Theology in the Style of Gilbert and Sullivan

There are two groups of people, diametrically opposed, who are remarkably similar to one another in a number of ways, including their capacity to annoy me. These groups are theists who claim moral superiority solely on the basis of their belief, and atheists who claim intellectual superiority solely on the basis of their non-belief.

Society has done a pretty good job of beating down the first group, to the point where their most visible representatives are 40 idiots in Kansas. There is no end to the publicity that these people receive, even though they are so few in number that two short buses could carry all of them at once.

On the other hand, we have the evangelical atheists. Since you're reading this online and the Internet is their natural habitat, I'm sure you've come across at least a few of these people. They're the ones who declare, full of faith in their own superiority, that religious people are stupid. They'll post updates on the latest antics of the aforementioned 40 idiots in Kansas, trying to smear all theists with the actions of just a few. They'll compare the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust, even though the Spanish Inquisition killed maybe 5,000 people over the course of 260 years (meaning they executed fewer people on average than the Texas criminal justice system has over the past few decades) while the Nazis killed around ten million in six years if you count Soviet prisoners of war. They'll claim that all wars are caused by religion, conveniently omitting both world wars and the handful of Chinese dynastic civil wars that get basically no attention in the English speaking world but several of which had death tolls above ten million. None of those matter, because to them, all warfare stems from religious belief, and if you believe in God then you are both stupid and culpable for whatever evil they feel like attributing to religion today. It is not enough for them not to believe; you shouldn't believe either, and they proselytize aggressively.

Inspired by the faithful missionaries from the church of non-belief, I wrote some lyrics for the Major-General's Song from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance:

He is the very model of a modern cyber atheist
Who claims he's packing logic but is just another dogmatist
Claiming that something's missing from the infinite expanse of space
Requires understanding that we simply don't have of the place
He's making claims while lacking any scientific evidence
Just like the fundamentalist who claims all things are providence
Now if you're an agnostic I would say that's justifiable
Consistent with just making claims from evidence available

Now I would count myself among those logical agnostic guys
If I had not had some experience showing contrariwise
If I ignored that evidence I'd be a crappy scientist
Just like the very model of a modern cyber atheist

Poetry Dump

One of my favorite verse forms is the double dactyl, sometimes called a "higgledy piggledy." It's got a rather long list of rules and follows a rigid meter, but it's very satisfying to write one because it's so challenging. Incidentally, the strict rules regarding what content goes in each line combined with the meter makes a double dactyl very easy to memorize. Here are a few of them that I have written, which are being posted again as cultural icons for posterity to cherish. You're welcome, posterity, now get off my lawn.

This one was comparing different class setups in Torchlight 2, because video game forums are appropriate venues for difficult poetry:

Clickety clickety
Glaive throwing Outlander
Aiming is optional
Hits like a truck

Marksmen are burdened with
Unsatisfactory
Damage per second and
Usually suck

While "usually" technically has four syllables, the "al" in words ending with "-ally" is typically (example!) skipped when the word is spoken in my dialect, so it sounds right. If you speak a dialect where "usually" has four syllables, I maintain that you are Doing It Wrong, and you probably have a wide and shameful array of vices and character flaws.

The next poem was about Planetside 2, an online friendly fire and vehicular manslaughter simulator:

Infantry Infantry
Food for artillery
Speed bumps for teammates who
Hit them and run

Corpses accumulate
Apocalyptically
Playing as Medic my
Job's never done

Here's one I wrote about Gendo Ikari from Neon Genesis Evangelion:

Higgledy piggledy
Pater Familias
Misses his wife so he
Wants to be Tang

Eagerly instigates
Instrumentality
Sending humanity
Out with a bang

There is some lingo in there, but it's ok if you're not familiar with the show and don't understand it; just take my word for it that this is terribly clever and you should be impressed. Nobody really understands Evangelion anyway.

