Hurricane

Quip for the day:

"Ah, the unmistakable sound of a man sustaining a nutshot."

Wanted to link to the video for context, but Facebook is just a bitch like that.

Guilt

The difference between "White guilt" and "Catholic guilt" is that only one offers the chance for redemption despite the fact that you can never achieve the ideal under your own power.

"Woo-natics"

Someone really needs to introduce the devotees of essential oils to the concept of homeopathy.

Why I Don't Adult Well

My mental to-do list is stored at /dev/null.

Random Thoughts 1

We hear all the time these days about social justice, but I have yet to hear anyone talk about social mercy.

The Cockroach Matrix

We've done a lot of work on insect neurology over the past few decades, and I have to wonder where the limits are. To be more specific, how far are we away from creating a Matrix for cockroaches? What could we learn and what kind of ethical issues might arise?

For readers who are confused by the reference (and my guess is that isn't many), what we're talking about here is creating an immersive virtual reality that is fed directly into  a creature's nervous system, bypassing the physical senses and musculature. As far as the roaches would be concerned, the virtual environment would be nearly indistinguishable from reality. Furthermore, the virtual environment would be shared among all of the roaches connected to it, which means that they would be able to interact with each other.

What could we learn from such an experiment? Well, first there's the question of whether there is a difference between the behavior of real cockroaches in a virtual environment and simulated cockroach neurologies in that same environment. Second, do we see different behavior between cockroaches in a simulation of a real environment and those in the environment being simulated? And how detailed a simulation do you have to have before you stop seeing significant differences in behavior? Finally, what happens when you subtly twist the virtual reality in ways that don't correspond to the known bounds of reality? Is it possible, in a quite literal sense, to drive a cockroach insane? How would you know if you had succeeded?

Then there are the ethical and theological questions. Is it morally wrong to do such a thing to cockroaches? If lying is defined as presenting a different reality than the one God created, does this put one into the position of lying to cockroaches? Is there anything wrong with that? Why or why not? Is it cruel to supply the roaches with a fake environment that caters to them as opposed to leaving them in their natural state of Darwinian struggle for survival? Does this whole thing pass the disgust test, or is it ok because we're not talking about doing it to human beings? Those are just a few I can think of off the top of my head. Are there others? Has someone already thought of all of this and I just don't know it?

I don't have the answers, of course. My brain just goes in really odd directions if I don't keep it on its leash.

Reversion - Part I

It was all the cat's fault, of course.

To say that Koshka was a smart cat would be a fair if simple way of putting it. Catching an animal in the act of opening a cupboard door,  using its paws to hold onto the handle while walking backwards on its hind legs, tends to leave an impression on you. So does watching the very same animal tear across your apartment, leap at an inside corner, rebound off both walls, and tear back in the opposite direction without losing any speed whatsoever. This was a cat who knew what she wanted and knew how to get it, so it shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as it was when she decided to take a walk one stormy night after I accidentally left my front door ajar.

From what I understand, indoor housecats can go feral rather quickly if given the opportunity, and Koshka was no exception. My biggest mistake once I figured out where she was holed up was rigging up a tiger trap with bungee cords, tent stakes, a wooden dowel, some fishing line, and a laundry basket. She learned quickly to stay out of boxes no matter how enticing the food looked, and I gave up on recovering her.

Which, of course, made the black-and-white-furred feline corpse in the middle of the road a few mornings later a depressing reminder of my inadequacy as a pet owner and of my own mortality.

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I was raised nominally Catholic in the grand post-Vatican II American tradition. My family attended mass (grudgingly) on Sundays. I attended CCD until I managed to persuade my parents that Catholic school made it redundant. In all that time, nothing about the faith connected with me. I knew the prayers and went through the motions, but that was about as far as it went. All of this practically guaranteed that I'd see no point in any of it once I got out on my own.

I never collapsed to atheism over the following decade; the implicit nihilism of the position would have proved lethal to me on any number of occasions. I held fast to the belief that the universe has an intelligible structure and that the structure and state thereof comprises Truth. Nor did I succumb to the notion that truth of any capitalization is an illusion caused by a prudishly closed mind. I did, however, feel strongly that if God did in fact exist, he must have been bent on making me as miserable as possible.

The cat went "splat" late in the Spring. Following soon thereafter was my 10-year high school reunion, where my existential angst was further heightened by the news that one of my classmates had succumbed to complications associated with a severe case of anorexia in the years since graduation. I went to mass for the first time in years that Sunday as it was dedicated to the memory of our departed. Then on my way out of town I decided to drop in on some family friends that lived across the street from the house we'd rented after moving to the area.

I'd gotten a lot of mileage that weekend retelling the story of Koshka's terminal mistake, so of course I pulled it out one more time. The response that came back could not have been aimed any more precisely:

"Well, it sounds like she was just too smart for her own good."

The comparison was undeniable.