Greater than Ourselves by Amnon Katz

Posted on August 5, 2011 by admin

Amnon Katz was a physicist, aerospace engineer, pilot, publisher, thinker, poet and essayist. At the time of his death in October of the year 2000, he held an endowed chair in aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama. For more biographical information about him, follow this link. For his CV, click here.

At the request of one of his friends, I made his article “Greater than Ourselves” available in the form of two image files from the Inverted-A Horn on our sister site, Inverted-A.com. There I posted a perfectly legible copy that is made available to the public free of charge and without advertising. But those who want a searchable  text, I provide it here on PubWages, accompanied by advertising.

The Original First Page of the Article

GREATER THAN OURSELVES

by Amnon Katz

1. Duality of cause and purpose

Since time immemorial, there have been two ways of understanding the world around us and predicting what will happen next. One is in terms of the forces at play and what they cause. The other is in terms of some “purpose” being served. A falling pebble increases its speed because it is acted upon by the force of gravity. Or, the pebble increases its speed so that its kinetic energy makes up for the loss of potential energy, the “purpose” being to keep the total energy unchanged. A ray of light is reflected off a mirror in accordance with Snell’s law, which states that the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection must be equal. Or, a ray of light picks the shortest distance to the mirror and back…

Most laws of nature can be derived from a variational principle, i.e., nature contrives to make some function as small as it can be. Two or three hundred years ago, philosophers tried to read a great deal into this. They thought they recognized in it divine purposes, that the laws of physics worked to make our universe “the best of all possible worlds.” Contemporary science views these variational principles merely as powerful and elegant mathematical tools.

There seems to be a measure of confusion about cause versus purpose when it comes to more complex issues, such as the evolution of species, of societies and of nations.

2. “God’s Utility Function”

A friend called my attention to the publications of one Richard Dawkins, who made a career of explaining Darwin’s theory of evolution to the masses. As a sample, my friend gave me an article entitled “God’s Utility Function” (Richard Dawkins, “God’s Utility Function”, Scientific American, 1995, pp.62-67.) My first reaction was wonder. More than a hundred years after Darwin, is there still room for drawing new implications from the facts, which, by now, are well established and generally understood?

Dawkins appears intent on settling an argument with certain anti-scientific religious quarters, and that is what my friend mainly liked. Dawkins proceeds by championing the “Causes” point of view of evolution and denying the dual point of view of “Purpose”.

“God’s Utility Function” concentrates on cheetahs and gazelles. Dawkins writes: “Cheetahs … [are] well designed to kill gazelles. [They] … are… precisely what we would expect if God’s purpose was to maximize deaths among gazelles. Conversely, [gazelles are designed] for precisely the opposite end: the survival of gazelles and starvation among cheetahs. It is as though cheetahs are designed by one deity, gazelles by a rival deity. Alternatively, if there is only one creator of the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is he playing at?”

“Maximize deaths among gazelles”? Really! If deaths among gazelles were maximized, they would all die, and the cheetahs would have nothing to eat. True, a common purpose in the evolution of cheetahs and gazelles is difficult to find along the lines of the wishy-washy, politically correct morality that is prevalent today. To find this common purpose, one must look beyond the individual cheetah and the individual gazelle and consider the best interests of cheetahs and gazelles as species.

 

Obviously, the cheetah is not doing any favors to the individual gazelle that it hunts down and kills. But it is doing a great service to the gazelle species collectively. It is ridding the species of a weaker member and making sure that only the most fit gazelles will reproduce. In passing, it also preempts the need for nursing home, hospital and undertaker. The gazelles reciprocate. By making themselves difficult to catch, they eliminate all but the fittest cheetahs. They also make sure that a stable population of gazelles is maintained to feed future generations of cheetahs. The process is cruel to individual animals, but preempts the suffering of the multitude of defective offspring, who in the animal kingdom are never born.

