Understanding (and Refuting) the Arguments for God

Michael Shermer has made a career of skepticism — he is the founder of Skeptic, for one — but in his 2000 book, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, he does not come across as the hardcore atheist you might expect. (He prefers "nontheist.") One can appreciate his honesty and integrity. In a media that both champions and lambasts the so-called "New Atheist" movement, Shermer says one thing: Show me the evidence.

Certain fundamentalists and atheists alike see the question of God as an either-or proposal, not content on the murky speculations presented by the other "side." As Shermer points out, what we consider "miraculous" simply means what we do not currently understand. In the books he investigates 10 arguments for the existence of God. It should be noted that he does not question whether religion is right or wrong; he merely looks at these arguments from a reasonable standpoint.

1. / 2. Prime Mover/First Cause: The first two arguments essentially state: Since everything is in constant motion, there must have been something that first moved everything. And that is God.
This argument results in an infinite regress. If God is the entirety of the universe, and everything in it must be moved, then something must have moved God. Rephrased, God either must be in the universe or is the universe. If God does not need to be caused, then not everything in the universe needs a cause. If everything does need a cause, then something caused God.

3. Possibility and Necessity Argument: Not everything is possible, for that admits the possibility that there could be nothing. If nothing once existed, the universe could not have come into existence. What exists of its own necessity is God.
Shermer borrows from Martin Gardner by stating that this is a "mysterian mystery" — the idea that nothing is unknowable is due to our minds being unable to process the thought of it. It is conceivable that nothing could exist; we just cannot imagine it.

4. The Perfectionist/Ontological Argument: This convoluted argument presented by an 11th century archbishop named St. Anselm boils down to: a) There must be a cause for our very being, goodness, and perfection, and b) Is it impossible to think of God as nonexistent.
As Shermer points out, if the first point were true, you would have to add the false, ignoble, and worst, all of which would also be God. This argument is not uncommon: God seems to be around when things go well, suddenly on leave when they do not. As for perfection, humans invented this concept. You can always think of something "better than," as in adding one to infinity. Finally, it is impossible to think of anything as nonexistent, since our thoughts are always on something that exists, has existed, or could potentially exist.  This argument proves nothing.

5. The Design/Teleological Argument: The heart of the modern creationist model: Since things act for a reason, there must be a designer. Otherwise how could we explain the perfect symbiotic relationship between insects and flowers?
Shermer points out that there are many design flaws in nature, such as the hind legs of a python and a whale's flipper. I'll add the human neck, which from a structural standpoint is not up to par with the 14-pound weight of our heads, especially with all the gazing down at our phones. If God perfectly designed us, he would have foreseen the ridiculous amount of time we stare at devices; thus, our necks would be much sturdier.

6. The Miracles Argument: The miracles of the Bible and any after can only be explained by an intervention from God.
As stated above, a miracle is simply something we cannot explain. To imagine all the great works of literature written thanks to the human imagination, then to somehow think the Bible is a special edition where everything is true, is foolish. It is, like other books of its time and since, a work of fiction.

7. Pascal's Wager Argument: The famous wager by French mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal: If we bet God does not exist and he does, we have everything to lose and gain nothing. If we believe, we have everything to win.
Obviously there is no proof in this argument. As Shermer points out, if believing implies going to church, attending services, and so forth, then there is much to lose: time. Also, what god are we talking about believing in? If not the Judeo-Christian God, you'd have a lot to lose as well.

8. The Mystical Experience Argument: Mystical experiences have existed throughout history in many cultures. They imply some sort of direct connection with the divine, usually in the form of "light" or a "feeling."
Shermer points out that the "visions" experienced in such encounters correlate with temporal lobe seizures or other neurochemical reactions. For myself, I have experienced a number of such "visions" on LSD, ayahuasca, and other substances. While emotionally and mentally profound, I see no reason to attribute chemistry to a creator.

9. Fideism, or the Credo Quia Consolans Argument: This is not an argument at all. Basically, it means you believe in God because it consoles you.
Many people believe in religion for exactly this reason. And yet, if beliefs are based on emotions rather than evidence, it negates the necessity of reason and science altogether. You can't argue against this one as it's not an argument, but it still does not hold up from a logical standpoint.

10. The Moral Argument: Alongside the creationist argument, this is the most popular: How can there be morals without God?
The notion that everyone would turn into robbers, rapists, and murderers if it were discovered there is no God is ludicrous. Morals are based on cultural upbringing and, to a degree, genetics. Likewise, if morals were the domain of God and He is omnipotent, then there is a flaw in His creation when humans do bad things. There is no sense in this argument; altruism and empathy are part of our evolution as social beings. Living in society helps us create morals for the betterment of the whole.
Image: St Salvator church, God. (Photo by: Godong/UIG via Getty Images)

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Scientists Accidentally Create a Battery That Can Outlast Your Device

Over the last decade or so it's become increasingly obvious that the limits of battery technology are a pothole on our road to the future. It's not even a new problem; scientists have been trying to invent better batteries since Edison. Whether we're talking about storing clean energy, more practical electric cars, or maybe even just our dozing-off phones, battery issues are slowing progress w-a-a-y down. They're not powerful enough unless they're uselessly big and seriously pricey. They take a long time to recharge. And for keeping the devices we depend on up and running, they just don't last long enough.

