CNN misleads on the Shuttle

I heard that the shuttle Endeavour was going to launch tonight, but it may not because of bad weather in Spain, where the astronauts would have to land if trouble developed on takeoff. This made me wonder about the shuttle. I was going to walk out to a place in my development with a low southeastern horizon so I could see it take off. I had seen one of these before. But I could go out there and wait and wait and wait without knowing that it had been scrubbed at X minus 3 seconds. So I carried out a cellular phone and asked my wife to call me if a report on CNN says the mission is scrubbed. I took this extra measure to ensure that I see the shuttle. I stood out there a while and then my wife called me on the cellular phone. She said that CNN reported that the mission had been delayed to see if they could get better weather in Spain. So I walked back to the house to find out when they were going to launch it now. I was surprised to find instead that the shuttle launched! It was too late to go back. I was misled by an erroneous CNN report. It is all the more galling because later on CNN contradicted themselves by saying the shuttle launched.

This shows you can't trust the media any more. I asked my wife to call me if the shuttle was scrubbed as protection against waiting a long time for a shuttle that won't come. Instead, this prevented me from seeing the shuttle by getting me to leave the place before the shuttle was visible. It used to be that I could trust stations like CNN to tell the truth; I could have relied on it for information on the shuttle. But I can't. Since I can't, I feel I need to treat it as though they were going to do the worst against me. That results in this matrix game:

	CNN tells truth	CNN lies
trust CNN	see shuttle(10)	don't see shuttle(-20)
don't trust CNN	wait forever for shuttle(0)	see shuttle(10)

Game theory says then I should flip two coins. If both come up heads, I trust CNN; otherwise, I don't. CNN's most perverse strategy is to tell the truth 3/4 of the time and lie 1/4 of the time. This implies that the chance that I see the shuttle is (3/4)*(1/4) + (1/4)*(3/4) = 3/8 or 37.5%. The most probable outcome is to wait forever for the shuttle; actually, probably only 20 minutes. If I could fully trust CNN, the probability would be 100%. Amazing what a lack of trust can cost. Trust is lacking in our world today and sooner or later we will pay the penalty for it.

At least I helped someone see the shuttle. I sent a notice to an Internet group, someone noticed it there, looked for the shuttle and found it.

Where is Iraq?

I have found something surprising as of late. The National Geographic conducted a survey of 18-24 year olds around the world and found that only 13 percent of American young people could find Iraq on a map. 87 percent couldn't, and we want to send these people to fight a war there? Only 17 percent could identify Afghanistan on a map. About 45 percent knew where New York was, but an incredible 11 percent could not even identify the United States. Scores around the world are similar. Mexico is even worse than the United States. In general, young people around the world don't know their world. This is dangerous. A lack of knowledge about the world, about science, mathematics, and social systems is what dogmas, fundamentalist religions, and tyrannical regimes feed on. Don't you think that if instead 87 percent could identify Iraq, Afghanistan, Mongolia, the United States and so forth that tyrannical regimes would fall and fundamentalist religions would disappear? I think so. Get out your National Geographic maps and discuss them with your kids. The fate of the world may depend on it.

More Giséle and PETA

This thing is starting to get hilarious. So far I thought that when PETA activists barged into the Victoria's Secret fashion show when strutted out, that the only signs that they held read "Giséle: Fur Scum". But according to two other Blogs, namely right-thinking.com and Blogs of War (sorry, no URL; it has become invalid), there were other signs, such as "OMG, she's hot!!!" and "I'm a fat whore with no life", and even one with the F word. To me the photos look authentic, but either they are fake or the media has misreported the PETA intrusion, maybe because some of these signs are not for family audiences. In my opinion, the PETA people are missing the mark. Their target is cruel treatment of mink, not the sex life of Giséle. It is the sight of these PETA women walking around a sexy supermodel is what I find interesting. The PETA women had their mouths wide open, and looked angry and demonstrative, while Giséle did not crack a smile and looked like an unfriendly nearly-undraped statue. At least the PETA women were expressing themselves and making their positions clear. To me Giséle seemed stuck up.

Giséle's name is interesting; to me, unnecessary umlauts and accents are hifalutin. But apparently her real family name was Bündchen. That is a German name; the word means little "Bund", since -chen plus umlaut is what the Germans use for a diminutive. For example, "Hund" is dog, and Hündchen is "doggie" or "puppy". "Bund" has several meanings, all of which suggests a binding or putting together. It could mean "league", in which case Giséle is Little League; maybe I'll find her in Williamsport. It could also mean "waistband", in which case it describes what she wore: a little waistband.

To me PETA is the Coyote of the protest world. They are always uncorking goofy skits. They have a woman in a skimpy bikini in a cage in the middle of downtown to protest cruel treatment to caged animals. Their dress is interesting and is designed for maximum impact: they dress skimpy where people are normally dressed, and they dress well covered where people are normally skimpily dressed, as at the fashion show. They recommend that kids drink beer, not milk. Why not orange juice? Because they want impact. They even compare a grisly murder to the butchering of cattle and other animals destined for the dinner table. Their tactic is to get people to notice. But much of the time they simply alienate. I prefer the actions of groups such as the Humane Society or the Farm Sanctuary.

Victoria's Secret

It's name is alluring. Victoria represents the epitome of sexual repressiveness. So saying "Victoria's Secret" says that there may be more than we see of Victoria, hidden behind a curtain. The company sells women's lingerie, and tonight they had a fashion show of some of the skimpiest fashions that they sell. Women paraded around in these outfits, sometimes garnished with outlandish wings, to the tune of dance music with a heavy beat, including one of my favorites, "Independence" by Jon and Vangelis.