3. Beyond the individual

Dawkins refuses to look beyond the individual, and this may be what his admirers want to justify. It does not take a great leap of imagination to recognize that a lot goes on in the world over and above the selfish. All animals sacrifice in favor of their young. Many exhibit loyalty to a group far larger than the basic family. Worker ants will readily sacrifice themselves for their queen. I have seen on television how a wolf, the head of his pack, exposed himself to attract pursuers, while the rest of the pack, including mothers and cubs, went the other way. This was in Russia, and the hunters were using a helicopter. The phenomenon of risking one’s life for a cause ranges all the way from insects, to mammals to man.

Dedication to values greater than the individual is rewarded and perpetuated by the classical mechanism of natural selection. Groups, species, societies and nations that don’t practice such values succumb to those that do. It is immaterial whether the group loyalty traits are propagated by genes that pass from body to body or by ideas that leap from mind to mind. Natural selection works either way. The most useful physical traits propagate genetically and survive long after the individual in whom they originated perished. Social structures that uphold the most potent ideas and ideals survive long after the individuals who practiced them are gone. The ideas themselves persist even after the societies that they helped establish become corrupted and are swept away. It is thus that we practice today many of the ideals of justice and of the valor of the long gone Roman Empire.

4. God and Country

Before Monotheism, major gods reigned over territorial domains. National wars were conflicts between competing gods, whose anointed servants guided the fortunes of nations. Individuals could distill an image of the object of their loyalty in the form of a deity. The gods demanded service in toil and blood. In return, they gave their followers meaning, identity and pride. It was a social system oriented toward serving that which is greater than the individual. It was one that natural selection favored. Individuals reaped the physical and spiritual benefits of belonging to a successful tribe or nation.

Then came Judaism. A defeated Israel despaired of victory and traded the vision of national triumph for the fantasy of individual reward beyond the grave. Judaism’s off-shoot of Christianity catered to the weak, the meek, the losers. Religion was diverted towards the small. It still calls upon individuals to sacrifice, not for something larger than themselves, but for that which is smaller, the ones less fortunate or less capable.

There is room for charity, and so much of it is for the better. But there must be limits. If everybody sold his livelihood and distributed the proceeds to the poor, as Jesus advocated, the economy would collapse, and all would starve. Besides, as the good senator said: “If you subsidize poverty, you’ll have more of it.”

The same goes for easing individual suffering. Measures such as the filling of decayed teeth and the fitting of near-sighted eyes with corrective lenses have the effect of proliferating bad teeth and poor vision. Reduced infant mortality, even when accompanied by reduced birth rate, neutralizes the mechanism of natural selection. Obviously, we will not forgo some level of individual care, but here, too, there must be limits.

Regardless of how much charity and compassion is enough, individuals and nations both have a need for the old style devotion to that which is greater than the individual. Jesus, who, in effect, destroyed the national deities, was also the one to point to a possible reprieve. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12, 17). This may have been the earliest hint of the principle of separation of church and state. God was now constrained to deal in the small, but Caesar could still take care of the large.

In our days, “Caesar” is the nation. The nation as whole and its well-being, as distinct from the welfare of every individual within it, remain a vital ingredient in our mix of ideals. The laws of nature can neither be repealed nor circumvented. Nations that lose this ideal will succumb, some sooner, some later.

 

© 2000, 2011 Estate of Amnon Katz



Posted in Education: Teaching and Learning, Health, Opinion Pieces and Editorials | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

iPod Touch- Free Text and Call App

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Peppergum01

For the iPod Touch there is an app called: Textfree and if you get the voice version then you can not only text free and unlimited but you can also call free with minutes. If you go to the App Store and type in: Textfree and install it then you will get these features. First of all when you first get this app they will ask you for your area code so that they can give you a number in your area, and it will be easier to call people in your area. You can text any number in the USA and maybe also Canada as much as you want without having to pay. You can call any number as long as it’s in the United States. You start out with a few free minutes. But when your minutes end, if you still want to call someone then you need to either earn more free minutes or buy free minutes for $1.99 but I recommend earning them instead. When you go to “Earn Free Minutes” they will show you a bunch of free apps that you can install and the better the app is, the more minutes you get. Currently, I have 600 minutes from earning and buying free minutes on this helpful application. So when you first start out you also get to choose your own number from a list of numbers they give you to choose. If you give your number to other people you can have them call you and if the other person calls you then it won’t take up any minutes. This is probably one of the best free text and call apps out there so I recommend it.

