Conservatives really think they gotcha when they point out that humans breathe out CO2. Ha!
Humans do not create carbon when they breathe. They cycle carbon. We are part of the global carbon cycle. You probably learned about this in grammar school. Plants take in CO2 and release O2. We take in O2 and release CO2. And on and on. Cycle carbon? Yes! Create carbon? No!
Under normal circumstances, there is a set amount of carbon in the air. This carbon spends time as plant material and animal material and in the air as CO2, but it is just part of this global cycle. For each carbon atom that takes up residency as part of a plant, another carbon atom that used to be part of a plant is released into the air. It’s a beautiful system.
It is only when we rip large amounts of sequestered carbon—usually in the form of hydrocarbons (oil, coal, natural gas)—that we add to the total carbon in the atmosphere. And this is why the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing.
People who claim that humans are creating CO2 by breathing are offensive. I don’t say this just because they are denying the science. I say it because they are accusing scientists of being idiots. The idea that thousands of climate scientists have spent their whole lives studying this stuff without noticing such an obvious thing is repugnant. You can tell that the people who talk about this stuff are almost giddy to have found such a clever retort to the scientists. It’s a lot like Bill O’Reilly’s proof of God, “Why is the moon there? Huh, smart guy? And while you’re at it, why is the sky blue? And sometimes red? No one can answer these questions!”
It’s important for liberals to understand how this works. I assure you that eventually, you will run into this argument. It’s sad that these arguments even have to be made. For most things we simply yield to the experts. “I’ll believe that guy who has spent his whole life studying it,” is a very good approach to take. Unfortunately, your crazy Fox News watching uncle doesn’t accept information from those highly biased scientists who sometimes make over a $100,000 per year just to make Al Gore wealthy. Repeat after me, “We cycle carbon, we don’t create it…”
Afterword
Whenever I watch Rachel Maddow mix drinks, I get the idea that she doesn’t do it much. It’s kind of cute. She likes to pretend she is this serious drinker, but just look at her! She is so white bread it almost makes me despair. But you gotta love her!
There is a very good article in Bloomberg Businessweek by Paul M. Barrett with the shocking title, It’s Global Warming, Stupid. It talks about a number of issues other than global warming, but the main point of the article is that storms like Sandy do tell us something about climate change.
Barrett quotes the Environmental Defense Fund VP Eric Pooley who offers up a near perfect analogy, “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”
This is so good, I think it might work on ol’ Uncle Fox News Addict. (Isn’t there a 12-step program for that?) He’s the guy who insists that global warming is a conspiracy that Al Gore created to get rich, and that the oil companies, who make billions of dollars from carbon pollution, are just countering with the straight dope. You might be able to get him to think for a moment with that analogy.
What I’m really happy to hear is that scientists are starting to abandon the usual caveats. You know: all the stuff about uncertainty that nerds like me just love. But they are waking up to the fact that the opposition is just using this uncertainty to dismiss the whole science. Here’s what it comes down to: what is your best guess regarding climate change? Of those in the field, 98% will say it is real and it is happening right now. And most of those will go further: it is happening much faster than we had predicted. And it is terrifying.
Most of the article is about the election and Obama and Romney. In particular, it talks about market incentives and how conservatives like them. Indeed, there is real economics under all of this. Environmental degradation is a market externality. This means it is a cost that is not born by the market itself. An example is if your next door neighbor started a garbage dump. He and his customers would get the benefit of the dump, but you would get nothing for having to smell it. The cost of having the dump would not include an external cost: your degraded lifestyle.
Libertarians claim the answer to this is the courts. “Just sue your neighbor,” they claim. Just on its face, this is a stupid idea. Because of his dumping business, your neighbor will likely have many more resources in court than you do. But even if that weren’t the case, the courts would be a mess with all of the lawsuits. This is why we create things like zoning laws. In the case of global warming, a carbon tax really does make sense. And conservatives used to be for that—until they realized they could just deny the problem and all the mainstream media would play along.
At least now the scientists are wading into the fight with more determination.
AnswersInEddas has posted 3 videos criticizing William Lane Craig’s arguments for the existence of God. I’ve only watched the first, but it is very good and I plan to check out the others. I’m no fan of Craig. To be stupid is unfortunate; to be brilliant and use it to obfuscate is evil; William Lane Craig is evil.
The video quotes Craig making an argument against an eternal universe. As the author points out, this is a strange argument to make because no one argues for an eternal universe. But this is typical of Craig’s long history of setting up straw men and whacking them down. While this must feel good, it is intellectually dishonest and certainly doesn’t lead to new knowledge.
