Here it is! The hundredth Good Reason post. Expressions of congratulations may be left in comments.

As a celebration, a little gift for you: a wonderful list of cognitive biases. Yep, all those funny little bugs in our mental system that make fictions seem real, and that keep religion and alternative medicine going.

I’m going to be poring over this list for quite some time today. Once I’ve got it memorised, I expect I shall be an insufferable tormentor to all my religious friends. “Sorry, pal, but that’s a mighty big case of observer-expectancy effect you’ve got going there.”

In the Language Technology community, we don’t talk enough about the ethical consequences of our work. We’re busy building speech recognisers and text classifiers — and they could be used to listen to your phone and flag an agent if you mention the wrong key words. I hope we don’t all someday have an Oppenheimer moment.

Data mining has been in the news, especially with regard to Bush’s illegal wiretapping operation. Data mining has acquired a vaguely sinister whiff about it, especially in the hands of the CIA.

But have a look at this interview with CIA ‘Open Source Center’ director Douglas J. Naquin:

“A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we’re getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to … people putting information on there that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.

Eliot A. Jardines, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for open source, said the amount of unclassified intelligence reaching Mr. Bush and senior policy-makers has increased as a result of the center’s creation in November.

Okay, so they’re pulling together a lot of opinions and stuff that’s already out there. That doesn’t sound so sinister. In fact, it sounds like the kind of thing I’d like to have.

In fact, I’d love a data mining news program similar to Google News, but with a few changes. It’d watch the articles I clicked on, and track those topics. It would pull up similar topics as they arrived. Of course, I wouldn’t only want items similar to what I’ve already seen, so then it would throw in unrelated stories every once in a while, just to see if I was interested in them. Over time, it’d learn my preferences, and deliver related news and blog pages. Things like this are already in the works, and the tools are already available: just combine data mining, topic detection, and user modeling.

Here’s the problem: the sinister-ness of the technology goes up exponentially with the opacity of the government.

“We’re certainly scoring a number of wins with our ultimate customer,” said Mr. Jardines, who became the first high-level official in charge of the government’s nonsecret intelligence in December.

“I can’t get into detail of what, but I’ll just say the amount of open source reporting that goes into the president’s daily brief has gone up rather significantly,” Mr. Jardines said. “There has been a real interest at the highest levels of our government, and we’ve been able to consistently deliver products that are on par with the rest of the intelligence community.”

Mr. Naquin said recent OSC successes have included the discovery of a technology advance in a foreign country. Also, most data on avian flu outbreaks come from open sources, he said.

That was weird. Could they have been any less specific? “We can’t say too much, but we have information that something happened. Perhaps in a foreign county, perhaps not. Also someone said something to someone else, so we’re looking into that.” I guess it must be hard getting respect when you’re in non-secret intelligence.

Is this information good for anything? Yes, one thing. Assembling an enemies list.

This stuff has to be pursued as openly as possible, and right now I don’t trust the US government to do the right thing with the technology. Or anything else.

Even though I know very little about other Presidents of the USA before Nixon (the Watergate hearings are one of my earliest memories), I still think Bush Jr has to be the worst. After all, the country was still standing when he got it, so no one else could have been worse, right?

So it’s nice to hear that many actual historians agree with my uninformed assessment. And better still, Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, lays out the case.

What makes this better than the typical ‘Bush is bad’ article is that the authors uses past presidencies to make historical comparisons.

How does any president’s reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties — Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush — have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures — an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

One quote that got me thinking:

No two-term president since polling began has fallen from such a height of popularity as Bush’s (in the neighborhood of ninety percent, during the patriotic upswell following the 2001 attacks) to such a low (now in the midthirties).

Do you think that people’s opinion of the President has more to do with external factors, like whether they feel happy or not, rather than whether they agree with his policies? Sort of like your favourite album or something.

I note that the latest SurveyUSA polls are out, and Bush isn’t looking good. Nice to see that Utah’s still pulling for him at the number 1 spot, though. It hurts to say this, but this may have been the thing that made me realise that people in my former state of residence really are a bunch of dumbasses, speaking collectively and not individually.

Anyway, try this. Sort it by approval, and notice how the states are marked as ‘red states’ (that voted for Bush in 2004) or ‘blue states’ (that voted for what’s-his-name). Now, which ‘red state’ gives Bush the lowest marks?

It’s Ohio. The one that turned it all for Bush. They finally figured it out, but it’s too late for the rest of us.

You can’t really say that they’ve repented, though. There’s a bill in the State Legislature to criminalise abortion — even if you try to get one in another state.

Ohio house bill 228 introduced by Tim Brinkman, R-Mount Lookout, in April would make it a felony for a woman to seek to terminate her pregnancy and holds the same penalty if she chooses to leave the state for the medical procedure.

Additionally, anyone who helps coordinate an abortion or transportation to leave the state for one could be charged as well.

The controversial nature of the proposed bill has slowed its progress through the legislature.

“House Bill 228, as far as I know, is still in committee. Some bills take more time to come out of committee. You just never know,” said Ohio Rep. John Schlichter, R-Greenfield. “I’m a pro-life person. My voting record has been consistent. I was raised in a Christian home.”

