Zeigen

Some mornings I get caught behind someone driving 35 mph on the freeway in the far right lane. When I pass that person, they look terrified — hunched forward, gripping the top of the steering wheel. Each car that zooms up behind them and passes scares them more.

But they’d be far less terrified if they sped up and used the next lane over — that way, they would avoid all the people merging onto and off the freeway.

Of course, there’s no chance they’re going to read this and change their habits. But the solution is easy to see, from the outside.

There’s some kind of life lesson trapped in there, somewhere.

Which of the following is racist?

1. A latina who says, “I’m proud to be a latina.”
2. A white man who says, “I’m proud to be a white man.”
3. All of the above.
4. None of the above.

The Internet being what it is, and today being what it is, almost anything I type here is not likely to be read, and if it is read, it’s not likely to be believed.

So today is absolutely the best day to send out an uncomfortable truth, something that’s implausible but genuine, something that (in a passive aggressive way) causes change.

So, here goes:

• Co-worker in a different building who wears sweaters even in warm weather: Your clothes stink. Wash them more.
• Twitter users (including me): Unless you’re a celebrity, hardly anyone reads what you write and probably very few people care. Do more with less. Write to please yourself, not to please imaginary others — because the world is impossible to please.
• Tech enthusiasts: (including me): We’re sheltered in such a profound way from the real world. People are losing their jobs and their life savings, or are living in wartime or hunger around the world, yet here we are enthusing about our latest gadgets and social media sites. We need to grow more perspective. Unless you work for a web 2.0 company or spend half your day using those sites already, you probably don’t care. That’s what, 0.001% of the world population?
• Happy Birthday, Taff!
• Bring back the “____ acquires” fake press releases. I liked those.
• Upside-down YouTube is pretty funny and every video becomes more profound. I’d like it that way all year long.

I’m just kidding!

Or am I?

Yes I am!

Really?

April Fools!

For real?

Best to just shut down your computer and go for a nice walk.

Suppose you had the opportunity to be in a major Hollywood motion picture that was guaranteed to be released to movie theaters.

You could be the leading actor, the screenwriter, the director, the producer, the director of photography — whatever your preference.

Everything was guaranteed. It’s a real shot at the big time, your opportunity to play a major role in a movie. Plus the salary is Hollywood-sized — let’s say a million dollars just for round numbers, for a few months of work.

The only catch: The movie is Policy Academy 17.

Would you do it?

If your answer is yes, now suppose the script for movie is, in your opinion, both racist and sexist, and those elements can’t be changed.

Would you still do it?

If your answer is yes, now suppose you have to become a cannibal and eat Steve Guttenberg.

<speed>WHAT WOULD YOU DO? WHAT… WOULD YOU DO?</speed>

I’m going to create an ultra-secret society, so mysterious and exclusive it makes the Illuminati look like girl scouts, the masons look like Shriners, and the Shriners look like Costco.

Based in the hidden tomb of an ancient building in a disused corner off the Stanford campus, future heads of state and captains of industry will learn the secret handshake and code phrases as they make the connections that will form the shadowy secret cabinet of those who control the world.

You, an exclusive reader of zeigen.com, are now privy to the details. Please keep the secret. Those who care, do not know. Those who know, do not care.

With its emphasis on eating hamburgers and blueberry breakfast pastries, I give you: The bull and scone society.

Here’s my semi-annual rant about changing clocks and how it disrupts the schedule of our kids.

Blah blah blah harder for them to go to bed blah blah blah.

Yadda yadda yadda messes up their internal clock for a week yadda yadda yadda.

Rant rant rant hate changing all the clocks rant rant rant.

I like having more daylight in the evening. When are we going to settle on nationwide DST permanently?

Arizona and Hawaii, I salute you both, for your progressive stance on not changing clocks, and for maintaining consistent bedtimes of your children. Plus you’ve been looking great lately. Have you lost weight?

Deep within the bowels of London, an ancient underground voice has been repeating this warning against a certain American retailer for countless years:

MIND THE GAP

“He died peacefully”: 108,000 hits
“He died intestate”: 32,200 hits
“He died in agony”: 2,300 hits
“He died in Haiti”: 126 hits
“He died from peanut butter”: 1 hit

I’m a subjectivist.  I believe the following: We only know the world through our imperfect senses and flawed brains, and our human categories and constructs and definitions are only approximations of reality, changing eternally and subject to endless debate, reinterpretation, misremembrance, bias and malfeasance.

However, for scientific or factual claims, I demand objectivity.  Isn’t that a contradiction?  No, and here’s why.

As far as human spheres go, I believe everything is subjective. If I have a bad experience with a cow as a kid, for example, that’s going to color my decision of whether or not to work on a dairy farm. When deciding if killing cows for hamburger is moral or not, my experiences shape my judgment.

When it comes to claims of fact, it’s entirely because our brains are such subjective messes that I demand an objective approach. The scientific method — of ruthlessly testing assumptions, using double-blind studies, bringing in as many observers as possible to try to decode — is necessary to try as much as possible to eliminate subjective biases. But when it comes to morality, that approach cannot work, because each individual human has so many diverse opinions about what is/isn’t moral and “right.” You can’t develop a double-blind test to “prove” whether or not cannibalism or gay marriage or euthanasia or abortion or adultery or anything else is moral or not. By definition, morality is a human concept.

One thing that humbles me when it comes to how little we understand about the world is the placebo effect. The human mind has immense powers over the bodies containing them, and in many cases, we can think ourselves well or unwell. So many quacks and charlatans in the world prey on that with their miracle diets or herbal remedies or snake oil. If you can convince someone that your $500 sugar pill is actually a super secret cure, and they part with their $500 and believe you fervently enough as they take it, for some percentage of the time, those people actually can get well (for a while, at least). A perfect example of why anecdotal evidence — subjective opinion — in no way substitutes for a rigorous, peer-reviewed, detailed study of an issue.

Remember that cold remedy Airborne? Our former nanny would swear by the stuff. It definitely had a placebo-like effect upon her. But it was basically overpriced vitamins and sugar, and I think the courts were right to rule in favor of the recent class action suit. She would have been better off taking regular vitamin C (which has been shown to have an effect on your vulnerability to cold/flu) and saving her money.

So it’s one thing to objectively show that Airborne is useless. It’s another thing to judge whether or not the people selling it were immoral. I don’t know if they knew it was junk or not, but I suspect the Airborne manufacturers thought it was a worthwhile product.

In the one case — is this product effective? — that’s a matter of objective, scientific debate. In the other case — are the makers of this product immoral to sell it? — that’s a matter of subjective opinion.

Things that are “natural”:

• oranges
• cyanide
• sunsets
• tornadoes

Things that are “unnatural”:

• Agent Orange
• twinkies
• symphonies
• waterboarding