DSPS

(Based on a facebook status I posted a few nights ago)

Alright, ladies and gents, let's have us a little chat about invisible disabilities.

When you have no legs and have to get around using a wheelchair or whatever, then everyone looks at you and says, oh look at that poor guy, trudging (metaphorically) through life with such bravery and dedication, let's build him special bathrooms and access ramps and lynch anyone who looks at him the wrong way.

And then sometimes you have different conditions, which do not make themselves readily visible by halving your height or by equipping you with an adorable doggy that's legally allowed to accompany you everywhere, and then everyone looks at you and says, oh look at that guy, what the fuck is wrong with him and why can't that bastard just act normal, let's shun him from society and mock his difficulties with vigor and alacrity.

So you know what, I'm not going to cry right now about having trouble seeing the distinction between different shades of red, or about my hilariously deformed spine, or my self-destructive eating habits or the social anxiety or the insane mood swings, but I'm tired, literally, of letting this sleeping thing slide.

Sleep! Wonderful thing, or so I hear. Humans apparently spend roughly 1/3 of their lifetime doing it. It must truly be the bee's knees. Oh what a shame it would probably be if you couldn't do it.
Well, hey, you know that one time you came back from your trip to America and the jet lag was so damn nasty you got yourself a Circadin prescription rather than wait for it to pass naturally after a few days? Yeah, I've been enjoying that particular condition for the last 17 years or so. Probably more, but all these years without sleep do make the memories rather fuzzy around the edges.

I can't sleep. Sure, I occasionally go to bed and briefly lose consciousness, but that bears the same resemblance to real sleep as getting around on a wheelchair does to parkour.
Yesterday I got home from work after finally giving up hope of getting anything productive done this week, so utterly drained and exhausted from several unusually-horrible nights following 2 weeks of head-splitting stress and anxiety (I sincerely apologize to anyone I snapped at lately) and decided that, fuck it, that horrible pill that used to make me completely sedated for up to 20 hours, I'm gonna take two of them, fire up the ol' A/C, barricade the windows, and party like it's zZzZzZzsnore. Well, seeing as 5 hours later I'm here, ranting at length, I think you could take a wild guess at how well that plan worked.

I can't sleep. I've tried everything. Tea, alcohol, milk, water, physical activity, lighter physical activity, heavier physical activity, sex, masturbation, video lectures on algebra, complete physical exhaustion, complete emotional exhaustion, counting sheep, counting camels, more blankets, less blankets, air conditioning, white noise, gentle music, power metal, eating carbs, eating proteins, eating nothing, Stilnox, Ambien, Nocturno, Miro, melatonin, earplugs, blindfolds, natural light, unnatural light, no light, fresh air, freshly washed sheets, nicely scented room, going to sleep earlier, waking up later, gradually making a full round to move my sleep time earlier, lemons, plums and mangoes in syrup. It doesn't work, it simply does not. Other than specific chemical substances, I can assure you with full confidence that any sleep tips you can offer I have heard and I have tried and they have failed. My bastard of a brain is living in the wrong timezone and there is not a bloody thing I can do about it.

Going to sleep at any point earlier than 06:00 means I will sleep badly. Going to sleep at any point earlier than 01:00 qualifies as a light nap and you're welcome to replace your night's sleep with one and let me know how good that feels. Going to sleep earlier than 22:00 usually means I'm going to wake up in 3 hours max, dizzy and pissed off, and be unable to even think about sleep (or anything else) until I literally collapse 20-24 hours later.

This is Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. It's a natural jet lag that never ends. If you've ever felt a bit off after switching daylight savings time, well, then you're 10% of the way to understanding what I feel like every single day of my life. It's such an utterly fucked up condition that the only way to get it diagnosed is to complain about bad sleep until the doctors run out of other options. I'm not even kidding, this is literally how this is diagnosed, by reaching the point of "we know you can't sleep and all we can say is that it's none of the reasons on this list". Nobody has any idea why it happens, and there's no cure other than working the graveyard shift.