In a way, it’s nice to know that not all the dumbasses are in Utah. On the other hand, some of them are in public office.

When you think of ‘purity’, do you think of ‘not having sex’? There’s a conscious effort afoot to play up just that aspect of the word.

Here’s a recent example: a ‘purity ball‘. It’s like a regular dance, but devoted to purity. Fathers take daughters, and there’s absolutely no sex allowed. (Thank goodness.) Link courtesy of the abstinence-only folks at Abstinence Clearinghouse and Alpha Center. Isn’t that in that one state where they banned all abortions?

Here’s the blurb, sorry there’s no permalink:

Fathers:
Would you like to show your daughter just how much you love her, but don’t quite know how? We are offering the perfect opportunity for you to do this at the Father-Daughter Purity Ball. This is your chance to lavish your princess with your high regard for her and her future. Does your daughter know you as her protector? You can demonstrate your concern to promote her physical, emotional, and spiritual security and need for protection. Show her at the Father-Daughter Purity Ball.

Daughters:
Have you ever wanted an opportunity to grow closer to your daddy? The Father-Daughter Purity Ball is the stellar event for you to be honored as his beautiful princess. By the end of the afternoon you will know without a doubt that your daddy really loves you. Plus, how many opportunities do you have to see your dad try ballroom dancing? Seeing is believing!

Creep factor: high.

I deplore the Victorianisation of words. Take morality. To me, morality involves doing the right thing by people, trying to be honest, and so on. Being a moral person is a worthy goal. But now try out the word in this sentence: “We need to make sure that young people stay moral.” You thought sex, didn’t you? For lots of people, especially the religious kind, the sexual aspect of morality has become the most salient.

The same thing has happened to virtue. It’s a wonderful word that comes from the Latin virtus, or ‘man’. Virtue was the set of qualities that made a man (or woman — sexists!), including valor and moral perfection. But now? It’s about the sex.

Why are the sexual aspects of words so salient for them? They’re simultaneously drawn to sex, and horrified by it.

And now the New Victorians want ‘pure’. Haven’t they had enough word mangling yet?

One more thing: the over-reliance on the word ‘princess’ in the blurb above is raising all kinds of Lakoffian framing flags for me. If I know one thing about Christians, they feel constantly afraid and threatened by ‘the world’ outside. These people are suckers for a fortress frame. Imagine: you’re in a big safe castle with an alligator-stocked moat around it. You live in a (repressively) feudal society where everyone knows their place. All the bad is outside. You’re a king, you’re safe, and you’re in control. And your daughter is… what else? a princess.

They do a pretty good job of hiding it, but sometimes the fortress mentality leaks out.

It’s Easter Sunday, and churches are ringing with messages of hope and rebirth — and how horrible it must be to be an atheist.

What meaning would life have without the reality of immortality? Otherwise life would become only a dismal journey of ‘getting and spending,’ only to end in utter and hopeless oblivion.

Hey, don’t knock getting and spending — it’s fun, and besides, the government might target you as some kind of subversive. And what kind of argument is that, anyway? Shorter version: “If we just died, that’d be too sad. So that can’t be true!”

Lots of Christians have written about how hopeless atheists must feel. It goes way back to Paul. Muslims even get into it from time to time — at last, something everyone can agree on.

But is life without belief in a Supernatural Being really that hopeless? This is my first Easter as a born-again atheist, and I’d like to say that while unbelief comes with some responsibilities (like life itself), you get a lot in return.

You are free of sin.
Sin is transgression against the laws of God. Subtract God, and the idea of sin becomes meaningless.

In its place is something far more difficult: ethics. Even if there’s no such thing as sin, you can still behave crappily towards other people. The problem is that no one will forgive you if you pray. If you choose to live ethically, you have to try and be aware of the effects of your actions and try and minimise harm to other people.

In return, you get to choose your actions based on how it will affect you and other people, without worrying about offending a Supreme Being whose commandments change depending on who you’re talking to. You are free of sin, and always have been.

You are free of false beliefs.
Well, at least some. Watch it, though — even when you think you don’t have any, you really do. Unexamined assumptions need to be ferreted out and checked against reality, as best as we can perceive it. This seems a bit wobbly — what good is your belief system if you can’t be certain? But the pursuit of knowledge requires a willingness to relinquish certainty and accept wisdom, including the wisdom of knowing that we may be wrong.

Giving up superstition allows you to use humanity’s most successful invention: science. To commit to a scientific approach is to commit to truthfulness, to discover and overcome your own personal biases, to be honest in reporting your data, and to be appropriately cautious about the conclusions you draw.

In return, you can be reasonably confident that your beliefs are true and well-supported, as least until more data comes along. Just think — people who believe in unprovable superstitions can never have that assurance. It drives them nuts. Sometimes they even kill each other over the comparative value of their delusions. You can be free of this.

Your mind and your body are your own.
No god is trying to put thoughts into your head. No devil is on your shoulder whispering words of sweet temptation. No mysterious promptings to puzzle over. When a thought comes into your mind, it comes from your mind, and you can choose what to do with it.