Posted in Education: Teaching and Learning, Electronics and Computers, Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Incorrect Premises Lead to False Conclusions: The Case of the Aging Brain

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Aya Katz

Yesterday I came across a science news story released by the establishment. In big headlines, it read: “Evolution of Human Longevity Led to Large Brains and Brain Shrinkage”.  Always interested in comparative studies of chimpanzees and humans, I eagerly read the story. I was even almost prepared at the outset to believe that it was going to contain a big revelation. I thought, well, we do have swollen brains with poor connectivity, compared to chimpanzees, which accounts for our slower processing rate and our ability to concentrate on minutiae. It might be possible that during old age the swelling goes down. After all, some immune disorders tend to dissipate as we age. But it didn’t turn out to be anything like that.

So what did the article actually say? Here is their reasoning in a nutshell. Chimpanzees in the wild rarely survive past the age of forty-five. In captivity, they can live to be as old as sixty.  Humans, on the other hand, live well into their eighties. So what did the researchers do? They compared humans from age twenty-two to eighty-eight and chimpanzees from age ten to age fifty-one. And what did they find? Humans had a lot of brain shrinkage in late old age, whereas chimpanzees did not. (To read the article in Science Daily, click here.)

And what was the long ranging conclusion? That humans due to the evolution of their brain and the evolution of their longevity, both of which are deemed to be biological facts, are more susceptible to diseases of senile dementia, such as Alzheimers.

I think this is a flawed conclusion.  It is not because I have access to more information than the researchers. After all, they got to study larger populations of humans and chimpanzees than I ever have had access to. They also had magnetic resonance imaging, a big research budget and lots and lots of technology to play with. So I don’t question their bare-bones facts. I just don’t understand how anyone could draw that conclusion from those facts.

Our longevity as humans is not primarily a result of evolution. Sure, some individuals do live much longer than others, and there are probably genetic facts that account for the rare person who remains healthy well past the age of one hundred. But by and large, the longevity of populations of humans is much more tied in to environment than genetics. Health care has an important impact on both lifespan and health during lifespan. In developed countries, the lifespan is longer, but the health issues that people have to deal with are much more serious. In other words, they stay alive longer, but they spend a lot more of their life being seriously, chronically sick. In countries with very little health care, humans tend to live about the same as chimpanzees in the wild, but they spend most of their life being healthy. There are no people with senile dementia in countries where humans die while still active and in their prime.

The life expectancy for a human being in Swaziland is 39.6 years. How many of those years can a human in Swaziland expect to stay healthy? 38.1. This translates to a “healthy life expectancy” of 96.2 %. That means that for 96.2% of their lives, the average Swaziland resident will be really, really healthy and will not require any kind of medical care. Let’s contrast that with a human being living in the U.S. . The average human being in the United States of America can expect to live to the ripe old age of 78.2, but he stops being healthy at around age seventy. This allows for a healthy life expectancy of  89.5%. But, of course, not every human in the United States dies as young as 78.2. Many live much longer than that. And the longer a human lives, the more likely he or she is to experience brain degeneration and shrinkage. (Want to know where I got this information? Click here.)

Now what about chimpanzees? Most chimpanzees live under much harsher conditions than humans, even when they are in captivity. The average zoo or research facility doesn’t really care what happens to the chimp, once he has served his purpose. Yes, they do give medical care, but often without any regard for what is best for the chimpanzee. For instance, they will use anesthesiology to make a chimpanzee unconscious just for a routine medical examination, when the chimpanzee is not sick, because they are afraid for their own safety. This routine use of very dangerous drugs takes a toll on the health of the chimpanzee. Research facilities also do things intended to harm chimpanzees, so it’s no wonder they do not live that long on average in captivity.

But did you know that Cheetah, a chimpanzee who starred in the Tarzan films with Johnny Weissmuller, is still alive in his late seventies?

