Homophobia and Homosexuality

PaintingOnScars.com

Are Homophobic People Really Gay and Not Accepting It? (Psychology Today) reports on several well designed studies that say they are.

This pretty credible source substantiates the reports on the Harvard/MIT and other studies that show a strong correlation between homophobia and suppressed homosexual feelings.

As Freud found, and with it launched the discipline of psychology... it is the intense suppression of true feelings that causes harmfully abnormal stress and behavior; not the feelings themselves.

The whole process of growing up and "becoming civilized" is the process of learning to suppress true feelings when they are harmful to others. This is the mandatory requirement in order to have any kind of functional society.

However, looking deeper tells us that (like everything) there are limits.

Too much suppression, too intensely, for too long creates a fragile psyche that can collapse into harmful behavior when stressed.
 

Climate Change is a Huge Business Opportunity

Climate-change is the greatest business opportunity since the American westward expansion of the 1800s.

American unbridled imagination could lead the world in adapting to it.

That is, if government stopped coddling businesses already making more profits than they know what to do with on financially safe, but dirty and wasteful, old technologies.

As the seas rise and the weather worsens over the next few decades, millions of structures will be damaged and flooded. How are we going to preserve and protect them?

Weather is becoming more extreme. Tornadoes more frequent. Hurricanes farther north and earlier in the year. Unusually high winds. Dry thunderstorms igniting fires. Sudden snow storms out of season. How do we adapt to this new normal?

We need creative thinking. Roofing materials must be redesigned to withstand higher winds and bigger hail. Homes and high-rises must be reinforced. Building codes require massive overhaul to allow for the new approaches and new materials.

Established industries that refuse to adapt will fail. New business models will require a deferment of short-term profits. Owners and stock-holders must be willing to invest in risky new technologies that are not as profitable today but have the best chance to prevail in the future.

Solar panel technology is advancing almost as fast as computers. It will soon be cheaper to produce electricity at the point of use rather than a central location. Utility companies that embrace that fact will prosper by providing standardized, reliable point-of-use systems. Such systems could use of the existing transmission infrastructure for load-balancing and second-sourcing.

The most dramatic reduction in energy use and pollution may not even come from solar panels and electric cars, but instead from a better Internet.

Why do we consume vast amounts of energy and pour out tons of pollution to drive across town twice a day? Why do we leave one perfectly good building empty, only to occupy another? Most jobs today are information workers who could be located anywhere. Why not at home?

That means renovations to create better home-offices. Installation of higher speed Internet and faster computers. More sound-proofing. More ergonomic chairs.

It also means renovating office buildings into apartments. Maybe more two-car driveways to accommodate service vehicles parked at the technician's home while off-duty instead of in a big parking lot.

More extreme weather means more damaged roofs and broken windows. Flat video displays that use very little power are now common and rapidly getting cheaper and more efficient. Digital cameras likewise. For safety, energy conservation and your choice of views, why not "virtual-windows"?

The massive upheavals caused by climate change will create unprecedented economic opportunities... for those ready and willing to embrace it.

photo credit: Climate Indicators - Relative Sea Level Change Along U.S. Coasts via photopin (license)

Some Favorite Quotes

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
Albert Einstein

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
widely attributed to George Orwell
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Orwell

"The price of freedom, is eternal vigilance."
Leonard H. Courtney, Thomas Jefferson, Jean-Luc Picard (fic.), et.al.

"A rising tide sinks all boats that are anchored to the bottom."
http://www.dailykos.com/user/Zwoo

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough."
Albert Einstein

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."
Albert Einstein

"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."
Albert Einstein

"Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
Albert Einstein

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."
Albert Einstein

"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."
Albert Einstein

"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters."
Albert Einstein

"That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes."
Albert Einstein, 1915

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction."
Albert Einstein

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true."
Branch Cabell, author of satirical fantasy

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French writer (1900 - 1944)

"How extreme isolation warps the mind"

(Getty Images)

How extreme isolation warps the mind, Michael Bond, 14 May 2014, www.BBC.com

My own theory goes something like this...

All that we perceive is the result of our imagination.

All raw sensory input is interpreted by our imagination.

If there is little or no sensory input, such as while sleeping or in extreme isolation, our imagination proceeds to rummage around through our memories for "input" to re-interpret.