That is, at least, until researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) stumbled across a way to make ridiculously long-lasting rechargeable batteries. They've made a battery that takes 200,000 charge cycles, says, "Is that all you got?" and keeps going. That's 400 times the charges that a lithium battery can handle.

They were as surprised as anyone. "We started to cycle the devices, and then realized that they weren't going to die," admitted chair of UCI's Chemistry department Reginald Penner in an interview with Popular Science. "We don't understand the mechanism of that yet."

Penner's lab had been experimenting with replacing lithium with gold nanowires—they're thousands of times thinner than a human hair and very conductive, with a large surface area for storing and transferring electrons. The goal was to make a solid-state battery, without the liquid lithium batteries contain that makes them overly sensitive to heat and combustible. Other researchers have experimented with using the nanowires before, but they're fragile.

At UCI, PhD candidate Mya Le Thai got the idea of suspending the brittle nanowire in a protective electrolyte gel after coating them with manganese oxide.

• Martha Heil

And boom: Super-Battery.
 "Mya was playing around, and she coated this whole thing with a very thin gel layer and started to cycle it," as Penner tells it. "She discovered that just by using this gel, she could cycle it hundreds of thousands of times without losing any capacity."

Rechargeables usually die after 6-7,000 charges, so this is amazing. UCI suspects the gel makes the nanowire more pliable, and thus prevent the cracking that ended previous experiments. This could be the kind of battery-life breakthrough we've been waiting for.
Here's the young scientist herself telling the story of this amazing leap forward.

• Headline image: Steve Zylius / UCI

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Who Doesn’t Love Dwayne Johnson? — The Ringer

The Undeniables

How Rocky Maivia became one of the biggest stars in the world

Ringer illustration

In the Internet Age, monoculture is unachievable. But there remain a few things we can all agree on.​ The Ringer is looking at this rarefied group all week. These are our Undeniables.


the fans had gotten their way, Dwayne Johnson never would've had a chance to become the Rock. When the third-generation wrestler first popped up on WWF television in 1996, it was as "Rocky Maivia" — the first name from his dad, the last from his maternal grandfather, both of whom were pro wrestlers. The audience, though, wasn't having it.
"His first wrestling persona was the perception of what a third-generation wrestling star was supposed to be: a smiling babyface [wrestling good guy], slapping hands with everybody and claiming to be fighting for truth and justice," said Brian Gewirtz, an 11-year writer for WWE who's now the head of television development for Johnson's Seven Bucks productions. "And obviously the fans threw up all over it. It's pretty daunting if you're being told 'die Rocky die' by fans when you're just doing what you're told."
The voice saying, "Now there's gonna be the man right there," belongs to Jim Ross, the lead commentator of the WWF through the 1990s and then the company's vice president of talent relations. He offered Johnson his first WWF contract.

"I just thought that he was a can't-miss guy. I paid him the most we'd ever paid anybody in that respect. I think he got a low-six-figure deal, and [WWE chairman] Vince [McMahon] was astonished that I'd given him that. Rock got a bigger contract than a lot of guys because I felt he had an unlimited upside."
"Unlimited upside" now gets tossed around by coaches and draftniks with barely a passing consideration, but in this case — even judged by the intangible terms of sports entertainment — Ross was close to right.
"He had a kind of odorless and invisible aura," Ross said. "Obviously I could see a 6–4 or 6–5, 270-pound individual who was handsome, great look, all that stuff. I think anybody who had any objectivity could have said that this guy looks too good in an 8-by-10 not to investigate. But when we got him in the ring, he had a natural aptitude. He had it — early."
In 2016, it's easy to look at Johnson in all his rippling, sui generis glory and take him for granted. But he came to wrestling only after his football dreams petered out. And he almost didn't make it as a wrestler. When he left for Hollywood, he almost stalled out there, too. The road to becoming one of the biggest stars in the world had plenty of red lights.
"I thought we had done a really good job of creating a babyface with the vignettes we put together," Ross said. "Little did we know that he was gonna march out there in the [Madison Square] Garden and that we were going to get 'die Rocky die' chants."
Was Ross worried when his six-figure investment got booed out of the arena?
"No. I just knew it might take us a little longer than we might have wanted. He was ready to be the biggest star we had after a couple of days."
It took closer to three years. After a knee injury put him out of action for a few months, Johnson got the chance for a reboot. The idea was hatched to bring him back as a heel — a wrestling bad guy — to quash the boos. But Johnson didn't just want to silence the boos; he wanted to embrace them. Rocky Maivia became "the Rock," and the rest is history.
"As he infamously told Vince, 'Just give me a microphone and one chance, and I'll take this character and run away with it,'" Gewirtz said. "I think that's a pretty strong parallel to what he does in movies and television appearances — once you give him that ball and let him run with it, you're going to get something incredible."
In August 1997, he got the mic and took his chance:
The lesson was real: Johnson would make you love him, make you respect him, and he'd do whatever it took to make it happen.

