Stuck In Traffic #1 by Calvin Stacy Powers ======================== Most Hated TV Commercial The ads I hate the most are the ones from all the different organizations that have an interest in Health Care urging people to call their representatives and urge them to do this or that about Health Care reform. They all try to paint a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Average American in a Norman Rockwell-esque living room having a seri ous discussion about health care reform. "Gee honey, I just can't understand that darn Con gress, don't they know that what we really want is a single payer health care plan with employer mandates?" "Well snookums, have you called our congressman or representative and told them what you really think?" "Well, I just havent' had the time, what with helping Jenny with her studies and Johnny's ball practice and all." "Well, you can call him right now, the kids are out doing their community service volunteer work." "Good idea, Hon, I'll do it right now!" Aside from painting such a rosy, idyllic, picture of Americana. The thing that really bugs me is that they work in just ther right buzz words for you to tell your Congressmen when you, inspired from these wonderfull commercials, rush to the phone and call him or her. Not only do they want us to call our representatives, they want us to say just the right buzz-words, as if we could not think for our selves and formulate our own opinions. All sides and all interest groups are guilty of airing these slimy ads and I think it shows how desperate all these organizations are in battling over health care. In the heated battle over who's going to control our health care, they insult all the Americans they're claiming to represent with these ads. =========== White Noise I've been a big fan of David Byrne's music, both his work with the Talking Heads and his solo stuff. Byrne is famous for his babbling, unfathomable lyrics, and the first Talking Heads live album was even titled "Stop Making Sense." But his solo work is chang ing and I've come to the conclusion that he's getting to be a darn good lyricist. On his latest album, in the song "A long time ago", there's a particluar line that's stuck with me: "In between stations I can hear a million possibilities. It's just the singing of the stars that burned out a long, long time ago. They burned out a long, long time ago." Now, everytime I hear static on the radio, I can't help but think that I'm lis tening to dying stars on the other side of the galaxy. And I want to stop and lis ten to it. One of the things that makes good art, is that it stays with you. It changes the way you look at the world. Where I never paid any attention to static noise in the past, now I do, thanks to David Byrne. And he didn't use sex, violence, profanity, racism, or break any social taboos to do it. There's still hope for pop culture. ============= Woodstock '94 Woodstock '94 is still weeks away and already I'm sick of it. Somehow I think the corporate sponsor, Pepsi, has missed the point. To my mind, if there is anything positive to say about the first Woodstock, it's that the music festival was a spontaneous, dynamic, free-for-all of music, fellowship, and good times. Woodstock '94 on the other hand, has all the trappings of a multi-million dollar marketing hype, the likes of which we haven't seen since, oh, at least last week. From the endless Pepsi commercials, the MTV sychophants running hourly commentaries on perparations, all those darn promotional contests, the 1-900 numbers you can call "for an update", and the the performers bickering over who gets to play when and on what stage, I'm ready for the thing to be over and done with so we can get back to hearing about important stuff, like the O.J. Simpson trial. ============= On Kervorkian In Junto 22, Temy Beall, makes a short comment about how Jack Kervorkian is "doing God's work". Based on his other com ments about religion, I'm not sure this was intended as a compliment or not. Personally, I can see Kervorkian's point of view. Who can say how much pain and suffering a person should have to endure? And if we are soverign indi viduals, do we not have the right to decide when and how we should die? Not that I would ever help anyone attempt sui cide. If I had a friend contemplating suicide because of a terminal medical condition, I think I'd be begging and pleading with him or her until the very end to keep trying to fight it. But I do recognize everyone's right to control thier own destiny the best way they perceive. I think the thing about Kervorkian's ideas that scares so many people is that they perceive it as a _loss_ of svereignty. People are afraid that the next step will be doctors and family _encouraging_ doctor assisted suicide. And I think it's a valid concern. I think there's another angle to this story that bears mentioning. Regardless of whether you agree with the notion of doctor assisted suicide, I think you have to admire Dr. Kervorkian on some level. Here is a per son that is willing to risk everything he has, his entire career, and a lengthy jail sentence in order to stand up for what he believes is the right thing. That takes an enormous courage and it's a very rare thing these days. I hope that I have as much courage as Dr. Ker vorkian has if I'm ever faced with such a serious situation when my beliefs conflict with the prevailing wisdom. =============== Man On The Moon All the recent hoopla over the 25th Anniversary of the moon landing reminded me of a story from my childhood. I can't remember exactly what year it was, but it was one of the later missions to the moon. My family and I were driving across Tenne see to visit my Grandparents in Texas. Back then the speed limit was till 75 and 80 most of the way, and if we left real early in the morning from our house in North Carolina and drove all day and all night, we could get to my grandparents house in 23 hours. This particular trip to Texas happened during one of the Appollo missions and it was late at night. My parents had tuned the radio in to a station that was car rying a live broadcast from the astronauts on the moon. I was laying down in the back seat with my sister and looking up through the window at the moon and listening to the voices of the astronauts as the talked about what they were doing on the moon's surface. I studied the moon closer and closer until I was con vinced that I could see the astronauts walking around on the moon! I could see tiny little figures