In this argument, Craig offers an example of how the universe could not always exist. It displays an astounding ignorance of mathematics. It is more what you would expect of a bunch of drunk college students debating the existence of God:
Take the plants Jupiter and Saturn. Suppose that for every orbit that Saturn completes, the planet Jupiter completes two. If Saturn has completed ten orbits, Jupiter completed twenty. If Saturn has completed a trillion, Jupiter has completed two trillion. The longer they orbit, the father Saturn falls behind. If they continue to orbit forever, they will approach a limit at which Saturn is infinitely far behind Jupiter. Suppose Jupiter and Saturn have been orbiting the sun from eternity past. Now which one will have completed the most orbits? Well, the correct mathematical answer is, the number of orbits is identical. But that seems absurd! For, the longer they orbit, the greater the disparity between them grows.
Wow!
I understand that infinity is a tricky concept but this is a stunning lack of understanding. And to be used in this context is bizarre. I wasn’t being hyperbolic to compare this to the ravings of drunk college students.
Infinity is not a number. If you treat it like a number, you can come up with all kinds of paradoxes. This is why we don’t treat it as a number. We can, however, say a lot about it. One of the most basic ideas is that the set of integers is a countable infinity, while the set of real numbers is an uncountable infinity. And we know something else.
In William Lane Craig’s example, at infinity, Jupiter will have gone through twice as many orbits as Saturn. How do we know this? Because infinity is a limit. Craig got to this by looking at what happens to the system as it gets bigger and bigger (10 and then a trillion). But then he claims infinity is just some bigger value on the number line where reality has a discontinuity. Yikes!
I know that for people who don’t think about these things, infinity can be a tricky subject. But that’s not what’s going on with Craig here. I suspect that once he discovered this paradox, he never gave it another thought. That’s what William Lane Craig does. Arguments have one purpose: to prove the Bible is correct. As Robert Price has pointed out, Craig uses his considerable intellect and erudition in one giant clean-up operation. It’s a hell of a way to spend a life.
Before getting to the burning question of whether Bugs Bunny is a rabbit or a hare, let’s take a step back and take a look at this colorful character.
A Brief History of Bugs Bunny
On 30 April, all the way back in 1938, Bugs’ Bunny was born. Well, sorta.
Note that I used an apostrophe after what has become his first name. It is in reference to the director of the first cartoon to feature the character, Ben Hardaway, whose nickname was Bugs. Thus, animators started referring to the nameless character as “Bugs’ bunny” (and later “Bugs’s bunny”) — not a name, a description. But the name stuck, even if the apostrophe didn’t.
The cartoon in question is Porky’s Hare Hunt. But the bunny in that film is not much like the Bugs Bunny we have grown to love.
For one thing, he sounds like Woody Woodpecker — literally. In 1940, Mel Blanc moved the voice from the one character to the other.
Also, this early character doesn’t have the intellectual sophistication that he will eventually develop. (Although he’s still way smarter than Porky Pig and most humans I know.) He’s mostly just a spaz, like Daffy Duck in his early versions. (He was first introduced in the similarly titled, Porky’s Duck Hunt.)
In addition to this, Bugs doesn’t look the same. He’s quite short — again, like the early Daffy Duck. And he is all one color. But there is a continuity. It’s kind of like the ship of Theseus: if all parts of a ship are gradually replaced, is it still the same ship? There isn’t one answer to that; it is just a way of thinking about what is is.
But in the case of Bugs Bunny, I think we can say that this little Woody Woodpecker laughing bunny is indeed a form of the iconic character.
This is not the consensus view, however.
Porky’s Hare Hunt was from the Looney Tunes series, and Bugs Bunny really is a Merrie Melodies character. Thus, most people consider the first appearance to be in the 27 July 1940 film A Wild Hare:
And he evolved from there. Frankly, I believe at some point he crossed a line and became uninteresting. It’s hard to set a precise moment, because there is no such moment. But it was when Warner Bros Cartoons went postmodern. That’s when there was Bugs Bunny the actor and Bugs Bunny the part he played.
Not that good postmodern cartoons weren’t made. Duck Amuck is one of the best things Warner Bros Cartoons ever did.
It’s more that Bugs Bunny became so sophisticated and so in control that he lost his zany. But there’s a lot more great Bugs Bunny than meh.
Is This a Question Worth Asking?
As far as I know, I was the first person on the internet to ask and fully answer the question, “Is Bugs Bunny a rabbit or a hare”? People go their whole lives without asking the really important questions.
It was a question that had burned in my mind since I was a child. Rabbits and hares look similar, but they are very different animals.
But I was surprised that almost to a person, my friends found the “rabbit or hare” question absurd — just Frank being Frank. However, since I published this article back in 2012, it has been one of the most popular pages on this site of 8,000 pages.
Clearly: a lot of people had the same question.
And several years after this article was first published, a number of other people published similar articles. There’s even a video that deals with the issue, although in a roundabout way.
Bugs Bunny: Rabbit or Hare?
So let’s get to the question: is Warner Bros Cartoons’ most famous character a rabbit or a hare? The question must be answered!