ewirtz first met the Rock when the writer was hired by MTV to script some segments featuring wrestlers introducing music videos to promote SummerSlam 1999. By that time, Johnson had already headlined a WrestleMania, and thanks to his urging, Gewirtz was hired by the WWF several months later. Johnson was eager to collaborate, even as other wrestlers sneered at accepting help from writers.
"You knew that [Johnson's] talent was different than the others."
When wrestlers do their match-hyping interviews backstage, they can choose to record them ahead of time or do them live. According to Gewirtz, almost everybody chooses the former, for the safety net in case something goes wrong. But Johnson insisted on doing his promos live.
"When we did a promo, it actually became an event backstage. The wrestlers and staff would stop what they were doing and gather around the set to watch him. He's the only person I've ever seen that with to this day. It was, 'Pick up your popcorn box and watch the Rock cut a promo.'"
In 2000, Vince McMahon somehow conned Lorne Michaels into letting the Rock take his live magnetism to NBC. At the time, having a wrestler host Saturday Night Live seemed a little bit crazy, but Johnson pulled it off.
"That was a big turning point," says Gewirtz. "Not only did he break perceptions about himself, but he broke perceptions about wrestlers in general. Whenever you would see a wrestler on a sitcom or in a movie, it would be the typical grunting, musclebound caveman. His performance on SNL just completely obliterated that perception."
("Although the WWF is still my first love, it turns out that I'm also pretty good and a natural at comedy," Johnson said in his monologue. "People also tell me I look like a sexy Rob Schneider.")
Johnson's first big movie role was in the Mummy spinoff The Scorpion King,in 2002. Maybe it was a little schlocky, but nobody does schlock better than Johnson. Pro wrestling, the Fast and the Furious franchise, the Baywatch movie that's coming next year — Johnson elevates schlock into something, well, if not something great, than something entirely palatable and impossibly hip.
"When I heard he was off to do The Scorpion King," Gewirtz said, "even though it was kind of a little thing, [I thought], 'Yeah, I see where this is going. This is going to be huge.'"
The movie made $165 million worldwide on a $60 million budget.
"I went to the opening of Scorpion King and I sat next to Vince," Ross said. "We didn't have to say anything. We looked at each other and knew we'd better be thinking about what's next because that kid on the screen was probably not going to be with us much longer, not full time anyway. And he wasn't."

hen The Hollywood Reporter named him one of Hollywood's 100 most powerful people last week, Johnson Instagrammed his thanks, along with the credo of his Seven Bucks production company (which he cofounded with his then-wife, Dany Garcia): "Hungry, humble and always be the hardest and smartest workers in the room." Gewirtz has another phrase for it: "benevolent world domination."
Besides the Furious franchise and the San Andreases and Journeys and Central Intelligence — which is the biggest live-action original hit of the year — Johnson's HBO show, Ballers, is about to start its second season. He's also producing a talk show, a reality show about marching band battles, a music history show, a prison documentary, a Bob Hope–style USO troop spectacular, and even an app that mainlines Johnson's unyielding work ethic into your soul. The Rock Clock is a small thing, but it feels like an accidental statement: It's the shift from metaphorical media omnipresence to the real thing. The Rock isn't a nerd subculture or cottage industry. He's everything.
According to The New York Times, Johnson has a Q score as oversize as his lats: "Since the company began tracking him seven years ago, Mr. Johnson has maintained a Q score that's consistently way above average, topping Tom Cruise, Mark Wahlberg, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the earlier paragon of musclebound crossovers. Mr. Johnson 'established a foothold and held on to it.'"
In 2013, he was Hollywood's highest-grossing actor, according to Forbes, and he had to earn it: "Iron Man 3 is the highest-grossing movie of 2013 so far with $1.2 billion. But that's not enough to put its star, Robert Downey Jr., on top of our list of the top-grossing actors. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson beat him this year by working more."
The determination isn't a new phenomenon, according to Ross: "He never was willing to settle to be Stone Cold [Steve Austin's] understudy. He didn't come up the way Austin did, but the Rock never wanted to be no. 2. He always wanted to be no. 1, and that was with no ill will toward Steve."
"Dwayne could read the alphabet and it would be entertaining," Gewirtz said. "But the flip side of that is that every time, Dwayne would say, 'OK, how do we raise the bar? How do we do something that's never been done in the history of the business?' That was the expectation."
In the world of pro wrestling, characters flip back and forth from good guy to bad guy on a fairly regular basis. But nobody plays the clean-cut, all-American, everybody-loves-me character anymore. Except one, in Hollywood, and his name is Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson's Instagram account, which counts 57 million followers, is a hypnotizing churn of inspirational quotes, respect for country (along with the tease of a future presidential run), respect for elders, his pair of French bulldog puppies, him saving his puppies from drowning, his grief over the death of one of the puppies, and (of course) workout porn. Johnson hasn't just changed what the perception of a wrestler is; he's changed what the perception of an action star is, and he's done it by turning back to the babyface character that once nearly got him booed out of the ring.
It took a long time, but Johnson finally made Rocky Maivia cool.

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100-Year-Old Box of Negatives Discovered Frozen In Block of Antarctica’s Ice

While restoring one of the exploration huts in Antarctica, Conservators of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust discovered a box that turned out to be a remarkable treasure. It contained 22 never-before-seen cellulose nitrate negatives documenting the life of Antarctic explorers a 100 years back. Preserved in a block of ice, these negatives surprisingly lived up to our days to shine a light on the Antarctic heroic era and the landscape itself. [Read more...]

Alexander Stevens on Aurora deck, chief scientist and geologist.

Iceberg and land, Ross Island.

Alexander Stevens on the Aurora.

Big Razorback Island, McMurdo Sound. It was most likely taken from the deck of the Aurora in January 1915.