I looked at this program because it was doubly controversial. Women's groups such as NOW protested the show is sexual exploitation. It shows women as sex objects. There may be some evidence of this. They showed one man there as having a "family" of women, of their training women to get out there and parade nearly naked, and so forth. Women's groups maintain that shows like this help put women in second place in our society, and these scenes certainly did not do anything to dispel that.

We need to distinguish, however, between discrimination and exploitation issues and expression of sexuality. The former is negative, the latter positive. For a long time societal institutions, especially religious ones, have been trying to repress sexuality. The show tonight was an expression of sexuality, showing off products that are normally used to stir sexual interest in the bedroom. As such it sends a positive message, that sexual expression is good and can add excitement to your life.

Victoria's Secret could have cleaned up its act a little bit. If the women have to go out there half naked, then so should the men. They should have been just as alluringly dressed, including singer Mark Anthony, who belted out a great song tonight. The show described how a man can get a gift for his woman from Victoria's Secret. No. That's not how it goes. The woman is the one to buy the lingerie for herself as a gift for the man, perhaps as a surprise in the bedroom. And the show could have refrained from referring to the women as "girls" and especially as "my girls". But in general I praise the show for celebrating one of the joys of life, namely sex.

The other way in which this show was controversial was due to one particular model: Giséle Bündchen. Initially as they filmed this episode, when Giséle walked on the stage, three women from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) walked on the stage and called her "fur scum", because she had signed a contract with Blackglama to model mink coats. Indeed, PETA's web site describes the cruel way in which mink are killed to make mink coats - electrocution, gassing and so forth. The three women were arrested and charged, then released, and the segment was edited out. Too bad. I liked seeing the models, but I would have liked seeing the PETA protesters as well. PETA's stand is well-taken; we have been unusually cruel to animals over the years. But I do think they were off-mark here. Tonight Giséle was wearing hardly anything, let alone fur. Her fur business was elsewhere. If PETA wanted to protest, they should have protested by waiting until she appeared in a fur coat somewhere. Doing it here instead puts them in the sexually repressed group. They led us the wrong way.

So to sum up I'd say that Victoria's Secret should have equalize the field by including alluring models of both sexes, by not referring to the women as "girls", by being careful recruiting models so they don't wind up with controversial people such as Giséle Bündchen, and PETA should have chosen the timing of its protests more carefully. I give the show a C+.

Thinking is believing

I saw this on Time Magazine's web site today: "He runs Iraq, in no small part, because people think he runs Iraq." (I am not going to post a URL, because in no time flat, it will become invalid.) This exposes Saddam's rule for what it is: it is a rule of abstract entities, a rule of belief. If you are an Iraqi and you think Saddam runs Iraq, then he will continue right on "ruling" Iraq and things will stay the same. But thoughts are free. What if you think differently? What if you think that he is just an ordinary bully instead? If a large number of people in Iraq thought that, the regime would fall quickly.

What else exists because of simply believing it exists? How about the value of the paper money in my wallet? Is there a dollar's worth of material in a dollar? No. That piece of paper is worth a dollar because I believe it is worth a dollar, because my friends and acquaintances think it is worth a dollar, and because the US government says it is worth a dollar. There used to be money that was really worth that (silver coins) but you don't see that anymore. In this case we want to keep on believing. If we don't, a monetary crisis will result and we will lose all of our savings. That happened during the Great Depression and in Germany in 1923.

But maybe with other things, if you stop believing in what you have been in habit of believing or what others tell you to believe, you may blaze a new trail. This is how clothing fads change. For example, people said in the 1960s and early 1970s that people will never own computers, and that it is not necessary to own one. But Wozniak and Jobs had a different idea: they wanted to own a computer and to make a living by getting others to own their own computers. So therefore the Apple II, and now many of us own computers, including this one I am writing on.

Be careful carving out a new belief trail. Trying to live life as you feel like it in Saddam's Iraq may not be a good idea. And you may startle people with your new thinking. But there are so many other belief trails to choose from, and the rewards can be great.

Nature Shows

I see a generational difference in the way that nature shows are presented. Take Wild Kingdom, for instance. I used to watch it in the late 1960s and 1970s when I was a young adult. The show was presented by the Silent Generation then; those born between 1925 and 1942. The show presented mostly the animals, in their adventures in obtaining what they need to survive. It would show cheetahs chasing springbok; jaguars hunting capybaras, and elephants grazing on the savanna. Once in a great while a human would appear, as in one case when one wrestled with an anaconda.

Wild Kingdom has reappeared on the Animal Channel, but it is different. It is now presented by Generation X, noted for practicality and adventurousness. Today is the day of wrestling crocodiles and "crikey". Now people appear all over the place on Wild Kingdom, especially young men who go out in the wilderness and investigate all over the place even to the extent of holding the necks of black mamba snakes in their hands. Instead of a travelogue of animals, we now get a wild safari. The show is just as interesting and informative; it is just presented differently.

If generational trends as theorized by Strauss and Howe in Generations continue, in 10-20 years the Millennial Generation will present the show. We then will see nature people going into the wilderness showing how we can preserve the environment and how to live peacefully among the animals. It will show a much more loving attitude than the bookworms of the 1960s or the daredevils of today.