text:
NYC, New England brace for up to 3 feet of snow
Published 12:00 am Friday, February 8, 2013
BOSTON (AP) — A storm poised to dump up to 3 feet of snow from New York City to Boston and beyond beginning Friday could be one for the record books, forecasters warned, as residents scurried to stock up on food and water and road crews readied salt and sand.
Before the first snowflake had fallen, Boston, Providence, R.I., Hartford, Conn., and other towns and cities in New England and upstate New York towns canceled school Friday, and airlines scratched more than 2,600 flights through Saturday, with the disruptions from the blizzard certain to ripple across the U.S.
"This one doesn't come along every day. This is going to be a dangerous winter storm," said Alan Dunham, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. "Wherever you need to get to, get there by Friday afternoon and don't plan on leaving."
The snow began falling Friday morning in some areas, with the heaviest amounts falling at night and into Saturday. Wind gusts could reach 75 mph. Widespread power failures were feared, along with flooding in coastal areas still recovering from Superstorm Sandy in October.
Boston could up to 3 feet of snow, while New York City was expecting 10 to 12 inches. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said plows and 250,000 tons of salt were being put on standby. To the south, Philadelphia was looking at a possible 2 to 5 inches.
"We hope forecasts are exaggerating the amount of snow, but you never can tell," Bloomberg said, adding that at least the bad weather is arriving on a weekend, when the traffic is lighter and snowplows can clean up the streets more easily.
Amtrak said its Northeast trains will stop running Friday afternoon. The organizers of New York's Fashion Week — a closely watched series of fashion shows held under a big tent — said they will have extra crews to help with snow removal and will turn up the heat and add an extra layer to the venue.
Blizzard warnings were posted for parts of New Jersey and New York's Long Island, as well as portions of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, including Hartford, New Haven, Conn., and Providence. The warnings extended into New Hampshire and Maine.
In New England, it could prove to be among the top 10 snowstorms in history, and perhaps even break Boston's record of 27.6 inches, set in 2003, forecasters said. The last major snowfall in southern New England was well over a year ago — the Halloween storm of 2011.
Dunham said southern New England has seen less than half its normal snowfall this season, but "we're going to catch up in a heck of a hurry." He added: "Everybody's going to get plastered with snow."
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ordered non-emergency state workers to stay home Friday and urged private employers to do the same.
Diane Lopes was among the shoppers who packed a supermarket Thursday in the coastal fishing city of Gloucester, Mass. She said she went to a different grocery earlier in the day but it was too crowded. Lopes said she has strep throat and normally wouldn't leave the house but had to stock up on basic foods — "and lots of wine."
She chuckled at the excitement the storm was creating in a place where snow is routine.
"Why are us New Englanders so crazy, right?" she said.
At a Shaw's supermarket in Belmont, Mass., Susan Lichtenstein stocked up, with memories of a 1978 blizzard on her mind. "This is panic shopping, so bread, milk, a snow shovel in case our snow shovel breaks," she said.
In New Hampshire, Dartmouth College student Evan Diamond and other members of the ski team were getting ready for races at the Ivy League school's winter carnival.
"We're pretty excited about it because this has been an unusual winter for us," he said. "We've been going back and forth between having really solid cold snaps and then the rain washing everything away."
But he said the snow might be too much of a good thing this weekend: "For skiing, we like to have a nice hard surface, so it will be kind of tough to get the hill ready."
The governors of Connecticut and Massachusetts ordered nonessential state workers to stay home Friday and urged travelers to stay home.
Terrance Rodriguez, a doorman at a luxury apartment complex in Boston, took the forecast in stride.
"It's just another day in Boston. It's to be expected. We're in a town where it's going to snow," he said. "It's like doomsday prep. It doesn't need to be. People just take it to the extreme."


text:
TIGER, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night. What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Looking out of the window, I feel elated. We are currently enjoying a gorgeous Indian Summer. The skies are bright blue, without a cloud in sight, a perfect backdrop for the rust, yellow and orange bursts of colors that surround us at this time of year. The sun wraps us in her warm rays and air is crisp.
To enjoy the glory of this Indian Summer we went for a lovely long trek in the Thüringian forest one weekend. The narrow paths that snaked along a mini stream were carpeted in gold and orange. Each time the gentle breeze would rustle the leaves, causing them to snow down around us.
I could not help it – I had to take of my shoes and walk barefooted on this carpet of gold. Soeren, who is all for twirling toes in sand, leaves and dirt, took my cue and untied his shoes. Holding hands we frolicked down the path, splashing every now and then in the stream. Tom laughed at us as we giggled and threw leaves in the air. Soon he too draped his shoes across his shoulders and joined us.
I have never done that before! Walking barefooted in a pile of leaves. For a girl who grew up literally on the beach this was an enchanting experience.
I've often seen Soeren and his friends make a cushiony bed out of leaves outside in the yard. Then they would squeal with glee and dive into the softness. Watching from the window I laugh at their carefree nature.
This time I was the one who jumped gleefully into the leaves. Leaving Soeren watching and laughing at me.
This sweet bread fits perfectly into the effigy of Autumn and rounds off the warm Autumn day in the forest. Pistachios, candied orange and bitter-sweet chocolate are embedded into the cake, kumquat marmalade hugs the top and spices like cardamom, cloves and cinnamon kiss the bread to make this an equally blissful experience.
Spiced Chocolate & Orange Bread
Printable version of recipe here.400g all-purpose flour
200g + more butter, softened
250g Muscovado sugar
5 eggs
100ml milk
200g bitter-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
2 teaspoon baking powder
120g pistachios, dry roasted in a pan
50g candied orange, coarsely chopped
5 tablespoons kumquat marmalade, substitute with orange marmalade
Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Butter a loaf pan (30 cm long).
In a bowl whisk 200g butter, sugar, salt and spices until creamy and pale. Beat in the eggs one at a time then the milk.
Sieve the flour and baking powder into the mixture. Using a rubber spatula incorporate into the batter.
Fold in the candied orange, chocolate and pistachios (reserving 2 tablespoons for the decoration). Fill the batter into the loaf pan. Bake in an oven, second rack from bottom for 65-70 minutes. The bread is done when a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.
Take the cake out, allow to cool then remove from pan. In a saucepan warm the kumquat marmalade until slightly runny. Brush the marmalade on top of the cake and sprinkle with the remaining pistachios. Allow to set.
Serve with coffee. You can enjoy the bread spread with butter and/or some marmalade.
This bread is perfect for breakfast or in the afternoon as a decadent accompaniment to your cup of coffee. The spices in this cake are preparing me for my Christmas baking but with the sweet candied orange and tart kumquat marmalade it still very much provides an autumnal flair. Soeren took slices of this in his lunchbox everyday for three days in a row. Although it does get a bit dry, the aromas and flavors however intensified as it aged.
Anita of Dessert First is hosting this month's Sugar High Friday. An event created by Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess. Anita chose a very fitting theme for SHF - Spices. I hope she will accept a slice of this from me.
