New breakthrough in TV programming!

Television is now obsolete technology, and its audience continues to shrink. At the same time, though, the number of broadcast and cable channels is increasing faster than the number of television shows produced, so there is more competition for the programs which are being produced. Television executives started looking for programs that were cheap to produce in an attempt to keep prices down.

At first the cheapest programs TV could find were so-called reality shows. These had the advantage that you didn’t have to pay the contestants. However, soon TV producers stumbled on a type of show where the performers paid to take part – the poker show. The prize money on these shows came from the entrance fees, and the participants paid their own travel and hotel bills. NBC has even been able to coax big-name poker players to cough up $20,000 apiece to play on Poker after Dark.

And – the shows were popular! Internet poker is wildly popular, and people who play internet poker like to watch shows that might help them play better.

But television was becoming one-dimensional. Before the 2011-12 season the executives of all major television operations sat down and decided what to do to help restore a wider range of programming for fall of 2011. After careful consideration they decided to – show more poker! Here are the exciting new shows you will be following eagerly this fall:

• CBC Poker Night: The CBC celebrates the diversity of poker throughout Canada by running a copy of a foreign poker show.
  
• CTV Poker Night: CTV celebrates the entrepreneurial flair of Canadian poker players by running a copy of a foreign poker show.
  
• Antiques Pokershow (Newsworld) : “In perfect condition your hand would take the entire pot, but with it in this condition I’d fold immediately.”
  
• Intelligently Designed Poker (Crossroads TV): This show demonstrates that poker must be the product of superhuman design, since the individual hands occur so infrequently in nature that they never could have combined by any natural process to form a new species of game.
  
• Gangsta Hold ‘Em (MTV): At press time the future of this show depended on whether the participants would make bail for the unfortunate incident during the first taping.
  
• Poker is America (PBS): Ken Burns’ latest documentary shows how poker was formed by America and America was formed by poker. Fifty-two cards of different colours and motifs overcome their differences to work together to create effective game-winning hands, and the big money goes to the guys who own the tables.
  
• NDP Poker Night (CPAC): The New Democratic Party introduces a new form of hold ‘em in which most of the pot goes to the winner and the remainder to the remaining players in proportion to the amounts of money they put in the pot. The NDP still loses.
  
• Hold ‘Em Québécois (TVA): Bets may be made in either French or English, but the English bets must be smaller than the French ones.
  
• Ontario Hold ‘Em (TVO): Players get extra chips for replacing cards in their hands with energy-efficient light bulbs. Steve Paikin hosts.
  
• Alberta Hold ‘Em (pay channel) : Whatever the players do, their stacks just keep getting bigger.
  
• People’s Republic of North Korea Resolute Anti-Imperialist Hold ‘Em (Omni): Players compete for the right to support the will of the people of the People’s Republic of North Korea by donating the grand prize (an egg) to the state and resolutely pledging to redouble their commitment to the thought of Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il.
  
• People’s Republic of China Hold ‘Em (Bloomberg): This series has been cancelled following the recall of the decks of cards because of lead contamination.

New Breakthrough in TV programming © John FitzGerald, 2007, 2011

Sex lives of the great philosophers

That Karl Popper – oh, he was a lively one, he was! "Whoops! – that was an unintended consequence," he'd say, and oh, how we'd laugh!

I said to that Gilbert Ryle once, I did, "There's no doubt about what's on your mind, is there, dear?" and he got the funniest look on his face, he did. He always paid me extra after that, too.

That Bertrand Russell, he'd had most of the women in Cambridge and Oxford. Well, you know that, you've read his autobiography, haven't you? And probably more than once. Still, "Mavis," he'd say to me, he would, he'd say "Mavis, it wouldn't be St. Swithin's Day without I give you a right doing over." Which he did. Do me over, I mean, every St. Swithin's Day.

And don't believe everything you read about that John Stuart Mill. Qualitative happiness, my eye. All he wanted was quantity, dearie, if you get my drift. Me and the other girls, we used to have to work shifts to keep him happy, we did.

Now that Artie Schopenhauer, once he had the idea he had the will, you can believe me. He brought that Hegel along once but I wouldn't want to tell you some of the things he wanted to do, no I wouldn't.

That Kierkegaard was a rum one. He never really did anything. He'd just sit and talk to me in Danish. He said it was English, but it sounded like Danish to me. His little joke, I reckon. As I say, he was a rum one, he was.

