David Wallace Croft

Optihumanist Principles 2011

2011-12-30T22:12:00.010-06:00

For the 2011 annual revision of my Optihumanist Principles, I added a new section entitled "Work is Life". In writing this, I wanted to communicate that the Idea of Progress implies that work both improves and increases life.

I just finished reading Gilgamesh: A Graphic Novel by Andrew Winegarner. This illustrated book for adults is based on the prebiblical Epic of Gilgamesh. Although the hero Gilgamesh comes tantalizingly close in his quest for physical immortality, the story concludes with his acceptance of a more limited immortality through enduring achievements. We are now at the point in our own Epic of Humanity where our work toward physical immortality could soon vindicate the original hero.

Brain Machine Interfaces

2011-11-29T16:17:00.001-06:00

I recently finished watching the science fiction television series Caprica, a spin-off of the new Battlestar Galactica. It shows a society transitioning to the adoption of new technologies such as exploring virtual realities for entertainment using brain machine interfaces (BMIs). The story transitions to uploading minds into those same virtual realities for continued existence after physical death.

I also finished listening to the non-fiction audio book Beyond Boundaries: The new neuroscience of connecting brains with machines -- and how it will change our lives (2011) by neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, M.D, Ph.D. Dr. Nicolelis is building BMIs both to understand how the brain works and to enable the completely paralyzed to interact with their environments. He concludes with speculations about the future that would appeal to any fan of "Caprica".

I think BMIs implanted in the body will gain rapid public acceptance as medical devices initially and then later as entertainment devices. The fact that they also give us what could be considered as enhanced super-human powers will be as welcome as wireless smartphone technology is today. I think the adoption of other transhumanist technologies will follow a similar course.

Under my former research advisor Larry Cauller, Ph.D., now retired, I did some research on implantable wireless peripheral nerve interfaces (PNIs). That led to me to new research on what I called Spike Interface Embodied Virtual Environments (SIEVEs).

Optihumanist Music

2011-10-28T00:02:00.001-05:00

I created an Optihumanist Music webpage. It features links to the music by my friend Scott Badger.

Periodic Table Song

2011-09-30T20:07:00.000-05:00

I uploaded my Periodic Table Song. I did most of my creative work on this while I was in the shower.

Healthcare Spending

2011-08-27T23:45:00.001-05:00

Being bedridden today reminded me that your health is second in priority only to your children. When you are too sick to function, your life stops.

It also occurred to me that it makes sense that healthcare spending keeps rising. I think modern industrialized society is at the point now where the costs of other needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and entertainment will continue to drop. I am amazed at how little nutritious food costs now in dollars per calorie. Likewise, it is somewhat stunning how many hours of electronic entertainment you can now access for a flat monthly fee in the form of music, videos, and games. Once we fully transition to delivering education electronically, I expect that we will see further price drops in that realm as well. Except for cases of conspicuous consumption, it appears that consumers can easily become satiated to the point of saturation with regard to our non-medical needs.

With regard to healthcare, however, there appears to be no limit to our requirements. As our healthcare increases, we live longer; as we live longer, our healthcare needs increase. As expected, and as it should be, healthcare spending will continue to rise as a percentage of our personal and national income.

I think this trend will continue until we finally figure out how to cure aging. After that, I do not know what we will spend our money on. In the meantime, check out the financial benefits of a Health Savings Account. And if you are choosing a new career field, consider the outlook for healthcare.

NE = Quit Signal?

2011-07-30T00:02:00.001-05:00

I uploaded a slideshow that I presented recently to the Atzori Lab on the role of norepinephrine (NE) as a neuromodulator:

NE = Quit Signal?

Magnet Checklist

2011-06-29T20:58:00.012-05:00

I recently finished listening to the audio version of the book The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. This book documents how simple checklists are saving lives. I was so impressed with this book that I added it to my Top Ten Books List.

I was inspired to create a checklist for my daily maintenance tasks. I created it using round refrigerator magnets on strips of painters tape.

Each task is written on its own strip of tape with the strips ordered by priority or sequence. I used foot long strips of painters tape of the type that is easy to peel off and reposition. The strips are mounted on the side of a refrigerator or metal bookcase so that magnets can be placed over the tape under the TODO or DONE columns.

For the magnets, I used one and a quarter inch diameter round magnets since they are large enough to discourage toddlers from swallowing them. The kind that I bought were beveled to make them easy to pull away from the metal surface. Sometimes I will position a magnet partway between the TODO and DONE columns to indicate that I have made partial progress.

On some daily checklist tasks that seem overwhelming or tedious, I try to work on them a little bit each day. Even at just a tolerable minimum of five minutes a day, you can start to see some progress over time.

My Full Name

2011-05-28T14:09:00.003-05:00

I like to use my full name on the things that I write. As far as I can tell, nobody else in the world shares this name so it is my way of saying "I was here".

I want to disclaim, however, one case that I know of in which a person wrote under my name with the intent to deceive others into believing that it was me. This person typically wrote on websites and blogs associated with Unitarian Universalism (UU). He had a grudge against UU and chose me as he knew that I had been a member of that organization.

To a lesser degree, I also want to disclaim things that I wrote where editors then changed the wording to the extent that it changed the meaning. This includes letters to the editor of newspapers and the letter to the readers on the back cover of my book. I have stopped writing letters to the editor for this reason. In the age of the Web, I think self-publishing is the way to go.

To an even lesser degree, I disclaim computer code that I have written where someone else then subsequently modified it without adding their own name to it. Their modifications, both good and bad, are then inappropriately attributed to me. In this situation, I would prefer that they add their own name or "unattributed" even if their changes are minor.

HumanLight Book Exchange

2011-04-30T23:27:00.027-05:00

For our HumanLight celebration party a few months ago, one of our planned activities was a used book exchange. This last time I made some improvements to the exchange. Here is how it works:

Announce the used book exchange in the party invitations
Clear a table for the used books that the guests bring
Put a clear glass bowl on the table
Put a pen on the table
Put outdated business cards on the table
For each guest, put a card in the bowl with their name and the number of books that they brought
At the designated time during the party, announce the beginning of the book exchange
Before the drawing begins, invite those guests that are willing to come to the front and talk about the books that they brought
Randomly draw a card from the bowl
Call out the name on the card
Invite the selected person to choose a book from the table
Subtract one from the number on the card
Unless zero, write the new number on the card and then put the card back in the bowl
Repeat drawing cards until there are no more in the bowl

For a group of guests such as a family, create a separate card for each individual and divide up the number of books that they brought together among the cards in the group. Having a separate card for each person helps the guests learn the names as they are called out.
Because each participant has just one card, everyone has an equal chance of being selected in each drawing no matter how many books someone else brought. Once they have chosen a number of books equal to the number that they brought, guests can leave the book exchange to mingle.
While randomly selected guests always have the option to skip their turns, encourage everyone to leave the party with the same number of books that they brought.
The hosts drawing the cards might want to exclude their own names from the drawing and instead choose from the remaining books after the other guests have left.

Transcendent Men

2011-03-29T22:45:00.015-05:00

I bought a copy of the DVD Transcendent Man: The Life and Ideas of Ray Kurzweil. In this documentary video, an old friend states that Kurzweil had ambitions from a young age to create inventions that would help the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the lame to walk. After I saw what he had achieved, I knew this belonged in my list of Optihumanist Heroes Movies.

I also added to the list the television episode "I Dismember Mama: A Story About Saul Kent". You can watch this video on YouTube in three parts:

Optihumanist Heroes Movies

2011-02-27T15:51:00.002-06:00

I recently watched a movie about Dr. Jack Kevorkian. This inspired me to create a list of Optihumanist Heroes Movies.

When you watch these biographical movies, it is interesting to note that many of the heroes were supported by other heroes. In some cases, the hero had to proceed alone. Their efforts to preserve their individual rights benefited all of us.

Immortality Links

2011-01-30T00:19:00.000-06:00

You can watch the NOVA scienceNow video Can We Live Forever? online.

The same topic is covered with good humor in the Cracked article 5 Ways Science Could Make Us Immortal.

Here is the secret to immortality as described thousands of years ago in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Tortoises can live a long time, as described in the io9 article Turtles could hold the secret to human immortality.

The Wired article Creepy ‘Human Fish’ Can Live 100 Years describes one hundred-year-old blind cave salamanders.

I have pre-ordered The Transcendent Man: The Life and Ideas of Ray Kurzweil on DVD.

I just discovered Terasem Radio.

Optihumanist Principles 2010

2010-12-31T20:39:00.008-06:00

I have uploaded my annual update to the Optihumanist Principles. I have inserted one sentence:

Progress promotes pattern perpetuation.

With this statement, I am attempting to summarize a couple of ideas:

Living things are a type of self-sustaining pattern.
Living things adapt over time to prevent extinction.

To stretch this, any self-sustaining pattern that does not evolve might not be considered alive. The self-sustaining fusion of the Sun is not alive. Similarly, a personality recorded in great detail within a computer simulation would be lacking if it could not learn and change; it would simply be a high fidelity ghost.

Any self-sustaining pattern that does evolve might be considered alive. Viruses mutate from one flu season to the next. Corporations adapt to changing market conditions. Laws are amended. Religions revise interpretations of holy texts.

Self-sustaining patterns comprise more complex self-sustaining patterns. Wedding ceremonies are perpetuated by humans which are perpetuated by genes. Animals breathe in what plants breathe out and vice versa. The Sun shines upon the Earth, birthplace of an intelligent species which might someday learn how to extend the life of a dying star.

Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation

2010-11-30T23:29:00.007-06:00

For a human physiology course that I am taking, I wrote a short paper on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). ECMO is a medical procedure used in cases of heart or lung failure in which the blood of a patient is pumped through an external device in order to add oxygen to the blood.