Why the hell am I writing all this? Mostly because of the situation described in this little comic. It's the arrogant ignorance I can't handle. You think you know what tiredness is, and you're wrong. The last time I had proper sleep for more than one night in a row was November 2011. I'm tired, and I'm tired of being tired, and it affects my life in the exact same way that you'd expect chronic sleep deprivation to.

What can you do to help? Well, gee, what do you do to help guys in wheelchairs? I don't want your pity and I don't want your tax money and I don't want people marching in the streets brandishing badly worded signs for the rights of DSPS patients in the name of justice and equality.
I just want some basic understanding. This is a terrible crippling debilitating disorder, and I'm fighting it and trying to lead a normal life as much as I can, and then something happens in my life that makes hell break loose and a few sleepless nights later I get people telling me "what the fuck, man, just go to bed earlier" and I just want to punch them right in their smug faces.

I'm <name redacted>, I have several very real problems that are not visible to you, and I just want you to acknowledge them and not feel so bloody smart because you came up with "just go to bed earlier" all on your own. Maybe also cut me a little bit of slack when in a state of complete exhaustion I say the wrong thing. I wrote this shit while you were sleeping safely in your beds, filling up your mana bars, because I can't.

There's no punchline. It's not funny. Good night and sleep tight.

Micromanaging The Government

It's generally agreed that micromanagement is bad; after all, not only is it extremely time-inefficient, but also managers tend to be too busy managing to have as much technical expertise as their underlings.

Why, then, do we try to micromanage our government?

The idea of democracy is that the power belongs to the people, but this doesn't mean that the people need to micromanage. When a company's CEO decides that the company needs to launch a product, he does not bother himself with the cogs and gears, or go around inspecting every line of code. So why should we care how our government chooses to attain our goals, so long as it does so effectively?

Let's face it, people's goals in life are really simple. We generally want to live without fear of war, famine, pestilence and death. We want to avoid traffic jams, and have the time and means to watch other people embarrass themselves in front of video cameras. In extreme cases we might want self fulfillment too.

There is not a single person in the entire world whose end goal is to pay less taxes. Nobody actively wants any specific laws. In fact, almost nobody even wants to either prevent or allow gay marriage. All of these things are means to an end, whether that end is financial prosperity, equality and justice, personal safety, or pleasing the Lord Almighty as He lies dreaming in R'lyeh.

That's why we should treat our elected officials the same way any good employer treats any valuable employee: tell them what we want done, and leave them to figure out how they can get it done on budget. It's their job, and they should be able to do it better than us. After all, if they can't do their job without our constant nitpicky supervision, why should we hire them in the first place?

Of course, at the same time it's important to remember that an employer usually has the ability to fire an employee if the employee breaks the law, knowingly acts against the employer's interests, or just proves to be completely incompetent. Not all employees would be motivated to do the best job they can when they know that it'll be years until anyone can possibly fire, demote, or otherwise punish them; and some people might be very motivated indeed to get a job that they know they are under-qualified for.

So if we want to keep up this democracy thing, we should act like it. If the people are the ones in charge, then the people should make sure to employ public servants who are capable of hearing what the people want and delivering it to them, while firing the ones who have proven that they aren't fit for the job.

And most importantly, we mustn't fall for politicians who promise to deal with whatever crisis is in the headlines this month; they are just like job candidates who can't do anything except spout buzzwords. By next year none of it will matter, and we'll be stuck paying the bloated salary of an employee who never gets any work done.

The STEM crisis

This post is my opinion on this article: The STEM Crisis Is a Myth.

Despite professional, scientific phrasing such as "Clearly, powerful forces must be at work to perpetuate the cycle", I suspect that this article may not be completely trustworthy. In the name of skeptics everywhere, let us dive straight into this conspiracy theory, and see whether it makes any sense.

