This is hastily transcribed almost verbatim from one side of an IM conversation, so apologies if I left something important out.

I just read Jason Asbahr's blog. He has a great link to a speech by Michael Crichton about the state of the environmentalist movement.

In keeping with his religious theme, I think his argument backs up my general feeling that the end of all life is really the only solution to the eternal questions that humanity struggles with.

It would be nice if Crichton put together a website to factually verify some of those claims he's making - such as the claim that DDT is harmless and its ban has killed millions worldwide - but the specific examples weren't terribly interesting to me. I'm willing to accept the possibility of their truth on the basis of numerous other examples that I've heard better factual evidence for.

Not a big environmentalist myself, I still find the main thrust of his speech really unnerving, though I don't think he approached it directly enough - how do you mobilize the public to act upon vague, potentially unpleasant, and most of all, changing information?

How do you sensationalize, propagandize, and thereby positively politicize rational thought? It seems like you'd have to in a mass-media democratic society if you want it to be allowed to have any impact. Ayn Rand tried pretty hard, and look where that got her. I've talked about what's wrong with objectivism before. Not all of it is due to the problem of mass-media exposure and misinterpretation, but the end result is the same - one set of assumptions get substituted for another, and you repurpose a few key buzzwords - "reason", "truth", and "love" to name a few - to mean something different than what they did in your previous ontological framework, and you're done. (Extra credit: find out what these three words mean in your favorite belief system, and how their meanings differ from the dictionary definitions.)

I've started to think lately that you really can't, that it's impossible, and that people have to be inculcated with a critical spirit from birth or they will never really acquire one. They may sway from the Church of Christ to the Church of Rand to the anti-church of LaVey, but they'll continue holding extreme positions with re-heated fallacious arguments without questioning of any of their beliefs until they have a crisis, at which point they question ALL of them.

More optimistically, It doesn't really matter that you can't discuss subtle and complicated issues in a broad public forum. Humanity staggers on anyway. The important thing is to prevent the criminalization of rational discourse and inquiry. That conflict is substantially easier to dumb down and sensationalize. At any given time, in the USA anyway, there is inevitably an unpopular thinker whose punishment is far enough out of proportion with his (thought)crime that the public can express some indignant outrage about allowing him to think whatever he's thinking (usually, with the implicit subtext of "as long as I don't have to listen to it").

The wonderful thing about rational thought is that it actually allows you to manipulate the natural world more effectively, which makes it less important that the dominant forces in society care about your methods and beliefs - as long as they're not actively working against you.

And that's why I'm a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. :-)

So, I'm awake again at 3AM. I've been sleeping a lot lately to catch up on my stress-induced sleep deprivation before, so it's not entirely unexpected, but the real reason I'm awake has me a little worried about my continued presence here in this building.

At about 1:30AM every other day, my apartment fills with a really peculiar smell and it doesn't go away for hours. I originally thought it was cigarette smoke, but it doesn't reliably give me the same headache that nicotine does. Likewise, I don't think it's pot. Also, I can't imagine that my neighbor's smoking habits would be quite so deterministic.

While it doesn't make me sick or give me horrible headaches, it's definitely distracting enough to keep me awake. Although I was awake today when it started, it can wake me up. I'm going to mention it to the landlord tomorrow, but I'm curious: has anybody out there experienced strange, periodic smells in an apartment building? What might it be? Should I be seriously concerned for my health? My working hypothesis, taking into account the periodicity and my difficulty in identifying it, is that the building has a poorly insulated incinerator.

I'm back in Cambridge.

Despite being several hours' journey from my lady now, I find I'm glad to be back. Sleeping in my brother's room was no fun. I hope that within a few days I will start to find a normal rhythm again.

According to the plan, Ying is returning on Jan. 2. I'm counting down the days.

(Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.)

The funeral was today. I'm going back to Cambridge tomorrow.

Thank you so much to everyone who has offered to help Ying and her family in some way. There isn't much to be done now. However, her mother is still moving to New Jersey later this year. I would like to organize a small crowd of people and cars in the NY metropolitan area to help move their stuff, probably sometime after march.

This week my plan is to get my apartment in order. I will unpack some boxes, build some furniture, pay all my bills and tidy up. Then I'm back to NY for a day (or less) to drop off some clothing for Ying for the rest of her stay here. Once back in MA I plan to work for a few weeks, and then return to pick up Ying in early January. After a brief "vacation" to get her settled in (and to wash off some of the darker stains that the previous month has left on our respective souls), life should return to something like "normal".

Normal never sounded so good.