So to recap: the human lifespan is to a great degree determined by the environment in which the human lives. We cannot ascribe the differences in human lifespan in Swaziland from the human lifespan in the United States to evolution. Neither can we suggest that Johnny Weissmuller’s co-star, Cheetah, is necessarily more evolved than the average chimpanzee in the wild or in a zoo. Lifespan is very much subject to living conditions.

It does not make any sense to compare the brains of fifty year old chimpanzees with the brains of eighty year old humans and to marvel at how much degeneration of the brain has taken place in the humans. The brains of fifty year old chimpanzees should be compared to the brains of fifty year old humans.

So who did this study? The National Science Foundation partially funded the work of Chet Sherwood, an anthropologist at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a team of scientists from seven other U.S. universities. The authority level of this team is very high. Which is just another reason we should not trust authority nor publicly fund scientific research.

© 2011 Aya Katz

Posted in Apes and Language, Health, Opinion Pieces and Editorials | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Editorial Policy and the Search Engines: Who Decides What is Spam?

Posted on July 29, 2011 by admin

Recently I was involved in a discussion with some internet colleagues about the relative merits of two sites for writers. I am not writing this editorial in order to run down or disparage either of those sites, even though they are in a sense my competitors. What I want to do is to contrast their respective editorial policies, as a way to explain my own philosophy about writing for the net and what I want PubWages to be.

So let’s just call them Site A and Site B. Site A allowed writers complete freedom to choose their topic, their style of writing, and the length and depth of their coverage. It allowed tiny snippets of poetry, articles that consisted almost entirely of images, and also very long and detailed treatises by experts. It allowed everything else in between. It was a writer’s paradise and also a marketer’s paradise, because there were very few rules and restrictions. Some people made a lot of money there. Some made no money at all. But most everybody was happy, because they got to do their own thing. Payment was in the form of revenue sharing. Who decided how much revenue you made? The market. And that means: the readers!

Site B was very strict. It told people exactly what they could write about, from a list of permissible topics. It had parameters for style and length. It determined exactly how deep or broad the coverage of the topic was going to be. And it paid up front for work done. So who decided how much money you would make? The management of Site B.

As a result of these competing editorial policies, Site B had a very consistent quality to it: it wasn’t very deep and it wasn’t very creative, but you could count on it to deliver a certain kind of writing product. Site A was like an old used book shop, where you never know what you will find. There was no consistency in topic. There was no consistency in style. But there were real gems there to be discovered, among all the heaps and heaps of junk.

As both a writer and a reader, I liked Site A better. But one day Google decided that there was too much “spam” and “garbage” on Site A, and they penalized it terribly, so that even the best articles did not show up in search. Site B, with its consistently maintained standards of mediocrity, on the other hand, was not penalized. As a result, I hear that many writers who used to like Site A better are reluctantly conforming to the restrictive editorial policies of Site B. They are also submitting to a pay scale that is not directly determined by the market.

Now here’s what I think about the decision by Google about the rankings of the two sites: creativity was stifled for the sake of uniformity.  Management that stood as an intermediary between the reader and the writer was preferred over management that just took care of the technical end of things, allowing reader and writer to interact freely.

But here’s what one of my colleagues has to say about that: “No, Site A were not penalized for allowing broad topics and creativity. They were penalized for allowing the site to develop into a cesspit of garbage, which totally drowned out the efforts of those who provided good content.”

You know what? Those two things go hand in hand. Allowing for creativity is also what allows for garbage. It’s the laissez faire attitude at work. If you start to require people to meet a certain formal standard, then it will also impinge on their ability to do their very best in their own way. This principle works the same everywhere it is applied, whether in a privately run site on the internet, or in the market as a whole. The moment products have to meet a certain standard set by an authority, rather than being tested by users, then many potentially wonderful new products are never made available, and all in the name of protecting the consumer.

The problem is that the search engines, and Google in particular, are no longer acting as mere search devices to let people know what is out there and to make their own decisions.  They are now trying to protect the consumer from spam.

What is spam? The last time I checked, it was a message received that was of no interest to the recipient. Whether something is spam is entirely in the mind of the individual who reads it. But articles on the web cannot be spam, because they are not messages sent to your email. They are more like books in a library. If you look up a book in the card catalog, thinking it will help you, and then find you don’t like it, do you blame the publisher of the book? Or do you just put it back on the shelf and look for another one on the same topic?