This extrapolating and recombining and juxtapositioning is the process by which we solve problems and think creatively. The process by which we "imagine."

Wildlife Ambassadors

Instead of banning Orca captivity entirely as a California Congressman's bill does, I actually think there should be laws requiring much more humane living conditions for them. SeaWorld has done more for Orcas that anyone else by bringing them into our world. If not for SeaWorld and other major aquariums, the public wouldn't care any more about "Killer Whales" than they do about sharks, rattlesnakes, scorpions... get my drift?

Yesterday, my daughter finally dragged me to the Tallahassee Museum of History and Natural Science (nee The Junior Museum)

If you haven't been there, TMHNS is much more a natural habitat zoo than a museum. Like virtually all zoos in the U.S., they do as much as they can within their meager budget to provide natural habitat space for wildlife. Only a few dangerous animals like poisonous snakes live in "cages" (aquariums). Most live in well fenced areas of native Florida habitat of several thousand square feet or more. Visitors are kept high above these enclosures of palmetto bushes, huge oak trees and cypress swamp on a well maintained wooden walkway. The animals ignore us most of the time.

Courage

A note to conservatives...

We know you're scared s***less of any kind of human progress. If it hasn't been done before, it must be "... lies straight from the pit of hell."

We try to explain that things will be better with improvements in the human condition. But your fears just won't let you go there. We understand.

The survival of the human race depends on overcoming our fears of the unknown... "to boldly go where no one has gone before."

That famous line was a metaphor by-the-way. While fictionally "exploring strange new worlds," the story-tellers were really exploring the human condition. How we treat each other. How we react to change. How we overcome our beliefs in what is possible on encountering the "impossible". And how we embrace it a grow as a result.

We know your fears for they are ours too. We've chosen to let our rational minds hold our fears at bay, for there is no way out of fear but through change.

The only way to remove a threat is to learn. We either learn to understand that it is not really a threat, or we learn how to mitigate or overcome it. We'll keep trying.

LA building's lights interfere with cellular network, FCC says

LA building's lights interfere with cellular network, FCC says

That's not all ...

Many types of electronic equipment found in homes and offices emit electromagnetic radiation, and clashes with outside radio signals once were more common. For example, when cellular add-on cards for laptops first came out, emissions from the CPU sometimes kept the radios from working, Marshall said. In addition, there used to be laptops that put off enough radiation to interfere with onboard navigation systems on planes, said analyst Craig Mathias of Farpoint Group.

NASA's "back in harness"

NASA's new "test harness" for its next generation of interplanetary flight systems gets "first light" this month. -- DocSalvage

Test engineer James Peckham runs an avionics flight simulation to see how SLS will perform during launch.

.@NASA_SLS hardware, software, operating systems integrated & powered up for inaugural run: http://t.co/iw6VJ6yumH pic.twitter.com/uMoVPTS0JX
— NASA (@NASA) January 13, 2014

loading tweet...

... life and death in the so-called safety net

Sharing and emailing to everyone, including my doctor, Dr. Jose Rodriguez at the Neighborhood Medical Center (nee Neighborhood Health Services) that is one of only two free clinics in Tallahassee like the one in this article ...

Texas' Other Death Penalty

http://www.texasobserver.org/a-galveston

A Galveston medical student describes life and death in the so-called safety net.

by Rachel Pearson Published on Wednesday, November 13, 2013, at 2:01 CST

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

Well Said Dr. Fullam...

Debate Over Intelligent Design Of God
and the case for unintelligent design

by Lisa Fullam

As the theory of intelligent design again hits the news with President Bush's encouragement this week that the theory be taught in schools alongside evolution, I have one question: What about unintelligent design?

Take rabbit digestion, for example. As herbivores, rabbits need help from bacteria to break down the cell walls of the plants they eat, so, cleverly enough, they have a large section of intestine where such bacterial fermentation takes place. The catch is, it's at the far end of the small intestine, beyond where efficient absorption of nutrients can happen. A sensible system -- as we see in ruminant animals like cattle and deer -- ferments before the small intestine, maximizing nutrient absorption. Rabbits, having to make do with an unintelligent system, instead eat some of their own feces after one trip through, sending half-digested food back through the small intestine for re-digestion.