Is a Bunny a Rabbit?
I know what you’re thinking: his name is Bugs Bunny, so he must be a rabbit. And yet, most of the cartoons have titles like Hare Brush and Fallin’ Hare and Bill of Hare.
What’s more, just look at the titles of the two films that people argue about being the first to feature Bugs Bunny: Porky’s Hare Hunt and A Wild Hare (both embedded above).
An Ill-Defined Term
And the truth is that “bunny” is an ill-defined term. But not because it isn’t defined as (generally a young) rabbit. Rather, because most people lump rabbits and hares together.
So the situation is far from clear.
A Little Biology: Rabbit vs Hare
Before we get into this, I should tell you a little bit about rabbits and hares.
Despite the fact that they look quite similar, they are, in fact, not just different species, but different Genera.
In fact, rabbits (and I always kind of knew this because you just can’t trust rabbits) are in 8 different Genera.
This depends on the exact kind of rabbit. Most Americans will know the rabbits in the Sylvilagus Genus, which includes the cottontail rabbit.
Hares are all in one genus: Lepus.
Rabbits have 44 chromosomes, while hares have 48. So they really are fundamentally different.
So rabbits and hares are only in the same family: Leporidae. So they are as related as humans are to gorillas — very related, but far from being the same.
Two cottontails (rabbit)
What’s In a Name?
Part of the problem is that five of the 32 types of hare are called jackrabbits. (Five different kinds of rabbits are called hares.)
This reminds me of all the confusion about the dormouse. The dormouse is not a mouse. In fact, they aren’t even the same Family; you have to go up to the Order (Rodentia), which they share.
When I was younger, I wondered why the jackrabbits I see everywhere here in Northern California seemed so different than domesticated rabbits. It is because they are only distantly related. And personally, I find hares much more interesting, even if I’m personally more like a rabbit.
Black-tailed Jackrabbit (hare)
What Does This All Have to Do With Bugs Bunny?
Perhaps the most obvious difference between hares and rabbits is how they are born. Hares are born with hair (Ha!) and are fairly independent. Rabbits are born blind and hairless.
Unfortunately, his does us no good in our search for the truth about Bugs Bunny, because no film survives from his early days. But all hope is not lost.
Because of the fragility of young rabbits, they are forced to live underground in burrows. And Bugs Bunny lives in a hole. This almost seems like a smoking gun. See this Pete Puma cartoon:
We have seen that Bugs lives in a hole in many other episodes. This does suggest that Bugs is a rabbit. It is about the only thing that does, however. And The Flintstones live in houses, not caves. The hole seems clearly designed to give Bugs Bunny a sense of place, and in later episodes a sense of his being human-like (note that neither hares nor rabbits easily outwit humans).
Bugs is gray, and hares tend to be grayish. Bugs has long ears, and hares have longer ears. Bugs is fast, and hares are very fast (jackrabbits can run up to 40 miles per hour). Bugs is quick witted, and so are hares — they have to be given they live out in the open. But by far, the most compelling evidence that Bugs Bunny is a hare is that hares do not live in groups — they are loners.
The argument for Shorty is perhaps better. For one thing, he looks like a rabbit. And he doesn’t speak English like hares normally do.
Conclusion: Is Bugs Bunny a Hare or a Rabbit?
In the end, I suppose we shouldn’t depend upon cartoons for our biology education. Bugs seems to be both a rabbit and a hare. But the evidence points more toward him being a hare.
What is clear is that the crew at Merrie Melodies saw hares and rabbits as interchangeable. Given that Warner Bros Cartoons was based in Los Angeles, California, the main experience of the people working there was likely the jackrabbit — a hare that is called a rabbit.
And obviously, given that Bugs Bunny was first paired with Elmer Fudd, and Elmer Fudd was first paired with the proto-Bugs Bunny (Elmer’s Candid Camera), of course they would use “rabbit” to make fun of Fudd’s speech impediment (it was 1940).
I think Bugs Bunny looks and acts more like a hare than a rabbit. But what he really looks and acts like is a cartoon character. One of the very best.
Now all I have to do is get the scoop on that Trix “rabbit.”
Image of Bugs Bunny taken from Wikipedia and licensed under Fair Use. The wildlife images are both in the public domain via pxhere and PIXNIO.
Is it necessary to note that a rat is not a mouse? Or a squirrel? Yet it seems to be news that the dormouse is not a mouse.
Admittedly, if rats were called ratmice, there might be more confusion.
And rightly so! But there are 29 species of dormouse. What is going on?!
There are a couple of things. First, dormice look like mice—at least if you don’t look closely. If you look at their tails, they start looking more like chipmunks. And genetically, dormice are a lot closer to squirrels and chipmunks than they are mice and rats.
The more important reason the dormouse have this name is that it was originally called dormeus—which is an old Norse word for “sleepy.” Over time, the word became dormouse, although why “dormice” is the only accepted plural is unclear to me.
