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The following is a guest post from Peg Winni, a noted expert on the nexus of art and politics. In this post, Peg interviews Whis, a conservative artist whose real name remains unknown.

Peg Winni: “Whis, you are somewhat unusual in that you are gay, an artist and extremely conservative. Have you always been all three?”

Whis: “Well, I was born gay, developed my talent as an artist and was originally very liberal. But, I recently became a Republican. Log cabin, of course.”

Peg Winni: “How recently?”

Whis: “Well, let it suffice to say that I voted for Obama.”

Peg Winni: “But now you are against him?”

Whis: “Yes. He promised to do something about “don’t ask” and didn’t. He also promised other things. When he betrayed us, I knew I had to become a Republican.”

Peg Winni: “But Republicans tend to be anti-gay.”

Whis: “That is the stereotype and the myth. But, in actuality, many Republicans are gay. Just look at Larry Craig and Ted Haggard. In fact, as the kids would say, most of the Republican agenda is totally gay.”

Peg Winni: “So how does your conservative views influence your art?”

Whis: “Well, I see it as an evolution. When I first started, I held my brush in my hand, then tried holding it in my mouth. To make a statement. Then I thought that taping it to my penis would make more of a statement. But, pulling the tape off hurt a whole bunch. So, I just started painting with it. But then I saw Glenn Beck talking about the tea bag parties. I love tea bagging and wanted to get involved. I’d tea bag with Beck any day of the week. But, to get back to the art, I thought that I could express the Republican outrage by incorporating tea bagging into my art. So, I applied finger paint to my ‘tea bag’ and used it to artistically enhance images of the Democratic leadership. I tea bagged them left and right.”

Peg Winni: “So, your art expresses in paint what the tea party folks express with words?”

Whis:“Quite so. We all want to tea bag America. I even scream out political sayings when I do my art. Once, I even did a piece at a town hall meeting-just dropped my pants, slapped on the paint and starting tea bagging away on photos of Obama while I was yelling at the Democrats.”

Peg Winni: “How did the other tea party folks react?”

Whis:“The other tea baggers were impressed. They could see how much I loved America-almost as much as Glenn Beck loves it. By the end of the town hall, most of the tea baggers had their pants off and the paint was everywhere. It was a great day for America!”

Peg Winni:“That must have been quite a sight. Tell me, do you have any plans to expand your art?”

Whis:“Actually, yes. The town hall meeting got me thinking that I could make my artistic tea bagging into a performance art. I could go to town hall meetings, paint up and slap my tea bag on the foreheads of the Democrats.”

Peg Winni:“Wouldn’t that be considered some sort of assault?”

Whis:“No, it would be art. The Democrats, for all their faults, do love the arts. So, they would have to let me do it. Plus, I think most of them would enjoy a good tea bagging, too. That is one thing that there is bi-partisan support for. After all, they don’t have the ‘bi’ in ‘bi-partisan’ for nothing. “

Peg Winni:“Interesting. Well, I’ll look for you on Fox News.”

As almost everyone now knows, Major Hasan killed twelve other soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Texas. While he was shot by a police officer, he is currently in stable condition. Naturally, people are trying to figure out why this happened.

Not surprisingly, one possible explanation is that the attack was an act of terror. This, however, seems somewhat unlikely.

First, workplace violence, though not common, does occur. These cases are generally not acts of terror (in the technical sense) and hence this might also be true of this incident.

Second, it would be rather odd for a terrorist organization to “waste” such an inside agent on such an act. After all, if a terrorist group had a Major as an agent, it would be rather odd for them to tell him to shoot a few soldiers. Such an agent would be a vastly more valuable intelligence asset. Of course, it is not impossible that an agent would be used in this manner. Also, an agent might decide to act on his own.