Oh, but that René Descartes! He had them French ways about him. He was ever so suave and debonair. Cogito ergo sum, he'd say and I'd say Futuo ergo pecuniam habeo. Oh, how we'd laugh!

That William of Occam was a handful, I can tell you. He was what you call a submissive. I'd flog him and flog him until finally he'd gasp and say "I have avoided multiplying entities," and then he'd leave as quiet and polite as you please.

My friend Gladys didn't want me to have anything to do with that Averroes but "Glad," I said to her, I said "Glad, I don't care where he's from or if he's an Arab or an Hottentot or whatever it is that he is, as long as he pays me in good English money that's all I ask." I used to get a groat in those days, dear. As it turned out my agent had misunderstood his English and he was looking for a tour guide! Oh, how we laughed about that! So as not to disappoint I got Mr. Bloggs to show him and his wife around Cambridge; it was a lot smaller then – stands to reason, doesn't it? after all – so it didn't take long, but they paid him a groat and a half! They sent Mr. Bloggs a postcard, too, from Bognor, they did.

Well, dear, I'll have to tell you about the Greek gentlemen next week. This nice Lacanian gentleman is coming over and I have to put the plastic slipcovers on all the furniture, so I'll do that while you're having the nice bath that Auntie's going to draw for you. Oh – ta ever so much!

Sex Lives of the Great Philosophers © 2000, John FitzGerald

The natural superiority of Christianity

Guest post by televangelist John Hazee

There are none so blind as those who will not see. And friends, today there is a plague of blindness on this land. A plague, moreover, which afflicts Christians, and keeps them from the service they owe to Jesus!

Yes, friends, many of our professed brothers and sisters in Christ have been struck blind by demonic power! How else can you explain their failure to deal efficiently and effectively with the anti-Christian forces which are gathering around us and threatening to put the Christian light back under a bushel!

One of the leading demonic forces is an evolutionary biologist, whose evil book The God Delusion sat atop the bestseller lists for weeks like the devil surveying his mighty works in Hell. And what have Christians decided to do when confronted with arguments that evolutionary biology disproves the truths of the Bible? Why, their response boils down to “Does not!”

Oh, yes, they came up with Intelligent Design. Proponents of Intelligent Design argue that since certain features of living organisms are supposedly too complex for us to understand, they must have been produced by an intelligent creator. Friends, I don’t understand what Paris Hilton does with her life, but that doesn’t imply that her life is the product of intelligence.

What is the correct way to respond to evolutionary biology? Friends, the answer is simple. When David went to fight Goliath, did he think “What I’ll do, see, is persuade him that he’s got the wrong ideas about us”? No, he didn’t. He thought “I’m going to beat this giant on his own terms,” and that’s what he did.

And we can beat the evolutionists on their own terms, using their own evolutionary principles! Evolutionary biology holds that species evolve by natural selection of organisms with superior characteristics which make them more likely than other members of their species or of other species to survive. Well, if we look at religions from an evolutionary perspective, what do we find?

First, we find that Christianity has evolved considerably over the two thousand years of its existence. At first a humble doctrine of obedience and love preached by impoverished members of the peasantry, it is now a collection of giant corporate enterprises whose leaders command the attention of the great and powerful and who live in affluence to rival that of the rich and powerful!

Furthermore, as a result of evolving to this highly selected condition, Christianity has become the dominant religion on the planet! Hallelujah!

After spending a thousand years evolving as it repelled repeated attacks from Asian pagans and middle eastern Muslims, Christianity was finally able to burst forth from Europe, conquer its traditional enemies, and then spread round the world as it made and conquered new enemies! Hallelujah!

Vastly outnumbered by Hindus, Christians conquered Hindustan and ruled it for hundreds of years! Hallelujah!

Christians were out numbered in Africa, but they conquered African Muslims and the adherents of all the other religions found there and ruled that vast continent for nearly a century! Hallelujah!

When adherents of Shinto tried to enslave the millions of the far east, Christians dropped atomic bombs on them! Hallelujah!

When adherents of Islam destroyed the World Trade Center, our Christian leaders destroyed Iraq! Hallelujah!

Christianity is the superior product of millennia of evolution which have made it the dominant spiritual and ethical force in the world. Richard Dawkins and others like him are mere evolutionary curiosities – random mutations whose function is to amuse us for a short while with their curious features before they are condemned to the evolutionary dead end of extinction.

How far do you think Richard Dawkins would get if he invaded Iraq?