It’s not Google’s job to protect searchers from finding something they don’t like. It’s Google’s job as a search engine to let you know what’s available, given the search terms you used.

After Site A was hit hard by Google, they tried to change. They tried to make things more pleasing to the powers that be. They thought that maybe there hadn’t been enough rules in place. So they started making arbitrary rules about pixelated images and the ratio of copy to ads, thinking that would make things better. It didn’t.

I know that some of you are going to come back and say things to defend Google or Site A or Site B. So just to anticipate what you’re going to say, I’ll say it for you. Google is a private business, and it has a right to change its algorithm any way it likes. I agree. And we as consumers have the right to choose a different search engine, if we don’t like the results. Lately I’ve been using Bing, because they don’t seem to be working as hard as Google to change my search results to what they think the average person would like to read, rather than what I asked for.

Site A and Site B are private businesses, and they have every right to choose whatever editorial policies they want. Also true. But amazingly enough, many writers are defecting from both sites in order to join PubWages and other smaller, independent sites such as ThisisFreelance, Xobba,  Freelancewriternetwork and Excerptz.

It’s good to have choices. It’s good that there is a free market. And it’s also useful to realize that any attempt, whether by a private entity such as an editorial board or a search engine, or by a public entity, such as a regulatory agency, to protect consumers from products denies access not just to the worst the market has to offer but also to the best.

© 2011 Aya Katz

Posted in Marketplace and Trading, Opinion Pieces and Editorials, PubWages Staff | Tagged , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Handwriting News …

Posted on July 27, 2011 by KateGladstone


/1/
I’ve just learned that I have been very recently quoted on handwriting — well, on the perils of doing it badly — in a fairly big magazine.

In other (and perhaps rather more interesting) news of the handwriting world …

/2/

Why cursive is being abandoned …

/3/
Hurry up, folks, and write your snail-mail letters while you can still mail them — the US Postal System is considering limiting mail delivery to three days a week.

/4/
India’s pharmacists beg: “Doctors, write legibly!”

/5/
Find every story on handwriting that the

    NEW YORK TIMES

has ever carried, here.

/6/
 Fake pen ad with a real message …

Posted in Education: Teaching and Learning, Opinion Pieces and Editorials | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

For California Pubbers: Replace Amazon with Barnes & Noble

Posted on July 27, 2011 by admin

Recently, due to tax legislation passed under an emergency measure in California, Amazon dropped all its California affiliates. This has put a lot of online writers in a state of reduced income. What’s a California pubber to do? Well, when one business opportunity closes, another opens up. One good way to handle being dropped as an affiliate by one company would be to go to the competition. And who is Amazon’s greatest competitor? Barnes & Noble.

Here is one way to get a Barnes & Noble affiliate account. First, sign up with Linkshare. Linkshare allows you to open accounts with many merchants. One of them is Barnes & Noble. Once you are accepted into the Barnes & Noble affiliate program, change your Amazon products which are featured on your pubs into Barnes & Noble Products.

Here is an instructional video by Tina Razzell showing how to add a Barnes & Noble product to your article:

YouTube Preview Image

This is a good solution to the problem of California pubbers who have lost their Amazon affiliate status. But it can also be used as a supplementary form of income for anyone who wants to try it. In fact, those of us who are still able to use Amazon can place competing ads for the same product from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Competition is a good thing. Give it a try and see if it works for you!

Here is my attempt to do this with my book Ping & the Snirkelly People. I’ve added an image link and a text link that will take a buyer right to the Barnes & Noble site to purchase my book:

icon

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ping-and-the-snirkelly-people-aya-katz/1030382159

But for those who want to buy it from Amazon, they can go here:

It’s nice to have choices!

Posted in Pubwages FAQ, PubWages Staff | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

An Interview with Julia Hanna

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Aya Katz

Julia Hanna, otherwise known as Sweetbearies here on PubWages, is a prolific writer and artist. Last night I had the privilege of doing a video interview with her on Skype. Even though she is in California and I am in Missouri, and though we have never met in person, we were able to talk together about her writing, her experiences online and off, her arts and crafts and her novel in progress. Come and meet Julia in this video!