standing on the top edge of the moon stnding beside the American flag and the lunar module. bouncing around in the low gravity. My parents didn't correct me when I told them that I could see the astronauts on the moon. Mr. & Mrs. Jackson Yea, right. Who seri ously believes this marriage between Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie (sp?) Pres ley is going to last? My friends and I are making predictions on how long this happy couple will remain together. Most predictions are in the 6-12 month range. My predicition is one year. I could almost buy this story almost. I could buy the fact that they fell in love after dating only a couple of times. I don't object to the notion of love at first sight. And I could buy the fact that they wanted to keep their marriage a secret to avoid all the publicity. And I don't have a problem with interracial marriages. I've never read anything that convinced me that interra cial marriages are any less stable than other marriages. The timing is just too convenient. Right after the accusations of child moles tation and questions concerning Mr. Jackson's morals, he creates a big stir by jumping into the most wholesome of institutions, marriage. But what really con vinced me that this marriage is less than sincere was a news story about he and his new wife arriving in Budapest Hungary. There was a great shot of the two of them coming down the steps of the plane. Mrs. Jackson looked really ner vous and out of touch. The newlywed couple never even looked at each other. At one point Mr. Jackson took Mrs. Jackson's arm for a brief moment, like he was going to escort her. But then he let go and fled down the steps of the air plane and into the limo, leaving Mrs. Jackson behind to catch up. It was just a brief glimpse of the two, but the only one offered on the whole trip and I did not get the impression that these two were newlyweds. And I certainly did not get the impression that these two were in love. Time will tell. ============== What Is Brain? I read a lot of science fiction and science related stuff. Last week I read an article in The Science Fic tion Eye magazine that really impressed me. It was about how popular science and science fiction writers have portrayed the brain over the years. The author's thesis is that everyone from psychologists to science fiction writers, describe the brain by analogy, using the then-current technology of the day. Freud, for example, described the libido in terms of hydraulics. The libido, in his view, is a fixed quantity that could not be compressed. In the same way that you can not com press water, you cannot compress the libido without it squirting out somewhere else. Try to suppress a bad memory and it leaks out in the form of some other behavior somewhere else. The behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner, saw the mind as a mechanical machine and you only got out of it what you put into it. The humanists psycholgists saw the brain like an indepen dent growing organism. And today, most cognitive scientists use the computer as an analogy for the brain. And science fiction writ ers have followed these changes in analogy also and have added a few of their own along the way. For example, many early sci ence fiction writers drew an analogy between brain size and intelligence. Thus lots of the early science fiction movies have alien beings with really really big heads, way out of proportion to the rest of their bodies. Later science fiction writers por trayed the brain as a mathematical function that could be calculated and predicted. Some even went so far as to suggest that every word you hear had an "emotional weight" and that you could predict the behavior of someone based on the words they heard. And most recently sci ence fiction writers, most notably those who write in the "cyberpunk" genre, have picked up on the analogy that the brain is a computer. Thus we get lots of stories about sentient computers and devices that meld brain and computer so that characters in cyberpunk stories often plug their brains directly into com puters and instantly learn new languages, new skills, etc. As the author points out, this latest analogy is just as flawed as all the past analogies. The main prob lem with the computer/brain analogy is that the brain's memory and the computer's memory are radically different. In a computer, every single bit of information it remembers is located in a single, unique location.That location might be in the computers active memory, or it might be stored on a disk somewhere, but it's in only one place at a time and only one "memory" is at that one place. The human brain, on the other hand, is associative. This means that a memory is not located at a single spot. So, you remember what you had for breakfast yesterday, but you can't point to any single spot in your brain that con tains the memory of yesterday's breakfast. The memory of yesterday's breakfast, as near as anyone can tell, is spread _throughout_ your brain and is mixed in with all your other memories at once. It makes you wonder what the next popular brain analogy is going to be? The brain is a rain forest? The brain is an ecosystem? I know mine sometimes feels like the hole in the ozone layer. ===================== Computers and People As a programmer by trade, I sometimes get asked if I think we'll ever be able to have conversa tions with computers and if they'll ever be a such thing as "living computers" or "artificial intelligence". My standard response is that I believe that someday we will be unable to tell the difference between a computer's conversation and a human's. But then I add, "Not because comput ers are getting so much smarter, but because people are getting so much dumber." ================================================================== Stuck In Traffic is a bi-monthly e-zine edited by, and mostly written by Calvin Stacy Powers. Copyrights of individual articles are held by their respective authors. All unsigned work is authored by Calvin Stacy Powers, who holds all copyrights. Permission is granted to redistribute Stuck In Traffic provided that it is redistributed in its entirety (including this copyright notice), and that no fee is charged. For commercial redistribution rights, or for permission to reprint/redistribute individual articles contact Calvin Stacy Powers at powers@rdu007.pdial.interpath.net. If you would like to receive Stuck In Traffic free by e-mail subscription send e-mail to the address listed above.