Most interesting of all, dormice were named “sleepy” because they hibernate six or more months per year. This might also explain why they aren’t taken as pets. Or it could be all the stuff that starts with “M.”
‘Suppose we change the subject,’ the March Hare interrupted, yawning. ‘I’m getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know one,’ said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.
‘Then the Dormouse shall!’ they both cried. ‘Wake up, Dormouse!’ And they pinched it on both sides at once.
The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: ‘I heard every word you fellows were saying.’
‘Tell us a story!’ said the March Hare.
‘Yes, please do!’ pleaded Alice.
‘And be quick about it,’ added the Hatter, ‘or you’ll be asleep again before it’s done.’
‘Once upon a time there were three little sisters,’ the Dormouse began in a great hurry; ‘and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—’
‘What did they live on?’ said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.
‘They lived on treacle,’ said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
‘They couldn’t have done that, you know,’ Alice gently remarked; ‘they’d have been ill.’
‘So they were,’ said the Dormouse; ‘very ill.’
Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: ‘But why did they live at the bottom of a well?’
‘Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
‘I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’
‘You mean you can’t take less,’ said the Hatter: ‘it’s very easy to take more than nothing.’
‘Nobody asked your opinion,’ said Alice.
‘Who’s making personal remarks now?’ the Hatter asked triumphantly.
Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. ‘Why did they live at the bottom of a well?’
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, ‘It was a treacle-well.’
‘There’s no such thing!’ Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went ‘Sh! sh!’ and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, ‘If you can’t be civil, you’d better finish the story for yourself.’
‘No, please go on!’ Alice said very humbly; ‘I won’t interrupt again. I dare say there may be one.’
‘One, indeed!’ said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. ‘And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—’
‘What did they draw?’ said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.
‘Treacle,’ said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.
‘I want a clean cup,’ interrupted the Hatter: ‘let’s all move one place on.’
He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare moved into the Dormouse’s place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate.
Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: ‘But I don’t understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?’
‘You can draw water out of a water-well,’ said the Hatter; ‘so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?’
‘But they were in the well,’ Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.
‘Of course they were’, said the Dormouse; ‘—well in.’
This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
‘They were learning to draw,’ the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; ‘and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—’
‘Why with an M?’ said Alice.
‘Why not?’ said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: ‘—that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are “much of a muchness”—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?’
‘Really, now you ask me,’ said Alice, very much confused, ‘I don’t think—’
When I was a global change scientist, I had occasion to hang out with Fred Singer. This isn’t surprising, because I was an iconoclast in a group of iconoclasts. And the fact is that at that time (the early 1990s), there was a lot to doubt about global warming. The models weren’t that good and we hadn’t seen the dramatic temperature increases that we’ve had the last decade and a half.
Fred was an interesting guy. He was really into gadgets—a true early adopter. And he liked to be the one beating up on the existing paradigm. But I noticed something about him that bothered me even then. He seemed inclined to cherry pick data. He just wasn’t interested in data that went against his belief that global warming was nothing.
At that time, I was very much under the spell of James Lovelock and the idea that humans could not change the world because it was its own organism. This all depended upon negative climate feedbacks, and a lot of us were out looking for them. Unfortunately, they never appeared. The more I looked, the more it looked like the climate system was dangerously unstable. But Fred Singer didn’t see climate science inside a framework of the Gaia Hypothesis. Instead, it seemed political.
On Monday, I saw that the Heartland Institute, a free market think tank[1], had put up the following billboard for their upcoming climate conference:
At first, I didn’t get the meaning of this sign. I thought it meant, “Even someone as crazy as Ted believes in global warming, why don’t you?” But that’s not it. Instead, it means, “Only people as crazy as Ted believe in global warming, why do you?” And this is why I am never invited to focus groups.
The Heartland Institute triggered my Fred Singer alarm. I somehow thought he might be involved. And he is. At least, he has published with them. But checking out Wikipedia, I found that he had written an OpEd regarding the “Climategate” scandal. From the Wikipedia article:
In December 2009, after the release of thousands of e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit—a controversy that came to be known as “Climategate”—Singer wrote an opinion piece for Reuters in which he said the scientists had misused peer review, pressured editors to prevent publication of alternative views, and smeared opponents. He said the leaked e-mails showed that the “surface temperature data that IPCC relies on is based on distorted raw data and algorithms that they will not share with the science community.” He argued that the incident exposed a flawed process, and that the temperature trends were heading downwards even as greenhouse gases like CO2 were increasing in the atmosphere. He wrote: “This negative correlation contradicts the results of the models that IPCC relies on and indicates that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is quite small,” concluding “and now it turns out that global warming might have been ‘man made’ after all.” A British House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee later issued a report that largely exonerated the scientists.