Third, there seem to be adequate evidence that Hasan acted on his own and was motivated by personal reasons, rather than acting on behalf of a terrorist organization.  After all, other soldiers have done similar things without being terrorists. Also, Fort Hood apparently has the highest number of suicides and it has been speculated that Hasan was attempting to commit suicide by cop. Of course, not all the evidence is yet available and things might change as new evidence is found.

However, there are some reasons to suspect that it might be a terror attack. First, Hasan is a Muslim. While officials are taking pains to say that this is not a reason that they are considering this possibility, obviously it is a factor that is being taken into account. Second, the incident took place on a military base.

While the event was horrible because people were murdered, the incident will also create additional damage. First, since Hasan is a Muslim, this incident will no doubt add to concerns about Muslims-especially those in the military. Second, this clearly adds to worries about the problems within the military in regards to soldier on soldier violence and the suicides that have been occurring in increasing numbers. Third, since Hasan was not just a soldier, but a psychiatrist and officer, this raises worries about the problems that the military is facing in regards to psychological issues.

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We know for a fact that one intelligent race died off on earth. This race was, of course, the Neanderthals and their race came to and end about 30,000 years ago. What we do not know for sure is why they perished. While figuring this out is important for science, it is also important for practical reasons. After all, since they perished completely, so could we.

Over the years, various theories have been presented as to why they died off. One popular theory has been that modern humans simply out-competed the inferior Neanderthals with superior intelligence and technology (include social technology). While this nicely appeals to our collective ego (and classic social Darwinism), there are alternatives. The latest one is put forth by Clive Finlayson in his book The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out.  Put crudely, his hypothesis is that luck was the decisive factor, as opposed to superiority on the part of our ancestors.

Of course, there is considerable evidence that our ancestors were more advanced than the Neanderthals. After all, our ancestors seem to have had better tools and weapons plus we have clear evidence that they produced art. Of course, Neanderthals were tool makers and some scientists believe that they could speak and might have created art (although evidence is still needed for this claim). In any case, they were clearly quite capable because they survived almost 300,000 years-not a bad run for a species.

While I am not an anthropologist, it is obvious that better tools and weapons would provide a considerable advantage. Also, the creation of art provides clear evidence that our ancestors had the capacity for abstract thought and communication. Also, the fact that they created art indicates that they had the luxury of doing so-indicating that our ancestors were doing well enough to expend time and resources on artistic endeavors.

To return to Finlayson’s luck hypothesis, he bases his view on the fact that about the time the Neanderthals were nearing their end, the forests of Eurasia began to shrink-thus resulting in a significant shift in the hunting conditions. According to Finlayson, modern humans humans evolved to be distance runners ideally suited to engage in long hunts. In contrast, Neanderthals were supposed to have bulky and strong bodies-suitable for waylaying animals in a forest, but no so good for chasing them across open lands. So, when Eurasia terrain switched from thick forest to open areas, modern humans gained the edge over the competition and thus we are here today and they are not. Finlayson notes that the Neanderthals survived the longest in wooded areas, thus lending support to his hypothesis.

Our success, as he sees it, is thus a matter of luck: we evolved as runners and Eurasia became a runners’ world. Of course, even if our intelligence was what enabled us to succeed then that would also have been a matter of luck. After all, (assuming evolution) we evolved intelligence through the same mechanism that we evolved as runners and whether intelligence or running won the day it would still just be a matter of chance.

As a runner, I obviously find his hypothesis appealing. However, I think that a reasonable case can be made against his hypothesis.

First, if the relative lack of endurance lead to the extinction of Neanderthals, then we would expect that animals that are not endurance hunters would also have been driven to extinction in Eurasia. After all, if the intelligent Neanderthals could not compete with modern humans, then animals should have not been able to do so. As such, we would expect that animals such as bears and  large cats would have been driven to extinction along with the Neanderthals.

