I believe in Truth.  Yes, that's "Truth" with a capital "T".  I'm not speaking of some  vague, spiritual notion; I mean the one objective, demonstrable reality.  I don't  deny the importance of more subjective, lower-case  "truths", the stories and metaphors we tell ourselves and each other to make sense of our world, but I firmly believe in the primacy of the  Truth we share.  I have often heard it said that "there is more than one way of  knowing", but I disagree.  There is only one way of knowing, and that is through  experience.  It doesn't have to be our own, but it is only through experience, and through  deliberate reflection on experience, that we can come to understand the universe and our place in  it.  Anything else is nothing more than wishful thinking, or, dare I say, delusion.  That's  not to say our delusions don't have their place, but I believe it's vitally important to  remember that's exactly what they are.  We should never turn our backs on what is true and  real in favor of what is comfortable and convenient.  I will always prefer an inconvenient,  unpleasant Truth over a comforting delusion.

I believe the universe is comprehensible.  Everything happens for a reason, and  that reason is nothing more than the accumulation of causes and their effects, stretching  back in an unbroken chain to the very dawn of time.  We live in a universe of great mystery  and wonder, and mystery should be sought out and celebrated.  But mystery and ambiguity  should never be preserved for their own sake.  Mystery is an opportunity to learn, and to  grow, and to discover something more about our reality.  Mystery is born of ignorance, not  of ineffability.  There are certainly questions we don't have the answers to, and there are  questions to which we'll never have the answers, and there are questions we can never  answer.  But there are no questions without answers.  And there certainly aren’t questions we aren't meant to answer, or things we’re not meant to know.  Such a notion presupposes the existence of an  "arbiter of meaning" in the cosmos, and I believe there isn't one.

I believe in accidents.  The universe never had us in mind, because the universe doesn't  have a mind.  Our world and our lives are the result of a string of quantum events,  cosmological circumstance, and basic chemistry.  There is no design.  We might say  we're insignificant in the Grand Scheme of things, but even that is inaccurate.  There is no Grand Scheme.  We are  accidents; but we are not mistakes.  And our existence is made all the more precious because  of it.  I believe the universe has no ultimate meaning or purpose or reason for our  existence.  And that means we're free to create our own. We do so, not within the boundless  infinity of a cold, indifferent universe, but within the social sphere of our relationships,  both with each other and with our world.  It is within this much smaller arena that we find  purpose and meaning and consequence.  We may never have real, lasting impact on our  universe-at-large, but the impact we have on individual lives, and on our world, can be profound.   That's where I look for meaning and purpose.

Because I believe in people.  We are all gentle, hopeful, noble creatures.  And we are all  selfish, greedy, savage beasts.  Which aspect of our dual nature we choose to embrace and  nurture is forever our choice.  We have a shared responsibility for our world, our future,  and for each other, and we can do far more together than we could ever hope to alone.   What we do today  may not resonate beyond our own insignificant little mudball, it may be forgotten in 1000  years, or in 100.  So what?  It may be remembered tomorrow.  It may make a difference today.

This is exceedingly odd for me. I am a deep, dark blue social liberal; I try to only make moral judgements about behavior insofar as it impacts others. Yet willful ignorance deeply offends me. How can you be an effective participant in society while remaining largely ignorant of it? Isn't an educated, informed electorate a necessary component of any healthy, functional democracy? It may be an unreachable ideal, and we may fall far short of it at the moment, but that doesn't mean we should just give up. I would actually be less bothered if he chose to withdraw from society completely, but to remain a part of society, yet refuse to engage with it completely, seems fundamentally wrong to me.

But my offense runs deeper. My friend is speaking specifically of news of politics and world affairs, but others are equally content to be ignorant of science, of psychology, of other cultures, etc. Many are quite proud of what they don't know, speaking of "intellectual elites" and speaking the word "science" with derision. You may argue that avoiding the news is not the same as refusing a few inconvenient scientific facts, and you would be right, but it is the same sort of "celebration of ignorance" that I find disturbing.

