Author: Rich Beckman

Justice Confirmation Hearings

I had a chance to actu­al­ly watch a lot of Tues­day’s hear­ings for con­fir­ma­tion of Sotomay­or. The hear­ings should prob­a­bly be called pos­tur­ing hear­ings. It does seem that much of what is said by the sen­a­tors has as much or more to do with shap­ing their own image as it does with try­ing to learn about the nominee.

The Repub­li­cans, under­stand­ing that Sotomay­or’s con­fir­ma­tion is a for­gone con­clu­sion, have their only hope of pre­vent­ing her con­fir­ma­tion by catch­ing her in an error. They return to the same sub­jects over and over wait­ing for Sotomay­or to make a mis­take. Sotomay­or has han­dled all the ques­tions with aplomb.

Sotomay­or was cor­rect to walk away from her “wise Lati­na woman” com­ment, but she walked too far away. It is not true that a wise Lati­na woman will make a bet­ter deci­sion than a white male. It is true that a wise Lati­na woman might make a dif­fer­ent deci­sion that is just as good as the white males. And it some­how nev­er gets men­tioned that for 180 years all of the Supreme Court Jus­tices were white males and in the next forty years all but four Jus­tices have been white males.

To watch the hear­ings is to enter a fan­ta­sy world where white males are the stan­dard for objec­tiv­i­ty. Where white males are nev­er influ­enced by their life expe­ri­ence as a white male. But, of course, a Lati­na woman is going to always be influ­enced by her life expe­ri­ence as a Lati­na woman (even though she has a lengthy record of not favor­ing minorites).

The truth is that any jus­tice is going to be influ­enced by his or her life expe­ri­ence. That’s the way it is, the way it has always been, and the way it will always be.

It is also the way it should be.

It is also that case that every judge should be able to empathize with the peo­ple who will be affect­ed by deci­sions. This repeat­ed mantra of “fideli­ty to the law” is not mean­ing­less. Fideli­ty to the law should be the guid­ing prin­ci­ple, but the law is not com­plete. If it were, there would be no need for judges. Con­ser­v­a­tives are hap­py to have empa­thet­ic judges, just as long as the judge is a con­ser­v­a­tive. Google “Ali­to empathy”.

Final­ly, an “activist judge” is a judge with whom the speak­er does not agree.

Con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings should turn on one ques­tion only: Is the nom­i­nee qual­i­fied to sit on the Supreme Court. This is deter­mined by ask­ing the nom­i­nee about var­i­ous issues that the Court has dealt with and like­ly will deal with. If the nom­i­nee can intel­li­gent­ly dis­cuss the sub­tleties of the var­i­ous issues, then the nom­i­nee is qualified.

Sotomay­or is clear­ly qualified.

Pence For President?

Is Mike Pence think­ing about run­ning for Pres­i­dent? I first asked this ques­tion on June 17. Now CQ Pol­i­tics thinks so, too.

House Repub­li­can Con­fer­ence Chair­man Mike Pence of Indi­ana recent­ly added his name to that list [of poten­tial can­di­dates for pres­i­dent for 2012] by sched­ul­ing a trip to Iowa start­ing July 25 — just before the final week of the hec­tic July session.

Remem­ber, you read it here first!!

Hat tip to TPMDC.

Short Memory

Can any­one, with a straight face, say that they under­stood the urgent­ly need­ed stim­u­lus plan to be a “two year plan.” If you say yes you are a liar. If some­one would have asked Oba­ma before pas­sage he would have denied it.

Where to begin?

Jan­u­ary 11, 2009

Oba­ma takes office Jan. 20 and is press­ing Con­gress to act quick­ly on a two-year eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus plan of about $775 bil­lion that includes new gov­ern­ment spend­ing and tax cuts.

Jan­u­ary 12, 2009

Oba­ma takes office Jan. 20 and is press­ing Con­gress to act quick­ly on a two-year eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus plan of about $US775 bil­lion that includes new gov­ern­ment spend­ing and tax cuts.