The first time that the article tries to explain why the STEM crisis is a myth, it uses self contradicting logic. It picks someone's estimates for the number of new STEM bachelors and the number of new STEM jobs, and shows that not all of these bachelors will be able to get a job. This would make a lot of sense if the article hadn't mentioned just a few paragraphs earlier what a stunningly high percentage of STEM bachelors don't work in STEM jobs - 20% abandoned the field less than 2 years after graduating (and another 38% in the following 8 years). So why bother comparing these total numbers which are already known to be irrelevant?

According to the next paragraph, a third of recent CS graduates aren't working in their profession, and a third of those say that the reason is a lack of jobs. So basically, out of a group of young inexperienced workers fresh out of an unknown educational institute, only 11% say there is a lack of jobs. These numbers do an even better job of showing how irrelevant the previous claim is - most of the people who don't work in that field don't even do that as a result of a lack of jobs!

Point for thought: has anyone checked the numbers of bachelors of various arts who work in their fields? Animators, movie directors, musicians? How about historians? English majors? The article says that "Another surprise was the apparent mismatch between earning a STEM degree and having a STEM job". The use of the word "surprise" here is entirely unsubstantiated, and I suspect that it was picked mostly for effect.

One paragraph I found worth focusing on is the one that says: "That report argued that the best indicator of a shortfall would be a widespread rise in salaries throughout the STEM community. But the price of labor has not risen". By what criteria exactly does anyone make that comparison? In CS alone, as a sub-field of STEM, the differences in salaries across time and space are absolutely staggering. The job offer I am probably going to accept tomorrow pays a whopping 40% less than the job offer I am almost certain to get later this week. And keep in mind that I myself am neither a complete newbie nor a rock-star developer; top software developers easily get a monthly salary 4-5 times higher than the lowest rank of code monkeys. So what conclusion is anyone expected to draw out of some average numbers? If the price of labor has not risen, is it because the ratio of supply and demand has stayed exactly the same, or maybe there are simply many places that now require the aforementioned code monkeys? Perhaps due to financial considerations it has become impractical for many places to pay rock-star developers quite as much as they used to, in a way that some may even refer to as the "bursting" of a certain "bubble"? Such averages tell us nothing of value here.

Moving on to the explanations about the conspiracy itself, we see sentences like "... an abundance of scientists and engineers is widely viewed as an important engine for innovation and also for national defense". Yes, this is absolutely correct, in the same way that petrol is widely viewed as an important engine for transportation: accurately. With all due respect to philosophy majors and certified homeopaths alike, their professional contribution to the overall well-being of a country is somewhat less than that of your average engineer. Sure, if 100% of the population are scientists, this may cause some friction, but we're hardly at a point where we have to worry about that sort of freaky phenomenon.

This approach is, in fact, seen more than once in the article. "Without a good grounding in the arts, literature, and history, STEM students narrow their worldview—and their career options", apparently. It continues to quote the CEO of Lockheed Martin, who tells us that while his engineer employees are all excellent engineers, "the factor that most distinguished those who advanced in the organization was the ability to think broadly and read and write clearly". Forgive me for getting all scientific here, but that's not particularly controlled or randomized, is it? The ones who advance in that organization are clearly still engineers. And what's the connection between non-STEM studies and broad thinking/ clear writing, anyway? Are you trying to say that a STEM degree actively inhibits one's abilities in the fields of broad thinking and clear writing?

This, sadly is where the article ends, without having provided any real basis for its fantastic conspiratorial claims, leaving me quite unconvinced.

This is a good place to note that this article makes the same mistake as literally every other article I've ever seen on this subject: the implicit assumption that graduating with a STEM degree qualifies a person to be a valuable STEM worker. This assumption is what we in the biz refer to as "bullshit".