How can anyone revel in ignorance?  How can anyone desire this, much less actively seek it?  This is my chief problem with religion: it encourages you to stop asking questions. I am well aware of the psychological benefits of religion, and of its societal benefits, but those benefits pale when they are in service of a delusion. Truth is a virtue. Truth is the highest virtue. And curiosity is a virtue as well. Our experience tells us the universe is comprehensible; we face practical limitations in our observational and computational abilites, but, in principal, nothing is out of bounds. We must keep pressing further. I will always prefer a hard truth to blissful ignorance, or to a comforting delusion.

Truth is a virtue. Is that a spiritual belief? I concede it might be. But, if it is, it is a belief, in part, that we should not be content with spiritual beliefs. And, if I begin embracing paradoxes...well, that starts to sound like religion. And that makes me a little uncomfortable.

Which brings us full circle; I like to be a little uncomfortable. I enjoy uncertainty. I embrace ambiguity. I crave greater understanding, and I will never be satisfied. This is what drives us forward, as individuals, as societies, and as a species.

Ignorance is not bliss; it is only ignorance.

I hate that.

I know my family and friends will find this news shocking, but the signs were there for anyone who cared to see them:  I build my own computers, and have several in my home.  I prefer open-source software and open standards.  I read books on theoretical physics and evolutionary biology for fun.  I rarely buy a consumer electronics device that is not subsequently hacked, cracked, or otherwise made to do something it's manufacturer never intended.  And, most telling?  I have a deep and abiding love for science fiction.

In order to fully realize my geek potential, however, there are certain benchmarks within the sci-fi realm; I've met most of them.  I have a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of comic books; I have seen all the Star Wars movies (with the exception of Empire, they're quite bad); I have seen every episode of every Star Trek series (the animated series doesn't count, as it's not in canon); I've read many of the classics, including the Foundation and Rama series (interesting concepts, but tedious and poorly written), and the original Dune series (quite well-written, but thoroughly uninteresting); I'm frequently able to watch The Big Bang Theory without reference to Wikipedia; I'm still pissed at Fox for canceling Firefly; and I worship Joss Whedon as a god.  Yet there is a final prerequisite to be met in order to achieve true geekdom:  Doctor Who.

Doctor Who was a BBC series that followed the adventures of the time-traveling Doctor and his ever-changing string of companions as they fought aliens, put right what went wrong, and, sometimes, set a few things wrong themselves.  Doctor Who is considered one of the classics of sci-fi television, right alongside Star Trek; it also has the distinction of being the longest-running sci-fi series in history.  That kind of continuity is daunting, particularly when one's only exposure to the series is via the occasional PBS rerun, which seemed to air on no particular schedule, in no particular order.  Factor in the Doctor's talent for "regeneration", whereby he escapes death by regenerating into a completely new body (and a completely different actor), and such non-chronological viewing becomes highly confusing, and hardly worth the trouble.  It's no surprise I didn't know Who.

All that changed when the series relaunched in 2005.  That seemed the perfect jumping-on point for a new viewer.  I was not disappointed.  I have enjoyed the new series immensely, having caught up via Netflix On Demand.  The series is quirky, campy, cheesy, silly, and, at times, utterly ridiculous, but it's all done so deliberately and self-consciously that it remains entertaining without becoming annoying.  It also manages the occasional flashes of sci-fi brilliance, such as the Series 3 episode "Blink".

But Doctor Who 2005 was a relaunch, not a reboot; the series introduces us to the 9th doctor (and later, the 10th and 11th).  Everything that happened in Classic Who still happened, and it's still a continuity of which I am largely unaware.

So, in order to fully attain my geek status (and hopefully receive the membership card and decoder ring), I am hereby announcing an ambitious new project:  the Complete Doctor Who.  26 Seasons.  8 Doctors.  Over 700 episodes.  In chronological order.  I will watch them.  Bad writing, silly storylines, cheesy effects, big hair and all.