Jan­u­ary 13, 2009

That com­pares with Pres­i­dent-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. plans for a two-year stim­u­lus pro­gram of about $775 bil­lion, or about 2.8 per­cent of GDP.

Jan­u­ary 15, 2009

In his week­ly radio address on Jan. 10, 2009, Barack Oba­ma said the No. 1 goal of his eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus plan is to cre­ate 3 mil­lion new jobs in the next two years

Jan­u­ary 29, 2009

…the two-year stim­u­lus plan would pro­vide up to $1,000 per year in tax relief for most families…Obama said.…“This recov­ery plan will save or cre­ate more than 3 mil­lion new jobs over the next few years.”

Feb­ru­ary 2, 2009

This is a two-year bill. The bill that we’re talk­ing about is a two-year bill.

Feb­ru­ary 3, 2009

Obama’s plan will cre­ate 3 – 4 mil­lion jobs over the next two years.

Feb­ru­ary 06, 2009

The Kingsport Times quot­ed the gov­er­nor say­ing he would do any­thing he could to help pre­serve state jobs, but cau­tioned the $800 bil­lion stim­u­lus now before Con­gress is a two-year program.

Feb­ru­ary 08, 2009

Chris Wal­lace: “The Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office says only 64 per­cent of the House plan actu­al­ly gets out into the econ­o­my in the next two years. So how is that timely?”

Lar­ry Sum­mers: “I think this econ­o­my is still going to need some sup­port two years from now. And so I think the idea that not 100 per­cent of it spends out in the next two years is actu­al­ly a pru­dent one.”

Feb­ru­ary 9, 2009

The plan that we put for­ward will save or cre­ate 3 to 4 mil­lion jobs over the next two years.

Feb­ru­ary 17, 2009

Now, what makes this recov­ery plan so impor­tant is not just that it will cre­ate or save 3.5 mil­lion jobs over the next two years, includ­ing 60,000-plus here in Colorado.

Feb­ru­ary 18, 2009

Oba­ma said the law would save or cre­ate 3.5 mil­lion jobs over the next two years.

Feb­ru­ary 24th, 2009

“Over the next two years, this plan will save or cre­ate 3.5 mil­lion jobs.”

Consciousness, Part 2

Now the inter­est­ing part. If you have not yet read my def­i­n­i­tion of con­scious­ness, then you might want to do so.

In the last two days I’ve dis­cussed déjà vu and “slow motion..” Those two top­ics had a cou­ple of sim­i­lar­i­ties: in both instances the dif­fer­ence between the pro­cess­ing speed of the sub­con­scious and the con­scious is impor­tant; and con­scious­ness plays the role of a pas­sive observer.

In my opin­ion this is the usu­al role of con­scious­ness: pas­sive observer.

If you closed your eyes and count­ed to ten when read­ing my def­i­n­i­tion, do you believe your con­scious­ness had any­thing to do with the count­ing? Clear­ly not. Con­scious­ness could not get to two if the sub­con­scious was not there “hand­ing” the appro­pri­ate info to con­scious­ness at the appro­pri­ate time.

Sim­ple math? I ask what’s two plus two. You already know it is four. But how? Even if you added the dig­its “in your head”, it was the sub­con­scious car­ry­ing the load and feed­ing the info to the conciousness.

ABC’s? Same thing.

This is clear because most of the time, the num­ber sequence from one to ten (or fifty to sev­en­ty-five) and the alpha­bet are not present in con­scious­ness. If all of such details were present, the clut­ter would be overwhelming.

High­er math? Same thing. The cal­cu­lat­ing is going on in the sub­con­scious with the info fed to the conscious.

Plen­ty of learn­ing obvi­ous­ly takes place with­out con­scious­ness. Peo­ple “pick up” man­ner­isms from oth­ers all the time with no aware­ness that they have done so. Pavlov­ian con­di­tion­ing takes place with no con­scious aware­ness. Lots of learn­ing seems to rely on con­scious­ness to at least get start­ed, but con­scious­ness quick­ly inter­feres with learn­ing more than helps it.