Here's one for history; it's about Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, famous Turk-stomper and generally not a very fun guy to be around:

Stabbity stabbity
Patronym "Dracula"
Vlad the Impaler was
Not a nice man

Widely renowned for his
Inhospitality
Rather than meet with him
Run if you can

This one is highly inappropriate, and I should be ashamed of myself:

Giggity giggity
Cloistered degenerate
Pens innuendos of
Dactylic kind

Playing with words somewhat
Autoerotically
Heedless of warnings they'll
Make him go blind

This one is probably my favorite:

Higgledy piggledy
Hero of history
Died temporarily
When it was time

Posthumous victory
Tripersonality
Jesus or Conan or
Optimus Prime

You have my apologies for unmarked spoilers for Conan the Barbarian (1982), Transformers: The Movie (1986), and the first four books of the New Testament (1st century AD).

The Birthday Soliloquy

I wrote this for a friend's birthday a couple of years ago.

To eat or not to eat-- that is the question
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to forgo
The fat and sugar of unhealthy baking
Or to take forks against a cake of birthday
And by consuming end it. To eat, to sleep-
And snore-- and by a sleep to say we nap
With heartburn, and the risk of diabetes
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a birthday outcome
Devoutly to be wished. To eat, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that nap of cake what dreams may come
When we have shoveled down this birthday cake,
Must give us pause. That's the respect
That makes calamity of too much cake.

Man Hug Protocol

Overview

The Man Hug is a social convention by which men express affection. It should be reserved for use among male family members or other men whom you would trust to help you kill a guy and dispose of the body. Casual friends or acquaintances get a head nod upon meeting, while more formal associates get a handshake. Friends in a formal setting might get both a head nod and a handshake, and maybe a fist bump hidden from your boss if you're at work. To avoid accidentally straying from the bounds of heteronormative behavior, certain rules are followed at each stage of the Man Hug.

The Approach

Get the other man's attention. Usually this is done by calling their name and spreading your arms like a bear about to attack. This announces your intention to hug them and will either be met by a similar response on their part if they accept the proposed Man Hug, or an extended hand for a handshake if your proposed Man Hug is rejected. Grabbing an extended hand to turn a handshake into a Man Hug awkwardly forces things and will likely result in them avoiding you in the future. It's like when that guy you were talking to just to be nice tells you that you're his best friend. Don't be that guy.

Contact

The Man Hug involves very little actual contact, mostly at the right shoulder. Don't stand up straight; bend slightly forward at the waist and tilt to your left. Anything below the solar plexus should not be touching. Rainbows are straighter than two men hugging each other with full body contact. Arm position is important, as hugging another person with your arms above theirs is easiest when you are larger than they are, so there are implications of protectiveness. Women and children, having typically less height and a shorter arm span, find it easier to position their arms underneath when hugging a man. Because it is impossible for both men to hug with their arms in the typical masculine position, it is possible to unwittingly set off a power struggle for the position of alpha male as one of the men is forced to hug like a girl. To avoid inadvertently challenging another male for social dominance and to minimize physical contact, it is necessary to use a crossed position facilitated by the waist-tilting mentioned earlier. This allows both of you to have your right arm extending around the other man's back above his left arm, which should dangle unused after the attacking bear approach stance, or used to pound on the other man's back along with the right arm, like you are riding an imaginary motorcycle turning left. Grimace or otherwise wear a tough expression if you are hugging a man who is not a relative.

Break

If one man ends a Man Hug unexpectedly before the other man is ready, it can make for an awkward scene where one man appears to be clinging to another who is trying to get away. Hugging another man is awkward enough as it is, so a non-verbal signal to break the Man Hug has developed: the back pound. This is typically done two or three times, either as an open handed slap on the back or as a closed fist if you want to be extra manly. If done properly, both men will disengage the Man Hug simultaneously, take a step back to reestablish normal personal space and begin conversing in a lively manner about topics which affirm their mutual heterosexual status so that nobody who saw the Man Hug gets the wrong idea. If you ever see a situation where one man is clinging to a second man who is repeatedly pounding on the first man's back while rolling his eyes, it's because the first man is ignoring the signal to break. He'll be getting a handshake next time.