You might like these spiced creations from WFLH:
Ginger Mango Bread | |
Peach and Cardamom Goat Cheese Tart | |
All-Spice Muffin Exotica |
From around the blogs:
- Taste and Tell - Lemon Nutmeg Scones
- Akshayapaatram - Tempeh - barbecue style
- Technicolor Kitchen - Chocolate Cinnamon Fingers
Daily Tiffin Reading Tip:
- Flexitarianism and New Age Diets by Deeba
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2008 Meeta Khurana unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First


text:
The nation's unemployment rate edged up to 7.9 percent in October from 7.8 percent in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.
But private and public employers added 171,000 jobs to their payrolls — nearly 50,000 more than economists had expected.
So the news is somewhat mixed: While the jobless rate remained stuck near 8 percent, job growth was better than forecast.
We'll have more from the report and reactions to it as the morning continues. Hit your refresh button to be sure you're seeing our latest updates. Or, click these links for:
-- President Obama's reaction.
-- Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's reaction.
-- Why the jobless rate went up even as more jobs were added to payrolls.
Update at 11:35 a.m. ET. Romney Focuses On Obama's Record:
At 7.9 percent, the jobless rate is more than 2 points higher than President Obama said it would be by this time in his administration, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney just told supporters in Wisconsin. The difference equals 9 million fewer jobs than Obama had predicted, according to Romney. He has also echoed comments he made earlier about the economy not getting on track during Obama's time in office.
Update at 10:55 a.m. ET. Obama Hails Growth, But Says "We've Got More Work To Do":
At a campaign rally in Ohio, President Obama just pointed to some of the good news in the report, including the word that private employers added "more workers in October [184,000] than at any time in the last eight months." In February, private payrolls rose by 254,000 jobs.
"We've made real progress, but we are here today because we know we have more work to do," Obama added.
Earlier, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said that "today's increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill."
Update at 9:40 a.m. ET. Economy Is "Continuing To Heal," White House Says:
"While more work remains to be done, today's employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression," Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, says in a statement just released by the White House.
He also points to this:
"Over the last 12 months, the economy has added a total of 2.1 million jobs, as compared to 1.9 million over the preceding 12 months."
Update at 9:30 a.m. ET. More On The Differences Between The Surveys:
As we said earlier, BLS really does two reports. One is based on a survey of employers (it concluded that 171,000 jobs were added to payrolls) and one is based on a survey of households (it concluded that the jobless rate rose to 7.9 percent). John Galvin, the acting commissioner at BLS, says in a statement that:
"The household survey and establishment survey employment measures often show different month-to-month changes. The establishment survey employment series has a smaller margin of error than the household survey because of its much larger sample size. An over-the-month employment change of about 100,000 is statistically significant in the establishment survey, while the threshold for a statistically significant change in the household survey is about 400,000. However, the household survey has a more expansive scope than the establishment survey because it includes the self-employed, agricultural workers, and other workers who are excluded by the establishment survey. Over longer periods of time, the employment measures from the two surveys tend to track more closely."
Update at 9:15 a.m. ET. Romney Says Economy Is "At A Virtual Standstill":
"Today's increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill," Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney says in a statement just released by his campaign. "The jobless rate is higher than it was when President Obama took office, and there are still 23 million Americans struggling for work."
In the year before President Obama took office, the jobless rate rose from 5 percent in January 2008 to 7.8 percent in January 2009. The rate then continued upward, to a recent peak of 10 percent in October 2009. It didn't drop back below 8 percent until this September.
Planet Money has charted the 22 million Americans who are "unemployed or can't find full-time work."
Update at 9:10 a.m. ET. Another Way Of Looking At Why The Jobless Rate Went Up:
-- 578,000 people reported they had joined the labor force, either by finding work or just by looking for a job.
-- 410,000 people said they had found employment.
-- So, the ranks of the unemployed grew by about 170,000.
Reminder: BLS is really reporting on two surveys: One of households and one of employers. Two surveys mean two sets of results that sometimes seem to say different things. In this case, though, both surveys are showing job growth in October.
Update at 9 a.m. ET. Households Report Even Stronger Job Growth:
Though public and private employers said they added 171,000 jobs to their payrolls, the BLS says its survey of households indicates that 410,000 more Americans report they were working in October. That follows an increase of 873,000 in that figure from August to September.
As we explained last month, the agency's two surveys — one of employers and the other of households — can produce different results.
Update at 8:55 a.m. ET. First Republican Reaction:
"Four years of persistently high unemployment and long-term joblessness might be the best President Obama can do – but it's nowhere near what the American people can do if we get Washington out of their way," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) says in a statement just released by his office.
Update at 8:45 a.m. ET. Why Did The Jobless Rate Go Up?
When job growth is stronger than forecast but the unemployment rate still rises, economists look at whether more people joined the labor force — hopefully because many of them are optimistic about being able to find work.
According to BLS, "the civilian labor force rose by 578,000 to 155.6 million in October, and the labor force participation rate edged up to 63.8 percent [from 63.6 percent]." Meanwhile, "there were 813,000 discouraged workers in October, a decline of 154,000 from a year earlier." Discouraged workers are those folks who aren't looking for work "because they believe no jobs are available for them."
Those figures may signal that the jobless rate stayed near 8 percent in part because of good news — that more Americans are feeling better about the economy and have decided to start looking for work. That increased the size of the labor force, though, and helped lift the jobless rate a tenth of a point.
Update at 8:40 a.m. ET. September Job Growth Revised Up:
There were 148,000 jobs added to payrolls in September, BLS now says. That's up from the agency's initial estimate of 114,000.
Our original post (from 7 a.m. ET). "Jobless Rate Likely Edged Up In October, Job Growth Was Likely Modest":
The last major economic report before Election Day is due at 8:30 a.m. ET and economists say we should expect to hear that the unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent in October from September's estimated 7.8 percent and that payrolls grew by just 125,000 jobs.
Whatever the Bureau of Labor Statistics says, the news is sure to be a hot topic on the campaign trail and among political pundits. As you've surely heard many times:
-- Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney says President Obama's economic policies haven't done enough to spur job growth and bring down unemployment.
-- The president has been touting the slow job growth and gradual decline in unemployment since the jobless rate's recent peak of 10 percent in October 2009. He says they're signs the economy is on the right track.
They're likely to hit those themes again today.
Meanwhile, some skeptics — such as former General Electric CEO Jack Welch — will be watching closely to see if the BLS report fits with their view of how the economy is doing.
We'll update this post with the news after the report is released, and follow with highlights and reactions. Also check Planet Money for economic analysis and It's All Politics for more on how the report might affect the campaign.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


text:
Suppose you are given a DNA fragment of mass 1897.27 Dalton and no other information. What nucleotide combinations are there that lead to exactly this mass? Decomp helps you solve this and similar problems efficiently.
Problems like this (referred to as mass decomposition problems) often arise in mass spectrometry, where the only information left about DNA, protein, or other sample fragments is their molecular masss.
Given the weighted alphabet A, B, C with weights 3, 5, 8, what are the decompositions for weight 16? Shown are all three solutions: A2B2, A1B1C1, and C2.