Of course, it could be replied that bears and cats could survive because they do not live in large family groups and hence can get along as individuals far better than human like creatures. In contrast, Neanderthals were group oriented and hence would suffer far more from the competition and would be driven to extinction before such “loner” predators. Of course, humans did not make the wolf go extinct (yet)-and the wolf is also a group animal. It could also be replied that while these other animals are predators, they did not occupy the same niche as humans, while Neanderthals did. If a niche can only belong to one species (for whatever reason) it would have been us or them.

Second, if the Neanderthals were comparable to modern humans in abilities and technology, they should have been able to compensate for their lower endurance (assuming they actually did have less endurance). After all, even animals that do not have particularly good endurance (such as Cheetah) are able to hunt quite effectively in open areas. Further, modern humans have proven quite capable at thriving in very diverse conditions due to our intelligence and technology. If the Neanderthals could not do the same, then this would indicate that they were, in fact, inferior in certain respects to modern humans-thus lending support to the hypothesis that we succeeded based on these superior capabilities. Our alleged edge in endurance alone should not, one would think, be enough to result in the extinction of another intelligent race.

Of course, as any runner will tell you, a slight edge in endurance can make all the difference in a race. So, perhaps it made a difference in this race as well-we got across that finish line just a bit earlier for the win. However, it still seems reasonable to wonder why they went completely extinct rather than surviving as our other competitors (wolves, bears, cats, and so on) have done. Perhaps our ancestors simply expanded into the only niche they could survive in and that spelled their doom. Or perhaps our ancestors warred against them until they were no longer able to survive (after all, we wage wars of extermination against our own kind). Or perhaps some other factor, unrelated to us, wiped them out-such as a disease. We will almost certainly never know. Perhaps someday our successors will be asking the same sort of questions about us.

While I live in Florida, I am from Maine. Hence, I followed the recent events there with some interest. The Maine legislature had passed a law that had legalized same-sex marriage and this was signed by the governor. However, Maine law allows a law to be brought up for a direct vote by the people.On November 3, Mainers voted to repeal the law by a fairly narrow margin. Not surprisingly, folks who are against gay marriage are thrilled and see this a great victory. Those who support gay marriage, obviously enough, regard this as a serious setback.

As this situation illustrates, this aspect of law can be seen as something of a two-edged sword. On the positive side, I regard the ability of the people to repeal a law by a general vote to be a key part of a truly democratic system. After all, democracy is based on the assumption that people have the right to chose the laws they wish to live under (or not live under). If we accept majority rule, then we must accept that the majority have rejected same-sex marriage in Maine and that this is how things should be-until those supporting same sex-marriage can achieve a majority.

On the negative side,  such direct democracy allows for the tyranny of the majority. As Mill argues in his work On Liberty, the majority can use the government to oppress a numerical minority and this can be unjust and wrong. While Mill does not advocate rejecting the democratic approach, he argues that an individual should be allowed complete liberty in regard to the aspects of her life that affect her alone. As such, one might argue, the repeal of this law imposes on the legitimate liberty of homosexuals by denying them the freedom to marry. As such, the repeal of the law was a wrongful act and should not have been done.

Of course, it can be argued that the repeal of the law does not present a special interference with the liberty of homosexuals. After all, the repeal of the law leaves homosexuals with the same liberty as heterosexuals-they can marry any consenting person of legal age who is of the opposite sex.

This can be countered by a basic analogy. Imagine that a law was passed that allowed golfers to play golf and then it was repealed by the tennis playing majority. While the golfers are free to play tennis, that is not their sport and hence their liberty has been impaired. Likewise, homosexuals are denied the right to marry the people they wish to marry and this restricts their liberty.

It is at this point that some folks will bring up the claim that if we allow such a liberty, then this would open the door to all sorts of marriages-such a people marrying goats or allowing for incestuous marriages. While slippery slope arguments of this sort have an emotional appeal, they lack logical force. When allowing a change in the marriage laws, there is no reason why such a change must lead to the dire consequences predicted by the slippery slope folks. This is nicely illustrated by the fact that all the dire predictions of doom used to argue against interracial marriage failed to come about.