I obviously lack the tools and data to exactly quantify the amount of STEM graduates who are incapable of actually working in the position they studied for, but from what I've read in data compiled by bigger men than I, the percentages are in the high double digits. If we focus on my particular field, software engineering, I can count at least 3 sources that claimed that over 80% of the people they interview for software development positions fail in the most basic of code-writing tasks. This pretty much invalidates any numeric comparison that anyone can ever make between the number of STEM graduates and the number of STEM workers; if, as was mentioned above, 11% of STEM bachelors say that there is a lack of jobs, isn't is likely that these are the lowest 11%, the ones wholly unqualified to work in their field? The ones who just barely passed their exams without understanding any of the material? The ones who graduated from the highly professional college that Uncle Joe runs in his basement? Possibly the ones who cheated their way to the degree? Not all of these industries are lousy automated production lines; a company that needs 1 skilled engineer cannot possibly fill that position with 1000 unskilled ones.

This is the real reason for the perpetual shortage of STEM workers. In industries where skill matters, anyone who lacks these skills simply doesn't exist. As long as jobs remain empty, no amount of unemployed STEM graduates would be evidence that there is no shortage of workers.

Discrimination

Racism, prejudice and discrimination have been a part of human society for a very long time. I mostly believe in equality (where applicable), but sometimes the politically incorrect truth must be said out loud.

There are people in our society who, sadly, adhere very strictly to rather offensive stereotypes. An entire slice of the population, which really appears to deserve different treatment.

They are extremely uneducated; you'd be hard pressed to find one of them that knows how to read or write, or has even the most rudimentary mathematical skills. None of them has ever made any significant contribution to any scientific field, and none of them has achieved anything in any of the liberal arts.

They tend to, as a general rule, altogether neglect their civic duties. They seldom hold a job, they do not pay taxes, and only in very rare cases do they serve in the military.

They appear to be exempt from most laws. They do not get prosecuted or punished for vandalism, in which they engage often. They noisily disturb the peace at night and the police will not come for them. They accost random passersby in the street, and even sexually harass and face no punishment. No jail time, no fines, no sex offenders registry.

Worst of all, they still get taken care of. They live on my dime and yours. We, the productive members of society, are responsible for their well-being, for their health and prosperity. They give nothing, and take everything.

I feel that the inclusion of these people in our modern human society brings us great peril, and something must be done before it's too late.

---

I seem to run across too many militant vegans these days. For some reason, they appear to be convinced that animals are people, and deserve the same rights as humans.

Needless to say, I find the idea completely ludicrous. Allow me to elaborate:

Cows don't pay taxes.
Chickens don't serve in the army.
Cats aren't prosecuted for vandalism.
Dogs don't get registered as sex offenders.
No pig has ever made a significant scientific discovery.
No goose has ever written a symphony or painted a landscape.

While I won't be as insensitive as to suggest that they lack the capacity, evidence clearly shows that they lack the will. They are completely parasitic, they contribute nothing to the advancement of either our species or theirs, but we give them food and a place to sleep, we give them love and provide healthcare. Oftentimes, a human who finds a poor homeless cat, or dog, or really any animal at all, will give it shelter and food. When have you ever seen an animal extend the same favor to an orphaned human?

So, no, I do not believe that animals are people. I will not support their right to elect or get elected. I will not support their right to get a driving license. I do not believe that the state needs to spend money on their education. And, most importantly, since they aren't people, I will choose whether or not to eat them in chili sauce in my own discretion.

I am not a murderous bastard. I do not kick puppies and I do not burn kittens. I do not step on ants, and I peacefully coexist with the praying mantis that has, apparently, taken residence in my apartment since last night. I will, however, place the interests of my species above those of other species. I will not sacrifice my health, nor my happiness, to protect a bunch of cows, and I do not think that any other human should, either.

Animals are food. All of them. If they don't get eaten by humans, they will get eaten by something else. Feral animals do not lead a long peaceful life of self fulfillment and die in their beds at a ripe old age; they get chased through various terrains knowing full well that one misstep will lead to their untimely demise. They get sick, they get hungry; nature is not the perfect utopia imagined by certain people, not even close. Feral cows are eaten quite savagely by various predators, and never have I seen a lion protesting with a "Meat is murder!" placard.