Of course, I can only speak from my own experience, though it seems to have been mirrored by many of my peers.  When I was growing up, what passed for "Bible study" was often little more than an exercise in revisionist history and self-serving rationalization.  Historical and cultural context was not only largely ignored, it was often a point of pride to do so; the Bible "means what it says".  Even in more liberal congregations, there was always a tendency to read scripture in light of current theological thinking, rather than in the context of the particular environment in which it was written.  Some of that context can be regained by simply reading the Bible linearly, from front to back, rather than by "verse-hopping" in order to prove a certain point.  Such a reading also highlights certain contradictions about the very nature of God:  God is eternal and unchanging, yet the anthropomorphic, tribal war god of the Old Testament bears little resemblance to the formless, transcendent, loving God of all nations of the New (for that matter, the very existence of an "Old" and "New" testament puts lie to the notion).  God is both completely good and completely moral, yet his behavior is sometimes decidedly immoral. The Jews were always strict monotheists, yet the texts indicate they were, for much of their history, monolatrists (never mind the vestiges of polytheism).  God promises eternal punishment or reward, while early Jews seem to have no concept of the afterlife.  Christianity is exclusive, but prior to its advent, Judaism is trending toward universalism.  What's more, the change seems to be politically motivated; post-exilic Jews want to make nice with the rest of the Persian Empire by equating their gods with Yahweh, while Jewish nationalism seems to have made a resurgence by Jesus' day.  How can an obviously evolving faith claim a monopoly on truth?  How many times can you see yesterday's God supplanted by today's before you begin to doubt today's God as well?

But it's in their knowledge of non-Judeochristian religions that non-believers claim their edge in this survey.  As knowledge of other gods and myths and cultures expands, we finally come to the ultimate question:  why should I whole-heartedly accept this particular collection of story and myth, while denying this other, very similar but mutually exclusive collection of myth?  We might come to the conclusion that the distinction is arbitrary; there is no real reason to prefer one over the other.  Yet, they can't both be true.  They can, however, both be false.

But that's my story (never mind the philosophical and scientific objections).  I can also imagine further explanations of the data.  A non-believer may simply have a legitimate desire to understand this "thing" that is obviously so important to so many people (I admit to a degree of this, and to a curiosity about the nature of belief in general).  I will also concede that there may be a measure of "eye-poking" going on, of non-believers looking for ammunition to use against believers, though I think this is rare (most non-believers I know are not at all evangelical about it).  It should also be mentioned that many self-described atheists are rejecting a particular conception of God, usually the one they were brought up with, rather than the notion of God entirely; a person dissatisfied with his own religion might be expected to do a certain amount of research.  That's precisely why many religions are so insular, and hierarchical, and authoritarian; because, the more you know, the less likely you are to believe.

But I most look forward to becoming reacquainted with the old friends (if you think it's ridiculous and a little sad that I'm referring to television shows as "friends", well, screw you!  And you're right).  But first, I have some catching up to do.

First up is Fringe.  This show flew under my radar for a couple of years.  As a card-carrying sci-fi geek, I am contractually obligated to at least try any series in the genre, but I lost interest after the first couple of episodes.  However, fellow geeks tend to rave about the show, so I thought I would give it another try.  I'm glad I did.

In retrospect, I think my initial reaction was because the first couple of episodes are in the "monster-of-the-week" vein, which I just don't find terribly interesting, but as the series progresses, we start to realize that these seemingly random events are related, and this is the point where the series starts to take off.

You see, I'm a continuity buff.  I like stories that are complex and stretch over entire seasons, where nothing is ever really forgotten and everything that happens informs everything to come, and problems are not neatly solved in 43 minutes.  This makes the stories far more realistic.  Paradoxically, this element of realism is especially important in works of sci-fi and fantasy specifically because of the genres' fantastical elements.  It helps keep the story grounded and relatable.  This is best done through strong continuity or strong characterization (Joss Whedon is a master at both), and Fringe has nailed the former.  I'm currently on episode 3 of season 2.

Next up is Supernatural.  I only watched the first two episodes of the last season, due to my then-pregnant wife's inability to stomach the blood and gore; while I think the gore tends to be more campy than gross or scary (think Evil Dead 2; if you haven't seen it, go here.  Do it now.), you just don't argue with a pregnant woman.  This, despite my opinion that Supernatural is one of the best shows out there; where most "horror" shows are content to merely be "thrilling" or "shocking", Supernatural actually succeeds in being "scary", yet it maintains its own peculiar brand of dark humor throughout.  The entire last season, the culmination of a 5-year story arc (there's that "continuity" thing again) is cued up on my DVR, waiting for me.