Speaking of doom, Mill does allow liberties to be restricted if such liberties are harmful to others. After all, if something I do harms you unjustly, then I have no right to do that. In the case of same-sex marriage, while some folks get irate about it, this is hardly the basis for claiming that it will harm them. The objective evidence seems to be that allowing same sex marriage will have no negative impact on marriage itself or society in general.

As I always argue, if people claim that homosexuals should not be allowed to marry because they are immoral and hence will harm marriage, then consistency requires that we apply the same standard to all marriages-that is, immoral people must not be allowed to marry and all immoral people who are married must be divorced. We could start the process with married people we know are immoral-like the famous politicians  and religious leaders who had affairs or were involved with prostitutes. Then we could set up boards of marriage protection to assess anyone who wishes to get married or stay married. Naturally, we should start with the religious folks who are most critical of same-sex marriage. Since they are throwing stones, surely they must be without sin and have nothing to fear from having their moral characters thoroughly assessed to see if they are worthy of marriage.

In fact, I will go so far as to demand that any state which does not allow same sex marriage set up such boards. After all, if the people there are so worried about protecting marriage, then they surely would want to take this logical step. Since I am a professional ethicist with a PhD and almost two decades of experience teaching ethics, I would be pleased to help set up such boards and would even serve on the Florida board (for a fair salary, of course). I know there are plenty of married folks who lack moral purity and it would be an honor to save marriage from them. In fact, when we are done preventing and nullifying all marriages involving people who are not morally pure, marriage will be completely protected because no one will be married and it will be pure and unsullied.

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While I did attend a very nice Windows 7 launch party, I’m still running XP on my main PC and OS X on my iBook (with Windows 2000 running nicely in emulation). I do have Vista on a laptop, but only because it came with Vista and I could never quit muster up the gumption for a downgrade to XP.  Interestingly, though I have used it the least of any computer I own, it has thrown up the most blue screens of death. But, to get back to Windows 7.

My desktop PC (a repair job based on the burned out shell of a friend’s “one fan short” computer) is running XP Pro quite nicely. While I am more of a Mac person, I find XP Pro with Service Pack 3 to be fairly stable and good with resources (of course, it was released almost a decade ago). Most importantly, it does everything that I need an OS to do-that is, it allows me to run the software I use without too much trouble. When Vista was spawned to torment the world, I passed because I saw no compelling reason to “upgrade” to a annoying resource hog. I do not regret that at all.

When Windows 7 was announced, I knew that I would probably have to use it eventually-after all, my PC is reaching the end of its expected life. However, I also knew that I would not be shelling out money for an upgrade. Rather, I figured I would just buy a new PC after Microsoft got around to beating some of the worst bugs out of Windows 7.

Based on my limited experience and research on Windows 7, it seems to be roughly a service pack of Vista. That is, it is basically Vista that works a bit better: it is less annoying, a bit faster, and hogs slightly less resources. However, there seems to be nothing compelling about it-beyond the fact that Microsoft has discontinued XP and soon it will be the only real Windows game in town.

While Windows 7 has some nifty interface features, I can honestly do without them or, if I must have them, I can find some third party freeware to do the same thing. Of course, my view of an OS is to take it as a metaphor for a worktable-it is there to provide the foundation on which I work, not to be getting in my way with fancy features. I am, however, concerned with security and stability. Not surprisingly, I rather like Linux.

Like many people, I find Microsoft’s multiple versions of Windows to be annoying. I rather like Apple’s approach: have one OS for consumers and a server OS. Don’t have numerous versions that seem to differ only in fairly minor ways (other than cost). Presumably Microsoft thinks that it can make more money with all these versions and perhaps this is correct. When I do buy a new PC, I’ll shop for the best hardware deal and then probably just deal with whatever version of Windows 7 is on there. I’d take a stab at sorting out all the different versions, but that should be something Microsoft makes clear. Fortunately, someone has taken the effort for me.