Horses are similarly badly put together: They ferment their food in a large, blind-ended cecum after the small intestine. Unlike rabbits, they don't recycle their feces -- they're just inefficient. Moreover, those big sections of hind gut are a frequent location for gut blockages and twists that, absent prompt veterinary intervention, lead to slow and excruciating death for the poor horse. The psalmist writes: "God takes no delight in horses' power." Clearly, if God works in creation according to the simplistic schemes of the intelligent design folks, God not only doesn't delight in horses, but seems positively to have it in for them.

Furthermore, why wouldn't an intelligent designer make it possible for animals to digest their natural food without playing host to huge populations of bacteria in the first place: Couldn't mammals have been equipped with their own enzymes to do the job?

But that's not all: Consider mammalian testicles. In order to function optimally, they need to be slightly cooler than the rest of the body and so are carried outside the body wall in the scrotum. Why would one carry one's whole genetic potential in such a vulnerable position? Clearly it's not a gonad problem in general -- ovaries work just fine at body temperature and are snuggled safely within the pelvic girdle for protection. But for testicles, nope -- the scrotum is jerry-rigged to allow for a warm-blooded animal to keep his testicles cool. Surely an intelligent designer could have figured out a way for testicles to work at body temperature, as ovaries do.

Here's another: Do you know anyone beyond the age of 20 or so who has not had a backache? Let's face it: The human body is that of a quadruped tipped up on end to walk on only two legs. The delicate and beautiful cantilever curve of the human spine
compensates (but not enough) for the odd stresses that result from our unusual posture. Perhaps the God of intelligent design has a special place in his plan for chiropractors? And what about the knee? Between the secure ball-and-socket of the hip and the omnidirectional versatility of the ankle is a simple hinge joint, held together only by ligaments (including the anterior cruciate ligament) whose names are known to athletes and sports fans because they're so easily and frequently injured. Again, unintelligent design.

The real problem with intelligent design is that it fails to account for the obvious anatomical and physiological making-do that is evident of so much of the natural world. Evolutionarily minded folks see this as the result of genetic limitations and adaptations accumulated in specialization for certain environments, while the intelligent design folks are left with a designer who clearly cannot have been paying close attention.

While there are extremely precise and fine-tuned mechanisms in nature, there is also lots of evidence of organisms just cobbled together. For instance, take marsupials, who give birth to what in other animals are analogous to fetuses, then have to carry them around in what amounts to an exterior uterus until the offspring are ready to face the world.

As a theist who sees natural evolution not as a theory but as well-established observation, I take comfort in the catch-as-catch-can of the natural world. I have every confidence that an all-loving creator walks in and with the natural world as it struggles to fruition, cheering on our evolutionary triumphs (let's hear it for the opposable thumb!) and standing in solidarity with the evolutionary misfits and misfires, like rabbit guts and horses generally.

Isn't this how God walks in and with us in our individual lives as well, cheering us on, emboldening us and consoling us in our often misguided attempts to live well and do right, and standing in compassion and solidarity with us when we fail, and loving us into trying again? And isn't this a more compelling vision of God, and truer to the biblical God who comes again and again to offer salvation to erring humankind, than that of a designer who can't quite seem to get things right?

Lisa Fullam, a former veterinarian, is an assistant professor of moral theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley

Published on Thursday, August 4, 2005 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Walt Disney: One Man's Dream

[Comment added to "Walt Disney: One Man's Dream" at IMDB on 12/11/2004 by Robert Watson]

This program was a promotional for the 1982 opening of EPCOT, Disney's third theme park on the same property with the second theme park, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, USA.

The Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow was Walt's dream to build a real research community where real people actually lived. He envisioned it as a place where urban planners and other researchers would live and work to find new and better ways to design cities, homes, transportation, etc. The concept drawings I saw in a film they used to run in the Welcome Center just off to right as you enter Walt Disney World's Main Street, were of a hub-and-spoke city with high-rise business buildings at the center and monorail loops extending out like spokes to the suburbs of homes.

I think he also expected it to be a kind of educational park as well with rides that would carry the public, unobtrusively, through the research areas.