This photo was taken from the deck of the Aurora looking South to Hut Point Peninsula.

Cellulose nitrate negatives were found blocked together, so Wellington photography conservator have spent many hours restoring them until they revealed their secrets.

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All the history that’s going to die with the Campbell Apartment

With its dress code, high beamed ceiling, and expansive window of century-old leaded glass, the Campbell Apartment is a strange place indeed for a bar brawl.
But a winner-take-all war has raged for six months within the granite walls of this dark and elegant dowager of a cocktail lounge in Grand Central Terminal — a battle that pits old against new, staid against trendy, an Old Fashioned with a stirring rod against black barrel whiskey with muddled raspberries.
This week, old — in the personage of longtime owner Mark Grossich — waved the white flag.

The Campbell Apartment's longtime owner, Mark GrossichPhoto:

Matthew McDermott "It sucks, it blows, it's totally unfair," Grossich said of losing his lease, after 17 years running Campbell Apartment and a half a year fighting eviction in court.

Originally the offices of a Jazz Age financier named John W. Campbell, the space had been a water-damaged, drop-ceilinged shell when Grossich, at a cost of $2.5 million, lovingly restored it to its original, baronial splendor.

Scott GerberPhoto: Chad Rachman

As CEO of Hospitalty Holdings, Inc., which owns Midtown's Carnegie club and Murray Hill's Lexington's, Grossich is a master of the timeless, intimate cocktail lounge, temples to single malt scotch, fine cigars and tufted upholstery.

The Campbell Apartment was a cornerstone of that civilized empire.

Mark Grossich looks down on his "empire."Photo: Matthew McDermott

But in one month, on July 28, Grossich must turn over the Campbell Apartment space to its new lease-holder, Scott Gerber, who runs such hip, jangly and galvanic lounges as the Irvington in the W Union Square and Mr. Purple on the roof of the Hotel Indigo on the Lower East Side.
The new guy plans to transform the Campbell Apartment and its "business casual" dress code into something far less stuffy. Something less Brooks Brothers, more limited edition sneakers and Gucci T-shirts.
"Right now, the image that people have of it very often is it's a place to go before special occasions," Gerber explains.
"So if you're going to a black-tie event at the Hyatt in Grand Central, you go in [to the Campbell Apartment] for a drink. That's OK, you can be in a tuxedo," Gerber says.
"But it's also OK for a guy or a girl to be in jeans or a T-shirt. That's OK too. That's the way people live," Gerber says, reasonably enough.
"We have a lot of athletes or musicians or celebrities who come into our places — what are you going to do, tell them we don't want you in because you're wearing a denim jacket?"
Well, yes, tell them exactly that, Grossich would counter.
Plenty of celebs come to Campbell Apartment as well — George Clooney, Liam Neeson, President Bill Clinton among them — and none of them wore sneakers.
"Trendiness," he scowls of Gerber's plans. "I hate that word."

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Photo: Eilon Paz

Nearly a hundred years before it became a bit of an existential football, the Campbell Apartment was the business and pleasure lair of a millionaire financier named John W. Campbell.
A close pal and associate of William Vanderbilt — then chair of the New York Central Railroad — Campbell acquired the lease for the 25-by-60-foot space in 1923.
It was near Campbell and his wife's Park Avenue home, and so would be a convenient spot for running his credit-reporting business by day and entertaining clients by night.
Campbell really knew how to trick out a corner office.

Photo: Warzer Jaff

He installed a grand piano, a pipe organ, a faux stone fireplace featuring his Scottish family's coat of arms, a 30-foot ceiling with faux-wood plaster of Paris beams, and a massive hand-knotted Persian carpet, one of the largest in the world, that would have cost $3.5 million in today's dollars.
Campbell, who died in 1957, was more a man of numbers than letters, and never ascended to the Astor 400, so there is scant record of him in libraries or old society page clippings.
But Grossich has spoken with his niece, Elsie Fater, who remembers that Uncle John oddly eschewed socks, even while wearing shoes.

'He sat there at his desk in his underpants, so as not to lose his crease.'
 - Author Allyn Freeman on John W. Campbell

Nor would he suffer wrinkles in his trousers, preferring to sit at his massive desk in his skivvies until an appointment required otherwise.

"He sat there at his desk in his underpants, so as not to lose his crease," as Manhattan author Allyn Freeman, the closest thing to a Campbell biographer, put it recently.

Freeman's brief collaboration with Grossich on a biography was abandoned when extensive research turned up "almost nothing," he said, though a black and white photo of the man and his office does survive.

"You go through the door and the armoire is on the left, and there's a big rug that greets you with a table and a flower arrangement," Freeman said, describing the photo.

"There's a couple of tufted chairs to the right, and at the far end behind this 15th-century Florentine desk is John Campbell."

When the tycoon died, "The furniture went no one knows where," Freeman said.
"CBS Radio did some broadcasting in there, and then it dilapidated," he said.
"At one point, the police put in a pokey, a cell, for all the wastrels and drifters that came through Grand Central."

By the time Grossich acquired the lease, "There was water damage, wires hanging down, all the colors had faded, every piece of furniture was gone.
"But he had the vision and the money to redo it."