If you have an XP machine and are happy with it, then it makes sense to just stick with it until it dies. While it might be able to run Windows 7, it makes more sense to use the money for an upgrade and put it towards a new PC. After all, some new PCs are priced close to the cost of a full version Windows 7.

If you have a Vista machine, then you might be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7. If you bought your PC on or after July 1, 2009 then you are probably in luck. If you bought before then, then you will need to buy an upgrade. If you are a student, then you can get the upgrade for $29.99.

Of course, my view is that Microsoft should issue a free upgrade to all Vista users as an apology for that mess. At the very least, they should allow them that $30 deal.

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For those concerned with equality, wealth presents something of a two-edged sword. Or, to present a slightly better metaphor, a two-sided coin. In her Vindication of the Rights of Women Mary Wollstonecraft considers this coin.

On the negative side of the coin, Wollstonecraft contends that a focus on wealth is harmful to both men and women. In the case of men, the focus on wealth distracts them from their moral duties. In the case of the women of her time, their main hope for wealth rested in working hard on the beauty and charm needed to win a wealthy man. Of course, she regards this as both a waste of the woman’s life and a distraction from being virtuous (in the classic sense).

On the positive side of the coin, Wollstonecraft argues that women need to be able to have respectable jobs so as to avoid being dependent on men or being forced to work subservient and menial jobs. She also argues that women need property of their own so as to exercise certain virtues, such as generosity. As such, the possession of wealth is a critical factor for women achieving equality with men (or at least a greater equality).

Fast forwarding from 1792 to 2009, it is evident that much of what Wollstonecraft hoped for has come about. In the U.S. and the E.U. women are now the majority in colleges and universities, some estimates place women in control of $12 trillion of the world’s $18.4 trillion consumer spending, and in some major Western cities 25-30 year old women make more than men in the same age bracket. Ironically, the world economic mess has also changed matters since most of the jobs lost were held by men. Interestingly, this shift in favor of women has been marked by a general silence in regards to concerns about inequality. Perhaps this is because such concerns are masked under the belief that such a shift will be beneficial.

One commonly made claim is that women spend more wisely than men. This is often used to explicitly or implicitly to present the shift in favor of women as a good thing. In terms of what this wisdom means,  it is that women tend to spend their money on health and education while also saving more  than men and avoiding many of the financial risks men take. It has also been claimed that women in politics take a similar approach and are more inclined than men to focus on what are regarded as family issues. Put a bit roughly, women are cast as natural liberals.

Interestingly enough, Wollstonecraft anticipated this when she urged that women be allowed to enter into politics and thus “settle their benevolence on the broadest basis.” This view, of course, fits nicely in with stereotypes of men and women. Of course, the mere fact that something is a stereotype does not entail that it is not true.

While the progress of women has clearly been generally good, it is also wise to consider the other side of the coin. As Wollstonecraft argued, a focus on wealth can have a rather negative impact on people and, of course, inequality spawns a wide variety of evils. As noted above, there are signs that the scales of inequality have tipped in the favor of women in some areas (and some parts of the world). While this might be due to factors that are not unfair or oppressive, this is something that needs to be watched, lest a new inequality be created and institutionalized. If arguments are needed for this, we can simply help ourselves to the feminist arguments used to argue against the unequal situation of women in regards to pay and education.

A final point of concern is whether the more benevolent approach of women to spending and politics is something intrinsic to women (that is, part of their nature) or if it is actually artificial. After all, while women are said to spend and engage in politics in ways that focus on family matters, this could very well be due to social conditioning and expectations rather than a natural female benevolence. We might find that women will start acting more like men as they continue to gain wealth and political power. Also, as feminists have often argued, what is taken as female nature might merely be the result of education and social conditioning. Women might generally exhibit this alleged benevolence because they have been trained and shaped to have those tendencies. If so, as social conditions and education changes, then the behavior of women would change as well. One indication of the shape of things to come is that there has been a significant increase in violence on the part of girls and women. As such, it is not unreasonable to expect this special benevolence to fade and that women will act more and more like men.