I was interested in this topic for multiple reasons:

A number of years ago I was sick in bed for a month with pneumonia. Many of the ways we die, from pneumonia to heart attack to stroke, are essentially variants of death from a lack of oxygenated blood to the brain.
I think you could combine this with other procedures such as hemodialysis. How long before we can get oxygenated nutrient-rich artificial blood piped to our homes as a utility like water or electricity?
Some of the same technology is used in cryonics after death to help preserve the structure of the brain.

In my ECMO paper, I describe each of the medical terms including the Latin and Greek word origins. I also describe and compare a number of related medical procedures. You can download the paper in Open Document Format (ODF).

Charley Horse

2010-10-08T16:54:00.002-05:00

From time to time when I am lying in bed I will get a painful leg cramp. When my children were younger, they once witnessed me suddenly start writhing upon my bed yelling "Charley horse! Charley horse!" This caused them some distress and moved one of them to tears as they could not understand why I would call out the name of a puppet from Lamb Chop's Play Along.

I had noticed that many of these leg cramps were initiated by a morning stretch in which I would extend my toes. I now know that I can instantly relieve a cramp when I feel one initiating by pointing my toes up and extending my heel instead.

BlackBerry Torch 9800

2010-09-30T23:54:00.032-05:00

I recently decided to buy a BlackBerry mobile phone when a friend sent me a copy of his book Learn BlackBerry Games Development. As a computer programmer, I was pleased to see that BlackBerry provides full support for the cross-platform Java programming language standard.

I became a little worried about my decision when I heard that BlackBerry was being asked by dictatorships to provide decrypted access to communications within their nations so that they could spy on their citizens. Then I realized that this was not an issue with the other mobile phone manufacturers because they did not bother to encrypt.

I wanted to get a BlackBerry with both a touchscreen and a keyboard but my wireless carrier AT&T was pushing iPhone instead. I was just about to switch to another carrier when AT&T came out with the BlackBerry Torch 9800. I was able to get it for just $150.00 because I was due for an upgrade discount on my mobile plan. That seems like a pretty good deal given that Amazon.com is selling this phone for $729.97, a $30 increase from the day before.

In the past I have had smartphones but I did not bother to use their features. I let my kids figure out how to set the wallpaper and ringtones for me. I rarely responded to text messages with text replies as it was just too tedious to use the condensed keypads. I stopped paying the extra fee for Internet access after I found that I did not want to surf the Web or watch videos on the tiny screen.

Now I am reluctantly paying the extra $25.00 a month to AT&T for up to 2 gigabytes per month of mobile data usage. Fortunately I figured out how to configure my application to only download my podcast subscriptions when a Wi-Fi connection is available which does not count against your 2 gigabytes monthly of mobile data usage. I am enjoying the NPR science podcasts.

Convergence has finally arrived for this late adopter. With this mobile phone I decided to dive into it and learn how to use all of the features. It just seems to have crossed that certain threshold for me personally with regard to the screen size, user interface, and the potential for becoming an important tool in my daily life beyond just serving as a phone. I am now using my BlackBerry for the following:

Phone
Texting
Ripped CD MP3 music player
Jump drive
Still and video camera
Web
Facebook
Locating nearby restaurants
Audio and video podcasts
Streaming audio from Pandora over Wi-Fi
Personal e-mail

I was going to use it to connect to my work e-mail but the BlackBerry Enterprise data plan from AT&T would have cost me an extra $15.00 a month. At that price, I decided I needed to maintain my work-home personal boundary.

I avoided earbuds in the past but I am getting used to them now. I accidentally figured out that the BlackBerry earbuds have a built-in microphone and that I can initiate voice dialing just by squeezing the cord in the right spot. I know I look like a schizophrenic talking to myself when I use them but the phone call sound quality and privacy is just so much better than holding the phone up to your head.

I definitely see the need for neuroprosthetic interfaces for devices like this. A Bluetooth cochlear implant seems like something they should have now. Retinal input would give you virtual screens of any size. Peripheral nerve output would give you fine control of the cursor. Given the future possibilities, I continue to entertain the idea of getting a degree in Biomedical Engineering. I am currently enrolled in the introductory course Anatomy and Human Physiology and I am enjoying it.

Thus far I am pleased with my purchase and I can recommend it. Check out the BlackBerry Torch website.

I am just waiting for a touchscreen iPhone user to admit their envy of my touchscreen plus slide out full-alphabet keyboard. So far this has not happened yet.

Engineering and Science

2010-08-30T23:15:00.004-05:00

As an independent final project for my Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering, I wrote a software implementation of an artificial neural network algorithm to distinguish different shapes in images. To ensure that I was learning engineering and not just neural networks, the faculty required that I wire wrap a photodiode-based scanner including the analog-to-digital and serial communications circuitry to use as the image input device.

As an independent final project for my Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, I designed a hardware implementation of an artificial neural network learning rule that I invented. I integrated the learning rule into my coursework on neuromorphic VLSI chip design even though an application-specific circuit model was probably not the most efficient means of studying its capabilities.

For my second graduate degree, my intent was to continue to study my learning rule, but this time within a school of science rather than engineering. I would focus on Computational Neuroscience which models neuronal network circuits using software simulations.

I was distracted from my original plan, however, by an increasing interest in neuroprosthetics, specifically wireless neural interfaces for controlling robotic arms. After I finished my Masters in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience, I submitted a related grant proposal as part of my doctoral studies toward a degree in Cognition and Neuroscience. I was told by faculty that my proposal was rejected because the literature review section contained too many references to engineering papers and not enough to neuroscience. Upon review, I noted that the disallowed citations were from journals of neural engineering and neural surgery.

Since then, I have continued my part-time doctoral studies by exploring Computational Neuroethology (CNE), the study of how simulated neuronal network circuits create behaviors when embodied in robotic or virtual reality environments. My previous studies of biologically-plausible learning algorithms and body-to-machine neural interfaces fit neatly within CNE. Furthermore, practitioners of CNE avow that it is a scientific discipline, not engineering, and therefore I assume it is valid subject matter for a thesis defended within a School of Behavioral and Brain Science. There is some risk, however, that those who consider Computer Science not to be a true science might object to CNE on the same grounds.

Fortunately the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) Erik Johnnson School of Engineering and Computer Science has just started a new graduate degree program in Biomedical Engineering (BME). Neural Engineering is classified as a subdiscipline of BME. I am now taking the introductory course "Anatomy and Human Physiology for Engineers" and I am enjoying it. I am considering pursuing a third Masters within an academic department that embraces both engineering and science.

Dallas Summer

2010-07-31T00:05:00.003-05:00

Our eldest three children are off to Camp Quest Texas 2010 this weekend. Last year I posted a blog entry with links to television news clips showing our children at Camp Quest Texas 2009.

The big ongoing event for the family this Summer has been moving into a new house and preparing the old one for sale. With five kids we really needed more space so we finally made the move after almost 10 years in our old home to a nearby neighborhood with great schools. Since we have moved from an adjacent suburb to Dallas city proper, I have stopped tuning out those news stories about the Dallas mayor and the city council that I never cared about before. To make our Dallas residency official, I ordered a subscription to D Magazine.

We look forward to hosting a Meetup.com event at our new place as soon we finish unpacking. We also need to install energy-efficient windows to help cool things down before we invite guests. Here is a list of Dallas area Meetup.com groups that I frequently attend:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

ThreatDown - Camp

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

2010 Election

Fox News

Electric Car

2010-06-28T23:26:00.013-05:00

My daughter Ada took this photo of the odometer of my 1999 Toyota Corolla. We reached the 130,000 mile mark just as we pulled into our driveway:

I am overdue to buy a new car but I keep waiting for the electric cars to hit the market that can be charged with a home garage plug-in connection. Speaking of which, here is the song "Electric Car" from the music video DVD Here Comes Science by "They Might Be Giants". Our family loves this DVD; it is definitely worth the $11 for this collection of catchy educational tunes:

I knew I wanted a plug-in but I was vacillating between getting a hybrid or an all-electric. I have decided to buy an all-electric Nissan Leaf when it becomes available later this year:

Rational Optimism

2010-05-31T20:56:00.009-05:00

A new term that I have started tracking is "Rational Optimism". I am currently reading The Case for Rational Optimism by Frank S. Robinson. Please see my review of his earlier book subtitled The Optimist Manifesto.

Robinson references the essay Dynamic Optimism by Dr. Max More in which More refers to the "rational optimist". I am a fan of Dr. More's Extropian Principles in which "extropian thinking places strong emphasis on rational thinking and practical optimism" [Wikipedia].

Another book that I have on my reading list is The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley. You can listen to an NPR radio interview with the author. He also has a Rational Optimist website with links to videos, his other books, and his blog.

Oral Arguments Audio

2010-04-29T20:49:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I watched my attorney Dean Cook present oral arguments to a three judge panel in New Orleans. This is the second time he has argued a church-state separation case on our behalf before the U.S. Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit. Previously it was for the Moment of Silence case. This time it was for the State Pledge case challenging the constitutionality of a new law adding "under God" to our Texas state pledge and mandating daily recitation by public school children. You can listen to the audio recording.