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The Campbell Apartment's signature cocktails.
Photo: Christian Johnston

Traverse a seemingly private passageway, then climb a tucked-away carpeted staircase to find the Campbell Apartment, a dark and stately bar so hidden away in the bustling crypt of Grand Central Terminal that even time seems to have abandoned it there.
Big Band standards waft softly from hidden speakers. Wait staff in their uniforms — white dinner jackets and black ties for the waiters, black cocktail dresses and double strands of pearls for the waitresses — carry Delmonicos and potent Prohibition punches across slightly threadbare carpeting.
"Cocktails from another era," the Campbell Apartment menu promises.
"There's a certain timelessness to the space that makes it so interesting," Grossich says.

'Cocktails from another era,' the Campbell Apartment menu promises.

Grossich took the lease to the space in 1999, and spent nearly two years and more than $2 million on the renovation.
"It was an absolute dump," he remembers. "Half the pane glass in the window was broken, doors were broken. Nothing you see was visible."
Painters had to lie on their backs on scaffolds for months to restore and paint the colorful, heraldic designs on the high ceiling beams.
The result, Freeman says, was lovely.
"It was a terrific place to meet," says Freeman.
"I took people there and they just exclaimed how wonderful and how different it was."
Grossich signed a five-year lease when the 10-year lease ran out, and month-to-month leases since then.
But last year, the MTA began aggressively overhauling Grand Central's restaurants and bars, hoping for higher rents and ever-more high-end lease holders.
By early this year, Junior's and Two Boots Pizza lost their spots, and Cipriani Dolci was waiting to hear if it could stay.

Paris Durante pours a cocktail at The Campbell Apartment.Photo: Chad Rachman

New leases were awarded to an Apple store and a Nordic food hall operated by prominent Copenhagen restaurateur Claus Meyer. Wichcraft, the sandwich chain owned by celebrity chef Tom Colicchio, is taking over the space Junior's had for 16 years.
Meanwhile, without Grossich knowing, The Gerber Group was approached by the MTA's hired advisers at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, inviting a bid on the Campbell Apartment space.
"I said, 'I'm really not interested,'" Gerber remembered. "And they said, 'Look, we think you'd be great, you're the kind of person we want.' And I said, OK."

Photo: Chad Rachman

In late December, Grossich, who'd been paying $350,000 a year on his year-to-year leases, learned that his offer to pay $800,000 a year on a new 10-year lease had been outbid.
Gerber had offered $1.1 million. As lease holder, Grossich was entitled to make a best and final offer.
"I told them I'd pay whatever the highest bid was, plus 2.5 percent," said Grossich.

Photo: Chad Rachman

"Oh no," he says he was told. "They said, 'They way overbid you. We can't do that.' Now after 17 years and all we've done to help rebuild the terminal, you can't do that? Are you kidding me?"
In April, Grossich sued the MTA, successfully barring them from transferring the lease, but only for a few months.

Gerber wants to run a "sleek and glitzy" club, Grossich argued in his lawsuit, not the kind of dignified restaurant and bar the MTA sought in its own bidding paperwork.
Gerber countered they had the better proposal and the higher rent offer, and that unless they could begin renovations immediately, they'd lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in holiday party bookings.

After many back-and-forths in Manhattan Supreme Court, a judge last week declined to extend Grossich's stay of eviction.

On Wednesday, the MTA gave Grossich his 30-day eviction notice.
"It's a sad turn of events," Grossich said of the eviction.
He wishes his successors luck — they'll need it, he said.
"It's going to be very difficult to achieve the kinds of numbers that will be necessary to sustain the operation for the long haul," given the million-plus rent, he said.
Gerber, meanwhile, is eager to start the refurbishment.
It's a landmarked space, meaning he can't change the walls, ceiling or century-old windows. But he's installing a costly new stone bar top, new bar and kitchen equipment, a new heating and air conditioning system, he says.

The club chairs and faded carpeting are bound for the trash heap, and instead of the fringe-shade wall lamps, Gerber says he's bringing in multiple chandeliers and high-tech lighting to better show off the beautiful ceiling.

Frank Sinatra, too, may have gone the way of John W. Campbell, and softly crooned his last. Instead, there will be "eclectic" music for an "eclectic" crowd, Gerber promises.
"I just think it needs to be — today."

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An ode to the Bronx, the best neighborhood you could grow up in

 Alexis Montoya

---

Seriously

It's always humorous to tell someone I'm from the Bronx and watch as their faces turn from curious to mortified. "How many times have you been shot?" None. "Are you in a gang?" No. "You must be hood/ratchet/ghetto." There's so much more to the borough than its violent history, something only natives will understand. Growing up in the Bronx is an experience unlike any other. It's exciting, weird, and just scary enough to keep you on your toes.

The Bronx molded me and every other Bronxite into someone ready to take on the world.

You woke up when the neighborhood did
It just isn't a logical investment to purchase an alarm clock when the neighborhood is up and loud just when you need it to be (or not). Sounds of construction, roosters, and fights are just some recurring sounds of the morning. There isn't a resting moment in the Bronx, not even for the gifted neighborhood gospel singer.

Waking up to the most wonderful praises imaginable gave the sense of waking up into a dream. I would always run to the window searching for the person responsible for the voice to no avail. If you live close enough to a church, you can hear the praises of a choir on an early Sunday morning. People with no regard for who's listening made waking up much more bearable.