The natural superiority of Christianity © 2007, John FitzGerald

The TRUTH about Queen Victoria!!

It's Victoria Day weekend, and I am proud to be able to help renew public knowledge of the great woman this holiday commemorates by providing the following list of little known facts about her.

1. If the Prince Regent hadn't detested Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent, she would have ruled under a different name. The Prince Regent livened up her christening by refusing to allow her to receive any of the traditional names of the British royal family. So her intended name of Victoire (sic) Georgina Alexandrina Charlotte Augusta became Alexandrina Victoria.
2. She had an older half-brother and half-sister, Prince Charles and Princess Feodora of Leiningen. Feodora and Victoria were each other's closest friends throughout their lives, as a result of the curious circumstances of their childhood.
3. These curious circumstances were called the Kensington System by their instigator, Capt. John Conroy. He had been the Duke of Kent's equerry, and after the Duke's death the Duchess fell under his influence. He wanted Victoria to be dependent on her mother so that when Victoria acceded to the throne he could control her through her mother. To make Victoria dependent, Conroy kept her and Feodora isolated from any outside influence. After Feodora was married off at the earliest opportunity, Victoria was on her own.
4. Victoria nevertheless refused to fall under Conroy's influence. Before acceding to the throne she refused his request that she make him her personal secretary, on the day of her accession she ignored him and her mother, and after her accession she refused to receive him at court.
   
5. She loved beer.
6. Contrary to popular belief, Victoria's first language was English, not German.
7. When she became queen one of the first things she did was pay
   her father's considerable debts.
8. Like the rest of the royal family she was a staunch Whig. In 1839 she precipitated a political crisis which resulted in the Whigs preventing the Tories from taking over the government. The idea that the Crown should be above politics was introduced later by Prince Albert.
9. Because she outranked Prince Albert, she proposed to him.
10. In 1840 one Edward Oxford tried to shoot Victoria from close range while she was going to her mother's house in her carriage. She proceeded to her mother's house, then shortly after went out for another drive to assure the public that she had not beenhurt. The public was much impressed.
11. In 1858 she wrote to her pregnant daughter: "What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but I own I cannot enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our very nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic."
12. Victoria's noble wish to promote the cause of civilization by demolishing the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, was thwarted by Brighton Town Council, which purchased and refurnished the building. The monstrosity survives to this day.

Happy Victoria Day.

(This article was cribbed from Cecil Woodham-Smith's
Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times, 1819-1861.)

The Truth about Queen Victoria © John FitzGerald, 2001

Autobiography

And then I was born. That was my first mistake. And my parents' second.

THE HOLLYWOOD YEARS
And what madcap years they were! Every night the house was thronged with the great and near-grear: Ramon Navarro, Fatty Arbuckle, Pola Negri, Ronald Reagan! Even Rin Tin Tin would drop by occasionally to pay his respects to my purebred Österreichischer Verdammte Falafelhund bitch Mitzi!

TRAGEDY STRIKES
I didn't know it at the time, but what at first seemed to be a catastrophe from which I could never recover turned out in the end to be a period of trial from which I emerged a stronger and a better person. I know now that those dark days which seemed as if they would never end formed the foundation of all my later success.

THE WORLD GOES GOES TO WAR
The seemingly interminable and ever higher-pitched whine suddenly was transformed into a deafening concussive blast. Someone screamed, and I felt the warm dampness of blood shrouding my face. When the smoke cleared I saw that a squad of despereate Tanzentruppe were advancing frantically across the barren chaos of the battlefield. As if in a dream I slid a hand grenade off my belt and felt the cool steel of the pin between my teeth….

LOOKING BACK
As one who has seen much of life in all its varieties, who has consorted with the wise and the powerful, scaled the fabled slopes of Langpyungchung, paddled a frail native fpirtlaq up the muddy waters of the Sullamangundy, spent weekends in cheap motels with Brazilian manicurists, experimented with the rarest and the commonest of consciousness-altering substances, I now realize that these and the myriad other adventures with which I crammed my life were but desperate attempts to fill the spiritual void in it. But how can a hunger for the spiritual be assuaged by the sensual?

Today I have found the path. I fast on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. On each of the other days I allow myself eight soda crackers and a sip of Vichy water. I see visions, and the visions see me.

Twice a week God drops by for cribbage. He's into me for $135.