Pledge Appeal Oral Argument

2010-03-31T22:18:00.000-05:00

Recently the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled against Dr. Newdow et al. in their case questioning the constitutionality of inserting "under God" into the national Pledge of Allegiance. Our attorney Dean Cook called my attention to this paragraph from the dissenting opinion of District Judge Reinhardt:

Today’s majority opinion will undoubtedly be celebrated by a large number of Americans as a repudiation of activist, liberal, Godless judging. That is its great appeal; it reaches the result favored by a substantial majority of our fellow countrymen and thereby avoids the political outcry that would follow were we to reach the constitutionally required result. Nevertheless, by reaching the result the majority does, we have failed in our constitutional duty as a court. Jan Roe and her child turned to the federal judiciary in the hope that we would vindicate their constitutional rights. There was a time when their faith in us might have been well placed. I can only hope that such a time will return someday.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has scheduled an oral argument hearing to take place in a month for our similar case regarding the constitutionality of the insertion of "under God" into the Texas state pledge. Recently our state Attorney General boasted at a Christian award ceremony of his defense of the mandatory Moment of Silence law against our First Amendment challenge in this same court.

Zombie Apocalypse

2010-02-24T22:57:00.002-06:00

I am a big fan of the zombie apocalypse genre, probably because it usually features lone individuals finding each other and joining forces to survive in a hostile environment filled with mindless infected masses. I love playing the computer game Left 4 Dead 2 and I enjoy watching zombedies such as Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead.

I experienced something novel recently when a friend loaned me his autographed copy of World War Z by Max Brooks, the author of The Zombie Survival Guide. Brooks presents an alternate history in which a zombie plague destroys most of civilization. Presented as a series of interviews recounted by the survivors, each stand-alone story provides a snapshot of the epic struggle to survive, fight back, and rebuild. Brooks presents each interview with the respect of a wartime journalist while weaving some contemporary social commentary into the context.

I recommend this book and I would love to see a television series based on this theme.

Optihumanist Movies

2010-01-31T11:15:00.001-06:00

Previously I have posted a list of Optihumanist Books. Today I posted a list of Optihumanist Movies.

Rainbows End

2009-12-29T22:28:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge and I recommend it. It is science fiction in the style of Gibson's Neuromancer series or Stephenson's Diamond Age but less cyberpunk. In Rainbows End, Vinge describes a near-future which includes augmented reality and life-changing medical advances.

Vinge published this novel recently in 2006 and makes reasonable predictions for a setting of 2025. I think this is futurism done right as educational entertainment. I do not read much fiction these days but when I do I like it to be a bit speculative as to what we might look forward to in our shared reality.

Optihumanist Principles 2009

2009-11-29T17:16:00.003-06:00

I posted the 2009 revision to my Optihumanist Principles. I reordered the sections to put the "Democracy first" section first and I inserted the following: "When we defend the rights of others, we defend our own".

Democracy Day

2009-10-31T20:17:00.003-05:00

November 3rd Tuesday is one of my favorite Optihumanist Holidays. On this day I am planning to exercise my right to vote in celebration of Democracy Day. In this off-year election, there are a number of amendments to the state constitution that are up for the approval of the voters here in Texas. My thanks to the League of Women Voters for publication of their Voters Guide explaining the pros and cons of each item on the ballot.

Pledge Appeal

2009-09-30T22:40:00.003-05:00

Our attorney Dean Cook has filed his appeal brief for the Texas pledge case.

I will upload and link the brief and the previous ruling soon.

Camp Quest Texas

2009-08-31T22:35:00.005-05:00

Our children participated in the first Camp Quest Texas. Television news gave it good coverage. You can spot our eldest three children and children from other families that we know from the Dallas Brights Family Meetup in the videos. Here are the links:

Two New Dallas Meetups

2009-07-31T20:39:00.006-05:00

UT Dallas student Matthew Fuller and I have launched the Dallas Transhumanists Meetup group for discussing books and videos on topics related to Transhumanism, Extropianism, H+, Cryonics, Life Extension, and the Singularity. For our first meeting on August 21st, we will discuss the first half of the book Youniverse: Toward a Self-Centered Philosophy of Immortalism and Cryonics by R.C.W. Ettinger.

Recently my wife Shannon started the Dallas Brights Family Meetup. It already has 55 parent members who are interested in bringing their children to the playgroup meetings and family-friendly outings. One of the topics we discuss is separation of church and school. See Shannon's recent blog entry on the Power Team as an example of what our children are exposed to as captive audience in our local public elementary.

Mambo Chicken

2009-06-29T22:04:00.002-05:00

The day before my trip to Alcor in Phoenix a week or so ago, I spotted Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition at Half-Price Books. It turned out to be an appropriate choice for reading on the flight as it documents the early history of Cryonics in an entertaining style. I had the chance to say hello to Hugh Hixon and Mike Perry, both mentioned in the book, while I was there touring Alcor.

I also finished up Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion. Although written by a different author, it could be the sequel to the Great Mambo Chicken book, picking up the story of the progress of the Immortalists some thirteen years later. I was pleased to see that it included an interview of my friend from the Humanist Fellowship Randy Wicker. I recommend both of these books to anyone interested in Cryonics, Extropianism, Transhumanism, and, of course, Optihumanism.

Alcor Interview

2009-05-19T14:38:00.003-05:00

My friend Chana de Wolf recently posted on her webzine "Depressed Metabolism" the article Interview with Alcor member David Croft. I submitted my article questionnaire responses about a year ago so some bits are out of date but it has been edited to reflect that I now have five children instead of four.

The picture included in the article was taken of me at the Alcor conference back in 2006. If you look closely, you can see the reflection of the photographer in the glass behind me, Regina Pancake. I recommend her interview on the same website as she tells of a dramatic brush with death: Interview with Alcor readiness coordinator Regina Pancake.

Theodore Bernard Croft

2009-04-25T19:44:00.002-05:00

Theodore Bernard Croft was born on 2009 April 18th Saturday at 19:20. He weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces.

Sham

2009-03-28T21:54:00.005-05:00

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the moment of silence law is constitutional. Their conclusion states:

While we cannot allow a "sham" legislative purpose, we should generally defer to the stated legislative intent. Here, that intent was to promote patriotism and allow for a moment of quiet contemplation. These are valid secular purposes, and are not outweighed by limited legislative history showing that some legislators may have been motivated by religion.

This ruling cites as evidence of secular intent the fact that one of the sponsors of the bill stated, "for purposes of legislative intent, this is not a prayer bill". This ruling permits any religious law to be passed so long as the legislators deny that the intent is religious while simultaneously presenting a sham secular purpose.

I have posted the ruling on my Moment of Silence webpage along with links to news covering the ruling. Some of those news stories erroneously state that we launched the lawsuit because a schoolteacher told my son's class that the moment of silence was a time for prayer. The correction is that we had already decided to pursue the lawsuit before we discovered what the teacher had said. The teacher merely stated what everyone already knew.

Appeal Trip

2009-02-28T21:51:00.003-06:00

I went to New Orleans earlier this month. On February 3rd, our attorney Dean Cook argued before a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals 5th Circuit for our moment of silence case. You can listen to the recording of the oral arguments. I posted links to the news stories covering the event on my Moment of Silence webpage.

Illinois Heroes

2009-01-31T13:50:00.009-06:00

My congratulations to high school student Dawn Sherman and her father Rob Sherman for getting the moment of silence law in the state of Illinois struck down as unconstitutional. In response, Illinois legislators are already maneuvering to again amend the law to remove the word "prayer" from the statute in the hope that the court will no longer conclude, as Judge Gettleman did in his recent ruling, "that the amendment has no clear secular purpose, and that the stated purpose is a sham."

Whether the text mentions prayer or not, everyone knows that moment of silence laws in this day and age in America are about getting state-sponsored prayer into public schools. To state otherwise is analogous to claiming that the primary purpose of poll taxes just after the Civil War was to increase revenue to the States.

As far as our moment of silence case here in Texas goes, our attorney Dean Cook is headed to Louisiana in a couple of days to present oral arguments to a three judge panel as part of our appeal. A story covering the details of the case including an interview with Mr. Cook is currently featured on the website Texas Lawyer.

Previously I uploaded appeal briefs written by Mr. Cook. Today I uploaded to my Moment of Silence webpage the appeal brief presented by the State.

Optihumanist Holidays

2008-12-25T16:33:00.004-06:00

I have put together a list of Optihumanist Holidays.

My family and I have successfully transitioned to celebrating HumanLight instead of Christmas. You can listen to a recent National Public Radio (NPR) audio report on this new holiday, HumanLight: December's Secular Holiday.

Appeal Reply Brief

2008-11-27T23:40:00.007-06:00

I have uploaded a reply brief written by my attorney Dean Cook for our Moment of Silence case appeal. Oral arguments are tentatively scheduled for the first week of 2009 February.

Antitheism

2008-10-19T23:36:00.005-05:00

I finished reading god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. If you are looking for a book that enumerates the sins of supernatural-based religions, this is it. Keep a dictionary handy when you read it.

Along with Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris, Hitchens is considered one of the New Atheists. In watching the first DVD of The Atheism Tapes, however, I noted that one of the interviewees described himself as an antitheist. This struck me as more descriptive and I read now that Hitchens has used that term to describe himself in the past.

Pledge Excusal Letter

2008-09-06T13:39:00.004-05:00

At the beginning of each school year, we submit a letter to the teachers of our school children excusing our children from standing for the pledges to the U.S. and Texas flags. The letter cites the appropriate section of the Texas law that permits parents to do so. I have provided a template version of the letter at my State Pledge webpage for parents to download and reuse.

During the recitation of pledges in our public school classrooms, you will see some students choosing to remain seated while others stand. What does this mean to our one nation indivisible? It means religious laws divide us.

Optihumanist Quiz

2008-08-31T03:57:00.003-05:00

Find out if you are an Optihumanist by taking the Optihumanist Quiz.

Roku Rocks

2008-08-02T11:46:00.004-05:00

A year and a half ago, I raved about Vongo, the online service that for a flat fee of just $10 a month would let you download videos to watch on your laptop. Now I have discovered something better.