Above all, I must pity these militant vegans. Comparing carnivores to Nazis, and eating meat to the holocaust... assuming no serious brain dysfunction, this implies a sincere belief that over 90% of all humans are monstrous homicidal maniacs, devoid of any morals or emotions, fueled by insatiable lust for blood. I cannot imagine what it must be like, living with that belief, fearful of every person you see on the street. In all fairness, if you believe humans are like that, then maybe I can see the sense in "animals are people".

Or maybe they don't really believe that and just enjoy the intense provocation. Maybe they have made some personal decision and are having so much trouble with it that they absolutely have to deliberately alienate nearly all of mankind.

But one thing is certain: whatever they may believe, or claim to believe, there do not appear to be any vegans currently campaigning in favor of making animals work, pay taxes, and obey the law in exchange for equal rights.

Let Hitler Die

Every year, about a week before Israel celebrates its Independence Day, it takes a day off to remember Adolf Hitler. I, for one, find it pretty sick.

Every year, in honor of the so-called "Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day", the sirens blare solemnly for two minutes of still and silent contemplation. This is apparently meant to remind us of the horrors of the Holocaust, for some reason. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, this reason is to perpetuate the memory of insane, hateful individuals who took it upon themselves to kill millions of innocent people with horrifying efficiency.

Every year, between the depressing movies on the TV and the not-really-depressing songs on the radio, the various official ceremonies try to appear serious and respectful as they light 6 candles, and let 6 people say that, yes, they too might possibly have distant relatives that perished in the camps. The recycled texts and songs disgracefully remind us that nobody, in fact, cares enough to refresh the thoroughly chewed contents of these ceremonies. Now, I'll be the first to admit that this sort of remembrance by meaningless repetition is a staple of Jewish tradition, but from a sane and secular viewpoint, it's still disrespectful to the slain and the survivors alike.

Let's cut to the chase: every year, while the sirens scream, while the candles are lit, while the TV shows the same sad movies, who is it that we remember? Why, the exact same party we remember in any similar occasion, of course: The Bad Guys. Just like everybody remembers the name of Jack the Ripper but nobody remembers the names of his victims, commemorating this crime yields nothing but eternal life for the criminals. When you're standing still, some of the names that are likely to be etched inside your respectfully bowed head are:

1. Adolf Hitler
2. Adolf Eichmann
3. Dr. Josef Mengele
4. Joseph Goebbels
5. Hermann Goering 
6. Heinrich Himmler

There are probably a few others that come to mind. You can take a peek at this list of 15 Nazis and, I am certain, find that most of them are familiar to you. Everybody knows Eva Braun, too, and she didn't even get personally involved with the Jew-killing (as far as I'm aware). 

And who's on the other side? How many of The Good Guys (AKA The Victims) do we actually remember on this remembrance day?

1. Anne Frank

Some might remember Mordechai Anielewicz, if they'd been extremely attentive, but I had to google his last name as well. The victims, the very people we pretend to commemorate, mostly remain anonymous. 

You might say that this is an opportunity to remember family members who were murdered in the Holocaust, but then, why the special day and why the special treatment? You have hundreds of dead relatives, certainly some that died more recently and that were closer to you. Do you spend an entire sad day every year in their memory? The only difference is the circumstances, because these particular people were killed by Hitler.

Even supposing that you do want to dedicate a day to grieving those family members, and that this, of all days, makes sense for it, doesn't it become cheap by being shared with everyone in the country? This is not a day that you have chosen to dedicate to your family, but a day that has been chosen by someone else, arbitrarily, to collectively grieve some anonymous dead people that almost no living person today ever knew personally. Suppose you've lost a dear family member in recent years and every year you remember them on the date of their demise; would you trade that day for a national Remembering-The-Dead Day? Again, the only difference is the circumstances, because these people were among Hitler's victims.