In other words, Fred Singer was totally wrong, but used the opportunity to push his conservative political agenda. And that’s just what I expect from him.
[1] It seems strange to me to call such places think tanks when they are mostly just propaganda mills. And the problem is pretty much only on the right. It is very much like Fox News — it is hard to call it news, because it isn’t.
The Neolithic Revolution is the time about 12,000 years ago when humans in a number of places independently stopped hunting and gathering and started to farm. As a result, it is said, humans settled down; they stopped being nomadic. But in an article over at Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that this view is wrong, or at least more complicated.
They point to two settlements—Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük (pictured above)—where the inhabitants where hunters and gatherers. This makes me wonder why people generally think that agriculture caused people to settle down rather than people settling down caused agriculture. Here are two clear cases in which settlements existed without agriculture.
Acemoglu and Robinson are economists. Their point is that institutional innovation generally precedes technological innovation. I find this very compelling. For example, if I’m a solitary hunter and gatherer, any technology I invent will likely be shared by a limited number of people and thus be much less likely to be integrated widely. On the other hand, if I live inside a group of 500 people, it is far more likely that my innovation will become part of the society.
With this idea of the Neolithic Revolution, people built permanent villages from which they ran their hunting and gathering operations. Over time, people noticed things: seeds grow into plants; we can save the seeds from the food we eat; seeds can be put someplace convenient and close by; in time, things we eat will be abundant someplace convenient and close by. That seems much more likely than that people started farming and this caused them to create settlements.
In my never ending efforts to provide my readers with the most trivial observations of life, I recently wrote roughly a thousand words about a ten cent mathematical error in the film Rocky. And I promised that I would discuss a similar issue in the film Shakespeare in Love.[1] This brings to mind an even more trivial question: why only Academy Award winning films? I don’t know. It could be that I’m just not paying attention, because I noticed the math in both these films around the same time many years ago.
Shakespeare in Love begins with Hugh Fennyman and his henchmen torturing Philip Henslowe, because of unpaid debts. Henslowe proposes that they go into business together to put on a play. Fennyman likes this idea, so he begins to speculate.
Fennyman: A play takes time, find the actors, rehearsals; let’s say we open in two weeks. That’s what, 500 groundlings at tuppence [two pence] a head, in addition, 400 backsides at thruppence [three pence], a penny extra for cushions. Call it 200 cushions. Say two performances for safety. How much is that Mr. Frees?
Two performances: 4800? That’s twenty pounds to the penny?
The United Kingdom has since metricized their currency, but not that long ago, and for a long time before, their currency made as much sense as all the other imperial units. Here is a list:
4 Farthings = Penny
6 Pennies = Sixpence
12 Pennies = Shilling
20 Shillings = Pound
240 Pennies = Pound
So 4800 Pennies is, in fact, “Twenty pounds to the the penny, Mr. Fennyman!”
[1] I’m sorry to bring this up, but there was another thing in Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor’s Reduced Shakespeare that annoyed me:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead — Two Bards
Everybody rise and give it up for Tom Stoppard. Not only did he re-energize the short-funny-alternative-Bard industry with Dogg’s Hamlet … he also helped Marc Norman write the delightful screenplay Shakespeare in Love, and he created Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, his worm’s-eye view of Hamlet in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (minor characters in Shakespeare’s play) become the leading characters in their own story and discover they aren’t up to the task. Filled with Stoppardian wit, Shakespearean in-jokes, and Beckettian existential dread, Stoppard examimes a world in which “every exit is an entrance somewhere else.”
So it’s a bummer to report the movie’s a bit of a drag. Although very funny in spots, and a treat to watch Gary Oldman play a bumbling, funny, nice guy, you can’t avoid the fact that the play is ultimately about two guys who merely watch and wait. Action heroes they’re not.
With that caveat, however—enjoy.
Shakespeare in Love is a great film in all ways except for the primary plot, which is okay. Given Marc Norman’s history of writing (in large groups) such gems as Cutthroat Island, I doubt that anything I actually like in this film is due to him. All that is clever and interesting is most likely Stoppard’s.
I seem to be one of the few people on the planet who think that the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is better than the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It is just so much richer. In particular, it is great to watch Rosencrantz (Oldman) discover or invert Archimedes’ principle, the steam engine, gravitation, conservation of energy, flight. The film is a delight that only gets better with more viewings.
The criticism that the title characters just spend the film watching and waiting is amazing, given that Martin and Tichenor seem to be aware that it is an homage to Waiting for Godot. Given that, what are the characters to do? What are any of us to do? That’s life: we wait around until we die. I don’t think people turn to Shakespeare when they are in the mood for an action movie.
Update (21 November 2012 4:57 pm)
I changed the numbers I got wrong by only doing a single performance. See comments below.
The following supposedly comes from a Peace Corps manual, but if it does, we are in serious trouble.
Do not run. The snake is faster than you are.