When you close the door of your room, you are blessedly alone. No angels, ghosts, or unseen spirits to pry into your boudoir.

It can be lonely without an imaginary entourage. Existential loneliness is something we all have to deal with. But in return, you get privacy. You also get a sense of personal ownership. No one has paid for you, so no one properly owns you but yourself. Your body, your mind, and your thoughts are yours.

After death, what?
There are lots of theories about what happens after death, but none of them are verifiable. From where we’re standing, it looks a lot like nothing happens, so that’s our starting point.

I don’t like the idea of not existing. I try to imagine what it’s like not to exist — like sleeping forever? — and I can’t do it. I look at people in the city, and I see my fellow travelers to the grave. I tuck my boys into bed at night, and I realise that they too will die, and I can’t stop it. And someday we will all pass out of living human memory.

And yet, though we may not exist after death, our influence may be felt. My children contain some of my genetic code, which will mix with that of all humanity. Perhaps someday some of my work will be useful to someone, and my words and ideas will linger after I’m gone.

This is the inspiring part of life, for me. For one brief instant, I was a part of human experience. And I think that’s beautiful.

You don’t have to go to Margaret River to get chocolate from the Margaret River Chocolate Company. There’s a factory in Perth that you can tour. By ‘tour’, I mean there’s a window that you can paste yourself to while you watch the chocolate being stirred around and around in the machine like some hypnotic wheel of lusciousness. They also have big bowls of chocolate chips to sample, a privilege we abused egregiously. So I bought some in penance.

The biggest disappointment was that the dirt out in the carpark was actually just ordinary dirt, and the flowers weren’t edible. Everything else was great.

Just got back from performing Mozart’s Requiem at St. Joseph’s in Subiaco with Collegium Musicum. It went really well.

Other times I’ve done the Requiem, there have been a hundred singers. This time — only twelve of us, three a part. It makes for a different sort of Requiem, more intimate. You have to be very confident on your part, and very precise; otherwise everyone notices every mistake.

Actually, the part I enjoyed the most was during rehearsal. It was during the ‘Benedictus’. The four soloists happened to be positioned all around me. I could hear each of them in perfect quadraphonic sound, and an orchestra on my left. Honestly, you couldn’t buy a seat to hear it the way I did.

We also did Bach’s cantata ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden‘. It’s BWV 4, so you can tell it’s one of his early ones. Not as singer-friendly as his later works. Very tricky runs, but lots of fun to do.

I love singing with a really good choir. I feel sort of connected with Mozart and Bach, and to all the people who have performed their works throughout history. The audience is in there enjoying it too. People like to hear a bit of history, especially when it sounds as great as this. And doesn’t everything sound better when you’re in the middle of it?

Is there a disease that affects your ability to realise that you seem ridiculous to other people? If so, we’d better isolate Bill O’Reilly for treatment, because he’s all over it.

Make no mistake, the War on Christmas was a resounding success. Presents and carols have been fully repressed in all major cities, and even the name has been subsumed into secular non-denominational ‘holiday’ greetings. Well and good.

But I personally have no desire to remove Easter from the calendar. And to understand why, perhaps we could reflect for a moment on the true meaning of Easter.

The name comes from Eostre, a pagan goddess among the Anglo-Saxons. The Venerable Bede wrote:

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

And Jacob Grimm noted some aspects of Eostre worship that carried over into Christian Easter observance, notably the eggs and the bunny.

So here’s my reasoning: While I’m not into imaginary deities, we do have a shortage of pagan goddesses these days. If we have to have any at all, then let’s give the females equal time. Besides, any holiday that can sucessfully merge fertility with chocolate has to be worth something.

Remember, Eostre is the reason for the season!

Tiger Woods did, and Britons are outraged. And Americans are confused and outraged, even the PC kind.

Growing up in the USA, my friends and I always said, “Don’t have a spaz!” Never connected it to a disabled person — it was a ‘nerd’ word, like ‘dork’. Then I got to Australia and found that it was used in all seriousness to describe people who suffer from uncontrollable muscular spasms. I even seem to remember a ‘Spastic Society’ in Australia. I was horrified — I’d been using the word ‘spaz’ without knowing what I’d been referring to, and also because… shouldn’t they call them something else?

So now I’m watching the Tiger flap unfold. British folks are (incorrectly) assuming that Americans are mocking the disabled, and Americans are incensed to find themselves attacked. Such is the danger of semantic shift in cross-cultural communication.

Linguistics offers no answer to what people ‘should’ do. It’s just going to have to sort itself out. But from an interpersonal standpoint, I am dismayed by the ferocity of the reaction of many Americans (see here for a typical sample).

Do these people react that way to their partners or their children when there’s a conflict? And is that likely to lead to a solution?

One measure of a person’s humanity shows in how they react when confronted by someone who feels wronged by them. Do they a) listen and try to understand the problem? or b) act annoyed and say there isn’t really a problem, and you’re just being stupid?

Yeah, call me a PC idiot for trying to understand other people’s gripes. I know it takes more time, but I’ve actually learned things that way. The opposite approach looks like supreme discourtesy. A real lack of care. Far worse than an accidental epithet.