Regulatory Capture and Deregulation

I decided to write this post after seeing a series of excellent Venn diagrams showing how common it is for politicians and their staff to overlap with the private sector they are regulating. For example, William Daley was Obama's White House Chief of Staff and Clinton's Secretary of Commerce, but he was also on the Boeing board of directors and the Executive Committee of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

This type of situation leads to something called regulatory capture, where regulatory agencies are used to advance the interests of the industries (or specific companies within an industry) that they are supposed to be regulating. Politicians can be hired after they held office (often for a considerable amount of money) or they can go from the company into a political position, or at worst they can hold both positions at the same time, but the corrupting influence is still there.

I suspect that most Democrats believe that this is a problem with Republicans and that Democrats will keep those regulatory agencies in line. Well, not really. If you look at those diagrams, you'll notice that the vast majority of people on them are given their positions by Democrats. Just look at all of those Goldman Sachs employees holding important positions under Obama. I don't know if there is some selection bias by the person who made the diagrams, so it's entirely possible that for every CEO, lobbyist, or "director of govt. relations" that a Democrat takes on board there are three more hired by Republicans. Ultimately, that just makes my point stronger: no matter who is in charge of regulations, regulatory agencies will be used to serve the interests of the industries they should be regulating. If you think that the Republicans will be even worse about this than the Democrats are, then that's all the more reason to dismantle the regulatory apparatus before the Republicans get their hands on it again.

Regulatory capture has more malign effects than just getting regulators to turn a blind eye. Regulations can allow the company with the most political influence to use those regulations to cripple its competitors. For example, tobacco companies know that with the ban on tobacco advertizing, they don't have to worry about new competition showing up to challenge them. Wal-Mart, as I mentioned in my post on the minimum wage, supports an increase in the minimum wage because they already pay more than that while many of their competitors do not. Regulations are a path to corporate hegemony, wherein powerful corporations offer their support to politicians in exchange for regulation that favors them over their competition, or which simply hits their competition harder.

In the absence of regulation, companies compete on the basis of their ability to make a good product, advertize it well, and sell it at a competitive price. The selective pressure of a market economy ensures that without being able to do those things, a company will fail and those resources will be allocated elsewhere, so companies that thrive will tend to be pretty good at what they do, and the rest of us benefit from this. With regulation, the company's political pull becomes relevant as well. As the power of regulatory agencies grows, political influence grows in importance. This means that in a highly regulated environment, political influence alone can determine whether a company succeeds or fails. The Holy Grail of this, for companies, is being deemed "too big to fail" whereupon bailouts and heavy regulations enshrine them as a permanent fixture in the economic and political landscape. The nature of the selective pressure in a highly regulated environment will ensure that companies are good at either getting regulation that favors them or getting around regulation that doesn't, but they won't necessarily be very good at making and selling good products at a competitive price because the relative importance of those things is diminished. Naturally, larger companies will find it easier to exercise political influence, so regulations will tend to favor them and the economic landscape will shift toward larger and larger companies.

The solution to this corrupt intermixing of companies and government is to limit the power of regulation. It's fine if you don't trust companies; I don't either. They are looking out for their own interests first and foremost, and nothing will change that. The important thing to realize is that regulation isn't going to make them more efficient or socially responsible or "green" or whatever it is that you care about; it's only going to replace economic criteria for success with political criteria. It gives them incentives to get heavily involved in the political process and make regulations that are worse than nothing. Regulation does not limit the power of companies because it is the most powerful companies that make the regulation in the first place, even under a president who loves to play up the notion of "Wall Street vs Main Street" and then take a populist position. Politicians who are heavily involved in this corrupt process will insist that regulation keeps companies in check, when in reality limiting the power of regulation limits the power of companies to use that regulation to their own benefit at the expense of everyone else.

This is not to say that companies should not be bound by the law. Rather, the law should arise directly from the legislative body itself rather than having that responsibility delegated to regulatory agencies or subcommittees. It's a lot harder to buy off enough Congressmen to enact favorable legislation (although certainly not impossible; Monsanto has given jobs to at least two former Congressmen, as have tobacco companies) than it is to swing a vote in a subcommittee someplace, many of which meet behind closed doors for even less transparency in their proceedings.