One’s body feels and reacts to pain with­out con­scious­ness being involved. Sure, if the pain gets severe, one can­not help but be con­scious of it. This does not mean that con­scious­ness was nec­es­sary for the body to feel the pain and react to it. It only means that the con­scious­ness was aware of it.

I did say just above that “lots of learn­ing seems to rely on con­scious­ness to at least get start­ed,” but I did say “seems”. I think it is doubt­ful that con­scious­ness plays any role in most such sit­u­a­tions. Deci­sions are made sub­con­scious­ly and fed to the con­scious often with the atten­dent illu­sion that the deci­sion was con­scious­ly made.

I first encoun­tered this idea of the pas­siv­i­ty of con­scious­ness in the late sev­en­ties when I read The Ori­gin of Con­scious­ness in the Break­down of the Bicam­er­al Mind by Julian Jaynes. A book that begins with the com­pelling case of this pas­siv­i­ty. As the book goes on the oth­er case(s) being made are less (and less) com­pelling. Over the next thir­ty years I have spent a lot of time con­tem­plat­ing what my con­scious­ness was nec­es­sary for.

That last sen­tence per­haps gives a clue about the pos­si­ble pur­pose of con­scious­ness. I spent time con­tem­plat­ing. There seems to be con­scious inten­tion and thought. Was con­scious­ness doing the think­ing? Prob­a­bly not. Con­scious­ness was just hang­ing on to the idea wait­ing for the sub­con­scious to pro­vide info.

But did the inten­tion orig­i­nate with con­scious­ness? Maybe. But not nec­es­sar­i­ly. I sus­pect most (all?) of my “inten­tions” orig­i­nate subconsciously.

So what is con­scious­ness for? It is an amaz­ing phe­nom­e­na. It is a “space” where no space exists. It seems so com­plete­ly cen­tral to one’s iden­ti­ty, yet it seems to have no function.

My best guess at present is that con­scious­ness has the func­tion of allow­ing an indi­vid­ual to behave in a way that dif­fers from how one’s genet­ic and expe­ri­en­tial back­ground would dic­tate. I do not have any evi­dence of this. But it does seems clear that, at least occa­sion­al­ly, indi­vid­u­als do some­thing that is con­trary to the dic­tates of their genet­ic and expe­ri­en­tial back­ground. How is that possible?

Only with a con­scious effort. Even if the motive is based in the sub con­scious, it is only with the con­scious effort that an indi­vid­ual over­comes the genet­ic and expe­ri­en­tial dictates.

Déjà Vu

Déjà vu is the oth­er phe­nom­e­non that to me is eas­i­ly explain­able. Déjà vu is the expe­ri­ence of sud­den­ly feel­ing like you have been here before, like every event that hap­pens has hap­pened before. You remem­ber it in incred­i­ble detail. If there is somethere talk­ing, you remem­ber every word he or she says…just as they say it. You can nev­er quite pre­dict what will hap­pen next, but it feels like you should be able to.

This is not caused by any mys­ti­cal force, it is not because you dreamed the events pri­or to the time they take place. It is a result of the sub­con­scious mind pro­cess­ing things at a much high­er rate of speed than the con­scious mind. I think, once in awhile, a “fil­ing” error occurs and what is hap­pen­ing now is get­ting filed as an old mem­o­ry. So when the con­scious mind becomes aware of the glass falling off the table, the uncon­scious mind is ready with the “long ago mem­o­ry” that was cre­at­ed mil­lisec­onds before.

And déjà vu.

Slow Motion

Two days ago, I men­tioned how the event of slip­ping while car­ry­ing the buck­et of sauce took place in “slow motion”. I assume most have expe­ri­enced this phe­nom­e­non, but for any­one who has not…

Some­times in a moment of “cri­sis” events seem to take place very slow­ly in rela­tion to one’s thought process. The result is that in what is a frac­tion of a sec­ond, one can ana­lyze what is hap­pen­ing, go through a hand­ful of pos­si­ble respons­es, choose one, and still react quick­ly (not move quick­ly, just react quickly).