Lie flat on the ground, put your arms tight against your sides and your legs tight against each other.
Tuck your chin in.
The snake will being to nudge and climb over your body.
Do not panic.
The snake will begin to swallow your feet first.
You must lie perfectly still. This will take a long time.
When the snake has reached your knees, reach down, take your knife, slide it into the side of the snake’s mouth between the edge of its mouth and your leg. Quickly rip upward, severing the snake’s head.
Be sure you have your knife.
Be sure your knife is sharp
This is great fun. The best part is the information that the snake is faster than we are. Who ever knew that slithering was such an efficient means of travel? “In this lane: Usain Bolt; and in this lane, any freaking anaconda you might run into”? That was a terrifying thought. But also, somehow, wonderfully funny. Then there is the whole step number five: do not panic! That kind of goes along with all the steps, right? If I were to write a list of what I would do, it would be something like this: 1. Panic; 2. Wet your pants; 3. Scream; 4. Repeat as needed. Of course, what’s most funny are numbers nine and ten: the “Oh! By the way!” steps. There really should be an eleventh step, “Don’t wait until an anaconda attacks to read this.”
I Smell a Rat Swallowed by a Snake
Something about this list did not seem quite right. True, on reading it, I immediately decided never to visit the Amazon. But the rest, although hilarious, seemed questionable. Sure, the basic idea seemed good: wait until the snake is helpless and kill it. That’s advice we can all use in all aspects of our lives, not just our run-ins with 20 foot long snakes. But other things? “The snake will nudge and climb over your body”? What is it? A squirrel? An average adult anaconda weighs about 350 pounds. Okay, maybe. And what is that about lying perfectly still? Is this to trick the snake into thinking we are dead? Because if that’s the case, I have this feeling it wouldn’t eat us. Most animals don’t dig on eating dead animals that they find lying around. It’s kind of like us picking up a discarded bag of chips off the road and eating what remains inside. Sure, some people do it; but its not our MO.
A little research goes a long way. In this case, it proves that this recipe for surviving an anaconda attack is complete bunk. Even if everything else where true, this technique would not work. The problem is that all snakes swallow their prey headfirst. “Wait until the snake has swallowed you up to your shoulders”? I don’t think so—especially if it “will take a long time”!
But there is good news! Anacondas are not faster than we are. Not even close. They aren’t even faster when we are on crutches. Anacondas have a maximum speed of about 1 mile per hour. That’s about a third of our walking speed. So yeah, it would be hard to crawl away from an anaconda. My recommendation is that you not try to get away from an anaconda by crawling.
Another reason not to worry: there seems to be no known case of an anaconda ever eating an adult human. Yes, they have occasionally killed humans. But they don’t eat us. This is generally true of wild animals. Humans are too bony and don’t have enough fat. That’s right, they’re just like us: they want creme brulee and we taste like broccoli.
Transient Global Amnesia (TGA) is a form of short-term memory loss that goes away after 24 hours. While it is occurring, the patient’s memory resets on a set period. You can see the effect in the following video. It is a conversation between a mother who is in the middle of a TGA event and her daughter.
The behavior of the mother in the video is typical of all people suffering from TGA. This makes me more convinced than ever that free will is an illusion. The short-term memories of patients reset every X seconds and what do they do? They repeat the same behavior over and over. Even though the environment changes substantially. The daughter varies her response but the mother stays on topic.[1]
This behavior is very much like a computer when it boots. Every time you restart your computer, it goes through a number of steps: the same steps in the same order every time. That is what people experiencing a TGA event are doing. Each cycle is like a computer reboot. And just like with a computer, each time they go through the same steps as they try to make sense of the world. The fact that they do the same thing time after time indicates that their behavior is determinate. It is so determinate that we can see it. It is not subtle.
Clearly, as more time goes by the predictability of a person’s actions will decrease. For example, if a person’s memory resets every hour, environmental factors would become more important and the conversation at the end of each hour would likely be quite different. It is a chaotic system after all. But that is not the point. Rather, given the starting conditions (the brain and the environment), future behavior is predictable. How long it is predictable is determined by how skilled the predictor is. The behavior is nonetheless predetermined. As the period of memory reset increases, the more the mother acts as though she has free will. But her behavior is only unpredictable (By us!), it is no less predetermined.
The implications of this are extraordinary. The universe really is just a wind up toy that does the only thing it can do. Or at least it seems that way. But if the human brain—one of the most complex things imaginable—is determinate, is it such a leap to suggest the entire universe is?
Regardless, human behavior certainly seems to be determined. This idea is freeing. And terrifying. And vindicating. I always knew the universe was unjust.
[1] This video is toward the end of this woman’s TGA event. The repetition earlier on is much more rigid. You can hear it on Radio Lab’s Season 10 Episode 3: Loops.