Arizona and BEC is a coveted breakfast combo
Breakfast was of the most treasured time for students on their way to school. It meant visiting the bodega and getting the best food combination to start your morning right: Arizona juice with a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese (BEC) sandwich. It was cheap, fulfilling, and delicious. Try making it at home and it just isn't the same. There's something magical about bodega deli workers.

You're thankful for the diversity and cultural presence everywhere you go

I'm amazed when meeting people who have never experienced any culture but their own for their entire lives. Going to school meant having friends from a variety of cultures, languages, and personas. Walking through any neighborhood meant seeing a mixture of flags, smelling a blend of delicious foods, and hearing any and all genres of music.
You've probably visited The Christmas House more than once
Every Christmas, houses are moderately decked out with lights and small signs, but The Christmas House on Pelham Parkway does not do basic decorating. In fact, every day is Christmas at that house. It has become a tradition for many to visit the house on holidays to see the animatronic statues of cherubs, celebrities, popular cartoon characters and much more.

Commuting always introduced you to someone you'll never forget

In the journey between home and school, you are guaranteed to run into someone begging for your money, attention, and time. Yet, there are those precious moments where you meet people that have you wondering if they're an angel in disguise.
In my own experience, I've met a woman, physically battered and emotionally disturbed, who clipped one of my neighbor's sunflowers and gave it to me just because. There was another occasion where I was struggling to get a cart of groceries off the curb at night when a giant man carrying a glow-in-the-dark boombox came and helped me. These hidden treasures teach you some of the most valuable lessons about humankind.

You know to never look at a stranger for more than 3 seconds
Making eye contact or smiling at a stranger is a huge mistake. From a very young age, we learn to keep to ourselves when in public. This means no eye contact, no smiling, no polite greetings. It's no wonder that we are often a contender (and winner) for the meanest city in the U.S.
In the streets, you never know who you're provoking. It's an unspoken rule that if someone looks at you for more than 3 seconds, there's a problem. While it may be seen as something rude, for us, it's a means of respect.

There's no need to visit art museums when your neighborhood is adorned in graffiti

Graffiti has come a long way since I was a kid. What once used to be illegible tags is now beautiful murals of abstract or realistic designs. You can't go far without seeing a mural in memory of a fallen Bronx native, Jesus, or still illegible yet skillful tags. It brings life to our neighborhoods, serving as true modern art.

It's hard to fall asleep without background noise
Whenever I would sleepover someone's house in a quiet area, I could never fall asleep due to the overbearing silence. The roaring hum of the buses, piercing yet muted sounds of firetrucks and police cars all give me the peace of mind I needed to fall asleep.

You can take the person out of the Bronx…

…but you can never take the Bronx out of the person. No matter where a Bronxite goes, the pride, charisma, and strength of the borough always stays with them.

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Your Brain Isn't a Computer. It's a Quantum Field. | Big Think

          by Daphne Muller                

•         September 21, 2015
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  The irrationality of how we think has long plagued psychology. When someone asks us how we are, we usually respond with "fine" or "good." But if someone followed up about a specific event — "How did you feel about the big meeting with your boss today?" — suddenly, we refine our "good" or "fine" responses on a spectrum from awful to excellent.

  In less than a few sentences, we can contradict ourselves: We're "good" but feel awful about how the meeting went. How then could we be "good" overall? Bias, experience, knowledge, and context all consciously and unconsciously form a confluence that drives every decision we make and emotion we express. Human behavior is not easy to anticipate, and probability theory often fails in its predictions of it.

  Enter quantum cognition: A team of researchers has determined that while our choices and beliefs don't often make sense or fit a pattern on a macro level, at a "quantum" level, they can be predicted with surprising accuracy. In quantum physics, examining a particle's state changes the state of the particle — so too, the "observation effect" influences how we think about the idea we are considering.

  The quantum-cognition theory opens the fields of psychology and neuroscience to understanding the mind not as a linear computer, but rather an elegant universe.

  In the example of the meeting, if someone asks, "Did it go well?" we immediately think of ways it did. However, if he or she asks, "Were you nervous about the meeting?" we might remember that it was pretty scary to give a presentation in front of a group. The other borrowed concept in quantum cognition is that we cannot hold incompatible ideas in our minds at one time. In other words, decision-making and opinion-forming are a lot like Schrödinger's cat.

  The quantum-cognition theory opens the fields of psychology and neuroscience to understanding the mind not as a linear computer, but rather an elegant universe. But the notion that human thought and existence is richly paradoxical has been around for centuries. Moreover, the more scientists and scholars explore the irrational rationality of our minds, the closer science circles back to the confounding logic at the heart of every religion. Buddhism, for instance, is premised on riddles such as, "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without it." And, in Christianity, the paradox that Christ was simultaneously both a flesh-and-blood man and the Son of God is the central metaphor of the faith.

  [D]ecision-making and opinion-forming are a lot like Schrödinger's cat.

  For centuries, religious texts have explored the idea that reality breaks down once we get past our surface perceptions of it; and yet, it is through these ambiguities that we understand more about ourselves and our world. In the Old Testament, the embattled Job pleads with God for an explanation as to why he has endured so much suffering. God then quizzically replies, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" (Job 38:4). The question seems nonsensical — why would God ask a person in his creation where he was when God himself created the world? But this paradox is little different from the one in Einstein's famous challenge to Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle": "God does not play dice with the universe." As Stephen Hawking counters, "Even God is bound by the uncertainty principle" because if all outcomes were deterministic then God would not be God. His being the universe's "inveterate gambler" is the unpredictable certainty that creates him.