YouTube Preview Image

You can read more about Julia and view some of her artwork and crafts at her Sweatbearies site:

http://sweetbeariesart.com/

I enjoyed talking with Julia online, and I think that the ability to see one another on Skype and share our thoughts with other pubbers is going to change the experience here on PubWages. Video interviews are not just for people who live in the same city, nor are they only open to those who are already extremely well known. We now have the ability to share a conversation with each other despite the distance and without going to great expense. Good conversation and good writing go together, I think, so please take the time to enjoy this talk with Julia. Let us know if there are any follow up questions you would like to ask. We may do this again!

Posted in Current Events, PubWages Staff | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Bard of Ely has a new entry in the YouBloom Music Awards

Posted on July 25, 2011 by bardofely

My song Mañana recently got through to the semi finals of the YouBloom Song Contest, so a big THANK YOU to everyone who voted for it and helped it get there! Sadly though Bob

Geldof and the team of judges failed to select it for the finals. However, I believe very much in the motto of try, try and try again, so this is what I am doing with a new entry in the contest entitled Always Look So Fine.

The YouBloom Song Contest, by the way, has been renamed as the YouBloom Music Awards, and my song Always Look So Fine is in the current Q3 Heat 1 of the competition.

It is very much a pop/rock song that I recorded many years back with my then band Flowers of the City. It nearly got released on a Cardiff independent label too at the time. A popular song in my live performances it is basically a simple love song that is saying how it doesn’t matter what sort of clothes the one I love is wearing because she always looks really beautiful anyway.
The photo I use to illustrate the song is of two former neighbours of mine when I lived on the Ely council estate in Cardiff. The two sisters Heather and Maria used to dress as punks and coloured their hair with shocking Crazy Colour pink. In my song lyrics there is the line: “I’ve seen you in black punk clothes…” and the two girls often used to dress in black so they make great models for this!
I need your votes again to help me progress in this prestigious Music Awards competition so please log in if you are already a member, or join if you are not, then listen to my song and vote. Here is the link to it: http://www.youbloom.com/ybsc/entry/2552/

Posted in PubWages Staff | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Found: precise analysis of cursive defenders’ favorite logical errors

Posted on July 25, 2011 by KateGladstone


Found: precise analysis of cursive defenders’ favorite logical errors

(I disagree, though, with this blogger’s claim that long handwritten messages are always an imposition on the reader. With well-planned practice— and a simple style of handwriting — the results can be as legible as any type font.)

What are some false-to-fact statements that you, yourself, have read or heard about handwriting? Share them, please, and any rejoinders you have worked out.

Also — what other handwriting-related matters would you like to see me raise? Would you like me to post samples of interesting handwriting, to analyze for legibility and other features? … or what?

Posted in Education: Teaching and Learning, Opinion Pieces and Editorials | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Snippets on handwriting …

Posted on July 24, 2011 by KateGladstone


/1/

Here’s some proof that liking to use cursive is no guarantee of common sense or accurate spelling. Well, at least the cursive was competent.

/2/
Incompetent handwriting — of any style — led to these other cake disasters.

/3/
Further scribal cake wrecks:

here …

… and here.

/4/

The worst I’ve seen: what does it say? Post your guesses!
Whichever commenter produces the most convincing decipherment (by the time I get 5 comments on this post) will win a free copy of my Handwriting Repair PDF (or PowerPoint if you prefer that format).

/5/

if your chosen medium is not cake-icing, here are sites that will turn your handwriting into a font:

Thankster.com lets you create a font from your handwriting and use it to send online messages …

… while VLetter.com turns your handwriting into a font you can use in any computer program.

Or skip fonts entirely, and send handwritten e-mail (with your choice of electronic ink, pen, and paper) at Ritemail.com.

if your chosen medium is, in fact, cake-icing, Squires Kitchen/Food Online sells equipment for topping your cake with calligraphy: icing nozzles that produce the effect of an Italic pen.

Posted in Education: Teaching and Learning | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment