Erowid is an organization that provides information about drugs and the experiences that drug users report. From the earliest days of its website (that predates the organization by about a decade), it has more focused on psychedelic drugs (but it covers all of them). On the site are lots of “trip reports” where people explain what happened to them while high.

The deliciously evil Max Read over at Gawker has created a test to see if you can tell the difference between passages from Erowid trip reports and the recent Newsweek cover story, Heaven Is Real. Let me offer you a taste of this with one passage each from the Newsweek article and an Erowid trip report. I’ll tell you which is which after you read through them.

First:

Second:

This is really hard. The truth is, even after looking at the answers, I keep mistaking one for the other. I’m pretty sure that the first one is the trip report and the second is the Newsweek article. But if you really want to be certain, you should click over the the Gawker article and see for yourself.

I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about this. I am not ridiculing the drug trip reports. These things are beautiful and meaningful. They say much about what we are as human beings. The problem is with the Newsweek article. It claims to be something that the trip reports do not: a report of some external reality. The human mind—under the influence of drugs or not—has an astounding[1] ability to create narrative structures based upon the smallest of external stimuli.

It’s pathetic that Newsweek doesn’t seem to understand this. But what do you expect when a major news magazine puts Tina Brown in charge?

Thanks to regular reader Andy for pointing me to this.

[1] It’s astounding:

This is actually a pretty good discussion of religious morality even though the caller is not presenting the best of arguments. It is from The Atheist Experience:

Giant Florida Eyeball Identified
Gino Covacci, the intrepid beachcomber who found the eye on a Florida beach, thought it had belonged to a squid.

I understand why the angler who had wrenched the swordfish from the sea also cut out its eyes and tossed them overboard. Those lifeless, yet reproachful eyes would have haunted him all the way back to shore. Or maybe they’re not edible.

On the other hand, the cavalier reporting of this fascinating drama is not so easily understood. The structure was “presumably swordfishy“? Seems somebody doesn’t take his job very seriously. If news isn’t worth reporting, at least have the decency to pretend that it is.

According to the new Washington Post / ABC News poll, Obama has bounced back a bit. He leads Romney in almost all of those sub-questions like, “Is Obama or Romney better on the issue of Medicare?” But the one big place that Romney is leading is on the deficit. By a margin of 8%, the people think that Romney would be better on the deficit. Wow.

I went out to dinner with my father last night and we discussed politics as usual. I explained Romney’s plan: cut taxes, close loopholes, balance the budget. Of course, Romney can’t do all of this without raising taxes on the middle class. But regardless of what the Obama campaign says, Romney will not raise taxes on the middle class. That would be political suicide. What’s going to happen is that Romney will explode the deficit.

“Really?” my father replied like a child who just learned that Santa Claus is a myth. Sometimes my father is adorable, as he was last night. He thinks of himself a cynical old man who knows that all the politicians are crooks and liars. In fact, he is one of the most naive people I know—perpetually shocked that politicians do different things than they promise.

We don’t even have to look at Romney or his plan; we need only look at history. From the end of World War II on, the national debt declined. Under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter: it went down and down and down. Then Ronald Reagan ran. A big part of his stump speech was that the national debt was exploding. It was a big problem! And he was going to solve it by cutting taxes. (I can’t put my finger on it, but I seem to remember someone else suggesting this plan.)

So the debt not only went up, it went way up. And it continued up under Bush Sr. And it went up during Clinton’s first term, but then went down under his second. But then we elected another deficit cutter; under Bush Jr. the debt went way up again. Under Obama, the debt has continued up. But I don’t blame this on him. In fact, if you look at this graph, it is hard not to blame Bush Jr.

I hate having to make this argument. The truth is that I’m not worried about the debt. Right now, we need more debt, not less. It is only after the economy recovers that we should deal with our debt. This is because government debt can crowd out private sector borrowing when the economy is booming. But as long as the economy is in recession, almost no amount of borrowing will harm the private sector. As it is, corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars not knowing what to do with it.

So it is frustrating as hell to have people like my dad vote for Romney because he will reduce the debt when just the opposite is what will happen. Matt Yglesias has written about this exact point. Right now we should be spending more. Obama—like most Democrats—is conservative and probably won’t spend as much as Romney. (Also, if Romney is President, he will have a Republican congress and they will go wild.)

So why not vote for Romney? In this particular case, it is because not all spending is created equal. Romney’s spending will go to two things: tax cuts for the rich (There is no way around that and anyway: look at history!) and increased military spending. Note that the military spending will not go to hiring more soldiers or paying them better. It will go to the weapons manufacturers. This will create jobs, of course, but not as many jobs (PDF) as it would if the money were spent on healthcare or education or just about anything else. The bottom line is that the debt that Romney will run up will primarily go to people who already have more money than they can use. This is not the way to a prosperous economy.

If you care about the nation debt or if you don’t, you should vote for Obama. He isn’t perfect, but he has reasonable and pragmatic policies. Romney is offering the same policies that have failed for the last 30 years. What more needs to be said?

Afterword

Check out this great zFacts video on the history of the national debt. It’s only 4:15 long.

I want to believe it is a new kind of cannibalistic taco:

Photo from Liliana Segura tweet.

In O Brother, Where Art Thou? the trio decide to vote on who should be the leader. After both Pete and Ulysses vote for “yours truly,” Delmar says, “Okay. I’m with you fellas.”