text:
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USCF News: Website Advisory Committee |
By USCF | |
January 31, 2013 | |
The USCF has passed a motion to appoint a USCF Web Site Advisory Committee (WSAC), which will have the charge to report back to the Executive Board within 120 days (but not later than June 1, 2013) to present the EB with advice and a proposed action plan for the upgrade/improvement of the USCF Web site. The form of the advice may include more than one option based on budgetary considerations. The Committee will be chaired by a volunteer member named by the Executive Board, but who is not on the Executive Board or the staff of the USCF. The Executive Board will be represented by President Haring and Secretary Nietman, and the committee will include at least two members of the USCF staff. To the extent possible, the WSAC will have one-half of its members who are not on the Executive Board or the USCF staff. If you would like to volunteer for the WSAC, login as a member in the USCF forums and respond to the thread on the Web Site Advisory Committee. You can also email Ruth Haring, Mike Nietman, or Gary Walters. Please briefly state your interest and/or your qualifications for the WSAC. Volunteers need not be IT or Web site specialists, but these skills would be helpful. Please also indicate if you would like to volunteer to serve as the chair of the WSAC. The chair and the WSAC members will be chosen by the EB. |


text:
Many believers retreat to the "F" word as their last ditch effort to defend believing in God. Faith has a number of features, but principle among them is that it describes cases where we believe that something is true even though the evidence on the whole does not support it. If there were sufficient evidence, after all, there would be no need for faith. Many people also view this sort of fudging as harmless. But what we have seen is that it creates a crisis. If the evidence doesn't matter in our justifications for what we believe, then floodgates are open for any sort of insanity to rush in. Taking the evidence seriously was the only way we had to sift the claims that are plausible from the ones that are delusional, dangerous, or absurd.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Open the Floodgates
Many believers retreat to the "F" word as their last ditch effort to defend believing in God. Faith has a number of features, but principle among them is that it describes cases where we believe that something is true even though the evidence on the whole does not support it. If there were sufficient evidence, after all, there would be no need for faith. Many people also view this sort of fudging as harmless. But what we have seen is that it creates a crisis. If the evidence doesn't matter in our justifications for what we believe, then floodgates are open for any sort of insanity to rush in. Taking the evidence seriously was the only way we had to sift the claims that are plausible from the ones that are delusional, dangerous, or absurd.
36 comments:
very well put. i'm bookmarking this one.
- January 22, 2010 at 12:11 AM
- Ketan said...
Congratulations! This was one of the best illustrations of double standards employed by theists in rejecting and employing faith and reason, as and when doing so suits the conclusions they want to support.
- January 22, 2010 at 2:38 AM
- Rick Mueller said...
Matt -
Is it possible to argue for the existence of a Creator God who lacks the omni characteristics without resorting to a faith assertion? (Deism, right?)
The omni characteristics seem to me to be human characteristics. They are just what I'd expect to have in a humanly created deity. The Abrahamic religions often refer to God as "Lord" or "Father". The perfect lord or father would be all powerful, good, wise, immortal, caring about me as an individual and capable of orchestrating a perfect society.
I remember reading about a theory (sorry, can't make citations, it was 35 years ago in college) that stated that the type of political system an ancient culture developed could be predicted by the geography of the region. I don't recall all the specifics but it stated that Middle East geography, particularly the Nile and Mesopotamian valleys are deserts, lack hunting opportunities, and rely on seasonal floods to support agriculture. Vast public works and manipulation of the water resource are required to sustain the society. This lead to concentration of power by individuals who could best organize the rest of the population into group building efforts, large scale agricultural, and trading. Compare that to European geography with its many water sources, forests, and abundant game. Individuals in small groups can sustain themselves without agriculture or trade. Admittedly, I am not presenting a complete picture of the theory but if it works for political sociology it might also explain religious sociology as well - single, all-powerful God vs. idiosyncratic pantheism.
So if I strip away the omnis because of their human generation, I am left with Creator being the only divine attribute. This also, happily, eliminates quite a few of the Arguments for God! Creation could still be a human invention but it does allow for a scientific inquiry and does not rely as heavily on faith assertions.
It seems to me that a Creator God could exist and I could be in awe and appreciative of Its brilliance and could feel a connectedness to It without relying on faith.
Rick - January 22, 2010 at 7:13 AM
- Matt McCormick said...
thanks for the comments. Clamflats, I think the standard view here, and it's my view, is that any lesser being than an omni-god isn't worthy of the name, and certainly isn't worthy of our adopting a slavish, fully religious attitude towards it.
Deism isn't a belief in a lesser God, it's the view that God has all of the omni characteristics, except perhaps "personal," and that he sets the world in motion and then steps back and lets it unfold according to rational principles without interfering or contacting it any further. Deus in absentia, as it were.
Certainly you can see what geographic, and cultural influences might lead to positing many kinds of gods. But those don't really bear on the question of whether it is true that one exists, or whether it is reasonable for us to believe in it now.
It's certainly possible that some such being exists. It's possible that Santa is real. But the question is always, what evidence do we have that suggests that it does?
MM - January 22, 2010 at 7:36 AM
- G*3 said...
I love the conversation between the believer and the atheist. It beautifully demonstrates how believers are willing to allow the faith answer ONLY for their particular pet religion, but not for anything else.
- January 22, 2010 at 8:58 AM
Reminds me of this:
Reformed Epistemology in Non-Christian Religions - January 22, 2010 at 12:12 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
Yeah, I love all that "Self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit" nonsense that they tout. I find myself amazed, shocked, and thrilled that they will say stuff like that with a straight face and expect people to take them seriously.
For all of its complexity and sophistication, I take the whole reformed epistemology movement itself to be plain evidence that they have erected a scaffold around their particular God belief and they simply are not going to modify it, consider the evidence, or allow any rational considerations to have any impact on it at all. That's their line in the sand, and they will subordinate everything else to it, even their sanity.
MM - January 22, 2010 at 1:27 PM
- Teleprompter said...
This article is great.
I think I even have a brand spanking new definition for faith.
Faith: Making use of logical inferences only just long as it suits you, but rejecting them when they give you any conclusion that is contrary to the conclusion you want. - January 23, 2010 at 12:24 AM
- John D said...
The two posts you have done this week are excellent.
I agree with you on reformed epistemology. It is a house built on sand. I tend to approach this from a Bayesian perspective, where different people start off with different priors (probabilities assigned to their beliefs), confront the evidence, and update their beliefs based on what the evidence will say.
Reformed epistemologists and Holy-Spiriters seem to start off with an unassailably strong commitment to a belief that can never be undermined, regardless of the strength of countervailing evidence. You see this with their constant appeals to possibility-arguments ("well, as long as its possible for god to have a reason, my prior commitment is still rational").
This is anathema to me: evidence must affect prior commitment. Bayesians talk about this in terms of something called "swamping the priors". That is: with a sufficiently large data, two people, irrespective of their priors, should end up with the same beliefs. This seems to be ruled out with RE. - January 23, 2010 at 5:02 AM
- Rick Mueller said...
Matt - thanks for the response.
I'll accept your expertise that 'Deism' is not the correct term for the Non-omni Creator God I am proposing (not advocating!). But I take exception to your statement that NOCG is "not worthy of the name". An entity that could claim responsibility for the universe would still be pretty awesome even if Its creation sometimes causes great suffering to its sentient inhabitants. Atheism is not just a-Abrahamic God. Your post suggests Haumiatiketike as a faith alternate to Jesus, and Haumiatiketike is non-omni.