Autobiography © John FitzGerald, 2003

Cargo politics

A cargo cult mistakes an effect for a cause. The original Melanesian cargo cultists watched cargo arrive after their colonial occupiers had built airports, and concluded that the cargo had arrived because the airports had been built. This reasoning seems naive to us, since we already know that the correct chain of reasoning is the reverse: the wharves and airstrips were built because ships and airplanes were going to be arriving. However, as we have seen in the earlier articles in this series, we frequently fall into this type of error ourselves.

Anthropologists might object that I have oversimplified cargo cults, by the way. For example, the Melanesian cargo cultists often believed that their gods had already prepared cargo for them, and they just needed to supply places for the gods to deliver it. Whether my definition oversimplifies cargo cults or not, the cargo cultists still had the chain of reasoning backwards. Whether or not you thought cargo already exists, building an airport doesn’t cause cargo to be delivered. Even if you build a real airport rather than an imitation of one, building an airport still doesn’t cause cargo to be delivered. The Soviet Union had many airports, but it didn’t receive much cargo.

These days we have a lot of politicians, but they're not delivering much politics. Even in the broadest sense of the word, in which politics means simply the exercise of authority, contemporary politicians seem remarkably apolitical. Consider their agonizing and posturing about climate change, and then consider the few, trivial decisions in which that agonizing has resulted. The government of Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocols, and then promptly started ignoring them. Politics is no longer the art of the possible, but rather the art of avoiding the possible.

Political philosophy has followed the slide rule, restaurant counter service, and the dodo into oblivion. There was a time when conservative principles were based on the interests of the landed classes, liberal principles on the interests of the business class, and socialist principles on the interests of the workers. In Canada these days the national party with the closest thing to a political philosophy is the Conservatives, and judging by that philosophy they seem to represent the interest of pension funds. Everything is evaluated by the colour of the ink on the bottom line in the account books.

The New Democrats are now above all the party of proportional representation; the issue over-rides all others for them, and they drag it into the discussion of the most inappropriate issues (parliamentary ethics, for example). With a history of getting 20% of the vote and 10% of the seats, they're fierce about getting a system under which their 20% of the vote will get them 12% of the seats. They are losing the support of organized labour, but prefer to concern themselves with tinkering with the way votes are counted.

Both the Conservatives and the NDP have adopted the view that politics is a form of management. The Conservatives follow the managerial philosophy that all operations should turn a profit, while the New Democrats follow the managerial philosophy that all stakeholders should be persuaded to believe that they have a fair say in decision-making. As for the Liberals, they follow an approach known in the managerial literature as hill-climbing. That is, they believe in dealing with issues as they crop up, rather than in ways that are consistent with a political philosophy. They long ago abandoned their representation of business (as a class), and as for liberalism in the sense of promotion of individual liberty, they're the ones who, with the notwithstanding clause, decided the Charter of Rights should be perforated for easy removal.

Then there is the Bloc Québécois. It actually has the appearance of a political party. Its fundamental principle of sovereignty for Quebec is not well defined, if it is defined at all, but its decisions on parliamentary issues unrelated to sovereignty seem to be guided by consistent political principles. The Bloc also has a clear idea of the people whose interests they represent. There is a simple reason that the Bloc is more like an old-fashioned political party than the national parties are.

National sovereignty has been declining as international organizations and international agreements limit it, and as transnational corporations grow to ever more enormous sizes. Canada signed away much of its sovereignty, for example, to get free trade with the United States. In a world of declining national sovereignty, political principles and serious decision-making can get politicians in trouble with the people who really run the world. The Bloc can operate like an old-style party because for the moment the real decision-makers don't care what it does. Let Quebec become sovereign, though, and then someone new is going to be calling the tune.

The tune the rest of us are already dancing to, that is.

Cargo Politics © John FitzGerald, 2008

The truth cult

For much of its history human beings have taken part in rituals in which an authority informs other people of what is supposed to be the Truth. I call this the pulpit model of information. For centuries Europeans went to church and an authority got up in the pulpit and told them what to believe about the world (and other places).

This model was later adopted by the schools, no doubt because the schools were established by churches. Whatever the reason, schooling until recently consisted of listening to an authority tell you what to believe about the world (in universities, it still often consists of this). In school, though, you were even tested to make sure you’d learned the approved view of things.

In school you also acquire the idea that Truth is something that can be found on the printed page. Consequently we come to accept something that has been published as true, without verifying that it is.