Alas, with Walt's death in the 1966, so too died the dream... except for the name. The money lenders apparently like the futuristic concept and so went ahead with EPCOT as another theme park. Ironically, the characters representing the "money people" in this program (all played by the great Carl Reiner) repeatedly express the view that Walt should keep doing more of the same (i.e. "think mouse","more pig cartoons") instead of trying new things. Maybe the writers were taking a subtle jab at what EPCOT had become?

There is (or was some 15 years ago when I was last there) one pavilion in EPCOT that captures the flavor of what Walt had in mind. It's called "The Land" and is sponsored by Kraft. It has a boat ride (a la "Small World") through a mixture of animatronics scenes and actual hydroponics gardens and things where they experiment with alternative ways of growing crops and such.

Absolute Truth?

[Excerpted from comment to Bob Lewis' Advice Line column]

We all have slightly different views on ethics. It seems to me that to expect that it could be any other way is to invite bloody conflict. Tolerance, and making a supreme effort to understand and find some value in other beliefs matures our own morality as well as promotes peaceful coexistence.

Contrary to the assertions of almost every belief system I've encountered, I don't believe there is such a thing as "absolute truth". There are too many variables. "Truth" is a moving target. It's constantly changing in light of new knowledge and greater understanding. It's called a "search for truth" for a reason... It's a process, not a goal. Whether God created Man or Man created God, what greater meaning could there be to our lives than for that search for truth to lead us to exceed our expectations?

If God is the Father of Man, is not a parent's most profound wish that their children grow into better adults than they? If, on the other hand, Man created God to embody and personify the ideals we should strive for in order to better ourselves and our world, then too is not exceeding those expectations not only desirable, but required to fulfill that destiny?

Whether one is atheist, agnostic or devout, is not the struggle the same... to become more than we are?

We in information technology are at the forefront of the latest great leap our society's ability to understand the world. Unfortunately, it's become painfully obvious that those who don't understand these new technologies and how they've changed our perceptions and behaviors are making highly flawed and destructive decisions. Their ignorance prevents their grasping the ramifications that are all too obvious to the rest of us. Despite our discomfort with the chaotic world of ethics, philosophy and theology, who else is there to bring rationality and maybe even a bit of wisdom to this decision-making?

As technologists, we like certainty. We like absolute truth. But have you noticed that the more complex computers and software get, the more elusive certainty becomes? Is certainty (truth) an illusion... an approximation... a convenience used to simply problems? What happens when our margins of error don't cover the inherent uncertainty that we are masking? If we're flying space shuttles, people die. Thankfully, most of us don't have people's lives in our hands... or do we?

REFERENCES
Enterprise Ethics - by Carlton Vogt, former Infoworld columnist

Origins of Values

[Comment #3 by Robert Watson to the post "Bush ethics adviser gets her principles from Star Trek" and "Update on trekkie ethics adviser " on Enterprise Ethics, Apr 1, 2005 1:09 am ]


Let me offer a counter argument to "I do not see Star Trek as an authoritative ethical source..."

For good or ill, some interpretation of The Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls has become the basis for most of the world's ethics.

The Bible is an anthology of stories designed to illustrate moral (ethical) lessons. Star Trek is an anthology of stories designed to illustrate moral (ethical) lessons. The purpose of both is to educate. The most effective way to educate is to convey knowledge in an entertaining way. It maximizes memory retention.

Since Christianity dominates American values, and Star Trek is written by Americans, most of its lessons are compatible with Christianity -- or at least some interpretation of those biblical teachings. Others have grown out of the application of secular logic to solve societal problems.

Thus, the Star Trek stories could be seen as an offshoot of Christianity much like Christianity was an offshoot of Judaism. It took Christianity several hundred years to rise above the status of "cult" but it has, and now more than a third of the planet's population are Christian. Star Trek lore is just getting started.

Personally, I find the values promoted in Star Trek to be more fair, honest and beneficial to long-term survival of human beings than the divisive, hateful, revenging, oppressive interpretation that dominates Christianity today. It is on that basis that I can say that my principals derive in large part from the Star Trek stories I've watched and read.

If most of the world can base its life and death decisions on 2000 year old stories written by men trying to keep an illiterate and superstitious population from destroying themselves, I can base my values and decisions on the lessons in a far larger set of stories that are much more applicable to the ethical dilemmas we face today.