Natebot
I Feel Like Natebot Tonight.

Daylight Saving Time comes early this year and will last longer too. I admit I did not know a wit about it till moving to the West Coast, because our clocks used to run just fine in Indiana (until the new governor decided to fix them.)

Besides rolling forward your clock, you'll need to run some OS updates on your computer to ensure all your progs work. However you'll have to bribe your child to fix your VCR (I suggest ample offering of Pocky,) and you Tandy TRS-80 users are on your own.

This is not the first change. In 1986 President Reagan increased the length of DST, which the gov claim saves the US 300,000 barrels of oil per year. Sound impressive? That's just a fraction of the oil pumped out of some countries in a day. It's less than half of what California produced in 2000 in a day. Don't get me wrong, a penny saved, as they say, is a penny to be spent elsewhere, but is it worth the hullabaloo that electronic manufacturers, airlines, farmers, and IT departments have to deal with? In the short term I think the answer clearly no.

There is a solution though that would help keep the GDP up. Simply let bars stay open additional hour in October when its time to fall back. Currently, bars closing at 1:59am don't benefit from the time change that happens one minute after closing. Simply keeping a bar open one minute longer (magically bestowing sixty one minutes to that day's business) will see millions in alcohol sales.

Benedict Carey has a thought provoking article in last week's NYTimes about a cognitive phenomenon known as "magical thinking" in psychology.

There he notes that while anthropologists have been seeking out remote tribes to study weird rituals and superstitions, really they only have to turn to their neighbors. Especially so in Indianapolis the next week, where fervent fans hope to out-pray their counterparts in Chicago.

This sort of thinking starts early reports Carey, but quickly reality barges in:

Children exhibit a form of magical thinking by about 18 months, when they begin to create imaginary worlds while playing. By age 3, most know the difference between fantasy and reality, though they usually still believe (with adult encouragement) in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. By age 8, and sometimes earlier, they have mostly pruned away these beliefs, and the line between magic and reality is about as clear to them as it is for adults.

Or phrasing it another way, most adults can distinguish between magic and reality about as well as an 8 year old. Cynical much? Well yes, but it helps explain things like witch burnings or local ministers burning 14-year olds D&D books because they believe they know the mind of a jealous white-haired man who lives above the clouds (somewhere I must have missed "do not play with polyhedral dice for they are an abomination" or "suffer not your children to pretend to vanquish the forces of evil for orcs and balrogs are previous unto me.")

Carey reports that some scientist ponder that if superstitious behaviors are products of the brain and they have not been weeded out by evolutionary behavior (for example, say you believed that your god Vulcan demands you should only eat hot coals. This kind of illogical and superstitious behavior would certainly put a damper on carrying on your genetic linage) then maybe it has found a purpose to serve and does some sort of good (for example, chanting a non-sense mantra gives you confidence to ace that interview.)

I wonder though if it is instead more like vestigial organ - lingering far after its usefulness has been surpassed. More of an appendix than a thumb. Like an appendix it is harmless but on occasion can be life threatening, and removing it is far from detrimental.

Yet, Carey points out:

This emerging portrait of magical thinking helps explain why people who fashion themselves skeptics cling to odd rituals that seem to make no sense, and how apparently harmless superstition may become disabling.

So even we skeptics have our appendix. Just another reason to keep the Rationality OS well oiled and running in the background of your hardware at all times even if it is a lot slower to react than your hardwired instincts.

Labels: philosophy, Religion, Science

Remember that freak snow storm after Thanksgiving I mention? Well more snow is dumping on the Puget Sound area and the drivers are acting all crazy again. SUV drivers on a ice-free highway with tire chains...that's weather paranoia. It hailed at work and then a inch of snow, making for great snowball-fight weather.

Though I do not have weather pics to share, I also wanted to point out that you can always see the newest pics in the gallery by subscribing to the Gallery RSS feed