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Throughout the history of political rhetoric it has been a common practice to not merely settle with claiming that one’s opponents are mistaken. These miscreants must also be cast as hating all that is good. This tradition continues with the claim that Obama hates (or more moderately, dislikes) America.

The claim that the President hates (or dislikes) America is a strong charge and, as such, requires equally strong evidence. Of course, what folks regard as suitable evidence varies based on their political views. For example, those who are vehemently opposed to Obama will tend to infer that he hates America because he does not act in accord with their political views. After all, they might ‘reason’, anyone who thinks differently from those who truly love America must truly hate her. While this line of pseudo-reasoning has considerable emotional appeal, the fact that someone disagrees with those who profess to love America hardly counts as evidence for a hatred (or even a dislike) of America.

I suspect that the reasoning used by some folks involves the classic fallacy of straw man. In this logical error,  someone ignores an opponent’s actual position and presents in its place a distorted, exaggerated, or misrepresented version of that position.  This is a fallacy because attacking a distorted version of a position does nothing to criticize the actual position.

Interestingly, this fallacy often involves reliance on what is referred to as an unknown fact. Typically, this involves claiming to know the “real reason” behind a view when such knowledge is  actually lacking. For example, someone might commit the fallacy using such an unknown ‘fact’:  “The Republicans oppose national health care because they value money more than people and want to ensure that their friends in the big insurance companies keep making fat profits. Even if this means letting people die. So, it is safe to say that their opposition is mistaken.”

In the case of Obama, people often refer to the unknown ‘fact’ that he hates (or at least dislikes )America and this is why he plans on having death panels, on forcing Americans into socialism and so on. Of course, he intends to do none of these things-these are but straw men and hyperbole.

The error people make could also be cast as the assumption of wicked intent. That is, the logical error of inferring that because a person disagrees with you it follows that she must harbor a wicked intent. For example, suppose that Jane supports same sex marriage and is arguing about this with Sally, who is against it. Imagine that Jane says “Well, you are against same sex marriage because you hate gays. You are a classic case of homophobia!” While this might be true of Sally, it might not. After all, a person could oppose same sex marriage on other grounds-such as religion or even a general opposition to marriage itself. Likewise, when people infer that Obama must dislike America because he says things they disagree with, they might be making this error. Of course, if they have evidence that he does hate America and make the inference based on this evidence, then they are not making this error.

Of course, a factor that makes determining whether Obama hates America or not is defining what this would mean. If someone asks me if I like Peanut Butter cups, I can say “yes”, for this is a simple matter. But, if someone asks me if I like candy, I’ll need to qualify my answer because there are some candies I like and some I do not. Now, if someone asks me if I like America, I would ask them to be more specific. Am I being asked if I like all the laws? The traditions? The people? The land? The political views? The Republican agenda? In these cases, my answer would be that I like some and dislike some. For example, I rather like my friends but I dislike the Americans who are rapists and murderers. Now, if someone simply refused to be specific and said “Damn you philosophers! Do you love America? You know, the America that Glenn Beck cries about!” I’d still have to say that I like some of it and dislike some of it. I’m sure Beck actually feels the same way. After all, Obama is part of America and Beck doesn’t seem to fond of him.

Being a logical person, I am open to evidence that Obama dislikes America. Just begin by defining “America” and then show that Obama does not like that.

While Obama has obviously been under attack from the right, he has also been the target of folks on the left. While the folks on the right attack him because they (claim to) see him as a socialist, a progressive, and a liberal the folks on the left have been critical because they (claim to) see him as being a capitalist, not sufficiently progressive, and a moderate. Naturally, it is tempting to think that he must be doing well-after all, he is annoying both extremes and is hence probably hitting things almost just right.