I have a the­o­ry on how this hap­pens and it has to do with yes­ter­day’s top­ic, con­scious­ness.

Nor­mal­ly, the con­scious mind has some­what lim­it­ed access to the sub­con­scious. Yes, infor­ma­tion read­i­ly moves from the uncon­scious to the con­scious, but the con­scious mind plays the pas­sive role of accept­ing the info with out hav­ing any role in its pro­duc­tion or any insight into how it is produced.

But some­times, in a “cri­sis” sit­u­a­tion, that rela­tion­ship changes and the con­scious mind is allowed access to the sub­con­scious work­ings. I sus­pect that the sub­con­scious process­es infor­ma­tion at a much faster rate than the con­scious mind can. When this faster pro­cess­ing is avail­able to the con­scious mind’s purview it seems like time moves more slow­ly than otherwise.

It is noth­ing more than “see­ing” the sen­so­ry infor­ma­tion processed at a much high­er rate of speed than the con­scious mind nor­mal­ly “sees”.

Tomor­row: déjà vu

Consciousness

Con­scious­ness is one of my favorite topics.

Con­scious­ness is inter­est­ing because so lit­tle is known of it (noth­ing for all intents and pur­pos­es) and because we all have the same access to it. We have our own and that oth­ers have it we real­ly can only accept on faith.

It is my expe­ri­ence that many peo­ple are not clear what is being dis­cussed when con­scious­ness is the sub­ject, so this post is my attempt to define consciousness.

If you would please indulge me, I ask that you close your eyes (not yet) and count to ten. Do this with­out mov­ing your lips and be sure that each num­ber is “enun­ci­at­ed” in your mind. Then be sure to open your eyes.

Go ahead and do that. I’ll wait.

Now, I would like you to point to the loca­tion where you count­ed to ten.

As I under­stand it, most peo­ple will point to right between their eyes. But some peo­ple will point to oth­er part of the body, par­tic­u­lar­ly the chest. A rare indi­vid­ual might point away from their body to a cor­ner of the room perhaps.

That loca­tion, that space, is your con­scious­ness. When I talk of con­scious­ness, that is what I’m talk­ing about.

I point right between my eyes. Where do you point?

Jets!!

Some cool videos of what hap­pens when a sphere falls into sand…

…from NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day.

…from Dis­cov­er Mag­a­zine.

…from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go.

Below is my favorite:

This reminds me of when I worked for Domi­no’s Piz­za in Bloom­ing­ton, Indi­ana. I was a Man­ag­er Trainee (inden­tured ser­vent). One day we were set­ting up for open­ing and I was car­ry­ing buck­ets of sauce from the walk-in cool­er to the make line. A buck­et of sauce was maybe two gal­lons of sauce.

I walked out of the cool­er and slipped and fell. Every­thing hap­pened in slow motion. As I start­ed to fall my pri­ma­ry con­cern was to not spill the sauce. So I held on to the rim of the buck­et tight with both hands and tried to “catch” my fall with the upright buck­et. I was sur­pris­ing­ly suc­cess­ful at this and for a mil­lisec­ond I thought all was going to be well.

But then the sauce moved. It hol­lowed at the mid­dle and then gath­ered togeth­er and rose in a col­umn to the ceil­ing. There was very lit­tle left in the still upright and unmoved buck­et when all was said and done. The sauce was on the ceil­ing, the top of the cool­er, the table, the floor, and me.

It was worth it.

The above video’s also bring to mind one of my favorite sci­ence fic­tion reads from the six­ties:  A Fall of Moon­dust by Arthur C. Clarke in which a moon vehi­cle sinks into the fine dust of the moon’s surface.

Separation of Church and State

As some­one who does not believe in the divin­i­ty of Christ or in the Bible as the word of God, I am grate­ful for the con­sti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion of church and state.

My grat­i­tude is top of mind late­ly as I read the con­ver­sa­tion in the com­ments of one of Rick­’s posts.