The Most Pretentiously Named Product Ever

I have found it: the most pretentiously named product in all of human history. It's not even something on a Starbucks menu, to my surprise. It's called the "Alpha Omega Elite." While this sounds like a special forces team founded by God during the Old Testament and comprised solely of wrathful archangels brandishing mighty swords wreathed with unquenchable eternal flames, that's not actually what it is. It's this thing.

Yup, that's a car seat. It costs a little under two hundred bucks and the idea is that you strap your wailing infant into it so that when you drive your car into a ditch because you were texting behind the wheel, they are less likely to go through the windshield. It also has a cup holder, because your infant knows how to operate one of those, and what could possibly go wrong with leaving a beverage within reach of a child in the car, anyway?

With a name like "Alpha Omega Elite" I expect this thing to detect an impending collision and eject the baby through the sunroof an instant before impact and parachute them to safety. It should then activate a radio distress signal that will call a helicopter rescue team like I'm a fighter pilot who has been shot down deep inside enemy territory, and my baby/weapons-officer has vital reconnaissance photographs that will turn this war around.

It is available in the following not-colors: Caroline, Lamont, Triton, and Nitron. That's a girl's name, a boy's name, a Greek god's name, and a Canadian professional wrestler's name, who played Sabertooth in X-Men. Presumably you are supposed to choose the one that is most appropriate for your baby.

How I Watch Disney Movies

I like to think that the prince is a master strategist. They had a ball and invited all the girls in the kingdom. This lets the prince see what all the girls look like when they're dressed up and how well they conduct themselves at social functions, but that's not actually all that important. What he needed, after determining whether a girl could pass muster as the public face of the monarchy, was an excuse to make a surprise visit to all of these girls to see what they look like when they're not doing their best to dress up for him, because he's a smart enough dude to know that makeup and fancy clothes are how women lie to you that they're attractive when they really aren't, and a monarch doesn't stay in power for long without double checking everybody's lies. The shoe is just an excuse to make these surprise visits. If that hadn't happened, he'd have found something else.
 
At this point, he doesn't actually care that much about Cinderella. She's just some girl he met at a party, one of a few who managed to not make fools of themselves. The prince is keeping his options open and checking out all the girls in the kingdom when they aren't ready for him, to see what they really look like. That's just gravy for the Prince, but what he's really doing is testing for initiative and cleverness. The glass slipper is tiny and they aren't exactly being careful with it, so breaking it isn't hard. A sufficiently crafty girl could see that they wouldn't be able to fit into the slipper and "accidentally" kick it off of that poofy pillow they were carrying it on to guarantee its destruction, and then argue her case that she was the one. Merely making the attempt to do this would show initiative (and a willingness to lie, which is an essential trait for a ruler), but nobody else even thought to try it.
 
So, Cinderella's evil step-people break the slipper, and Cinderella presents a replacement which fits. Note that there is no way for them to check that the slippers are actually the same size, and nobody cares about that because it's irrelevant whether a girl would actually fit into the slipper that was left behind. What matters is whether a girl would be smart enough to break the slipper that was left behind and then make the case that they were the mystery girl from the ball. The prince was probably under the assumption that Cinderella had her family break the slipper on purpose, which displays initiative, cleverness, leadership, and the willingness and ability to lie convincingly. At this point, the prince is actually smitten with her and can hardly wait to take her back to the castle and start ensuring the royal succession, but he plays it cool to see how she's going to wrap things up.
 
Cinderella pulls the other slipper out of her dress. The Prince figures this is all just going according to plan, because who carries a single glass slipper around the house? Nobody, unless they knew they were going to need to present it as evidence, and Cinderella showed up a little late for the shoe-fitting event; the prince assumed after the fact that she was going to get the other slipper, to make the big reveal more dramatic. That's good enough for him. He marries her and is disappointed when he discovers that she's not actually a master of deception, but her ability to speak to mice and enlist the aid of birds makes her an unexpectedly useful asset in running the kingdom's spy network, so they have their happily ever after anyway.