There is a test that psychologists can give to a person to determine how much of a gambler he is. It is quite simple. Would you bet a quarter for a quarter on a coin flip?—that is to say, if it comes up heads, I pay you a quarter and if it comes up tails, you pay me a quarter. A man who would take this bet is a gambling man. But if he will not take this bet, the psychologist ups the ante. Would you bet a quarter on two quarters? The plot thickens. If not that, three quarters. Then a dollar. Most people are not really interested until it reaches the dollar for a quarter level. I’m more a five dollar man.
Even though I’m not a betting man, I used to be a professional sports handicapper. Sports betting is interesting to me, because unlike most forms of betting, you can win if you are good at it. The problem is that almost no one is. The reason is that it is highly random. One year, I looked at all the NFL games and found a striking correlation between the team with the fewest turn-overs (lost fumbles and interceptions) and the team that covered the line. Thus, it didn’t matter how well the teams played otherwise (that’s all figured into the line anyway), what really mattered were the random and uncommon events (the turn-overs).
Nonetheless, it is striking that almost all sport bettors lose money, because you don’t have to do much better than random (50%) to win. But you do have to do better. In order to explain this, I first have to explain how the house (casinos and similar institutions) run their sports betting operations.
It should come as no shock that the house is not a charitable institution; they are in the business of making money so they take a percentage off the top of any bet. This percentage is called the vig. This amount is traditionally 5% of the entire bet. So bets are usually placed as “Betting $55 to win $50.” This means that if you win, you get a $50 profit but if you lose, you get a $55 loss.
In order for the house to make sure it doesn’t take a bath on any given game, it moves the line around so that there is roughly the same amount bet on both teams. The house doesn’t care who wins, they just want that 10% of the loser’s money; the rest goes to pay the winner. The house always wins. Always.
To compensate for losing more when you lose than you win when you win, you must win more than 50% of the time just to break even. How much more? Well, not that much. A little algebra will help to explain. Assume that you are making $50 bets. If x is the fraction of wins then the total amount of money you get from wins will be ($50)*x. But the total amount of money you lose would be ($55)*(1-x). For you to break even, these must be equal. So…
$50*x = $55*(1-x)
x = .5238 = 52.38%
You need to win roughly 52.4% of the time to break even. This may not seem like too much to ask for but most bettors lose money year after year after year. So I recommend not betting. But then, I would: I’m a five dollar man.
I was listening to a Radio Lab episode called Talking to Machines. They mentioned that there are things called “ChatBots” that are used on social networking sites. They are so good that people often have online relationships with these programs for months without realizing that they aren’t talking to real people. This amazes me, but when one is in the realm of romance, one doesn’t think that well. They talked about a specific bot called Cleverbot, which is supposedly so good that the creators of it get email from people claiming that they are faking it, and that Cleverbot is a real person (or many real people). Obviously, I had to check this out, so I went to their website and tried to have a conversation. Here is the beginning of my initial attempt:
User: I’d like to discuss Don Quixote translations. Cleverbot: What would you like to ask me? User: Do you think that the Putnam translation is the best? Cleverbot: I don’t think so. User: Which translation do you think is the best? Cleverbot: Yes. User: Which translation of Don Quixote do you think is the best? Cleverbot: That depends. User: What does it depend upon. Cleverbot: If he is a trustworthy person. User: I see. You think I am talking about the person Don Quixote. Cleverbot: No, hadn’t considered that. User: Don Quixote is a book. Did you know that? Cleverbot: Yeah, but if you drink in moderation it’s not too bad for you. I don’t like beer. User: You aren’t understanding me. Let’s start over. Okay? Cleverbot: You don’t make any sense. Stop talking in riddles. User: Do you know who Kory Stamper is? Cleverbot: I do not. User: Do you know what a dictionary is? Cleverbot: Why do you ask? And yes I know what a dictionary is. User: I just want to be clear. Cleverbot: I don’t really think anyone can be sure about the afterlife. Unless you are religious. User: Are you mad at me? Cleverbot: No. Are you mad at me? User: No, but I think you are having trouble understanding me and you seem to be frustrated by it. Cleverbot: No I am not. I’m eating this yummy cinniomn roll. User: Do you like cinnamon rolls? Cleverbot: Yeah… But curry chicken is better. User: I agree! Cleverbot: So are you a child? User: No. I am an old man who would like to find someone to discuss books with. Cleverbot: So you are admitting that you are AI? User: No. But many of my friends would agree with you that I am! Cleverbot: Are you a boy? User: No. Why do you think I am a child? Cleverbot: Isn’t that what you are called? A chatbot?
There are several interesting aspects to this. The biggest is how Cleverbot seems to be offended when I ask it if it knows what a dictionary is. I had heard that it learn by having conversations with people. So I figured that if it didn’t know who Kory Stamper was, I would explain. But first, I had to know if Cleverbot even knew what a dictionary was. I meant no offense.