Every year, a day is dedicated to the memory of something which, in itself, isn't amazingly memorable; people have been killing one another since the dawn of time. Even today, I have no doubt, somebody somewhere is killing a person in ways that would make Hitler cringe. Pretending to commemorate these particular victims, which, as victims, were so un-special that we cannot even remember their names, does nothing except commemorate their murderers. I, for one, do not feel that these murderers deserve to be commemorated.

But these reasons, on the whole, mostly appeal to those who frankly and actively want to remember the dead, which is a rather personal thing. Why must the rest of us face all this excess sadness? War, famine, pestilence and death ravage the world every hour of every day, and depression is generally considered an international epidemic; do we really need to dedicate a whole day every year to sheer sadness? Why should a person who enjoys their life stop on this day and be miserable? Worse, why should a person who is already miserable suffer more on this day?

This is as if somebody said: Hitler made it his goal to exterminate all Jews and failed, so for one day every year we're going to feel bad for him. For an entire day we will show respect for his handiwork. For 2 minutes we will even go as far as to stop our lives completely, and pretend to be dead for his sake. I cannot even imagine how this made it into Jewish tradition, which includes, for example, the following holy days:

Day	What happened	What we do on this day
Chanukah	The Romans tried to kill us, conquered our land and destroyed our holy temple.	Light colorful candles, play with a dreidel, give money to kids, and eat delicious extra-oily foodstuffs.
Purim	The Persians tried to kill us, apparently unsuccessfully.	Give candy to people, wear costumes, donate to charity, and generally be happy. The Hebrew Wikipedia page on this subject claims the bible literally forbids being sad on this day.
Passover	We escaped Egypt after being enslaved for centuries, and Pharaoh commanding to kill all our male babies.	While most actual traditions of this holiday revolve around obsessive-compulsive behaviour, it is by all means a happy day and a happy month, and some go as far as saying the whole month is forbidden to grieve in.
Holocaust Remembrance Day	The Germans tried to kill us, but failed to finish the job.	Mourn, grieve, and pretend to be dead for 2 minutes.

If the Holocaust deserves to have a day dedicated to it at all, it should be for celebrating our national escape from certain doom. If the destruction of our holy temple by a conquering empire can be given a positive spin (i.e. "God Almighty gave us enough oil to light our lamps!"), I'm sure that we can spare some happiness for the memory of how a murderous maniac, who initiated the biggest war in the history of mankind and killed tens of millions of people, ultimately failed in his carefully orchestrated scheme to kill all Jews.

---

While this covers the emotional and historical aspects, there is another reason for this holiday which people inevitably mention: What if another Hitler arises?

Well? What if another Hitler arises? How is remembering the original Hitler going to stop him? There is only one kind of person who would avoid doing something because "someone has done it in the past", and, frankly, I don't think hipsters are known for committing war crimes.

But seriously, what kind of reason is that? The reason not to commit genocide is not "it's been done before", but "it's a bad thing to do". If you're a parent trying to teach your kid that stealing is wrong you may choose the moral approach ("It hurts other people"), the pragmatic approach ("You'll get thrown in prison"), the philosophical approach ("How would you feel if someone stole from you?") or just the direct approach ("It's bad!"). Can you even imagine a parent telling their kid not to steal because "This guy 70 years ago stole a lot of things"? Sounds like a surefire way of raising a little criminal, if anything.

While some people imagine that the memory of the original event gives us a frame of reference for next time, perhaps a few pointers and indicators for warning signs to watch out for, the truth is the absolute opposite. This merely gives us a cheap weapon to use in arguments when we have nothing good to say, or an even cheaper weapon when we want to incite emotion in the masses. How cheap is this weapon? Approximately this much. How can you stop someone from being a Nazi if, as every resident of the internet knows, merely making a comparison to the Nazis makes you automatically lose the debate?

It's not just the internet, either. I can't remember any Israeli prime minister or defense minister in my lifetime who wasn't accused of being a Nazi, and so were countless other army commanders of varying ranks. Twice in the last few years our very own orthodox Jews have used Holocaust imagery in their protests against democracy. This probably isn't as widespread in the rest of the world, but plenty of foreign politicians are also called Nazis whenever the opportunity arises.

The very term "Nazi", in fact, has become such a tired cliche that it pops up everywhere, and in our very own country that should be holding the concept sacred, every right wing supporter has been dubbed a rightnazi, every left wing supporter is a leftnazi, every feminist is a feminazi and every vegetarian is a vegginazi.  To see just how overused the Nazi cliche is, simply answer this question for me: what do you call a person, especially online, who often corrects grammatical mistakes made by others?

If another mustached madman ever truly arises in attempt to finish off the Jews, he will laugh and shrug off all Nazi accusations, just like countless thousands before him have. This constant use of the term in ridiculous settings has done nothing but desensitize the entire world to the actual horrors of the Holocaust; if pointing out the difference between "your" and "you're" puts me in the same camp as a genocidal dictator, then apparently being a genocidal dictator isn't all that bad.

If you want to prevent a second Holocaust, the best thing you can do is forget everything you ever knew about the Holocaust and argue this case from a moral or pragmatic, rather than historical, point of view. The best thing you can hope the memory of Hitler will achieve is absolutely nothing; the worst is inspiration for other people who already have a similar mindset and will not be deterred by an argument of this sort.

---

The name of Hitler, and other individuals of similar circumstances, is often mentioned in Hebrew suffixed by the expression יימח שמו, which Babylon helpfully translates as "May his name be erased". It might be time to do what we've been absentmindedly saying for two thirds of a century, and, instead of granting eternal life on the pages of history, to erase Hitler's name from those pages and let him rot in the anonymity that he so well deserves.

Protecting Our Children

This filth has been filling our movies, shows, magazines, and even the internet, for far too long. You used to have to watch it privately and quietly in the middle of the night on some TV channel that had nothing better to show, or go out and purchase some printed materials where everyone could see you and judge your tastes. But now it has become so ubiquitous that not only is it accessible for free in huge amounts on the internet, or on TV at any time of the day, but commercials run rampant with it and mainstream books are sickeningly full of it, making the whole thing practically inescapable!

Sure, some people would argue that there is nothing wrong with it, that it is merely a basic biological function of humans, the mere documentation of a natural phenomenon, nothing to be ashamed of. And, of course, in its own way it teaches us important things that all adults need to know, but which schools seem unwilling to properly teach us. But I say no, these flimsy excuses only try to hide the disgusting truth, that this horrible thing is destroying our society!

The fact that it deliberately engenders terrible and sinful lust in its viewers is, I hope, undeniable; after all, it is carefully built to incite these exact emotions. The subjects prepared to exacting specifications; the lighting, just so, to optimally show their exciting shapes and shades. Or, just as bad, graphic descriptions in textual media paint such a vivid picture that we might as well be sitting in the same room. One can hardly refrain from drooling at the mere idea, and often cannot think of anything else until their urges are, temporarily, sated.

But an even greater problem is how all of these enticing views and descriptions create and perpetuate an unrealistic standard, which cannot possibly be met by any of your real life interactions. These fictitious accounts, performed by talented professionals with skill beyond any of us average Joes, meticulously captured on film and often edited further to make them even more alluring, are unlikely to be matched by you or anyone you know due to lack of skill, practice, equipment. All of this results in an endless void of unrealistic expectations, never to be filled, always leaving us wanting.

How many people have asked their spouses to do something they've seen in one of these shows, only to be met with a scornful look and, should they be willing to try, crushing disappointment at the amateur results? How many inexperienced teenagers have had their expectations built by such things they have seen online, and grew up thinking that this is how the real world is and should be?

And that, of course, leads to the most dangerous part: people, especially underage, seeing these shows and trying to mimic them at home. A young and impressionable viewer might well try to perform something they've seen on TV, without properly understanding the significance of their actions or the inherent dangers. Such experiments may well result in people harming themselves, or the people they love, and possibly leaving them scarred for the rest of their lives.