My intended point was that a NOCG could be believed without a faith assertion. Sure, it still requires evidence but at least it is falsifiable. The faith floodgate stays closed.
I'm coming off the winter holidays where my Christian fundamentalist in-laws like to gang up on the atheist. All in good fun, they claim. My position with them is that I see no necessity for belief in God and that Christianity is an obvious fabrication. Their final "arguments" are always - You're in rebellion against God (you know He exists) and I'm going to spend eternity in Hell. Convincing stuff, right?
Thanks for your blog. I've been reading a number of your articles and it has tickled my interest and sent me off researching. You're a good teacher.
Rick - January 23, 2010 at 5:47 AM
- Matt McCormick said...
John D, the Bayesian approach is the right way to think about these discussions. I think a lot of smart and not so smart Christians get together and in their echo chamber they get themselves really convinced that they are talking sense, partly because they don't have anyone to push back. So they do revise their priors over time, even when they don't want to. But when they are confronted with the hard problems with their positions, and their outrageousness, like I am trying to do here, it has an effect. You just have to keep plugging away and people make progress toward enlightenment.
Clamflats, sorry to hear about the strife with the family. That's repeated countless times and it has broken a lot of hearts.
Since Anselm and before, and especially with Aquinas, God in the monotheistic tradition has been conceived as the greatest possible being, or "that than which which nothing greater can be conceived," or the limit of power, goodness and knowledge. He's the idealized ultimate form at the logical limit of what these properties are. Some being that is less than that might be worthy of awe and would be impressive, but it wouldn't be God. Such a being just couldn't fit the job description, as it were. One of those might exist, sure, but we don't have evidence in favor of that. And to keep things clear with 2,000 years of philosophical theology, we should not refer to a thing like that as God. It would be like referring to Joe Biden as the President because he works in the same building.
Thanks again for all the comments. Keep them coming and gimme your ideas for the sorts of theistic positions you're encountering out there.
MM - January 23, 2010 at 9:16 AM
- Exploring the Unknowable said...
A former churchmate of mine dropped this little bomb on me; it's not a new idea, of course, but I'm shocked to actually hear it vocalized.
He simply asserts that there are other spiritual forces out there, but they are just manifestations of demonic forces acting on the real world. It's such a get-out-of-jail-free card. He can now say that he acknowledges the existence of all these entities, but he can reject them precisely because of his faith.
In other words, he can allow all of them to existence and still reject them, ie. there is an Allah, but he's just a manifestation of Satan, there is an Odin, but he's just a manifestation of Satan, so on and so forth.
I have emotional rejections to this, but as far logical rejections to this, I have a hard time refining them.
Thoughts? - January 24, 2010 at 8:20 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
Thanks Anthony. That's pretty wild. A couple of thoughts. The more of these exotic supernatural entities that one allows to be real, the more pressure there is to actually produce something resembling proof of them. I mean, if there are spiritual forces demons, demigods, deities, and gnomes, or whatever, running around all over the fucking place like this, then why the hell can't we get a single picture, video, autograph, tissue sample, or anything? It's not like cameras are in short supply on cell phones or anything.
My other idea, is that it is pretty unusual for mainstream Christians to actually countenance the existence of all of these things. They usually deny that they are real. One problem is that they are mutually exclusive. Given what everyone says about what they are, God and Allah, for instance can't live in the same universe. Same for Vishnu and Jehovah. There can only be one almighty creator of the universe, unless you want to just throw out Christianity in any recognizable form.
But actually, I think your friend is just off the deep end. He's so deep in the grips of a consuming ideology that he'll embrace the most outrageous silliness rather than give it up. Once the Christianity worm has gotten that far into their brains, there's not much that can be done for them.
MM - January 24, 2010 at 8:56 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
Thanks Anthony. That's pretty wild. A couple of thoughts. The more of these exotic supernatural entities that one allows to be real, the more pressure there is to actually produce something resembling proof of them. I mean, if there are spiritual forces demons, demigods, deities, and gnomes, or whatever, running around all over the fucking place like this, then why the hell can't we get a single picture, video, autograph, tissue sample, or anything? It's not like cameras are in short supply on cell phones or anything.
My other idea, is that it is pretty unusual for mainstream Christians to actually countenance the existence of all of these things. They usually deny that they are real. One problem is that they are mutually exclusive. Given what everyone says about what they are, God and Allah, for instance can't live in the same universe. Same for Vishnu and Jehovah. There can only be one almighty creator of the universe, unless you want to just throw out Christianity in any recognizable form.
But actually, I think your friend is just off the deep end. He's so deep in the grips of a consuming ideology that he'll embrace the most outrageous silliness rather than give it up. Once the Christianity worm has gotten that far into their brains, there's not much that can be done for them.
MM - January 24, 2010 at 8:57 PM
- Exploring the Unknowable said...
Hey Matt, thanks for the response. I think your reaction was similar to mine...complete incredulity!
Anyways, to clarify, he doesn't think that Allah, in the sense of his power and ability is real, but that whatever forces he may possess and disseminate in the real world are simply the forces that Satan has at his disposal, and they are being used as a means to trick Muslims into believing they have found the real god.
When you really spell it out, you realize how ridiculous it is, not to mention that he believes his all loving God allows this to happen.
Yeah, so he doesn't believe that there are two all powerful Creator Gods jockeying for cosmic position. He believes that Satan is parading as a Creator God, drawing people away from the real God. And in his view, Satan is very, very, very successful. Although Satan will be overthrown in the end, he will have effectively led nearly 90% of the world's population to Hell (he doesn't believe Catholics are saved, so it really starts to whiddle the amount of actual Christians in the world down significantly; so much for Christian solidarity!)
I will offer a glimmer of hope. When I was talking to him, he actually conceded that he might be wrong about the doctrines of Calvinism and an eternal Hell (as opposed to annihilationism). In his own words, "Those doctrines are not a hill that I'd die on." He saw just how untenable those doctrines were in light of an omnibenevolent God, and he knew that it would be impossible to argue for their existence with me. I kind of pride myself on disabusing people of their belief in eternal damnation. :)
Baby steps. - January 24, 2010 at 9:12 PM
- M. Tully said...
When you wrote, "Is it possible to argue for the existence of a Creator God who lacks the omni characteristics "
I'm curious, what would make you posit such an entity in the first place?
I mean, if we are going to have a discussion about "does x exist," shouldn't we have a reason for suggesting "x" in the first place?
Otherwise, couldn't I suggest that a non-detectable, non-interfering, non-fantastic being exists on my left shoulder and require everyone else to prove with metaphysical certainty that it doesn't? Put your question on the same standing.
If your answer is that, "there are phenomena in the universe we can't explain, ergo x. Well, the guy on my shoulder is just as good of an explanation as "The Creator."
I'm interested. Is there something deeper?
The argument from ignorance may make us feel better, but in the end it is no better of an expanition than my invisible friend. - January 27, 2010 at 6:22 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
Thanks M.Tully. Good to see you back. You bring up a really good point here. In lots of cases, when you poke some holes in the omni-God hypothesis, the hopeful/faithful are tempted to fall back some slightly lesser being. If there are problems with omnipotence, then why don't we just give that up and maintain that God is just very, very powerful.