It is dif­fi­cult enough dis­cern­ing the mean­ing of the con­sti­tu­tion with­out hav­ing to also deter­mine the mean­ing of the Bible.

The con­ver­sa­tion linked to above con­cerns polyg­y­ny and whether the Chris­t­ian God approves or not. If you are a Chris­t­ian, I guess that means some­thing. But what it means depends on what kind of Chris­t­ian one is and how one reads the Bible. And, of course, every­one thinks they read it cor­rect­ly. But if one is not a Chris­t­ian, then what the Chris­t­ian God says has no more relevence than what Odin has to say.

Whether the coun­try should allow polyg­y­ny (or homo­sex­u­al mar­riage) is a pub­lic pol­i­cy ques­tion. A pub­lic pol­i­cy ques­tion should be decid­ed based on real world evi­dence of what is hap­pen­ing in the world today and what the con­sti­tu­tion says (and maybe chang­ing the con­sti­tu­tion if nec­es­sary). The prin­ci­ple con­sid­er­a­tions should be whether some­one is being harmed or not, and whether a giv­en out­come enhances civ­il peace and pros­per­i­ty or dimin­ish­es it.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

A few years ago (I real­ly have no idea how many, three? four? five maybe?), I aban­doned the prac­tice of eat­ing lunch out. I used to eat out five days a week, but it got to the point that I could no longer afford to do so.

I start­ed “brown­bag­ging” it. A cool­er, sev­er­al cans of caf­feine free Coca-Cola, and two peanut but­ter and jel­ly sand­wich­es. The first jel­ly was what I found in the fridge, Welch’s Grape Jel­ly. Then a few jars of Smuckers.

Over time, when Deb­by and I did any trav­el­ing, I start­ed buy­ing jars of jam at var­i­ous gift shops, winer­ies and oth­er retail stores that we stopped in. As the cans of Coca-Cola decreased with bot­tles of water replac­ing them, I also began to learn what I want­ed in a jam.

I much pre­fer pre­serves to jel­ly; I like to have some pieces of fruit in the jam. I learned that if the sug­ars were over ten grams in a table­spoon, it would be too sweet (today there is only water in the cool­er, no Coca-Cola.…not even in the house!). Also, I avoid any jam that lists corn syrup or any thing like it in the ingre­di­ants. I also pre­fer that the ingre­di­ant list begins with the appro­pri­ate fruit and the few­er ingre­di­ants the better.

Two week­ends ago, Deb­by had a week­end with her daugh­ter in St. Louis. One of the places they went to was the Mis­souri Botan­i­cal Gar­den. While there, Deb­by, being the lov­ing, thought­ful per­son she alway is, bought a jar of jam for me. She checked the label. No corn syrup and 2 grams of sug­ar per serving.

It did not take long for me to check the nutri­tion label when Deb­by gave me the pre­serves. “Two grams of sugar…gee, that might not be sweet enough,” I thought to myself. But I had just recent­ly fin­ished off a jar of jam that had only five grams of sug­ar and it was excel­lent. So I looked for­ward to try­ing my new preserves.

Just a cou­ple of days lat­er, I fin­ished the jar I was using and opened my new pre­serves. I made the sec­ond sand­wich with the new stuff, the first sand­wich with the last of the pre­vi­ous jar. Then I licked the knife.

It tast­ed very sweet.

When I ate the sand­wich­es, I knew imme­di­ate­ly when I bit into the one with the Mis­souri Botan­i­cal Gar­den Black­ber­ry Pre­serves. It was sweet. Very sweet. Too sweet.

There is no way in heck that those pre­serves have only two grams of sug­ar per serv­ing. That jar is so sweet, I can’t even believe that the two is a mis­print for twelve. Twen­ty one maybe. It is not edible.

I will fur­ther com­ment that the pre­serves have a tex­ture more akin to jel­ly than to pre­serves. There is lit­tle if any pieces of fruit. It is hard for me to judge due to the over­whelm­ing sweet­ness, but the black­ber­ry fla­vor that I think I maybe can detect is good.

I won­der if Deb­by can get her mon­ey back?