While the attacks from the right are to be expected, the attacks from the left might surprise some folks. After all, Obama was regarded as some sort of liberal messiah, a progressive Moses who would lead the liberal tribes out of the desert of the Bush years. When he turned out, like most presidents, to be a moderate, the left was sadly disappointed. Their liberal messiah has turned out to be a moderate Moses who would seem to be leading them to the land of the middle, rather than the promised land of the left (moonbat heaven).

Some folks in the media have been paying special attention to Obama’s alleged failures when it comes to the two Gs (Gays and Guns). Obama has failed to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and has actually come out against legalizing same-sex marriage. He has also not, contrary to the fears of some folk, done anything against gun rights. While things might change, it seems unlikely that Obama will want to risk losing the support of the moderate mainstream by siding too strongly with the gays or too strongly against guns.

Bush was also subject to a similar sort of criticism from the right. While some folks on the right believed that Bush would outlaw abortion and push through an amendment against same sex-marriage, he did neither. Not surprisingly, some folks felt that Bush had betrayed them. While Bush seemed to have no problem with alienating people, perhaps even he balked at the political cost.

Interestingly enough, the disappoint of some folks on the left towards Obama (and the right towards Bush)  can be countered by one of Leibniz’s responses to the classic problem of evil. The problem of evil is, roughly put, the problem of reconciling God’s existence with the evil present in the world.

Leibniz writes: “We find in the universe some things which are not pleasing to us; but let us be aware that it is not made for us alone. It is nevertheless made for us if we are wise: it will serve us if we use it for our service; we shall be happy in it if we wish to be. “  (Theodicy, #193-5)

The same can be said about the president: we find that the president does some things that are not pleasing to us; but let us be aware that he is not our president alone. That is to say, he is not just the president of the left wingers but of all Americans and hence cannot simply please the left.

President Obama recently signed a hate crime bill, making it into law. Roughly put, the law makes assaulting a person because of sexual orientation or gender identification a federal offense. It has been claimed that this law will help protect people.

Naturally enough, this raises the question whether such a law will help protect people. Presumably what is meant by “protect” is that the law will deter people from committing such assaults. This, of course, assumes that people who commit such crimes will be aware of the law and that the fear of the law will cause them to not engage in attacks they would otherwise conduct if the law did not exist.

On the one hand, people can be deterred by the threat of punishment-especially when the law is a federal law. People presumably have more fear of federal laws than they do of lesser laws because of the greater power of the federal government. As such, there is reason to believe that the law can deter-especially when a high profile case or two makes the law and its consequences widely known to the sort of folks who would be inclined to attack such people.

On the other hand, assaulting someone is already illegal and punishable by the law. Presumably the people who have been assaulting folks who are now protected by this law were aware of this fact, yet they acted anyway. Also, the sort of folks who would be engaging in hate crimes would seem to be the sort of people who are not rational calculators. That is, it seems unlikely that they weigh out the probabilities and consequences before acting. Presumably if they are committing hate crimes, they are driven by hate and would tend to just act on the basis of this emotion.

Of course, the same can be said of any law. When I was an undergrad, one of my professors pointed out that prisons did not really work as deterrents. After all, if they worked, then they would be empty. Of course, it can be replied that the law (and prisons) do not deter everyone, but they do have some deterrent value. As such, this law might deter those folks inclined towards hate crime who are capable of making rational assessments about punishment. Of course, those folks would probably be deterred by the laws relating to assault.

The law does, of course, provide a way to punish people more severely. While this does not necessarily enhance deterrence, it does give the law more retributive force-and perhaps that is part of the appeal.

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While watching the Colbert Report, I learned that two physicists have put forth the theory that the hypothetical Higgs boson particle might be so abhorrent to nature that creating it would cause a temporal backlash that would prevent such a vile spawning. This was put forth as an explanation why the Large Hadron Collider suffered a mechanical failure that put it out of operation for about a year.

