After years of fighting against the reigning mantra of elite academe that we are living in 'The Matrix', i.e. that the concepts of science and rationality are artificial 'constructs' designed to preserve the existing social order in which we are all slaves duped into thinking we have some freedom from our roober baron masters, I have to concede I have finally run up against just such a thing.

While the sun in the sky is not a construct, and perhaps noon is not a construct if it is defined as the time that the sun is directly overhead, the time that our clocks say is decidely a cultural con job. Forgetting the arbitrary idea of rebooting our circadian rhythms twice a year going on and off of daylight savings time (which could be easily fixed by my proposal for adopting daylight savings time year round), the fundamental 'construct' that gives rise to the debate in the first place is time zones.

The sun is not directly overhead at all places in the time zone at noon, even on standard time. Indeed the sun actually rises and sets more or less an hour earlier at the leading edge of each time zone than at the trailing edge. (That was the best thing I noted about living in Michigan, the trailing edge of the eastern time zone, compared to Rhode Island, out there on the eastern front of eastern time). We order our lives around an agreed time for the efficacy it provides to us all. But is this an evil capitalist plot?

Added to this fundamental question of the hegemony of the hourglass is whether daylight savings time is yet another plot to further separate the haves and the have nots. If you were to listen to the anti-Daylight Savings Time ravings of Michael Downing, you might think so.

Posted by Brian Bishop at 07:23 AM | Permalink

A perfect storm of vocational and avocational challenges have kept my 'pen' quiet on this summer's blog but, despite the lack of a humor category at fromtheheartland.org, I couldn't resist a pointer to what might be the exception, i.e. a justified law, that proves the rule about how unnecessary the rest are.

In Bromley UK, citing the loss of the latter day 'battle of the bulge' a Tory councillor is proposing to ban men from going shirtless in the center city shopping district.

I concede to regularly violating the prohibitions of the proposed ordinance, but even I can see that this is one of those arenas where politeness has not kept up with the post- modern physique. If we have to have laws, this is one I might be able to stomach.

I await an avalanche of comments to the contrary. I'm sure there is a private market solution to this problem. That will be more entertaining than offers for ringtones which I must regularly stricken from these roles.

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

I read about this study in the Tribune last week, but will still link to the Washington Post version. The study is on social isolation and is being reported under the headline "Social Isolation Growing in the U.S., Study Says." It's claims, if true are definitely interesting and perhaps disturbing> But I would invite everyone to read the whole study for themselves before coming to any conclusions. To my mind there are plenty of caveats to be had.

Continue reading "Isolating Social Variables" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 12:56 PM | Permalink

The Sci-Fi Channel is running a program this evening that begs the question: what's more likely alien invasion or robot revolution? I'll take my chances with alien invasion. The odds are in our favor right? Given the amount of space/time in the universe, it's only a matter of time before some advanced alien civilization bulldozes the galaxy to make way for an intergalactic tollway right?

The Sci-Fi Channel Program was accompanied by a poll that found:

Approximately one-quarter of Americans have a strong "doomsday" outlook and strongly agree with the following statements: "I fear for the future of mankind," and, "Life as we know it could come to an abrupt end any day."

What's scarier, doomsday scenarios or the fact that so many people walk around with such a sense of doom?

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

With the obvious intention of currying favor with carriers for free transmission of fromtheheartland.org faster than the speed of life; and - less toungue and cheek- at the risk of subjecting this blog to its first DOS (denial of sanity) attack from commentors and trackbacks: I feel compelled to point to the self-interested chatter that is supposed to qualify as argumentation on behalf of net neutrality.

I'm a big fan of alliteration, but somehow this one had escaped me until I fell across a rather cryptic reference by Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit.com. He seems to be buying into casting this as a battle between titanic telephone and bantamweight bloggers. When you're a lumberjack, everything looks like a tree, so it is unsurprising to see that the author of An Army of Davids : How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths would cast this as yet one more battle cry for the little literati to take up the sling.

It is not that internet architecture and the commercial interests of the relatively narrow band of broadband providers aren't worthy of discussion, but this appears to be an intellectual fait accompli, not a serious discourse. The vast silence in the grassroots blogosphere in the face of such a sweeping regulatory effort made me wonder: where has skepticism of government solutions gone? Apparently if forced to choose between Big Media and Big Government, Glenn Reynolds has thrown in his lot with the latter, or actually with both. The blogoshere ain't leading this charge, they're following the likes of Google's Guru Vint Cerf. The coalition for net neutrality operates under that typically 'understated' rubric of "Save The Internet".

Continue reading "Net neut[e]rality or the wild, wild web? I'm with the cowboys!" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 07:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Temptation is a central concept in Christian faith, and church elders are providing their own contemporary parable in that regard this week as Cardinal Arinze apparently asks Christians to employ anti-discrimination laws in jursidictions where they reside to censor the Da Vinci Code. Please Cardinal Arinze, lead us not into....

Commentors to Ilya Somin's post on the Volokh Conspiracy have made intellectually supportable arguments that Arinze's remarks are vague and don't constitute the blatant demands for censorship that accompanied the non-violent portion of the Muslim clerical response to the Danish cartoons. But no post I have read opines that the very line of reasoning introduced by Arinze, a right for religious beliefs to be "respected", augers well for Catholicism (or western civilization for that matter). For crying out loud, why not just assert a right for religious beliefs to be believed by everyone.

Continue reading "Cracking [on] the Da Vinci Code" »

Posted by Brian Bishop at 07:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Oliver Stone thinks folks don't take Hollywood seriously.

I can't imagine why that would be.

Posted by Brian Bishop at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps there’s no better evidence of just how “out of touch” Hollywood has become than their obvious inability to make movies that really challenge our prejudices and preconceptions. Instead, they spend their time zealously preaching the virtues of tolerance to an America public that is arguably as tolerant as ever.

So it should come as no surprise that the most politically incorrect movie to hit the screen in years comes to us from a rookie. That rookie is Jason Reitman and his film is Thank You for Smoking.

Continue reading "At Last, Some Irreverence" »

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 10:48 AM | Permalink