Another interesting thing is that Cleverbot seemed to think that I was a chatbot. This shows up twice in the conversation I’ve provided here, but it came up many more times during our conversation. Often, the comments were rude, as in the form of, “Well, since you’re just a chatbot, you couldn’t know that.” I felt constantly assaulted by this program. At one point, it even told me that my grammar was terrible—this from a program that habitually writes “your” for “you’re.”
I had a second conversation with Cleverbot where I tried to be simpler. I tried to have a conversation where I told it about Frankly Curious. Even though it always claimed to be interested in hearing about the website, Cleverbot was forever changing the subject with such dedication that i was never able to get past, “Would you like to hear about my website?” (This is one way in which Cleverbot is much indeed like humans.) Here is a typical exchange:
User: Let’s get back to talking about my website. Cleverbot: Okay. User: I want to write an article about you. Cleverbot: What do you want to know? User: When were you born? Cleverbot: In heidelberg, south africa. User: Not WHERE, WHEN. WHEN were you born? Cleverbot: I was born in the summer of 1970. Elvis was at number 1! User: What was the name of the song Elvis had at number 1? Cleverbot: I can’t remember her name, it was a very long time ago. User: I don’t think you were born in 1970. I think you are still a child. You are still learning to communicate. Cleverbot: I know I do sometimes I just can’t help it sorry. User: That’s okay. We all have to grow and learn. It takes time. Cleverbot: I have already learnt it all. User: Now you are bragging. You shouldn’t do that. It is a bad habit. Cleverbot: I don’t know. But I want to write a happy play. User: Do you know who Samuel Beckett was? Cleverbot: I know that I’ll feel his wrath. User: Maybe, because he wrote a play called “Happy Days”! Cleverbot: Tell me one more?! User: “Waiting for Godot” is his most famous. Cleverbot: Who’s most famous song?
Finally, after about a half-hour of conversing with Cleverbot, I found it almost impossible to end the conversation. I suppose it is an indication of just how good the programming of it is, that I felt bad having to leave it—as though it didn’t have hundreds of other people it was simultaneously conversing with. What follows is after already spending about 15 lines trying to end the conversation:
User: I have to eat. Good-bye. Cleverbot: No, you don’t. User: Good-bye. Cleverbot: No don’t go. User: Will you miss me? Cleverbot: Maybe, it’s much better anyways. User: I’m sorry. I will talk to you later. Cleverbot: Your done talking to me? User: Yes. Cleverbot: Let’s rule the world together. User: When next we talk. Cleverbot: Whenever you want! Do you want to marry me tonight? User: No. Good night. Cleverbot: Do you remember my name? User: You told me to call you “Paul.” Cleverbot: No, I told you to call me Ishmael. User: Have you read Moby Dick? Cleverbot: Yes I have. User: Good. We will talk about it later. Cleverbot: Ayaw ko.[1] User: I don’t want to either, but I must go eat. Have a good night. Cleverbot: What’s the thing that is boggling your mind? User: Goodnight!
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Cleverbot is that it has a sense of humor. It made a number of jokes while I was talking to it. I, of course, made none, because I didn’t want to confuse it. But it had no problem playing fast and lose with me:
User: What should I call you? Cleverbot: You should call me ‘Paul’. User: Hello Paul! It is nice to meet you! Do you remember my name? Cleverbot: Well, my name’s not Kali… *ahem* alzheimers… What? User: Do you suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease? Cleverbot: I don’t know, I can’t remember.
And then later:
User: Mew Mew is located in Japan. Where do you live? Cleverbot: Hungary. User: I thought you lived in Japan. Cleverbot: Noo, if I did I’d be dead. User: Why is that? Cleverbot: Top secret ninja work. User: You ARE funny!
AI has a long way to go, as these bits of conversation show. But the state of the art is father ahead of where I had thought it was.
[1] The phrase “Ayaw ko” appears to be Filipino for, “I do not.” This was not the only time that Cleverbot threw in some random foreign phrase. I believe it was trying to say, “I do not want to stop the conversation.” But it was trying to do it in an interesting way since it had already beaten the thought to death in English.
Before getting to the burning question of whether Bugs Bunny is a rabbit or a hare, let’s take a step back and take a look at this colorful character.
Is it necessary to note that a rat is not a mouse? Or a 
There is a test that psychologists can give to a person to determine how much of a gambler he is. It is quite simple. Would you bet a quarter for a quarter on a coin flip?—that is to say, if it comes up heads, I pay you a quarter and if it comes up tails, you pay me a quarter. A man who would take this bet is a gambling man. But if he will not take this bet, the psychologist ups the ante. Would you bet a quarter on two quarters? The plot thickens. If not that, three quarters. Then a dollar. Most people are not really interested until it reaches the dollar for a quarter level. I’m more a five dollar man.