What this reveals, as you have brought out, is that the default position for these folks is to believe, at all costs, even if that means changing the characterization to avoid paradoxes. "Given that we are going to believe in God, how do we need to characterize him so as to avoid some of the thornier problems that the atheists are brining up?" But of course the problem is that believing in any God hypothesis at all, including the modified one, demands justification. You have to have some reasons for it. The point isn't just to find a conception of God that could possibly exist in the world as we find it; the point is to believe those claims that have sufficient justification to render them reasonable. We start at zero, not one. Thanks for helping me put my finger on something that's been evading me here.
MM - January 27, 2010 at 9:52 PM
- オテモヤン said...
- This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
- January 29, 2010 at 3:47 AM
The question of God, aliens, invisible imps are not testable and are thus outside the scope of the scientific method. We need to consider the veracity of such things philosophically and not scientifically.
There are plenty of beliefs people have that aren't scientific. Like for example the philosophy of science isn't scientific and like many other systematic processes are based on assumptions. And such assumptions are not always evidence based. Thus to argue that there is no valid hypothesis for supernatural things (which aren't testable to begin with) really doesn't hold very well.
CS - February 13, 2010 at 4:42 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
You're not reading very closely, anonymous. The argument here isn't confined to empirical hypotheses. Our provisional conclusion that there are no supernatural beings living above the line is the result of the failures of all of our efforts--a priori, conceptual, empirical, inductive, deductive, etc.--to find a single instance where we have sufficient justification to think that a non-natural being is real. You're conflating evidence with empirical evidence, I'm not.
MM - February 13, 2010 at 6:31 PM
- M. Tully said...
"The question of God, aliens,
invisible imps are not testable and are thus outside the scope of the scientific method."
I have to call, very much BS!
Those are very scientifically testable!
If you claim x as an explanation for y. Science demands that you DEMONSTRATE x!
Hey, if you want to claim, "There are fairies." That is a scientific claim. Absolutely the same as, "There are quarks." Give me a fairy (or god) hypothesis that can explain events in the past and make accurate and testable predictions about the future as well as the quark hypothesis and I'm all ears.
You see that thing about explanation and prediction, is science. Now, you can say that we should give that methodology up, but you would also be saying that we should give up curing diseases and using electricity (they both came from that whole explanation and prediction thing).
Can you produce a god (or fairy) hypothesis that even gets remotely close?
Give me a call when you can. - March 1, 2010 at 6:54 PM
- M. Tully said...
"are not testable "
My point being, Yes they are testable! - March 1, 2010 at 6:59 PM
You have no idea what you are saying. In the philosophy of science the things mentioned are not testable. If you think otherwise ask the phil of science professor at your university and he will fill you in.
Or for a simple understanding read thw wiki article
Falsifiability or refutability is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment. The term "testability" is related but more specific; it means that an assertion can be falsified through experimentation alone.
For example, "all men are mortal" is unfalsifiable, since no finite amount of observation could ever demonstrate its falsehood: that one or more men can live forever. "All men are immortal," by contrast, is falsifiable, by the presentation of just one dead man. Not all statements that are falsifiable in principle are falsifiable in practice. For example, "it will be raining here in one million years" is theoretically falsifiable, but not practically so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability - March 2, 2010 at 7:26 PM
You are correct in that your position of the supernatural etc is due to a lack of evidence. But of course you cannot logically move from a lack of evidence to a disbelief. You can however disbelieve the supernatural by an argument which you do not appear to be giving me but rather a case for weighing available evidence or lack there of. In such a case you would be making a logical error. If you said argument X has convinced me that there is no God then that would be sufficient. But again, I speak of evidence in a general sense because that is what you appear to be offering me - all cases of evidence (lack thereof) point to your conclusion that God does not exist. In other words, you are allowing the current set of lack of evidence prove an opposite assertion. You cannot possibly think that a limited amount of evidence for God, which may or may not be sufficient for verification, be all the possible evidence that exist. Only if you had the complete set of evidence on God or the supernatural you could prove such a negative.
Again, your denial of all empirical cases for god existence (throw in arguments etc) does not logical get you to a conclusion that he does not exist. But a positive argument for God's non existence is a logical move because it relies on positive evidence and not negative evidence.
CS - March 2, 2010 at 7:50 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
Thanks for your input, CS. You've got a few of these ideas right, but there are several mistakes here. First, we have countless situations where we lack positive evidence in favor, as you put it, and we draw the conclusion that X is not real. You lack evidence that you have ebola right now, correct? And from that you infer that you do not have ebola. Same for Santa, Tooth Fairy, Bigfoot, etc. Second, the "logical" move you're talking about doesn't really have anything to do with logic, either inductive or deductive. What you mean is that you think the inference is unjustified. I've addressed this issue and the question of what counts as evidence or proof at great length and in a lot of the prior posts. Scan back for those.
MM - March 2, 2010 at 8:44 PM
Ok I get the gist of what your saying. But It sounds like you me that you are appealing to common sense as opposed to a satisfied course for a JTB. In other words, you are telling me that because I don't believe I have ebola right now (no evidence for such) that I should be not bothered that such a belief is superficial? I mean it sounds like you are describing the shortcomings of the daily beliefs people accept to not live in fear. I agree with you that people, most if not all do tend to conjure up beliefs based on lack of evidence but again this is the status quo or common practice and should not be confused with what people ought to be doing.
I am thinking even if we say that a person can have a inductive belief that they do not ebola for lack of evidence that we still do not solve the problem of logically moving to disbelief that is plagued in deductive reasoning. Doesn't inductive reasoning also need to be based on some type of positive evidence? I mean we cant be justified to think we don't have ebola because we just rearranged the strength of our conclusion? Or can we?
I guess I need to learn more about inductive reasoning before I can fully comment on your position. Unfortunately all that was offered in college was deductive logic so this may be difficult for me.
CS - March 2, 2010 at 9:25 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
These are really interesting issues. Thanks for bringing them and engaging about them. There is not a short answer here. But I can say this. Positive evidence: there is a significant body of philosophical literature now in deductive atheology, or arguments that allege to show the impossibility of God. It seems to me that if a person has thought long and hard about one or some of those, considered objections, and arrived at some reflective equilibrium about the general soundness of it, then they would be justified in concluding that no such thing as God exists. There are lots of details, of course. See my encyclopedia entry on kinds of atheism and arguments above. Second, if a person has looked at the major groups of arguments that have been offered for centuries in favor of God's existence, and thought long and hard about them, and arrived at the conclusion that none of them is compelling--they all suffer serious problems, objections, or short comings--then they'd be justified in concluding this: We've been working on this topic with some of the greatest minds in history and to date, no one has come up with a convincing argument in favor of God's existence. The failure of so many attempts, by itself, makes it reasonable to conclude that while some new fangled argument might still be generated, for now we can decide that no such thing as God exists. Add the Divine Hiddenness arguments for atheism from people like Drange and Schellenberg on top of all of this and you've got a really convincing, broad case against the existence of God.
One problem in this discussion is that the believer or the non-atheist is tempted to try to saddle the atheist with some extra burden of proof that no one accepts or meets in other comparable situations. We all are justified in believing lots of negative existential claims in lots of circumstances, but somehow the atheist is always accused of exceeding the limits of what the "lack of evidence" entitled him or her to conclude. More double standards.