It’s not surprising that we come to look on the truth as something that is dispensed by authorities. Consequently, we look around for people who look like authorities, and treat what they say as information. Furthermore, we treat the methods they use to come up with things to say as methods that can be used to define information. We are often wrong.

Given the track record of authorities (remember all those biological weapons that, according to authorities, Iraq was just itching to use against the West?), depending on them to tell us the truth is a questionable approach. Another problem with this approach is that there is considerable doubt as to whether we need to know the truth, anyway.

Here’s something that’s true: Churchill, Manitoba, is named for John Churchill, first governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. That’s a fact. Despite being a fact, though, it doesn’t help me get served when I drop in to the local branch of his company.

Every day we are bombarded with truths. The newspaper tells us things like what the temperature was yesterday in Beijing and what celebrities have (or had) their birthdays today. I remember once reading in the paper that it was the late Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday and thinking “I can’t really send him a card, can I?”

Better than mere truth is information. Information is confused with many things that are not informative, though.

Facts, as we have just seen, are not necessarily informative. Unless I’ve made a bet about what the high temperature in Beijing was going to be, that fact cannot be said to inform me of anything.

Furthermore, many items of information are not factual. The idea of intelligence, for example, cannot be said to be a fact, since there is widespread disagreement about just what intelligence is. However, the concept of intelligence is informative because in speculating about it we discover useful things. We have even discovered some of the shortcomings of the idea of intelligence.

As we have also seen, authoritative statements are not necessarily informative. Another reason they're not necessarily informative is that they disagree with each other. In fact, many of them work according to decision models which encourage disagreement as a way of establishing crucial issues that need to be tested. Courts of English law, for example, require two or more highly trained professionals to argue for exactly opposite points.

People also often assume that a logically sound argument is informative. However, it need not be. We can reason as soundly as it’s possible to reason and still be wrong.

Deductive reasoning starts with a general premise or principle. It then applies that premise to a specific piece of evidence and draws a conclusion about that piece of evidence. For example, we might reason like this:

• All Canadians are British subjects. (general principle)
  
• John FitzGerald is a Canadian. (evidence)
  
• Therefore, John FitzGerald is a British subject. (conclusion)

Well, that conclusion is true. However, let’s suppose we reason like this:

• All Canadians have French first names.
  
• John FitzGerald’s first name is not French.
  
• Therefore, John FitzGerald is not a Canadian.

That conclusion is not true, although the reasoning is entirely sound. Since my first name is not French, the conclusion that I am not Canadian follows logically from the general principle that all Canadians have French first names. The problem, of course, is that the general principle is wrong. Consequently, all statements that follow logically from it are most likely to be wrong. That example is a bit artificial, but people draw sound conclusions from erroneous premises all the time.

For example, many people reasoned out thoroughly logical arguments that on January 1, 2000 the world would be thrown into chaos. I say their beliefs were serious because they acted on them. They stockpiled food, for example, they bought portable electric generators, and some even created fortified shelters to protect themselves from people who hadn’t stockpiled food or bought generators.

As we saw on January 1, 2000, though, the computers didn’t fail. Some of the premises in those thoroughly logical arguments had been unsound. Logic is a tool. Logic does not guarantee that your arguments will stand up any more than a hammer guarantees that the bookcase you build with it will stand up.

Information is often confused with consensus. The supposed existence of a consensus among scientists about global warming is supposed to imply that the consensus opinion is highly likely to be true. Well, a hundred years ago a consensus of scientists would have told you that other races were inferior to whites.

The issue of consensus about global warming seems to have been raised initially as a red herring. That is, people argued against taking action against global warming because there was no scientific consensus about what caused it.

However, consensus has nothing to do with it. At one time there was a scientific consensus that the sun revolved around the earth. That point seems to have escaped the people who are opposed to taking action against global warming, though. Now they complain that this consensus they considered so desirable is being forced on them.

What is informative about an idea is its ability to predict events. The chief value of consensus seems to be coming up with a plan that everyone, or at least everyone important, is willing to go along with. To me, that seems a lot like what lemmings do.

Information cannot be defined by its source. If an expert meteorologist says tomorrow will be sunny, clouds don’t decide to go somewhere else just because a respected source says they will. Information is defined by its effect. Information increases the probability that we will act in effective ways. If it never rains on days when the weather forecast calls for rain, you’re going to end up lugging around a useless umbrella. If it always rains on days your bunions hurt, though, your bunions are a mine of information.

The Truth Cult © John FitzGerald, 2008