  The mind then, according to quantum cognition, "gambles" with our "uncertain" reason, feelings, and biases to produce competing thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Then we synthesize those competing options to relate to our relatively "certain" realities. By examining our minds at a quantum level, we change them, and by changing them, we change the reality that shapes them.

  Changing the metaphors we use to understand the world — especially the quantum metaphor — can yield amazing insights. Jonathan Keats, experimental philosopher, explains:

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  Daphne Muller is a New York City-based writer who has written for Salon, Ms. Magazine, The Huffington Post, and reviewed books for ELLE and Publishers Weekly. Most recently, she completed a novel and screenplay. You can follow her on Instagram @daphonay and on Twitter @DaphneEMuller.

  Image courtesy of Shutterstock

             

           

         

       
     

Why Iron Maiden Still Rules, and Heavy Metal Will Never Die | NOISEY

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By Kim Kelly

Photo courtesy of Iron Maiden

Earlier today, Iron Maiden made an announcement that sent the Metal Internet into a frenzy of excitement. Not only will the British heavy metal gods be releasing a new record later this year (on September 4, to be exact), they'll be marking a new milestone in their storied career by putting out their first-ever studio-recorded double album. Clocking in at 92 minutes, The Book of Souls will feature eleven new songs, including an 18-minute closing epic entitled "Empire of the Clouds."

That's a whole lot of Maiden, and fans are pumped. Ever since iconic vocalist Bruce Dickinson announced that he'd be undergoing treatment for cancer earlier this year, the band's future seemed to hang in the balance, but this new announcement makes clear that Bruce ain't going down that easy. His doctors have given him the all-clear, and according to the band's official website, "Due to Bruce's illness the band had to delay touring plans but promise to be out on the road again early next year, giving time for Bruce to make a full physical recovery to be ready for the rigours of Maiden live performances."

The prospect of a new Iron Maiden album has resonated deeply with their many fans around the world. While news of upcoming new albums from even established veterans like Black Sabbath, Slayer, and King Diamond is routinely met with suspicion from fans who've lost the faith (or wised up to the fact that some bands just can't hack it anymore), there's something truly heartening about seeing the overwhelming excitement with which this new album has been greeted. It's almost surprising, too, given that Iron Maiden's first album came out in 1980, a full 35 years ago; its members are well past middle age, and this latest effort will mark the band's sixteenth studio album. They're not pushing boundaries anymore (I mean, shit, they set the goalposts to begin with); they're not extreme, or nihilistic, or brutal, and are most certainly not "hip" (no matter how many times Miley Cyrus is spotted wearing their shirts). They play the same kind of music that they've always played, and save for Bruce Dickenson's temporary absence between 1993-1999 and the back-and-forth between guitarists Adrian Smith and Janick Gers, have kept a fairly stable lineup since the '80s. So why are people still so excited about this new album? Why do people still care?

Because it's Iron fucking Maiden, that's why. 

Simply put, Iron Maiden rules. They're one of the original heavy metal bands, and still one of the absolute best. They were a leading light of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal that propelled those galloping guitars and lusty wails into the waiting ears of scores of angry, lost kids across the globe; a thinking person's metal band who pepper their rousing epics with hyperliterate lyrics and bombastic theatricality; the best damn live band you'll ever see, and the people who brought the coolest mascot ever, Eddie, to life. They've always seemed larger-than-life, and their catalogue is incredibly rich, varied, and honestly, timeless. Even their more lackluster latter-day albums retained the ambition and energy that made their earliest classics so compelling, and there's no reason under the sun why The Book of Souls would fall flat. Will it top The Number of the Beast or Powerslave? Perhaps not, but it will still be good, because Iron Maiden isn't the kind of band that would allow itself to release anything but a solid effort—and a solid effort from Iron Maiden is still leaps and bounds ahead of what most younger bands could ever hope to pull off on their best days.

Heavy metal still places a huge amount of significance on its past, in part because of the genre's own relative youth. It's not like the blues, or electronic music, or even rock'n'roll, whose histories have become just that—history. The first metal bands are still active, still kicking, and hell, Black Sabbath—widely regarded as The First Heavy Metal Band Ever—toured recently and is prepping a new album. Our history still walks out on stage and grabs the mic each night. The old guard is still standing, even as the ravages of time begin to take a toll. Our gods of war are beginning to show the cracks in their armor, their frail mortality becoming less of an idea than a fact. We're already haunted by the ghosts of heroes gone too soon, like Ronnie James Dio, Cliff Burton, Jeff Hanneman, Darrell "Dimebag" Abbott, and it's not a trend that shows any sign of slowing down.

If we count back from the earliest rumblings of Black Sabbath in 1968, heavy metal itself turned 47 this year. Allowing that most people start their first bands as teens or young adults—Tony Iommi was 20 in 1968—it's far from shocking that the past few years have seen an uptick in press releases about the medical problems plaguing our elder statesmen. Judas Priest's air raid siren of a vocalist, Rob Halford, has undergone multiple surgeries for his back and hips. Motorhead have had to cancel a slew of dates because of Lemmy—who's as close to God as most metalheads would ever want to be—and the health issues that persist even though the legendary hellraiser has cut back on his beloved white lines and Jack Daniels. Iommi, the iron man himself, was sidelined by a bout of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2012, and while he's back in action for now, his prognosis isn't as rosy as anyone would like. In 2011, King Diamond underwent open heart triple bypass surgery after a series of severe heart attacks; he's back in fighting shape now, but this and other stories underline the stark reality that our heroes are getting old. Despite the bravado and the power and the sheer might that is heavy metal, these men are made of flesh, not steel, and as their bodies start to fail them, we cling even harder to their myths. They have quite literally devoted their lives to heavy metal, and someday, they will die.