MM - March 2, 2010 at 9:35 PM
I looked into Bayesian reasoning and it seems interesting but entails conclusions that are probabilistic. So at best I could think that its unlikely I have ebola (be justified) but I haven't really taken much of a position, at least one that would afford the strength of deductive methods. I cannot see though how a person can be an atheist and use Bayesian reasoning to deny God's existence because at best they can only say he unlikely exist - wouldn't that entail a more agnostic position due to the lack of strength in their reasoning method?
I think it is perfectly acceptable that a person can be an theist and tell me that such and such argument against God is true. I really couldn't say much and maybe I would try to find out why but I would respect their belief, I believe many theist go wrong by trying to force their views, which just isn't very humble nor tolerable.
Thank you for your comments
CS - March 2, 2010 at 10:00 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
You're not thinking through the implications of this comment:
I cannot see though how a person can be an atheist and use Bayesian reasoning to deny God's existence because at best they can only say he unlikely exist - wouldn't that entail a more agnostic position due to the lack of strength in their reasoning method?
If you hold the justification and knowledge standard to a deductive certainty criteria, then there is virtually nothing in your life that you are justified in believing. You'll have to be agnostic about your name, the day of the week, where you live, how old you are, what you had for breakfast, and all of the other claims in your life that you count on with the most confident. If you jack up the standard for agnosticism to this level, then the atheist isn't justified, but you've fabricated that criticism of atheism at the cost of everything else that is obviously true, justified, and known in our lives. Your adopting some radical global skepticism isn't the atheist's problem to solve; that's just an indicator that your epistemology is screwed up down to its foundations. I'll go ahead and have lots more knowledge, thank you. - March 7, 2010 at 3:38 PM
I can't think of many theists I know that would dispute someone's belief that there is no god. Are you at long last reconciled that atheism is also a category of belief system? Your dialogue between atheist and beleiver does not seem believable.
Secondly the floodgates analogy does not really hold. We are not faced with the choice of abandoning reason for ever. Even in simple matters, when we cannot prove something, we can assume a "likely" answer, and then if that assuption leads to contradictions go back and change the assumption.
One small leap of faith where reason provides no solution, does not mean we reject reason forever.
With regards to rational thinking, when the debate was raging, whether a photon was a particle or a wave, many believed that it could not logically be a particle because diffraction experiments showed wave properties. To cut to the chase, we now believe that quantum mechanical entites do not conform to our old logical distinctions, they transcend them in some way. (Probabilities interfere etc.)
So if certain type of gods are logically inconsitant, they must either not exist or, and here you fail to mention this alternative, they exist but transcend our logical constructs.
When dealing with questions that have no rational solution, like what kind of pizza shall I have tonight, it can open a "floodgate" if you will of possible choices and I may have no rational means of choosing between them. This does not pose a real problem to me when I'm hungry. I pick one, and I can live with the fact that I believe their Hawaiian is the best. Faith is called faith for a reason, and few theists try to defend their choice as entirely rational. I glad to see you asserting the same for atheists. - March 8, 2010 at 10:07 AM
I see what you are saying but I also see that it is not ideal. It seems that you are appealing to the convience of baysean based beliefs and not their inherent limitation. You are right that my speculation entails agnosticism about most things in life but this seems appropriate. We ought to be always ready to change our views in life and many of us do. To me the baysean reasoning is what makes the scientific method self correcting -the fact that it doesnt draw deductive conclusions. The process of learning ought to be in a marriage with doubt. So the only way an atheist can be justifed is to use RE for their position.
I dont see problem with saying that most beliefs in my life are tentative with the exception of a few core beliefs, which are a priori.
I guess the real question is can't a person be agnostic about their position and still be justified? Justification is not truth and I have many beliefs that I believe are justfied but perhaps not true.
CS - March 8, 2010 at 1:06 PM
For clarification
"So the only way an atheist can be justifed is to use RE for their position"
What I am trying to say here is that athiesm requires a stronger method than induction to be a grounded position. Theist are certain in their conclusion about God and this is why they cannot not use inductive methods - they use deductive arguments.
I hope this makes sense to anyone... - March 8, 2010 at 1:12 PM
- Matt McCormick said...
I'm sorry CS, I don't mean to be a dick about it. But none of what you've said here makes any sense at all. It seems to me that you're contradicting yourself in numerous places. And your goal seems to be to argue that atheism is in some respect unjustified, or that the atheist is not entitled to claim that they know that there is no God. I don't get any of the criticisms. And you know, I hope, that there is a whole literature full of deductive disproofs of God's existence, right? And the widespread consensus among philosophers of religion is that the so-called deductive proofs for God's existence don't work.
MM - March 8, 2010 at 2:56 PM
No right minded logician or philosopher would ever accept the alleged proofs you speak of. didn't you ever wonder why these alleged deductive proofs against God are so easily construed? You can easily crank new ones out with any given set of contrasting attributes. But these miserably deductive proofs you speak of is framed so absolute attributes when weighed against each other will contradict when accompanied by no scope. However, of we add color to our deductive proofs they fail. God was merciful one day as angel X and not a neither as angel y (both representing his will), God is outside of time and so form our perspective can be both mercurial and Just. Or God does not have human attributes of Just and merciful because such things are human qualities. I can thinking of countless reasons how God can either have both attributes (maybe his will operates by homeomorphism?) or no attributes. The mere fact that I can crank out explanations for each and every attribute game suggest there is something seriously wrong with the logic of your deductive proofs. Remember, we only need a single instance where God can have contrasting attributes and they all fail….
But back to the main point of me posting here. Matt, You really need to reexamine the whole proving the negative thing in regards to God.
Here is the champion of many atheist that even he admits to there being no philosophical proof for God. oddly, I am familiar with this man's work but didn't realize how close his words here in 1947 mirror what I have been trying to say. So Matt I ask would you be so kindly to respond to Bertrand Russell on behalf of what I have been trying to convey?
Bertrand Russell (1947)
Proof of God
Here there comes a practical question which has often troubled me. Whenever I go into a foreign country or a prison or any similar place they always ask me what is my religion.
I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist". It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.
On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.
None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof.
Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line
CS - March 9, 2010 at 6:39 AM
- Matt McCormick said...
I appreciate your trying to educate us, CS. But you're 60 years behind the curve. Here's your list of respectable philosophers whose works you need to catch up on:
Martin, Drange, Mackie, Rowe, Grim, Gale, Everitt, Oppy, Pollock, Dennett, Schellenberg, Kitcher, Nielsen, Papineau, Salmon, Sober, Smith, etc. There's a full bibliography of sources here:
If you really think there's something fundamentally flawed with the whole project of provided a philosophical justification for atheism such that one can claim to know that there is no God, then your beef is with all of them as much as with me. Please get back to me with your analysis of the foolish mistakes that all of them are making as soon as you can--I don't want to waste my time on a mistake. MM - March 9, 2010 at 9:26 AM
My intent wasn't to post someone who supported my position as you have done but to ask you why you think Russell is incorrect. The key to Russell's thinking as well as the mainstream field of logicians and scientist is that you cannot prove a negative because you are required to use the lack of evidence for evidence of something (there is no God). This is pretty simple to understand and many atheist try to flood the internet with the misconception of proving a negative by using a straw man suggesting you can prove Fred is not at the door, which is testable and not what the problem of proving the negative is about - a case of arguing from ignorance.
Matt, you cannot tell me that you can disprove that there is an invisible imp in your closet or living room with Bayesian reasoning, so why can you do so with God? The very reason invisible imps, Gods etc aren't testable in science is very much tied to why you cannot prove a negative. Scientist do not go around claiming they have disproved Genii's, magic, or any other supernatural panorama. But scientists will claim they have no evidence for such things, I believe I already pointed out where in your position you have mistaken in using lack of evidence for you position that there is no God - that the available evidence just doesn't pan out for God's existence. this is in your own words and if you cannot recognize that you are committing the fallacy of argumentum ignorantum then I suggest you review your position more carefully. Just as Russell stated that when he speaks to a philosophical audience he would say he is an agnostic because he knows there's no logical demonstrative proof. But you Matt aren't giving the folks on here a an argument for God's nonexistence through philosophical means but through practice and convenience.
This all relates to the fact that atheist appear to have their belief system based on an article of faith of their own. Why? Because they have no way to logical prove God doesn't exist - they cannot prove a negative. And this a long held view where the lack of evidence cannot serve for the evidence of lack thereof.
My theory is that atheist just become lazy and rather then deal with the cognitive distance of not rationally knowing God exist or not resort to a default position. But this isn't an argument its an explanation and shall serve as such.
CS - March 9, 2010 at 3:20 PM


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It's an argument frequently used by food companies, which tend to stress the need for physical activity and moderation when addressing criticism about the nutritional content of their products. But health advocates say that glosses over the reality that many people are simply consuming too many calories and that it would be unrealistic for them to try and offset that with exercise, especially given people's increasingly sedentary lifestyles.
In the meantime, the soda industry is fighting to stop declining sales even without the impact of any special taxes or measures. Just last year, U.S. sales volume declined 3 percent, faster than the 1.2 percent drop the previous year, according to industry tracker Beverage Digest. And critics are increasingly taking aim at other sugary beverages sold by Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, such as sports drinks and juices.
Judith Snyder, a Coca-Cola spokeswoman, said the latest video is part of a series that show "moments of delight and surprise" with Coke. She said it's intended to address the theme of energy balance in a lighthearted way.
She said it will be promoted on Facebook and Twitter, but won't run on TV.
At the end of the video, which runs for 1 minute and 40 seconds, the phrase "Movement is happiness" appears on the screen, followed by: "Where will happiness strike next?"
Laura Ries, president of the brand consulting firm Ries & Ries, said that the video could backfire because people might be turned off by the idea that they would need to cycle for 23 minutes just to burn off a Coke.
"They're showing exactly why you wouldn't want to drink a Coke. Twenty-three minutes on a bike is not fun for most people," she said.


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9/11 remains returned to World Trade Center site
9/11 remains returned to World Trade Center site
Associated Press
By MICHAEL CASEY 3 hours ago
Raw: 9/11 Remains Returned to WTC Site
NEW YORK (AP) — The unidentified remains of those killed on Sept. 11 returned to the World Trade Center site in a solemn procession on a foggy Saturday morning.
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The remains left the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on Manhattan's East Side shortly before 7 a.m. in three city vehicles. They were accompanied by police and fire department vehicles with lights flashing but no sirens.
Construction workers paused as the motorcade passed, and about 10 firefighters stood in the cool breeze saluting the vehicles as they arrived. The remains will be transferred to a repository 70 feet underground in the same building as the National September 11 Memorial Museum.
Like many decisions involving the site of the nation's worst terrorist attack, the disposition of the unidentified remains has been contentious.
A group of victims' family members who say the remains should be stored in an above-ground monument separate from the museum protested the procession. About a dozen wore black bands over their mouths at the site Saturday.
"It's horrible. I am so angry. I am so angry. I am outraged," said Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son was killed at the trade center.
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9/11 remains returned to WTC site
A flag-draped casket is lifted out of a police vehicle during the ceremonial transfer of unidentifie …
"The human remains of my son and all of the 3,000 victims should be in a beautiful and respectful memorial, not in the basement of a museum," she said.
Rosemary Cain, who also lost her firefighter son at the trade center, was also upset about the transfer.
"I don't know how much of him is down here; if it's one little inch, I want it treated respectfully," she said. "I want it above ground. I don't want it to be part of a museum. I don't want it to be part of a freak show."
Other family members support the plans, which have been in the works for years. Lisa Vukaj, who lost her 26-year-old brother, said the new home for the remains is "a fitting place until technology advances" and new techniques are available to identify their loved ones.
Vukaj, who got emotional as the flag-draped caskets were taken inside the center, said she didn't like that some victims' relatives turned what should have been a solemn event into "a political thing."
"Just come in, pay your respects, be here, have your emotions and don't make it political," she said.
Uniformed officers from the New York Police Department and Fire Department of New York and the Port Authority police carried the three caskets into the repository.
The facility will be available for family visits but will be overseen by the medical examiner. Officials hope that improvements in technology will eventually lead to the identification of the 7,930 fragmentary remains.
The death toll stemming from the attacks at the World Trade Center stands at 2,753. Of those, 1,115, or 41 percent, have not been identified.
Monica Iken-Murphy, whose husband was a bond broker in the North Tower, said she hopes his remains will eventually be identified.
"Every year they identify someone," she said. "Last year they identified a male and female in their 40s. I could be next, and I'm optimistic that he could be one of those. Even if he isn't, I feel he is home. This is where he took his last breath, his last step. This is where he lost his life."
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There was considerable mouth-dropping from publications such as The New York Times at initial reports this week that NSA programs are gathering both telephone records and information gleaned from large tech companies like Google and Microsoft. But as those reports have settled in, reactions have gotten more complex.
One intriguing line of thought came from David Simon, a Baltimore Sun crime reporter turned TV writer who created, among other projects, the acclaimed HBO show The Wire.Literally named after police surveillance tactics, The Wire largely exists as a critique of the failures of government institutions — especially the way the government investigates and responds to crime.
In a lengthy post on his own site, Simon argues that the sheer breadth of the information being collected by the NSA means that very little of it is actually being looked at; it's being put into a database to be used later in ways that will more seriously raise privacy concerns and implicate policy.
"That is tens of billions of phone calls," he argues, "and for the love of god, how many agents do you think the FBI has?"
Simon posits that what will determine whether these programs are illegal, unconstitutional, discriminatory or otherwise privacy-violating will be what happens to this data and what decisions are made about how to use it. If they abuse the information, he says, the problem will be the abuse, not the possession of the data, which is a horse both (1) out of the barn and (2) of a different color from targeted eavesdropping.
But for a lot of us, this certainly had the feeling of sharp, strange intrusiveness, and as is often the case, very real discomfort came out through semi-dark jokes like the ones NPR's Andy Carvin collected under the hashtag "#CallsTheNSAKnowsAbout."
"I rarely answer my mother's calls the first time she tries to reach me," offered one reader. "Sometimes Grandma and I have long, uncomfortable pauses," offered another. We envisioned the NSA reading our e-mails, looking at our status updates, and seeing that we haven't called the dentist like we said we would.
This was it, in the popular imagination — some supercomputer of intrusive eyeballing come to life, a combination of Skynet and HAL 9000 and the guys on Law & Orderwho can improve the quality of a bank surveillance video until they can make out the logo on your underwear through your pants.
But would we really care? Would the growing number of people who willingly share so much of what they do on Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare be horrified that the government could, in theory, look at a database of their phone calls? If you spend your time posting, "Here's a map showing where I am, a list of people I'm with, a description of what I'm doing, a picture out my window, a list of the companies I buy from, a list of political causes I support, three articles I just read, and my review of the movie I just saw and where I saw it," what are the odds that the existence of a database saying your phone called this other phone for 4 minutes and 19 seconds will shock your conscience?
The way we live now, we use our data as a currency. Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't, but we do. In fact, any time you appear to be getting something for nothing, there is an excellent chance that you are paying in part with your personal information. Store loyalty cards give you discounts, which you get in return for overlooking or accepting that someone now has (or could have) a history of everything you've ever bought.
If the government assigned you a grocery card that tracked all your food purchases, it would seem like something out of a dystopian everybody-in-a-jumpsuit movie. But when your grocery store does it in return for a dollar off a bottle of salad dressing, that's an absolutely everyday occurrence for many of us. Going through toll booths is much easier and faster if you have a device on your windshield that automatically charges your account as you drive through — of course, that means there's a record of every time you drove through.
It's a mistake to imagine that all of this is hidden from view; that consumers do all this not knowing they're doing it. Many, many perfectly savvy people know very well that their information is being constantly accumulated by Verizon and Sprint, Google and Amazon and Apple and Netflix, as well as banks, stores, car dealerships, cable companies, doctors, and insurance companies. In fact, the growing problem of managing the sheer number of passwords we all have is caused by the number of entities that we know have information about us or belonging to us that we don't want just anyone to be able to access.
Many of us do this not because we don't know about it, but because there are benefits to it. Storing stuff in the cloud, to use just one example, is greatfor lots of reasons — you can access it from anywhere, you don't have to store it, and you don't have to worry about frying your hard drive (or burning up your file cabinet) and losing all your contacts (or all your work, or your books, or your music).
Of course, that means somebody else somewhere — actually a lot of somebodies, none of whom you've ever met, to the good faith and security practices of whom you are effectively entrusting yourself — could find out whenever they chose what books you bought, what's in your email, what you listen to, what documents you've written, whom you talk to, and what organizations you contribute to. You just have to figure they won't.
It's an economy of often queasy trust that applies to private companies the same principle Simon is applying to the government: it's probably not that big a deal, this thinking goes, that they have a massive motherlode of information, because they probably aren't going to do anything with it, and if they do, that's where the problem arises. That's what most people believe about their email, for instance — sure, the email provider could read it, but probably nobody is going to bother. We assume that we will hide in the crowd, protected by its very size.
That's true even though, on a regular basis, tales emerge of data being used in ways we haven't thought of. A 2012 New York Times story detailed how Target set out to find a statistical, data-mining method of determining whether a woman was pregnant even if she did not want them to know. We know now that companies use data about the kinds of mundane things over which we've surrendered control in order to learn the kinds of private and personal things we still want to control.
And the reason this economy of queasy trust continues to flourish is that candidly, if you look at the numbers, it's worked OK for most of us in practice. Most of the time, nobody calls you out for ordering a politically charged book for your Kindle or watching a dirty movie on demand, nobody confronts you about the comment you made in an email, and nobody comes to your house to ask why you bought wine while you're pregnant. They could, but under ordinary circumstances, they don't. If Target finds out you're pregnant, all they really want to do is send you some coupons.
In a sense, we're mostcomfortable with the profit motive as a reason to collect information. Amazon or Apple might know all about you, but the thing they're most likely to do with that in practice, so far, is try to sell you stuff. That's where the theory that the economy of trust in private companies can be extended to government hits one of several major snags.
We "trust" private companies to be reliably self-interested, and we don't believe there's a self-interested reason for them to read our email other than, worst-case scenario, to sell. And we further believe that their self-interest works to our advantage, because it wouldn't be good business for people to find out that Google employees (for instance) were reading and passing around people's embarrassing email on their lunch breaks. We don't really trust them to limit their use of data in our best interests, but we might trust them to limit it in their own best interests. Part of our belief that they won't do anything nefarious with the theoretically breathtaking information dump they have comes from the belief that it wouldn't make them any money.
Government has no such transparent single motive, like profit, but a variety of motives, not all of which people are confident they know about. What you believe to be the motives of a particular administration or government agency depends on a complicated, often highly charged calculus of politics, policy, media consumption, and internalized constitutional theory that you may not have even verbalized but know in your gut. (The Fourth Amendment, really, has been developed by courts but is historically rooted in our collective sense of, " They can't come in my house and do that when I didn't do anything wrong.")
Furthermore, government has powers that private companies don't have. Target and Apple can't arrest you, deport you, fine you, jail you, try you, charge you, tax you, or confiscate your stuff. What's more, they are the final arbiters of nothing; you have potential recourse in court if they wrong you. Your only recourse, should the tentative trust you place in government prove misplaced, is ... more government. Other branches, levels and segments of government. And, ultimately, your ability to vote for somebody else.
The problem is that if it proves to be true that because of these programs, the loose trust you place in Google is now extended to the government without your consent (or knowledge, until now), you don't have a choice whether you want to be David Simon or The New York Times. You can't opt out of that part. The benefits remain the same — your free email, your chat applications, your cloud storage — but the costs are different. Simon displays some actual relief that the government is using phone records and Internet information to potentially prevent crime; that's a trade-off he won't be alone in his willingness to make.
And even for those who aren't relieved, they may be grudgingly willing to accept government access to data in return for whatever security advantages it might bring along with the mundane advantages of doing business with whatever tech company or cell phone provider is at issue. But not everybody is going to feel that way. Not everybody believes that they can predict what the government will do the way they think they can predict what Apple will do.
But what does not change with our willingness to make trade-offs is the constitutional question the Timesraised of whether search, seizure and privacy provisions are being violated. Constitutional provisions, in part, exist to counteract our natural tendency to make bad deals in challenging historical moments, and to protect people who don't want to make those deals from those who do. There is a value proposition in allowing both government (for security reasons) and business (for convenience reasons) to suck up data, but there was a value proposition in almost everything the constitution in its amended form was written to prevent.
There was a value proposition for at least some citizens in punishing people without trial, in denying universal suffrage, in punishing speech, and in slavery. That's why those things are in the constitution, out of the easy reach of legislatures — we choose to outlaw them even if, in a specific context, a democratically elected government decided to vote for them. If all of this is constitutional — and it's certainly not yet been found not to be — that's not because it's OK with enough of us, right now, considering what we get in return. That requires a different approach.
So our willingness to submit to surveillance in return for benefits may set our level of outrage or our level of willingness to do business with Google. It may dictate whether the ability to ensure privacy becomes a more treasured characteristic in a tech product and whether too much cooperation — if in fact these companies cooperated, which most deny — is a mark against it. But the value proposition is not the end of the inquiry. The inquiry is going to be harder than that.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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Vol. 23 No. 3: December 2019
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