Delmar, of course, is a lovable idiot. I am neither. But I am with Noam Chomsky. He has said it makes sense to vote for Obama if you live in a swing state. This goes along with my long held opinion that Obama really sucks and that it would a catastrophe if he were not reelected. But I don’t live in a swing state. And I told Obama I wouldn’t vote for him and I don’t want to be a liar. So I won’t be voting for Obama next month.

It had been my intention to vote for the Peace & Freedom Party candidate. But as I was helping my sister vote this week, I noticed that Roseanne Barr was that candidate. At first, I thought this was something of a joke. I still can’t think about her without remembering her reality show freak out over her child abuse. But I’ve since rethought my distaste for Barr as a candidate.

Anyone running for President as a third party candidate is only doing it as a kind of protest. The basic idea is that you get time to push marginal policies into public attention. It is a way of broadening the Overton Window a bit. One of Barr’s issues is gay marriage. This strikes me as pathetic, because this is already part of Democratic Party platform. But her other big issue is cannabis legalization. I would rather she talk about decriminalization of all drugs, but cannabis will do.

And then Roseanne Barr did something that really made me love her. She tweeted “Romney is pro-rape.” What she is referring to is Mitt Romney’s belief that the government should not pay for abortions for rape victims:

So I don’t have any problem voting for her in November. It helps that her vice presidential running mate is Cindy Sheehan.

And because my sister has such a smart and knowledgeable brother, she too will vote for Roseanne Barr.

I just read Kingdom Coming by Michelle Goldberg. It is about Christian Nationalism. I’ve been interested in subject for a long time. In particular, Chris Rodda‘s work has made me very aware of this evil movement. And there is much to fear of such a movement in a country where 80% of the people believe God was directly involved in the creation of the world and 40% are biblical literalists who believe that the universe was created just as it says in the Bible.

This is a very disturbing statistic. I tend to pooh pooh aristotelian logic, because it just isn’t that useful. I forget, however, that I believe this only because I have thoroughly internalized such basic concepts. Apparently, this isn’t the case with most people. There are contradictions in the two books of Genesis. In Genesis I, God made the animals before man; in Genesis II, God made man before the animals. In Genesis I, God made man and woman at the same time. In Genesis II, God made man before woman. So when people claim that the universe was created exactly as is claimed in the Bible, what are they talking about?

I understand that apologists out there try to smooth away all the conflicts. This is done throughout the Bible, not just in the Genesis books. But these efforts are never convincing except to those who are determined to be convinced. The answers to the contradiction are all over the place. Some claim that Genesis I is a chronological account of creation whereas Genesis II is just a look back at the process on day 6. (How this answers the question, I do not know.) Some get into the grammar—kind of like Bill Clinton’s “what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” This is hilarious when the authors only consider English translations. Another clever solution is to look to Jesus to settle the question because the Bible is perfect, just some parts are more perfect than others.

My take on all of this is that none of these religious people give a flying fuck about the Bible. In my experience, most of them haven’t read it. They believe it is the true world of God because that’s what good people believe. And this is the world of the Christian Nationalists. Like almost all other Christians, they are ignorant of the book they supposedly believe is most important; all of their knowledge comes from demagogic leaders

I was particularly moved by one line in Kingdom Coming:

I will allow to being “gay” in the newer slang versions of the word, but when I comes to finding men sexually attractive, I just don’t have it in me. And yet, the list of “danger signs” that Focus on the Family is putting out describes me rather well as a child and now. What’s more, the converse is often the case: men who find other men attractive are often stoic, athletic, and lovers of man-on-man wrestling.

In C Street, Jeff Sharlet discusses the highest rungs of these Christian literalists. They favor an image of Jesus Christ that most Christians would find odd. He is not the Prince of Peace, but rather an angry Jewish body builder with a sword. Such thinking reminds me of nothing so much as the Nazi ideal of the young man as soccer hooligan.[1]

Clearly, the Christian Nationalists do not want thoughtful young people. They might actually read the Bible. They might rebel against the large amount of nonsense in it. Or they might hook into the spiritual truth that can be found there. Regardless, a group of thoughtful young people is the last thing wanted by the demagogues who energize the Christian Nationalist movement.

[1] I don’t think we should allow Godwin’s Law to stop us from making these statements. For one thing, Christian nationalists are an authoritarian group. For another, as far as I can tell, the whole of the right wing in this country would think the Nazis just fine, except for that part about killing the Jews. The Nazis were bad for a whole lot more reasons than that. I think by focusing so much on their most heinous crimes, we are losing sight of their many other terrible aspects.

While walking along Pompano Beach this week, Gino Covacci saw something “protruding from the sand.”

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is now in possession of the body part. As of late Friday experts still hadn’t been able to identify it, but “the front runner is some type of large fish.” Covacci disagrees: “It’s a squid…prove me wrong!”

I’m not interested in knowing which type of sea dwelling behemoth is now partially blind. I know for a fact that it belongs to one of the many species of enormous and terrifying creatures that lurk in the fathomless dark ocean. I am more curious about Gino Covacci. Does he often pick up and inspect large squishy objects that he finds partially buried in the sand? And if so, why? I myself am inclined to avoid slimy, globulous bits — bits of any size — that have been puked from the sea onto the beach. Obviously, Gino is not a squeamish man.

While there may be a one-eyed monster bumping into things off the coast of Florida, it isn’t the only one suffering.