It will be sad, and we will mourn, but you know what will live forever? "Run to the Hills" will live forever. "Sweet Leaf," and "Raining Blood," and "Rainbow in the Dark," and "Cemetery Gates," and so many, many more will never be forgotten. A classic is a classic whether it's being heard for the first time or the five thousandth. Iron Maiden will never die, and neither will heavy metal, so bring on the new album. Bring on the new tour. Bring on a new Eddie shirt design, and new videos, and more photos of Bruce flying his fucking airplane. Bring on the metal.

Up the irons, now, tomorrow, and until the final note rings out.

Written by: Kim Kelly

Jun 18 2016

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How to Use the Feynman Technique to Identify Pseudoscience

Earlier this year, a study made headlines worldwide by bluntly demonstrating the human capacity to be misled by "pseudo-profound bullshit" from the likes of Deepak Chopra, infamous for making profound sounding yet entirely meaningless statements by abusing scientific language.
This is all well and good, but how are we supposed to know that we are being misled when we read a quote about quantum theory from someone like Chopra, if we don't know the first thing about quantum mechanics?

In a lecture given by Richard Feynman in 1966, the influential theoretical physicist told a story about the difference between knowing the name for something and truly understanding it:
"This boy said to me, 'See that bird standing on the stump there? What's the name of it?' I said, 'I haven't got the slightest idea.' He said, 'It's a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn't teach you much about science.' 

I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesn't tell me anything about the bird. He taught me 'See that bird? It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird — you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way,' and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on.

The result of this is that I cannot remember anybody's name, and when people discuss physics with me they often are exasperated when they say, 'the Fitz-Cronin effect,' and I ask, 'What is the effect?' and I can't remember the name."

Feynman went on: "There is a first grade science book which, in the first lesson of the first grade, begins in an unfortunate manner to teach science, because it starts off on the wrong idea of what science is. There is a picture of a dog — a windable toy dog — and a hand comes to the winder, and then the dog is able to move. Under the last picture, it says, 'What makes it move?' Later on, there is a picture of a real dog and the question, 'What makes it move?' Then there is a picture of a motorbike and the question, 'What makes it move?' and so on.

I thought at first they were getting ready to tell what science was going to be about — physics, biology, chemistry — but that wasn't it. The answer was in the teacher's edition of the book: The answer I was trying to learn is that 'energy makes it move.'

Now, energy is a very subtle concept. It is very, very difficult to get right. What I meant is that it is not easy to understand energy well enough to use it right, so that you can deduce something correctly using the energy idea — it is beyond the first grade. It would be equally well to say that 'God makes it move,' or, 'Spirit makes it move,' or, 'Movability makes it move.' (In fact, one could equally well say, 'Energy makes it stop.')

Look at it this way: That's only the definition of energy; it should be reversed. We might say when something can move that it has energy in it, but not what makes it move is energy. This is a very subtle difference. It's the same with this inertia proposition.

Perhaps I can make the difference a little clearer this way: If you ask a child what makes the toy dog move, you should think about what an ordinary human being would answer. The answer is that you wound up the spring; it tries to unwind and pushes the gear around.

What a good way to begin a science course! Take apart the toy; see how it works. See the cleverness of the gears; see the ratchets. Learn something about the toy, the way the toy is put together, the ingenuity of people devising the ratchets and other things. That's good. The question is fine. The answer is a little unfortunate, because what they were trying to do is teach a definition of what is energy. But nothing whatever is learned.

Suppose a student would say, 'I don't think energy makes it move.' Where does the discussion go from there?

I finally figured out a way to test whether you have taught an idea or you have only taught a definition. Test it this way: You say, 'Without using the new word which you have just learned, try to rephrase what you have just learned in your own language. Without using the word "energy," tell me what you know now about the dog's motion.' You cannot. So you learned nothing about science. That may be all right. You may not want to learn something about science right away. You have to learn definitions. But for the very first lesson, is that not possibly destructive?

I think for lesson number one, to learn a mystic formula for answering questions is very bad. The book has some others: 'gravity makes it fall;' 'the soles of your shoes wear out because of friction.' Shoe leather wears out because it rubs against the sidewalk and the little notches and bumps on the sidewalk grab pieces and pull them off. To simply say it is because of friction, is sad, because it's not science."

Feynman's parable about the meaning of science is a valuable way of testing ourselves on whether we have really learned something, or whether we just think we have learned something, but it is equally useful for testing the claims of others. If someone cannot explain something in plain English, then we should question whether they really do themselves understand what they profess. If the person in question is communicating ostensibly to a non-specialist audience using specialist terms out of context, the first question on our lips should be: "Why?" In the words of Feyman, "It is possible to follow form and call it science, but that is pseudoscience."

Follow Simon Oxenham @Neurobonkers on Twitter, Facebook, RSS or join the mailing list. Image Credit: Adapted from Wikimedia Commons.

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