When you subscribe to the $9 a month plan from Netflix, not only do you get unlimited DVDs one-out-at-a-time snail-mailed to your home, you also get access to their "Instant Play" library to stream to your laptop or your Roku. Roku is a small box that connects to your home wireless Internet allowing you to watch the Netflix "Instant Play" videos on your television.

Roku is family-friendly. As a parent you login with your username and password to the Netflix website from your laptop and then select movies to add to the "Instant Queue". Without having to login, your children then use the Roku remote to scroll through the Instant Queue list on the television. Parents can add hundreds of videos to the Instant Queue for their children to choose from.

In addition to movies, cartoons, and toddler shows, my children have been enjoying the television series A-Team, Astroboy, Incredible Hulk, and Knight Rider. I have enjoyed Dilbert, Heroes, Tick, and The Life of Mammals.

You and your family members can flip between several videos and Roku remembers where you left off watching on each. Unfortunately Roku does not support captions so you have to use your wireless headphones with the volume turned up when the family is sleeping. The other issue is that you cannot power it off without unplugging it so it will dominate the auto-select on your composite audio/video selector switch until you do.

Since Roku uses a wireless connection to your Internet, it is easy enough to move and reconnect when you want to use it in another room but we are considering buying a second. For a one-time cost of $99 for each, the price is not bad, but you then need to upgrade to the two-out-at-a-time Netflix plan of $14 a month.

I highly recommend Roku, especially if you have kids. It has some quirks but it gives you thousands of videos to choose from to stream direct to your television for a small monthly flat fee.

Moment of Silence Appeal

2008-07-20T19:55:00.006-05:00

On May 27th, our attorney Dean Cook filed our appeal on the Moment of Silence case. Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed an amicus brief supporting our appeal. I have uploaded the legal briefs and posted links to the AU and ACLU press releases on my Moment of Silence webpage.

I renewed my membership in the AU and the ACLU recently. If you support the separation of church and public school, I encourage you to do the same.

Pledge Briefs

2008-06-29T16:57:00.004-05:00

My attorney Dean Cook filed a brief requesting a motion for summary judgment regarding the new law adding "under God" to the Texas state pledge. I uploaded it to my State Pledge webpage along with a brief from the state attorney general in opposition and our follow-up response.

I had a chance to read the briefs recently and I found them to be interesting as they contain the legal arguments pro and con. If you read the included excerpts from the legislative debate transcripts, you will note that some of our elected officials saw this law as unconstitutional from the beginning. State representatives of different faiths, a Quaker, a Jew, and a Baptist, took deliberate steps to ensure that the non-secular purpose of the bill was recorded in the legislative history. It is clear from their lines of questioning of the sponsor of the bill that they were cleverly laying the groundwork during the debates for a future separation of church and state lawsuit even though it was a certainty that the bill would garner enough votes to become law.

Speaking of clever heroes, I was pleased with what Mr. Cook wrote on our behalf in his briefs and I think he is persuasive. The next step in the case is that the judge may hear oral arguments or he might just make a judgment based on the written briefs.

Anti-Condom Message in School

2008-05-14T21:01:00.007-05:00

Tonight my wife went to preview an educational video about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to be presented to one of our children at the local middle school here in Carrollton, Texas. It turns out that it was not an educational film but rather an electronic slideshow talk assembled by a local lady. Apparently she has been presenting this material since 1991.

My wife told me that the images of diseased genitalia in the presentation were horrific. When asked, the presenter stated that she did have a couple of students pass out after seeing the images. Some of the parents at the preview talked about hearing of students vomiting after seeing images like these in school.

The presenter also stated that condoms are ineffective against preventing virus-based STDs. She suggested that the reason condom manufacturers print on the boxes that condoms are effective against such diseases is that it would be unprofitable to state otherwise. She stated that when boys ask her about whether wearing two condoms might prevent such diseases, she tells them to ask their parents.

She provides an analogy of two people shaking hands while wearing gloves. She states that the gloves might or might not prevent infection. To be safe, she suggests, you should keep your hands tucked behind your back.

I asked my wife to revoke permission for my child to see this presentation. I am concerned that the agenda of the presentation is primarily an abstinence-only approach to disease prevention. I fear that the misstatement by the presenter that condoms are ineffective in preventing virus-based STDs might result in unwanted pregnancies and potentially lethal infections. More reliable information about the effectiveness of condoms and the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only programs is available on Wikipedia.

Family Photo

2008-04-30T21:33:00.004-05:00

We had this photo of our family taken today. From oldest to youngest, we are David, Shannon, Ada, Ben, Tom, and Abe. Click on the image to see it full size.

Emigration is a Right

2008-03-31T20:05:00.005-05:00

I updated my Optihumanist Principles as I wanted to communicate that emigration, i.e., to migrate out of one's nation, is a basic human right. Under the "Our lives are our own" section, I write "Emigration, reproduction, and life span are personal choices."

Nations such as China restrict emigration because productive citizens are obligated to serve the state which raised and trained them. China also restricts the right of reproduction to one child per couple because of the national burden of raising and training children. If the laws of your nation restrict your right to settle elsewhere, raise a large family, and even commit suicide, your life is not your own.

I had intended to add emigration to my Optihumanist Principles earlier but it had slipped my mind. I was reminded of it recently after finishing the 1936 novel We the Living by Ayn Rand.

Never Say Die

2008-02-09T19:53:00.000-06:00

I came across a Portfolio.com article on the longevity industry, Never Say Die by Alexandra Wolfe. The article link was posted on the CryoNet mailing list. I have had the opportunity to see a number of the people interviewed in this article speak at venues such as the Alcor conference.

Intelligent Design

2008-01-09T16:03:00.000-06:00

The NOVA program Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial was recommended to me by my attorney Dean Cook. I watched with interest as this is a documentary about a recent trial on evolution vs. creationism in government schools. It has parallels with our Moment of Silence and Pledge cases. The entire show is available to watch online.

Secular Purpose

2008-01-06T00:48:00.000-06:00

On January 2nd, a judge ruled that the secular purpose of the moment of silence law is not a sham. We disagree and have asked our attorney Dean Cook to file an appeal.

I have uploaded the ruling to my Moment of Silence webpage along with links to recent news articles about the decision. I have also added a transcript of the oral arguments in which Mr. Cook summarized with this memorable quote:

[...] while the free exercise clause clearly prohibits the use of state action to deny the right of free exercise to anyone, it has never meant that a majority could use the machinery of the state to practice its beliefs.

Optihumanist Principles 2007

2007-12-31T23:30:00.000-06:00

As is my annual tradition, I have updated my Optihumanist Principles for the year 2007. I think the wording gets a bit smoother each year.

Happy New Year to all. If you have not already done so already, I encourage you to make a New Year's Resolution. I think this is a fine tradition.

Creeping Theocracy

2007-12-25T20:16:00.000-06:00

I have uploaded the transcripts of the State House floor debate regarding the recent bill which added "under God" to the Texas state pledge. You can find them from the links on my State Pledge webpage. The first transcript is pretty funny as the legislators debate whether Texas is "indivisible" or not.

The second is more serious. The sponsor of the bill is questioned by the other representatives as to whether the purpose of her bill is religious or not. She responds by referring to the inscription above her. It is not apparent from reading the transcript but she means the words "In God We Trust" which were just recently carved into the archway overlooking the House floor.

The other justification she gives for adding "under God" is that she wants the state pledge to mirror the national pledge. This is a type of argument I have heard before: "we have previously permitted similar infringements so this new one is just more of the same." I call this Creeping Theocracy.

Flesh and Machines

2007-11-30T15:44:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us by Rodney A. Brooks, CTO of iRobot. After reading this, I now understand the behavior of my robot vacuum cleaner Roomba a bit better. I was pleased to see that the final chapter covered neuroprosthetics, something I had been studying recently, and the possibility of physical immortality in the future. He closes with "The distinction between us and robots is going to disappear."

I started reading this book a couple of years ago. I remember reading it while sitting in the waiting room as my wife Shannon was getting her checkup for her pregnancy with our son Abe. I picked it up to finish it today as I have decided to integrate robotics into my doctoral research. I bought a LEGO Mindstorms NXT robot and started playing with it. I hope to demonstrate robotic control using spiking neuronal networks (SNNs).

Nerd Test

2007-10-10T22:21:00.000-05:00

State Pledge

2007-09-24T01:26:00.000-05:00

On 2007 August 7th, the same day that a judge heard oral arguments on our moment of silence lawsuit, our attorney filed a new lawsuit on behalf of my family and another North Texas family challenging the constitutionality of a new law adding the words "under God" to the Texas state pledge.

On 2007 August 28th, a few days after the school year started when the new state pledge law went into effect, another judge denied our request for a preliminary injunction. The case proceeds but a hearing date has not yet been set.

For a list of links to news stories on this topic, please see my new State Pledge webpage. Please also see the related blog entries by my wife Shannon and our attorney Dean Cook.

Mr. Cook informed me recently that the transcripts for the Moment of Silence oral arguments are now available, indicating that we might have a ruling from the judge soon. I hope to post a copy of the transcripts as I was quite impressed with what Mr. Cook said to the judge, particularly in his summary.

Media Moment

2007-08-18T21:20:00.000-05:00

I have updated the list of news stories on the Moment of Silence webpage to include those related to the recent oral arguments hearing. I also posted some corrections to errors in the original story which were repeated by other media.

To the supernaturalists who sent us numerous e-mail, voice mail, snail mail, and blog comment messages recently, I respond by recommending the very short book Letter to a Christian Nation by neuroscience doctoral student Sam Harris. It reminded me of Age of Reason by founding father Thomas Paine.

Debate Transcripts

2007-07-10T23:07:00.000-05:00

A judge will hear oral arguments for the Texas Moment of Silence case on July 20th. Tonight I uploaded the transcripts of the 2003 legislative debates. One of my purposes in having these debates transcribed was to show that this new law is really about mandating organized silent prayer in the public schools.

Peer Screwed

2007-06-13T22:26:00.007-05:00

Today I heard a story about how some scientists deliberately planted an error in a draft paper to throw off the research of competing scientists who they knew would steal the information during the peer review publication process. In reading the history of science, I know of a number of famous cases where proper credit was not given where due for ideas taken from papers blocked or delayed for publication. I recently conceived of a pithy saying for this which I wanted to share with you:

Peer Reviewed is Peer Screwed.

The peer review system is flawed in that your peers are your jealous competitors, not fair and impartial judges of scientific merit. Instead of publishing, consider patenting. Patents permit you to publish your knowledge to the world with the patent agent serving as the unbiased reviewer to determine whether the invention is actually novel, useful, and nonobvious.

If your idea does not qualify as an invention, you can always self-publish it to your personal website. I am proud enough of the above non-invention to have added it to my webpage of quotes.

Update 2010 Oct 08 Fri

I just learned of a new trend toward Open Peer Review which might fix some of the problems in the peer review process as traditionally practiced.

Nerve Endings

2007-05-12T23:07:00.000-05:00

In my previous entry about the book In Search of Memory, I wrote "one of the best ways to learn a science is to learn the history of that science". I recently finished reading another book in that category, Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse by Dr. Richard Rapport. Like In Search of Memory, Nerve Endings is a biographical work about the life and scientific contributions of a Nobel prizing winning neuroscientist. The author documents the 19th century debate about the existence and purpose of the synapse and the personal rivalry between Dr. Santiago Ramon y Cajal and Dr. Camillo Golgi.

The following excerpt reminded me how much I have enjoyed participating in reading and discussion groups over the years:

He delighted in his work, as always, and enthusiastically returned to an intellectual cafe society with other scientists, philosophers, writers, and politicians. Associations of friends who meet regularly to debate are called tertulia, a Spanish word without a direct English translation but a common feature of Spanish intellectual life. [p152]

Resveratrol

2007-04-25T22:09:00.000-05:00

I had been drinking pinot noir to get my daily dose of resveratrol but recently I switched to taking it in 100 milligram (mg) capsules. I ordered my supply from the Life Extension Foundation. I made this decision after watching The Science of Living Longer: Part Three of the Charlie Rose Science Series.

Oral Arguments

2007-03-28T21:52:00.000-05:00

It has been quiet for awhile but there has been a new development in the Moment of Silence case which we initiated a little more than a year ago. The judge has asked for oral arguments to be presented on June 1st.

I hope the judge strikes this down pretty quick as moment of silence bills have been popping up in additional states such as Illinois. To have millions of public school children waste a minute of education each day for a practice that has no secular purpose seems to me like a great sin.

The God Delusion

2007-03-28T21:23:00.000-05:00

In my recent blog entry In the Absence of God, I recommended the NPR interview of Julia Sweeney on the subject of her atheism. I just finished listening to another worthwhile interview published today from the same source, Richard Dawkins Explains 'The God Delusion'.

I found particularly interesting his thoughts on the evolution of morality. My religion Optihumanism, including what I am calling "genetic egoism", has been substantially influenced by my reading of earlier books by Dr. Dawkins. I ordered a copy of his latest today.

Word Clouds

2007-03-25T00:11:00.001-05:00

My sister-in-law Heather wrote a blog entry introducing us to SnapShirts word clouds. My wife Shannon ran it on our website CroftPress and I ran it on my blog and CroftSoft. Here is what it generated.

Shermer Interview

2007-02-28T20:40:00.000-06:00

I enjoyed reading an interview of Michael Shermer recently by the neo-Objectivist organization The Atlas Society in its magazine "The New Individualist" (TNI). Shermer and the interviewer cover topics on libertarianism versus Objectivism, neo-Objectivism versus orthodox Objectivism, socialist Humanism versus libertarian Humanism, and a little bit of what I have labeled "genetic egoism". In reading this article, you might see why I felt I had to come up with a new term, Optihumanism, to describe the set of beliefs that I hold at the intersection of libertarianism, Objectivism, and Humanism.

Vongo

2007-01-29T19:55:00.000-06:00

If you are a Blockbuster Total Access or a Netflix subscriber, consider Vongo instead. I have used Vongo for a few weeks now and I am a satisfied customer. It lets you download movies off of their website to watch on your computer for a flat fee of $9.99 per month. I have been waiting for something like this for years. Things just keep getting better and better.

Optimist Manifesto

2006-12-26T05:15:00.000-06:00

I first learned of the book Life, Liberty, and Happiness: An Optimist Manifesto by Frank S. Robinson from an e-mail from the author himself. I am not certain how I came to be on his list of e-mail addresses but he correctly identified me as being within his target market. Being fond of the Humanist Manifesto and having named my own religion Optihumanism, the subtitle immediately caught my eye. I was further intrigued by the fact that he originally started out to write a letter to his daughter about life, something I have considered doing for my own children.

I have described my Optihumanism as a blend of Religious Humanism,
Neo-Objectivism, and Libertarian Transhumanism. Being at the tiny overlapping intersection of what are small minority beliefs to begin with, I suspected I was alone. You can imagine how pleased I was, then, to read in his introduction that his book "reflects elements of libertarianism, humanism, objectivism, and so forth". I even found a footnote in his chapter "The Meaning of Life" that leans toward Transhumanism.

The more I read, the more astonished I became that this book could so closely mirror my own beliefs while simultaneously covering so many different topics. It was not until I reached one of the last chapters where I finally found one issue, capital punishment, where I was not in substantial agreement with the author. It made me wonder how was it that we thought so much alike.

One possibility is that it is because we are reading many of the same books. A criticism I do have of this work is that it perhaps leans too heavily on repeating historical examples I have already read in other places. I can forgive this, however, if I consider that the author might have had a different target audience in mind where these core examples are still novel.

My other criticism is what I perceive to be his overuse of footnotes for parenthetical side comments. This seems to me to distract from the flow of reading his main text. I wonder if this comes from his twenty years of service as a judge in which footnotes in legal opinions frequently do convey significant information yet are considered subsidiary.

I started heartily recommending this book long before I finished reading it. Now that I have completed the text in its entirety and I am assured that there is nothing in it to which I have any strong objections, I am pleased to say that I am adding this title to both my top ten books list and my Optihumanist reading list. I plan to purchase a number of copies for my friends. I look forward to reading additional publications from this author in the future.

The table of contents follows:
Introduction
The Meaning of Life
Reason, Science, and Human Values
Living a Good Life
Happiness is a Choice
Satisfaction
Consciousness, Thought, and Personal Responsibility
Always Question
Relativism and Nonjudgmentalism
The Mystery of Creation
Freedom from Fear
Love, Marriage, and Sex
Political Vocabulary
The Social Contract
Individualism and Society
Government is the Problem
The Forced March to Paradise
The Era of Big Government
But What About the Truly Needy?
Wrongful Rights
America the Beautiful
The Morality of Free-Market Capitalism
Globalization and World Poverty
Why Corporations are Not Totally Evil Scum
Territoriality and Tribalism
Why the Gloom and Doom Crowd is Wrong
Man, Technology, and Nature
History and Its Lessons
Freedom of Expression
Race
Pro-Life and Pro-Choice
Animal Rights
Crime and Punishment
Homosexuality
The War with Islamic Extremism
Coda
Index

In Search of Memory

2006-12-13T21:58:00.000-06:00

I have finished a number of books recently, some good, some not as good. One that I can recommend is In Search of Memory by Eric R. Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for his work in neuroscience. It is part autobiography and part history of neuroscience with a layman target audience. From reading this, I have concluded that one of the best ways to learn a science is to learn the history of that science. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the philosophy of mind from a reductionist viewpoint.

Religious Humanist Association

2006-11-27T21:35:00.000-06:00

I created a webpage and a mailing list for a proposed democratic Religious Humanist Association (RHA). The purpose would be to promote Religious Humanism in the tradition of the Humanist Manifesto I in independent congregations and related organizations.

Democratic Minarchist Caucus

2006-11-08T21:53:00.000-06:00

In 2005, I proposed an Objectivist Party. In May of 2006, I proposed instead to call it the Minarchist Party.

A day after elections, I am now proposing a Minarchist Caucus within the Democratic Party. It would parallel the Republican Libertarian Caucus and the Democratic Freedom Caucus.

The reason I am advocating forming it within the Democratic Party initially is because the state I live in is a one-party state with the Republicans dominant. In many of races on the ballot yesterday, there was only a Republican candidate running unopposed or a Republican versus a Libertarian.

In 2002 I ran for Congress in a four way race: Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and Green. The Democratic Party candidate for 2002 was a fairly weak one-issue candidate as no other Democrats wanted to run and lose in this Republican district. Later in 2004 the same Green Party candidate of 2002 ran as a Democrat where no Democrats would bother to do so. By joining the non-incumbent major party, he had secured a platform for his message he would not have otherwise had. I have been thinking about his tactic for two years now.

This Green Party candidate also ran as a Democrat in 2006. Given the mood of the nation yesterday, he did surprisingly well in the polls. I wonder how much better a minarchist Democrat with a message of small government and civil liberties might have fared in this Republican stronghold. In addition to gaining a platform for spreading your message, running as a candidate of the non-incumbent major party puts you in a position for victory when there is a strong anti-incumbent sentiment such as the vote yesterday.

I think the DeLay race also deserves some mention here. I think the lesson to members of the Libertarian Party should be obvious. This is another reason I am now advocating a caucus within a major party instead of working through a new third party.

If you are interested in this proposal for a Democratic Minarchist Caucus, please join me in discussion on our mailing list.

Religious Humanist Reading List

2006-10-28T06:46:00.000-05:00

I started a Religious Humanist Reading List. I had been meaning to do it for some time but it was not until I was especially inspired by my reading of Timely and Timeless: The Wisdom of E. Burdette Backus this morning that I decided to go ahead and make the time to do it. I will be adding to this list of books over time.

In the Absence of God

2006-10-27T03:22:00.000-05:00

I just finished the short book In the Absence of God: Religious Humanism as Spiritual Journey: with special reference to Julian Huxley by John H. Morgan, published this year. The title suggests that it covers Religious Humanism with an emphasis on Julian Huxley when in fact it is about Julian Huxley with an emphasis on his own formulation of Religious Humanism. If you have already read some of the original writings of Julian Huxley and you liked what you read, you will enjoy this book.

I wanted to share with you a couple of my favorite passages where the author quotes Huxley:

A Religion is an organ of man in society which helps him to cope with the problems of nature and his destiny -- his place and role in the universe. It always involves the sense of sacredness or mystery and of participation in a continuing enterprise; it is always concerned with the problem of good and evil and with what transcends the individual self and the immediate and present facts of every day. [p64]

For want of a better, I use the term divine, though this quality of divinity is not truly supernatural but transnatural -- it grows out of ordinary nature, but transcends it. The divine is what man finds worthy of adoration, that which compels his awe. [p84]

I caught an interview on the radio last night with Julia Sweeney, former castmember of Saturday Night Live and current atheist activist. If you listen to the audio archive, you will hear two things that I found quite interesting in light of what I recently read in Morgan's book. The first is that Sweeney believes that even when we lose our childhood fear of divine judgment, we remain moral because we have evolved to be so. I suspect that Morgan, who also authored Naturally Good: The Behavioral History of Moral Development, would agree.

The second is that toward the end of the interview Sweeney expressed her sense that something was missing from her life and that of her young daughter ever since she left the Catholic church. As she stated, it was not something that she could get from her local tennis club. I suggest it is what my wife and I were seeking for our family just as many others have before us ever since the revelation by Darwin about the origins of life on this planet. In the words of Morgan, it is this:

A humanistic religion, a religion based on the science of evolution and fostered by the awe and wonder perceived and adored in the creation of the cosmos by the human community, invites conscious development as we invite and work to foster ever deepening appreciation of nature and music and art within our offspring. [p119]

Privacy Disclaimer

2006-09-20T13:13:00.000-05:00

I took a couple of photos of the decal in the U.T. Dallas library which reads "Audio Monitoring On These Premises / Louroe Electronics". I highlighted the position of the sign in red in the second photo so that you can see where it is located over the checkout desk.

The Louroe Electronics website states:

The First Amendment of the Constitution provides that any conversation between individuals is private, unless otherwise notified. In simple terms, this means that any overhearing or recording of a conversation is illegal ...unless both parties are aware that it is being done.
In order to comply with the law, LOUROE ELECTRONICS provides a disclaimer stating, AUDIO MONITORING ON THE PREMISES. These disclaimers must be affixed, in plain view, to all entrances where the microphones are installed.

I have been told that the audio monitoring in the library has been going on for years. I have been going to the library for years and this was the first time I noticed the decal. No other student or faculty that I have told about this was aware of this either.

I have two problems with this. The first is that it seems to me that a violation of privacy of this magnitude should require explicit acknowledgment on the part of the patron. It seems contradictory to put up a notice and then use hidden microphones. It suggests they do not really want people to know that their conversations are being recorded.

The second problem I have with this is that there is no consent. This is a government building funded by taxpayer dollars. I should not have to waive my privacy rights in order to use it. Whereas video monitoring records our actions within the building, audio monitoring records our verbalized thoughts and intentions. It is too much to ask that we yield our privacy rights on this level whenever we need to enter a public facility.

Update: I just got off of the phone with Ellen Safley, Senior Associate Director, University of Texas at Dallas Library. Whereas last week a librarian told me that hidden microphones were placed upstairs to monitor conversations for homeland security, Dr. Safley assured me that the only audio monitoring in the library took place in the immediate vicinity of the checkout desk. She stated that this was so that they could refer to the recording if there was a problem. I assume by this that she meant a conflict between a patron and a librarian. Although I was still unaware that I was being recorded while I was talking near the desk, I find this much less offensive than library-wide audio monitoring among the stacks, which she assured me is not taking place.

Audio Monitoring

2006-09-13T15:57:00.000-05:00

Years ago I fought a town council in West Virginia that passed a law requiring convenience stores to purchase security cameras and to allow the police to take the tapes whenever they wanted them. I had argued that this was an example of a Big Brother video camera in our private businesses. They replied that it would reduce crime. I then asked whether they would consider putting security cameras in our homes if they thought it would reduce domestic violence. I had meant for the question to be rhetorical but one council member immediately answered yes.

This afternoon I submitted the following letter to the editor of the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) school newspaper:

Today I noticed an "Audio Monitoring" sign over the checkout desk in the U.T. Dallas library. A librarian explained to me that they used microphones to record conversations in the building for homeland security. This seems excessive for an unclassified facility.

I also asked the librarian if anyone had made any comments about the audio monitoring. She answered no with a questioning tone that communicated "Why should they?" Apparently those of us who do question such things are few and far between. If you are one of those, please join me on the Minarchist Party discussion list.

Shared Bookmarks

2006-09-03T05:39:00.000-05:00

I have uploaded my bookmarks to del.icio.us, a website for storing and sharing bookmarks online. I will be updating them over time.

Microsoft and Libertarians

2006-09-02T20:30:00.000-05:00

As a Java programmer, I followed news of Microsoft's anticompetitive practices closely over the years. I was interviewed by the trade press for a parody piece I wrote about it, The Ten Commandments of Java.

In the antitrust suit, one federal judge compared Microsoft to drug dealers and gangland killers. Another judge compared Microsoft to Tonya Harding. That was a number of years ago. Since then, Microsoft has paid billions of dollars in damages to the injured parties and everyone has pretty much settled.

I never forgot, though, my irritation with the national Libertarian Party for their public defense of Microsoft during the antitrust lawsuit. Instead of simply blaming the prosecution for enforcing antitrust laws and painting Microsoft as an innocent, the Libertarian Party should have pointed out that individuals have an alternative free market mechanism to punish Microsoft for its practices via the consumer boycott.

I just came across this blog entry I wanted to share with you that expresses my sentiments on this better than I ever have. It is Why Bill Gates is not Hank Rearden by Pedro Timóteo.

A Glorious Accident

2006-08-24T00:55:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching a tape of an interview with the philosopher Daniel Dennett from the public television series A Glorious Accident: Understanding Our Place in the Cosmic Puzzle. This VHS tape set was loaned to me by a fellow transhumanist friend. I heard a number of transhumanist themes in what Dr. Dennett was saying in this interview from way back in 1993. My estimation of Dennett's ranking just jumped from "my favorite living philosopher" to "my favorite philosopher".

First Church in Boston

2006-08-05T17:13:00.000-05:00

While I was in Boston last weekend on a business trip, I attended the Sunday morning service of First Church in Boston, a Unitarian Universalist (UU) church founded in 1630. You can view a slideshow of the photos that I took.

Introducing Philosophy

2006-07-29T20:22:00.000-05:00

I just finished the illustrated book Introducing Philosophy. I found it to be a quick and painless introduction to the history of Western philosophy from the ancient Greeks to modern day. I was pleased to see a brief mention of my favorite living philosopher, Daniel Dennett.

Dallas Brights

2006-06-27T15:52:00.000-05:00

I have updated the webpage and the purpose of the Dallas Brights. I propose that it be used as an announcements list for the 10+ related organizations in the Dallas area.

Rand on Determinism

2006-06-26T01:48:00.000-05:00

In reading this morning the "Introduction to the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition" of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, I came across this quote:

I could not endorse its literal meaning: it proclaims an indefensible tenet: psychological determinism.

I have long thought that Rand's rejection of "determinism" was not a rejection of causal determinism but rather other variants such as psychological determinism. Recently a friend suggested to me that since Objectivists reject determinism they should not be considered Brights as they do not have a naturalistic worldview. To be clear here, by "determinism" he meant causal determinism and by "naturalistic" he meant metaphysical naturalism.

I do not agree with those who think Objectivism rejects all forms of determinism. And please note that I have encountered both Objectivists and non-Objectivists who hold to this opinion. I think Objectivism rejects hard determinism, not causal determinism. This is why I state in my Optihumanist Principles that "Determinism and free will are compatible."

Rand's Religion

2006-06-23T22:34:00.000-05:00

Tonight I came across the following in Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life: The Companion Book:

You see, I am an atheist and I have only one religion: the sublime in human nature. There is nothing to approach the sanctity of the highest type of man possible, and there is nothing that gives me the same reverent feeling, the feeling when one's spirit wants to kneel, bare-headed. Do not call it hero-worship, because it is more than that.
If a life can have a 'theme song' -- and I believe every worthwhile one has -- mine is a religion, an obsession or a mania -- or all of these -- expressed in one word: Individualism.

Ayn Rand is clearly using the term "religion" in both of these quotes in the non-supernatural context. Similarly, her usage of the term "spirit" here, and "soul" elsewhere, to mean mind is not incompatible with her naturalistic worldview. When she refers to the "sublime", the "sanctity", and a "reverent feeling", we may assume she is speaking of experiences appropriately defined with a spiritual terminology.

A few days ago I finished reading a history of the founding fathers of Religious Humanism, the hard-to-find book American Religious Humanism by Mason Olds. Before I read this book, I used to think that the early Humanists were socialists. I read, however, that like the founder of Ethical Culture, they rejected both socialism and communism as incompatible with individualism. There was, however, at least one of the Humanist pioneers who was an advocate of what we now frequently label as "socialism" but is more correctly described as the welfare state.

If only atheism were more commonly associated with capitalism rather than communism! In the Optihumanist Principles, I explicitly distance my own flavor of Religious Humanism from any association with socialism or the welfare state. It is because I, too, hold Individualism to be my religion.

Video Archives

2006-06-21T00:39:00.000-05:00

I updated our Moment of Silence webpage to link to video archives of the Texas state legislature debating the new mandatory moment of silence law. It is pretty clear from the comments by the legislators that this law is simply an attempt to introduce prayer into the public schools in a way which the sponsors of the bill hope will not be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Higher Power

2006-06-08T02:03:00.000-05:00

My wife Shannon and I, both Religious Humanists, are working with our attorney Dean Cook to have the new mandatory moment of silence law in Texas public schools declared unconstitutional. Recently Mr. Cook discovered this 2003 press release by the author of the bill, a Texas state senator. The senator describes the religious purpose of the new law as follows:

Aristotle said that habituation at an early age makes more than a little difference, it makes almost all the difference. If you agree with Aristotles philosophy, then if you want children to be responsible, hold them responsible. If you want children to know what work is, have them work.
If you want children to love country and state, teach them to honor their flags. If you want them to value a power higher than their own, provide them with a minute to reflect, meditate or pray.

Habituating our children to value a higher power is not a legitimate purpose of government. That is why this new law is unconstitutional. It violates the first clause of the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights.

The senator is not the first to say something like this. It immediately reminded me of the Jesuit saying, "Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man." Here are two more statements from my quotes collection with a similar theme.

State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly alike one another; ... in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. ~ John Stuart Mill, 1859
Whenever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, 1874

Please note that the following statement in the press release is incorrect:

It was encouraging when the U.S. Supreme Court last year upheld a state law in Virginia that mandates one minute of silence for reflection, meditation or prayer in Virginia public schools.

In fact, the last time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a moment of silence in public schools, they declared it unconstitutional. You can read more about this on our Moment of Silence webpage.

The Call

2006-05-24T04:13:00.000-05:00

In my studies, I have noted that a number of the philosopher-scientists of the 20th century looked forward to the day when there would be a new religion compatible with science. In The Call for a New Religion Compatible with Science, I present a selection of quotations expressing this hope.

Minarchist Party

2006-05-21T03:30:00.000-05:00

In 2002, I ran for U.S. Congress as a Libertarian. As part of my explanation as to what the Libertarian Party stood for, I would state our advocacy of minarchy, i.e., a minimum government restricted to the sole purpose of defending individual rights. I would then direct audiences to my Minarchist webpage.

In 2005, I proposed creating an Objectivist Party as an alternative to the Libertarian Party. Among other things, I was concerned that there were too many anarchists within the Libertarian Party.

Now I am proposing instead to call it the Minarchist Party. I have reacquired my old domain name, Minarchist.org, for that purpose. If are you interested, please join the discussion list.

Optihumanist Principles 2006

2006-05-19T06:55:00.000-05:00

I have updated the Optihumanist Principles for 2006.

I have been considering aspects of this annual revision to the tenets of my personal religion for some months now. The inspiration to publish today came from my reading last night in Freedom Evolves by Daniel Dennett, 2003. In this book, Dennett defends the position that determinism and free will are compatible. I have added it to my list of recommended books.

Why I Am A Neo-Objectivist

2006-05-11T01:18:00.000-05:00

In a recent discussion with Objectivists, I asked about their reasoning on core essentials such as why they bothered to wake up in the morning and why they cared about the well-being of their children. After repeated questioning in a fashion after the Socratic Method, I began to suspect I was dealing with an "is-ought" issue and I stated so.

In this discussion, I had asserted that my religion is faith-based in that I had "faith in Humanity". I held this position as I concluded that our love of life, i.e., survival of Man qua Man, was a core value that was not derived through a rational thought process. It was something we simply accepted and was therefore a matter a faith.

My reasoning was that this love of life was a genetic predisposition shaped into us by evolution through the forces of natural selection. One of the Objectivists pointed out to me that this was not faith. I immediately realized that I had erred in assuming that this value must be faith because it was not derived rationally. I had been overlooking a third source: instinctual knowledge. I then conceded on this basis.

Later than night I read in Wikipedia that "Some Neo-Objectivists stick relatively close to Objectivism, merely rejecting (for example) Rand's 'life-to-value' argument in ethics". By typing in "life-to-value Rand" into a search engine, I came across an essay by William H. Stoddard, "Life and Value in Ayn Rand's Ethics", Section 4 "What is Life?" in which he concludes:

Rand's statements about the nature of living organisms may well reflect her training in Aristotelian philosophy and Aristotelian metabiology. For Aristotle, the telos of an oak tree, the that-for-the-sake-of-which the oak tree exists, is the full grown tree. But Aristotle's biology has been replaced by Darwin's, in which an oak tree is an acorn's way of making more acorns. And Darwin's theory has more explanatory power than Aristotle's. If Rand is claiming to base her ethics on the actual facts of biology, she's picked the wrong statement of those facts.

At about the same time, I also read an article by Nathaniel Branden, perhaps the first Neo-Objectivist, that stated that Ayn Rand never accepted the Theory of Evolution. I made a connection and a number of puzzle pieces suddenly fell into place. This explained why Rand and many of her students reject animal intelligence and human instincts, assert that homosexuality is a choice, minimize parenting as self-actualizing, and are oblivious to the selfish gene hypothesis. Ayn Rand never accepted the Theory of Evolution and therefore never factored in the consequences of such a theory into her philosophy.

The purpose of the acorn is to make more acorns. I asked myself retrospectively, had I not just said the same thing recently when I wrote that "Persistence persists", "Children give life meaning", and, in my sermon entitled "The Virtue of Selfish Genes" in which I paraphrase Dawkins, that "the individual unit of survival is not an individual human being, but rather the individual genes that comprise a human being"?

Some of my fellow Objectivists have suggested to me recently that my disagreements with Objectivism are due to a lack of complete knowledge of Objectivism and that, with further study and time, I will eventually come to realize that the philosophy of Objectivism is correct in all aspects. I reply that in just a year of study I have come to understand Objectivism sufficiently to identify the flaw at its root. While I am proud to state that I discovered this independently through my own reading of orthodox Objectivist philosophy as written by its leading proponents, Rand and Peikoff, I am also happy to accept validation by discovering that others besides myself have analyzed, identified, and published this misstep long before me.

Ayn Rand never integrated the Theory of Evolution into her context. Until that day when the human animal no longer is forced to exist within a body and mind shaped by evolution, I will never accept orthodox Objectivism. This is why I am a Neo-Objectivist.

I conclude with this quote from the article "The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand: A Personal Statement" by Nathaniel Branden:

Ayn Rand has an incredible vision to offer -- in many respects a radiantly rational one. I am convinced that there are errors in that vision and elements that need to be changed, eliminated, modified, or added and amplified, but I am also convinced that there is a great deal in her vision that will stand the test of time.

Optihumanist Fellowship

2006-05-10T09:08:00.000-05:00

Recently I defined Optihumanism as a religion without supernatural elements at the intersection of Religious Humanism, Objectivism, and Libertarian Transhumanism. I have decided to nudge that from Objectivism to Neo-Objectivism. I have also joined a Neo-Objectivist organization, the Objectivist Center.

I have created the Optihumanist Fellowship Discussion List. If you are interested in discussing the future of Optihumanism and the Optihumanist Fellowship, please join.

A Religion Compatible

2006-05-06T14:06:00.000-05:00

I posted the following in response to discussion on the North Texas Objectivist Society forum:

The topic "Objectivism as a Religion" was not quite what I meant. "Objectivism", as defined by Ayn Rand, is a philosophy. What I am advocating is a religion compatible with Objectivism.

Certainly no religion that advocates a belief in the supernatural is compatible with Objectivism. Fortunately for us, the courts have long held that belief in the supernatural is not a required element for a religion. In a nation where not all of the religious believe in the supernatural, a non-sectarian reference by our government to a universal God is an act of religious discrimination.

Ideally a religion compatible with Objectivism would also promote Objectivism. This could be inherent in the rites and rituals. As suggested by John Davis before the recent baby naming ceremony, we discussed which Objectivist elements we might introduce into the ceremony. I proposed words to the effect that in a capitalist society each new child brings new prosperity to humanity as wealth is not simply divided but created by each member of our population.

When we marry and bury our dead, we do not want officiants who will use the event as an opportunity to promote their supernatural beliefs. We want celebrants from our own religion who will speak the words that give us strength and comfort. We certainly do not want them to upset us at that time. Nor do we want to simply ignore the necessity of life event celebrations.

Perhaps more than others, parents need religion. We need a support group to promote our ideas such as naturalism and capitalism in an environment dominated by the supernaturalists and collectivists. We need to immunize them from the memes that might infect them in the future. We need to provide them with social opportunities. We need our own holidays to celebrate with the children that instill our own values.

"Science, as a system of discovering, organizing, and applying mutual knowledge, is already unified and universal in principle, though its efficiency as an organ of the human species could still be much increased. It remains for man to unify and universalize his religion. How that religion will take form -- what rituals or celebrations it might practise, whether it will equip itself with any sort of professional body or priesthood, what buildings it will erect, what symbols it will adopt -- that is something which no one can prophesy. Certainly it is not a field on which the natural scientist should venture. What the scientist can do is to draw attention to the relevant facts revealed by scientific discovery, and to their implications and those of the scientific method. He can aid in the building up of a fuller and more accurate picture of reality in general and of human destiny in particular, secure in the knowledge that in so doing he is contributing to humanity's advance, and helping to make possible the emergence of a more universal and more adequate religion." -- Julian Huxley

"In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. [...] After religious teachers accomplish the refining process indicated they will surely recognize with joy that true religion has been enobled and made more profound by scientific knowledge. [...] The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

Establish Individual Rights

2006-05-02T18:13:00.000-05:00

Some months ago, when I heard President Bush talk about establishing a democracy in Afghanistan or Iraq in the style of "their own traditions", warning bells went off in my head. Here in Texas, folks like Bush use terms like "traditional" and "patriotic" as code words for the blurring of church and state. I imagined a new democracy without freedom from religious law where women would not be allowed to drive cars and homosexuals and atheists would be jailed.

My suspicions were confirmed when in March an Afghani man was prosecuted for converting from Islam to Christianity. Under the law of the new constitution of Afghanistan as established under the supervision of the U.S., he faced the death penalty for a decision he made over 14 years ago. Surely this is now what our Christian president had intended.

I hope this incident impresses upon our president the importance of separation of church and state here in our own country. I suspect the current violence between the Shiite and Sunni religious sects in liberated Iraq is due to the lack of any assurance of minority religious rights in the new government. In his speeches, President Bush should focus less on the replacement of dictatorships with democracy. Instead, the leader of the free world should emphasize the establishment of individual rights -- as protected by a democratic form of government.

We should not feel guilty about imposing an "American-style democracy" in countries previously enslaved by dictatorships. An "American-style" or "Western" democracy is one in which individuals are protected by a Bill of Rights. No matter what their traditional dominant cultural background is, everyone deserves to be free.

We know we can do it successfully because we did it in Germany and Japan after World War II. I have become concerned about Germany recently, though, as it appears from news reports in April that the German constitution is not quite "American-style" when it comes to individuals denying the Holocaust. In America, individuals can say exactly the same thing without going to jail as we consider our freedom of expression to be a sacred right. Why then, is our American government cooperating with Germany in violating human rights by extraditing these individuals to stand trial?

On National Public Radio (NPR), I listened to a representative of a Jewish organization state that while she is normally an advocate of complete freedom of expression in other nations, she felt that the the history of Germany and Austria merited a special law limiting this freedom. While to my knowledge, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) has said absolutely nothing about this violation by a government of the freedom of individuals to publicly deny the historical validity of the murder of millions of Jews, they have launched a free speech campaign with a focus on recent efforts by Muslims to censor cartoons of Mohammed through threats of violence. I hope ARI will expand its campaign to include an expression of their moral outrage over infringements on free speech in Germany.

The other reason I mention ARI is that my writing this essay was inspired by the release today of the op-ed by Peter Schwartz entitled Freedom vs. Unlimited Majority Rule. Mr. Schwartz brings to clarity my ruminations on our misguided policy of permitting liberated nations to establish democracies without individual rights. He reminds us that America was the author of the post-World War II constitutions of both Germany and Japan.

After you finish reading this article, I also encourage you to read or re-read "Collectivized Rights" by Ayn Rand in The Virtue of Selfishness. Although it was written in 1963, I find her essay to be quite topical.

Optihumanism Refined

2006-05-02T00:05:00.000-05:00

I have refined my definition of Optihumanism as a religion without supernatural elements at the intersection of Religious Humanism, Objectivism, and Libertarian Transhumanism.

You can read more about my views and affiliations at my Religion webpage.

Academy Atheist

2006-04-26T12:51:00.000-05:00

I just discovered the blog for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The current controversy swirls around majority Christians imposing their religion on non-Christian cadets at the United States Air Force Academy. This interests me as I graduated from the Academy in 1990. I am proud to state that I made a decision early in my military career as a cadet to have "Atheist" stamped on my dogtags as my religion.

Introducing Plato

2006-03-16T09:27:00.000-06:00

I read Introducing Plato last night. I picked it up at Half Price Books because Plato is referenced repeatedly in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. "Introducing Plato" covers many of the ancient Greek philosophers of the period and shows how they influenced or were influenced by Plato. It covers his life, his philosophy, and his influence through the ages.

By reading "Introducing Plato", I now have a far better understanding of Objectivist philosophy. Before I read this book, I found some of Rand's terminology a bit odd but now I realize that she was engaged in a conversation with the ancient philosophers that I had walked in on toward the end. I also see where she agrees and where she deviates with them on the important questions. I would recommend "Introducing Plato" to any student of Objectivism that has not previously studied the ancients.

Ayn Rand was no fan of Plato. She prefers to praise Aristotle, his student of twenty years. I see that a second edition of Introducing Aristotle in coming out in August. I am looking forward to it.

Chronology and Interviews

2006-03-14T00:42:00.000-06:00

A reporter from the Dallas Morning News called me yesterday about the moment of silence case. In response, I sent her our "Chronology of Requests by a Religious Humanist Family to Be Free from Coercive Judeo-Christian Religious Influence in a Public School". We prepared this 19-page document detailing church-state separation violations at our public elementary school at the request of Dr. Michael Newdow, a medical doctor and attorney who is championing the Restore the Pledge effort. I have uploaded the chronology to our Moment of Silence website.

Later that evening, a reporter from WFAA television news interviewed me in front of the school. The children enjoyed seeing themselves on T.V. The Dallas Morning News article has a link to the WFAA video. If you see any more of these stories, please let me know.

Moment of Silence

2006-03-10T20:43:00.000-06:00

My wife Shannon and I have been concerned for some time about violations of church-state separation at the public elementary school where our children attend. Today our attorney Dean Cook filed a petition to have the mandatory moment of silence law in the Texas state education code ruled unconstitutional. You can read more about this on my Moment of Silence webpage.

Theory of Consciousness

2006-03-07T05:15:00.000-06:00

I have just finished reading Introducing Artificial Intelligence, Introducing Mind & Brain, and Introducing Consciousness from Icon books. In reading these back to back, it reminded me that they are all different views on the same subject. This was a rewarding experience for me. I recommend that you read these books together if you can.

"Introducing Mind & Brain" could have been titled "Introducing Neuroscience". Those readers having difficulty buying into the functionalist materialist viewpoint described in the other two books will find persuasive evidence here.

"Introducing Consciousness" is where you will find the heavy duty philosophy stuff which the other two books touch upon. It reminded me of a couple of related papers that I wrote for a "Philosophy of Mind and Psychology" course a few years back. In Could a Computer Feel Pain?, I reveal my functionalist leanings. In Representational Systems, I tie my theory of consciousness to recurrent networks.

Introducing Icon Books

2006-02-26T20:31:00.000-06:00

Last night I was raving about a book I had just read, Introducing Artificial Intelligence by Henry Brighton, 2004. This book is illustrated with cartoons on each page depicting caricatures of the scientists and philosophers in the field. It covers the entire history of the field from "classic" A.I. to the "New A.I." including the terminology, debates, and the connection to philosophy of mind. It reminded me just how much this topic interests me.

It turns out that Icon Books (a.k.a. Totem Books) was also the publisher of another of my recent favorites, Dawkins and the Selfish Gene by Ed Sexton, 2001. They have a whole collection of science titles. The four that are going on my wish list right now are Introducing Mind and Brain, Introducing Consciousness, Introducing Learning and Memory, and Introducing Genetics.

Roundaboutness

2006-02-26T04:44:00.000-06:00

I uploaded my sermon Evolutionary Humanism and Roundaboutness. In this sermon, I proposed, among other things, that the progress of evolution toward ever greater complexity and the inevitable increase in intelligence, as described in the 1953 essay “Evolutionary Humanism” by Julian Huxley, is related to the economic theory of roundabout methods of production.

I first learned of "roundaboutness" from the book Economics for Real People: An Introduction to the Austrian School.

Replicator Unit

2006-02-14T19:03:00.000-06:00

I enjoyed reading Dawkins and the Selfish Gene by Ed Sexton (2001). It provides a concise summary of the selfish gene theory and the related debates. At just 80 pages, it is perfect for those who have already read The Selfish Gene some time ago and are looking for a quick review with a bit of historical perspective.

One the debates is on what is the fundamental unit of replication. Is it the gene, the phenotype, the individual human, or the community? It reminded me of my recent sermon The Virtue of Selfish Genes in which I asked whether the individual unit of survival was the gene, the person, or all DNA-based life on Earth. I think that in my next update to the Optihumanist Principles, I might add a paragraph that states something to the effect that "Survival is the absolute good. Persistence persists. We survive through the legacy of our children and our culture."

I think that in the future, we will not need to rely exclusively on genetic or memetic means of reproduction for survival. In looking for a word describing a third alternative, I found this definition of Patternism.

Animal Intelligence

2006-02-13T20:24:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading The Octopus and the Orangutan: More True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity. People who enjoy thinking about evolution, artificial and natural intelligence, and consciousness will want to read this book. It is a quick read worth the price.

It reminded me of my own anecdote about animal intelligence. My Siamese cat Dodo (a.k.a. Scratch) used to try to get out by repeatedly jumping up and pawing at the front door handle. We had become accustomed to hearing the repeated twack and thump in the middle of the night as the cat tried over and over again. One night the twack-thump sequence was interrupted by the creak of the door. This aroused our curiosity. Sure enough, the door was open and the cat was gone.

The cat got in the habit of doing this on following nights. This posed a security problem for us as he consistently failed to close and lock the door behind him. We described the problem to our landlord and asked him to replace the lever handle with a twist handle or add a lock. Our landlord was incredulous and asked for a demonstration. We all turned and stared at the cat but it failed to perform.