I say we have to stop it here. Get rid of this abominable phenomenon while we can, before it's too late. So I urge you to say no to cooking shows, to books full of sensational descriptions of feasts, to pictures of heavenly foodstuffs in commercials or on random websites. At the very least, if you insist on displaying such content, hide it behind a NSFH warning (Not Safe For the Hungry) and make it accessible only for responsible adults over the age of 18.

So for the sake of our children, please, say no to culinography!

My Immortal Soul

I find it very hard to believe in the supernatural.

It's worth it, however, to define what I mean when I say "supernatural", which seems to be different from what most people mean.

What is it that, in most people's opinions, qualifies ghosts or telekinesis as supernatural? Nothing about such phenomena is above nature. Surely ghosts obey some natural rules; most people would agree that they look a certain way, behave a certain way, and are incapable of performing certain things, for example interacting with physical objects. If a ghost tried to pick up a pencil, you could predict the outcome: its hand would pass through the pencil.

As far as I'm concerned, it is the existence of these rules that defines "nature". Nature is the whole universe and everything in it, and it is all subject to various natural laws, be it Newton's third law or "ghosts cannot pick up pencils". This, in turn, means that nature is, theoretically, completely predictable; we can perfectly predict the result of a collision of two particles, or the presence of a particle in a magnetic field, and so on. And since these laws encompass everything in existence, obviously nothing we see is supernatural.

Now, in light of this, let us examine the following chain of events: I, while walking in the street, see an acquaintance, and wave at him. We can break it down like so:

1. Photons from the sun hit my friend and are reflected in my direction.
2. The photons go into my eyes, and the visual information is transmitted to my brain.
3. My brain performs some miraculous image processing, facial recognition, and data retrieval, reaching the conclusion that this is an acquaintance of mine.
4. ???
5. My brain sends some signals down to my muscles.
6. Certain muscles contract, moving various parts of my hand in some directions.
7. I wave.

Some of these steps are fairly understandable. We know how muscles work, we understand the function of the human eye, and we are certainly on our way towards understanding how the brain does some of what it does. But what about step 4? Why, in a nutshell, do I wave?

The automatic answer is that I choose to wave. I could also choose not to wave. Something within the black box that is step 4 has decided that I, whatever "I" means, want to wave. It has taken all the information from the eyes, it has scanned my memory for familiar faces, it has consulted a vast database of experience to find the socially acceptable thing to do when recognizing an acquaintance in the street, it has considered my mood, and has reached the conclusion that I want to wave.

You could, of course, narrow down each of those steps, break it down to the smallest parts, end up with a list of hundreds of steps describing all of the most basic physical, biological or chemical interactions that make up this simple event. You could break step 4 into many smaller steps as well, but somewhere you would still end up with one step, let us name it Step X, that deals with whether or not I actually want to wave. Which brings us to the big question:

Is the mechanism behind Step X natural?

If Step X is natural, then it obeys natural laws, and is a direct result of the chain of events that precedes it. Given the exact circumstances, we could calculate the outcome. Or, in other words, free will is impossible because it is all predetermined, and determinism must be true.

If Step X is not natural, then its mechanism is above and outside nature; it exists somewhere outside the physical universe and can reach into it and affect it without being subject to its laws. I am no great theologian, but it seems to me that such a mechanism, the entity that performs this step, can be safely referred to as a soul.

That's it, more or less, that's my conclusion. Either the universe is deterministic and we are all meaty machines, or we have an actual supernatural soul. 

Not such a bad choice, actually.

---

* One argument I have heard against this conclusion is that a third option exists, and that is randomness, i.e. not all natural laws are predictable. I do not accept it, because I don't believe in a random nature and have never heard of any laws that even claim to be random, and never mind the fact that proving randomness is literally impossible. But be that as it may, it may still be viewed as a sort of determinism, in that our reactions are governed by the quirks of quantum mechanics rather than any sort of free will, so I guess the final conclusion should be phrased as: if free will exists, then souls exist.