Interestingly enough, these two physicists are well established in the field. They are Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan.

They have written papers on the topic such as “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” Of course, the idea that time is not a one way street is nothing new and some physicists claim that such time events are quite possible. Obviously enough, the idea that the discovery of an abhorrent particle would cause such a backlash is something new (at least outside of science fiction).

Interestingly enough, Nielsen predicts that all machines intended to produce the Higgs boson will suffer from bad luck.  He even asserted that “well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God” and “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.” This prediction provides an empirical way to test their claim. After all, if all machines intended to do this suffer from “bad luck” at a rate that differs in a statistically significant manner from the norm, then there would be grounds to suspect that there is some unusual causal factor at work. Of course, “bad luck” would need to be properly defined and a proper baseline would need to be set for determining what would be a statistically significant deviation.

In terms of the evidence for this claim, the Hadron machine suffered that rather serious failure and the United States Superconducting Supercollider (also intended to search for the Higgs boson) was canceled in 1993 after a fortune had been spent on it. More recently, a scientist who works on a collider experiment was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy with Al Qaeda.

Of course, it is rather common for things to go wrong with large projects and large machines and these failures can be explained without some sort of odd temporal backlash. For example, human attempts at space exploration have been marked with some very serious disasters, yet these can all be explained in perfectly mundane ways. Likewise, the problem with the Hadron seems to be explainable in mundane terms and there seems to be no compelling reason yet to go beyond the mundane.

Naturally enough, if all machines intended to to produce the Higgs boson fail, then there would be good grounds for believing a causal factor is in play that is well worth considering. However, the notion that there is some sort of temporal backlash would be but one possible explanation and the mere repeated failures of such machines would not conclusively show that this specific hypothesis is correct. After all, alternative explanations could be given. To use a science fiction one, perhaps benevolent aliens are sabotaging such projects because they know that producing a Higgs boson would destroy the world. Or perhaps the aliens are doing it to keep us from advancing. Or any other of a number of odd explanations.

Of course, sitting around and waiting for more failures will take time. So, Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Ninomiya have suggested a test that can be conducted now. This is, oddly enough, a luck test in which the folks at CERN would play a game of chance to check for bad luck radiating back from the future. They claim that if the outcome of the game was adequately unlikely, then this would indicate that machine would not work or, if it did work, not function well enough to produce the Higgs boson.

Obviously enough, luck and bad luck are not exactly scientific concepts. However, they could no doubt be properly defined in terms of statistics (something I have written on elsewhere). In this case, bad luck would be negative events happening that consistently exceed what would be statistically expected.

However, even if “bad luck” is properly defined, there is the obvious question of whether this bad luck affects anything related to the collider or just the operation of the collider. To be specific, it seems reasonable to wonder whether the alleged bad luck would affect such a game of chance. Suppose, for example, people decided to play Monopoly on the site-would everyone roll really badly? Or would people lose at cards if they happened to be thinking about making a Higgs boson detecting machine? It is, of course, not clear how all this would work. Finally, even if the game went badly, there is still a probability that things can happen against probability (that is, the possible is still possible even it is incredibly unlikely).

When I first heard of this hypothesis, I assumed that it was a clever joke. After all, it seemed to involve attributing to nature a purpose that smacks of Aristotelian teleology-something that has been out of fashion in science since the Renaissance. At the very least it does propose some sort of intent and seeming intelligence to the universe-that it takes action against certain events and has the capability to target specific things like magnets and also to influence human decision making. I suppose that a suitable tale could be told trying to show how nature could do all this with no real purpose or intent-perhaps by drawing an analogy to how a body’s immune system destroys invading disease agents without any conscious intent. Of course, in this case nature is said to be ridding itself of a contaminate before it even exists, which is a heck of a trick.

I’m still sort of waiting for these two clever fellows to say “just kidding.” But, I’ve seen enough bizarre stuff in philosophy and science to suspect that this is no joke at all.

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