Facebook: a place for insecure, narcissistic people?

This Daily Mail article will surely spark some debate.

I’ll answer the question: why do I like “facebook and blogs”?

Several reasons:

1. I meet new friends. Many a time, I’ve met people through this medium, especially those who racewalk and those who either run or walk very long distances. I’ve also met political/social friends that I went on to meet in person.

2. I’ve reconnected with people I haven’t seen in 30-35 years (junior high and high school classmates).

3. It gives my long suffering wife/family/friends a respite from my political/science/religion rantings.

4. Diversity. On facebook, I have friends that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. These include medical doctors, lawyers, other professors, chronically homeless, truck drivers, social workers. These also include people of different religious views and, yes, different races. I even have Republican friends! I don’t have any African American friends in real life, but due to my Obama support activities, I have several on facebook.

I get a sample of what life is like for others; for example some only have internet access through libraries. Libraries have obscenity blocking software…hence some big time websites (e. g. Daily Kos) have rules against profanity in diary titles.

Another instance: a truck driver took a photo of the fuel bill….it was something like 475 dollars for ONE fill up!!! He also talks about his travels and how happy he is on pay-day…for him that is steak day.

So am I insecure and narcissistic? Probably a bit of each, though I bend over backwards to NOT pretend to be something I am not.

An Answer to PZ Myers’ question: why do some link Nazism with Darwinism?

PZ Myers is frustrated with the false linkage of Darwinism with Nazism. Myers talks about a debate that Christopher Hitchens had with some idiot who tried to link the two things. Myers went on to write:

Good grief, please. Hitler was a nominal Catholic with an extremist pseudo-scientific philosophy that excluded Darwin and evolution, and found justification in religious dogma. It’s absolutely nuts that people still play this game of blaming Darwin for the Nazis; there’s just no historical reason to do so. Why not settle on that mass murdering tyrant, Stalin, instead? He was no friend of Darwin, either, but at least he was openly atheist, so they’d at least have a tiny pinch of logic (but not much of one) in correlating atheism and tyranny. At least, pointing at one godless anti-Darwinian and blaming all his crimes on godless evolution is marginally more sensible than pointing at a god-walloping anti-Darwinian and blaming all of his sins on godless evolution.

Emphasis mine.

Now I agree, there is no valid historical reason for doing so. But here is what I think is going on.

1. Remember the Scopes Monkey Trial? Well, the text in question was Hunter’s Civic Biology; this was the text that Scopes used. It had evolution in it. But check out what was in the text:

Yes, it contained racist, pseudo-scientific nonsense. And yes, that text, for historical reasons, got associated with scientific Darwinism, albeit unfairly so.

2. Darwin got his idea of species competing for limited resources, in part, from Rev. Malthus. Now Malthus argued that charity was bad as it lead to those who had lesser abilities to compete in society to continue to reproduce, thus hastening the exhaustion of resources.

Of course, Darwin never went along with “social” Darwinism; Darwin’s idea was a scientific one to describe how nature worked. It was never intended as a suggestion of how society should structure itself.

Anyway, that is where the associations of Darwinism with Nazism came from, I think.

Of course, this association is nonsense. Anyway, if social Darwinism was valid, then there would be no need for a state to kill off the “lessers”, would there? That would happen all on its own.

8 September 2010 posts

Science

I found a couple of good resources: physorg.com (articles) and plato.stanford.edu (a refereed science/math wikipedia).

Science and Religion
Last night I went with Barbara to the UU church to hear Michael Dowd speak on “Thank God For Evolution”. His basic premise: religions must conform to scientific facts; he then attempted to lay out a religious philosophy based on evolutionary principles. My take was roughly the same as Jeffrey Shallit’s here. It was the old “turn nature into something it isn’t” canard. I said this at Shallit’s (fine) blog recursivity:

Nice topic; Dowd spoke at the local UU church (where I used to belong) and said more or less the same stuff.

I didn’t ask a question but the questions in my mind were more or less the same as yours; the point is that nature, while awesome to comprehend, IS uncaring.

Bottom line: many people want a deity that cares about them and they aren’t going to get it from the universe as it really is.

But, the talk was at least entertaining and not as dreadful as I had feared.

I am starting to read the book and so far it IS dreadful. Perhaps it will get better as I go through it.

One note: Dowd is married to Connie Barlow and I’d much rather listened to her speak. Based on Larry Moran’s recommendation, I might order her books and read them.

Social: here is an interesting Daily Kos article written by someone who stutters. Frankly, while I understand stuttering might have a stigma attached to it and be frustrating, I never was bothered by those who stuttered. I suppose that one reason for that is that I had a couple of excellent college professors who stuttered; hence I never associated stuttering with low intelligence.

Politics

Of course the Republicans want one thing: win the elections. Hence they won’t compromise or even vote for stuff that they actually favor.
At least one Democrat is urging other Democrats to be aggressive.

8 September 2010 rehabilitation

Shoulder: it hurt last night; tough PT session and probably the ketoprofen creme that I used wasn’t strong enough. Today’s PT (on my own) was easier though; I did the band stuff plus the hand bike.

Workout: I got up later than normal so only did the following in the morning:
squats (one leg), 20 x 45, 10 x 95 (Smith)
squats (two leg) 10 x 160 (Smith)
leg press: 15 x 270, 15 x 360, 15 x 360
extensions: 3 sets of 10
curls: 3 sets of 10
toe: 3 sets of 30
sit ups: 4 sets of 25 with no rest between incline settings (high to low)
leg lifts 30
twist crunches: 20, 10
arm bike (6 minutes)

Noon: 45 minutes (3+ miles) of brisk walking on hills (Bradley Park); pretty day.

Knee notes: I can’t quite squat all the way down, but I am so close. But my left knee hurt just a little bit; that quad muscle is very tight. I need to keep stretching it. The piriformis is ok, but I’ve been doing hip hikes and stretches.

I swear; aging is tough. You end up playing “whack-a-mole” with little injuries.

But I have to be patient; fall racing season is just around the corner.

7 September 2010 pm

David Plouffe: on the 2012 midterms. Basically, the Democrats are in a stop-the-bleeding mode.

Andrew Sullivan: “Game On”!

In all this, the president deserves constructive criticism, but also moral and political support in engaging actual problems with actual solutions. Those on the left and in the middle who once saw his potential have no reason to abandon him now. If you were one of them, he needs you and this country needs you now more than ever before.

Right on. I don’t agree with the President on everything, but a lefty who opposes him is crazy. Sure, it is ok to push him and advocate.

Pots-Kettles anyone? Rush Limbaugh calls Barack Obama “angry with a chip on his shoulder”.

Speaking of rabid, this snark is hilarious!

JEFFERSON CITY, MO (The Borowitz Report) – A rabid Doberman Pinscher jumped on stage at a Tea Party rally in Missouri on Labor Day and barked at the crowd for nearly twenty minutes before people realized he was not a candidate.

The dog, later identified by its owner as “Mister Buster,” held the crowd spellbound as he barked, growled, and frothed at the mouth, eventually receiving a standing ovation for his exertions.

Gwendolene Thomason, 42, a Tea Party supporter from Jefferson City, was one of the hundreds on hand who were convinced that the Doberman was a Tea Party candidate until he was outed as a dog. [...]

Read the rest…