And finally, there's Caprica.  I never really got into this Battlestar Galactica prequel, but I feel I owe it to the brilliance of its predecessor to at least give it a shot before it returns in October.

In other words, I have a lot of work cut out for me before I can fully enjoy the new season.  And with a 3-year- and 4-month-old, I might actually be caught up in time for the premiere of the 2011 season.  If I'm lucky.

First, the facts of the case: Hannah Poling was a happy and healthy 18-month-old. Then, in July of 2000, she received a series of routine vaccinations. Afterward, her health began to decline, and she began showing signs of autism. Her parents sued in federal vaccine court, and the government eventually settled with the family before the case went to trial, saying that the vaccine aggravated an underlying, undiagnosed mitochondrial disorder, which didn't cause her autism, but resulted in it.

While the headline screams "autism", a more accurate description would seem to be "mitochondrial encephalopathy".  This disorder typically presents in childhood following a period of normal development.   If she hadn't been vaccinated, Hannah would have lived a normal, happy life...until her disease was triggered by a cold, or the flu, or some other environmental cause, or by no apparent trigger at all.  So the underlying cause is genetic, but the vaccine is being held responsible for an unforeseeable, all-but-inevitable outcome.  That just doesn't compute.

I'd like to say this is simply a case of a clueless jury awarding settlements with little understanding of the science involved, but this is not the case.  Vaccine cases are decided by a special "vaccine court", set up in recognition of the fact that vaccine makers would be reluctant to manufacture them if they were open to litigation in the traditional sense. Compensation is determined by a team of experts, and is paid from a special fund to which vaccine makers contribute. The case was settled before going to trial, so there is no guarantee the court would have ruled in the plaintiff's favor, but recent decisions indicate they might have. The problem here is the shockingly low standard of evidence. Plaintiffs don't have to prove causation (which would be difficult regardless), or that an outcome is likely, or even reasonably foreseeable; they simply have to demonstrate a "plausible biological mechanism" by which the event could occur. In other words, they only have to show that it might be possible, even if the odds of the particular outcome are vanishingly small. The family will no doubt have substantial expenses related to Hannah's continuing care, so maybe the government is simply being altruistic; this is, after all, why the fund was established.   In this single, isolated case, the vaccine might even be the "trigger", despite the odds; however, this says nothing about its overall safety or efficacy.  Unfortunately, that is not how this award will be perceived.

The real travesty is that this settlement will only serve as encouragement to the anti-vaccination crowd. Some are conspiracy theorists, but most base their objections on bad science, such as the utterly refuted autism link, or simply on bad math. The reality is, given the variability of human biochemistry, it is impossible to predict, much less test for, every possible complication. However, the odds of experiencing a serious complication from a vaccination are invariably less than the consequences of contracting the disease in the first place. It's not a terribly complicated risk analysis; that is, after all, the whole point of vaccinations.

While I certainly sympathize with the privacy issues raised by mandatory vaccination, frankly, when it comes to public health, those concerns go out the window. Many diseases, once thought controlled and on their way to eradication, such as measles, have made resurgences in recent years, largely due to anti-vaccination efforts. It's not only the unvaccinated who are affected; their decision compromises the "herd immunity" that protects all of us. Vaccination is not 100% effective, but non-vaccination is 100% ineffective, and more infected people simply means more opportunities for infection.

So that's the practical objection; here's the ideological one: making important life decisions based on junk science and poor reasoning is a BAD IDEA. So in that vein, here are a few suggestions to keep in mind when making medical decisions (most are more universally applicable):

1.  You do not know more than your doctor. Your hours spent on Google are no replacement for your doctor's years of training and experience. If you feel he or she has not considered something, absolutely bring it to his attention, but then respect his judgement. If you don't like what you're hearing, seek a second opinion from a qualified medical professional. Not from Google, or from your Facebook friends, or from Oprah, or from your yoga instructor, or from your nutritionist, but from a qualified medical professional.

Corollary 1: All opinions do not hold equal weight.

2.  Anecdotes are meaningless. It doesn't matter what happened to your neighbor's friend when he ate pine nuts; it matters what has been demonstrated in controlled scientific studies.

