Don't Save the Whales

One of the problems with many environmental movements is they've put things the wrong way. "Save the whales." "Save the rainforest." "Save the Earth."

That's wrong. It's not about saving the Earth. Earth will be around after us, barring some kind of uniquely destructive world-cracking weapon that would have to be orders of magnitude stronger than the strongest nuke, and barring some kind of technological nanotech singularity whence we convert the entire planet into microscopic computing machines.

It's not about saving the Earth. It's about saving US. Humans. Civlization. Our civilization grew in certain conditions. But in doing so it's been helping to change those conditions. The climate is changing, which can and will screw up weather patterns worldwide. And is. Rain patterns change and suddenly what was farmland is scrubland, while monsoons and floods hit cities. Hurricanes and typhoons will show up more, because with more energy, the whole system of climate gets more unstable at the extremes. But the subtle changes to farmland and others are worse, they'll drive people out of where they lived and into new places.

Then there's overfishing and monoculture crops, where disease or collapse of stocks can hit a big chunk of the food supply. Then there's clean water. And many other resources, but food and water are the base of survival.

It's not about saving the planet. It's about making the way we live sustainable, which means we can keep doing it. That should be the point. Not just photogenic animals and landscapes that opponents can ridicule as "tree huggers", because it's in their short-term profit to do so. And they figure if they have enough money, they can ride out the chaos. It's really hard to convince someone of something when their job depends on them ignoring it.

Don't save the planet. Save the people.

The Point of Religion?

Okay. So I feel like I agree with people who say religion shouldn't just be about making you feel warm fuzzies, though it certainly does do that for some people. And it shouldn't just be a list of things to do or not do, because some Big Scary says so. It shouldn't just be about enforcing social norms, or giving people something to do on Sunday. It shouldn't just be about damning people who disagree with you to your particular brand of hell. It shouldn't be assumed to be a literal explanation of the world, because that usually turns out poorly.

So, what I wonder then, is what should religion do? I guess like anything else big, it's something different to lots of different people. What's the point of religion? I'm not trying to attack anything here, I'm honestly curious and trying to understand.

So Awesome

I realize everybody already saw this at boingboing, but still. A guy in a Max Headroom mask overrode the signal of two stations in Chicago, back in 1987.

I kinda wish that kind of thing happened more often. It'd be annoying but cool.

The Universe is Absurd

This probably sounds kinda stupid. But we've been doing wave experiments in physics, and doing physics homework, and there's something about doing the math and then having the experiment work out exactly right that strikes me as absurdly unlikely. It's probably silly to ask why math works to represent the universe so well, since math was a system developed to help describe the universe. And all of our modern technology depends on maths far weirder than waves in a string. But it still just somehow feels strange and wonderful to see something go from abstract equations to an actual embodiment in the universe. But there it is. And one of our greatest achievements of modern technology and user interfaces and stuff has been to make all that invisible, and make things Just Work. Though I suppose that has the downside of science being less glamorous than it was in earlier days, and the invisibilty letting people use things without understanding how it works and figuring science is like magic or "just like religion" because they don't understand it and don't think they have to.

I don't think most of the rest of my class quite sees the absurd brilliance of the fact we can go from these equations to something that actually describes the world pretty accurately. It's sure reminding me why I'm a geek for science, though. Maybe I'm easily amused.