3. Correlation does not equal causation. Just because B follows A, it does not necessarily mean that A caused B. This should probably be tattooed on everyone's forearm, to be referred to throughout the day.

4. Shit happens. Some events are not foreseeable; sometimes you're just the victim of poor dumb luck. There's not always someone to blame.

I have nothing against this development per se; I'm not one of those scared white people who thinks anything different than what's gone before, especially anything different that non-white people are doing, harbingers the end of civilization as we know it (see Fox News, above). I just find it confusing. When I meet a new person, do I offer the hand, or go immediately for the fist? Invariably I choose the wrong one and end up looking like a jackass. While there are worse outcomes for a first meeting ("assault", "immolation", and "cannibalism", for example), "looking like a jackass" ranks pretty high on the undesirable list. Perhaps some sort of early warning system is in order to signal intent: "hand" or "fist"? After all, it is probably not in anyone's best interest to make a new acquaintance look like a jackass. Unless, of course, he is a jackass. You may make of that statement what you will.

Unfortunately, the choice of ereader is also your choice of bookstore.  If you buy a Kindle, you're shopping with Amazon; if you buy a Nook, your store is Barnes & Noble.  You can either buy a more expensive multiformat option, like an iPad, or you can suck it up and make a difficult choice.

I chose the Nook, because it supports the defacto standard ebook format, epub, and I'm just a standards kind of guy.  Practically every other ereader and ebookstore also uses the epub format (with Amazon being the notable exception).  Unfortunately, the epub format allows distributors to use any form of DRM they like.  Fortunately, it's not hard to crack.  The go-to site for ebook decryption is i♥cabbages.

Borders/Kobobooks/Adobe Digital Editions
Borders' ebooks are provided by Kobobooks.  Most titles are offered in multiple formats including web-based, pdf, and epub.  The epub titles (and the pdfs) are encrypted using Adobe's Adept algorithm.

Enter ineptkey and ineptepub.  The former will retrieve your validation key (generated by Adobe Digital Editions), and the second will use that key to decrypt your ebook.  Just enter your input file, your output file and press "Decrypt".  You're done!

Barnes & Noble
B&N uses a variation on Adobe's DRM format, so the process is similar.  Use ignoblekeygen to generate your decryption key by entering your B&N.com login name and the credit card number you used to purchase your ebook (this number is used ONLY to generate your decryption key; it is not stored or transmitted).  Then use ineptepub to decrypt your book.

Amazon
Amazon opted to use the proprietary azw format for their ebooks, which is itself a variation of the mobi format.  These titles can be decrypted by unswindle.  This script will launch the Kindle Reader, where you will choose the title to decrypt.  Once the title opens, close the reader.  The script will read the key from memory and open a file dialog where you may specify where to save your decrypted file.  Kindle books can also be decrypted using the command-line tool skindle.

You may also occasionally see Amazon files with the tpz (Topaz) extension.  These files can also be decrypted with skindle, though conversion is more involved.  A Google search is helpful here.

iBooks
iBooks titles also use the epub format, but they can not yet be decrypted.  The titles use the same "FairPlay" encryption scheme used by iTunes' music and video downloads, however, so it's surely just a matter of time (audio and video can currently be decrypted with "Requiem"; search your favorite torrent site).

Once decrypted, your ebooks can be converted as necessary by a program like calibre.

The original Watchlist was a simple web scraper; it took as input a text list of authors, and performed an Amazon search on each one. The script "read" each result page and generated an html page and an rss page of the results. The new version queries Amazon's database directly, using Amazon Web Services, making it much faster and more efficient. Additionally, Watchlist has transitioned to a database-driven format, which should make it easier to use and opens some new possibilities.

The script is in a very rudimentary but functional state. Try it out at http://moralanimal.net/watchlist.   A downloadable package is forthcoming.

What's Coming:

• code cleanup and cosmetic enhancements
• Add to Wishlist, Ignore Title, and Add to Google Calendar functionality
• re-implement (optional) RSS functionality

Future Possibilities:

• additional media types (DVDs, music, etc.)
• Joomla and/or WordPress plugins
• mobile theme

Feedback and comments are welcome, especially if you are a CSS or web design guru who can help me get this think looking presentable...