Science Rides Again

In my zeal to be "right" yesterday, I neglected to make a few simple points about science and Aaron Swartz and science publishing in general.

It's transparent bullshit what the fed was doing to him over the JSTOR incident.  Illegal and rude his actions may have been, but a slap on the wrist would have been sufficient.  Any jail time over a couple of days seems ridiculous.  Even then, it seems debatable.  They clearly were gunning for him for other reasons.

I learned today, JSTOR is a non-profit institution, formed to help libraries and increase availability to scientific journals, especially online.  With this is mind, I think Swartz's stunt was mis-guided.  He had many good ideas, but sticking it to an institution that would probably have been happy to have him as a consultant to make information more widely available wasn't one of them.

I don't question the benefits of open access.  I don't think journals need to live forever.  I question attacking benign institutions with hacktivism instead of, I don't know, being helpful and helping them build a better open source distribution system and transition the peer review process to the new publishing environment.  Science would like to continue while we sort out open access.  Maybe we could preserve existing peer review and then transition once a new framework is in place, instead of throw it away as bullshit and shrug in answer to "what now?"  The problem I have with Schwartz was his method, and his lack of solution to the problem, not the problem he was trying to tackle.  And I'm not really comforted by a lot of non-scientists seemingly ready to tear down an existing process that is vital, without a plan to help replace it, or make the transition orderly.

Academia, in general, is widely supportive of open access to their articles.  The fact that it's not free does not mean it's a conspiracy to keep it from the public.

Science has a culture just like anything else.  The fact that it moves slow is not a conspiracy.  It takes time to change habits, and as a culture it is cautious in changing habits and culture for fear of sacrificing accuracy and effective peer review in changing too quickly or too rashly.  Also, as a culture it has weaknesses and biases, stubborn older generations, young, bright-eyed idealists and everything else.  It also has pretty good checks and balances in the form of peer review and you won't find a more open-minded and curious group of people willing to be swayed by a good argument and evidence anywhere else.  I think concerns about science are best addressed straight-fowardly and not with subversive stunts.  Unlike most other societal institutions power is diluted, not concentrated in a few people.  So conspiracy theories don't make much sense.  Science just doesn't have much an authoritarian organizational structure that would enable selfish retention of power and money, unlike the RIAA, Wall Street or government.

I don't think scientists are infallible.  Far from it.  I'm gearing up to start writing about some fringe science and philosophy and in my reading have decided science and its underlying philosophies have some big blind spots.  I don't think science should be regarded as mindlessly authoritative.  Scientists are sometimes wrong, and sometimes try to make their studies say more than they do.  The community is usually happy to correct them.  In any case, any figure with enough experience and knowledge to be considered an authority, should be able to explain themselves when challenged.

I think the interface between scientists and the public is woefully inadequate.  Given the completely irrational state of politics and finance and the way the evidence for global warming has been downgraded to the level of an opinion, I think it's done a poor job of making the case not only for the application of reason, evidence, logic and math in solving problems, but in fighting for unpopular theories supported by a metric ton of solid evidence.  Scientific journalists and popular science books aren't quite cutting it.  Or maybe enough people aren't reading them.  Or maybe the good and supported stuff is still too drowned out in pseudo-scientific noise.  I'm not sure.  But I wish we had a better mechanism for cutting out the noise and I don't think it's impossible.

I'm happy to have my ideas challenged.  I don't much like being wrong, but I know there's lots I don't know and I frequently will be.  When I fight for an idea, it's because I think it's important.  If you think I'm wrong or unfair, I expect you to tell me.  That said, I'm still working on a style of argumentation that convinces without beating someone else over the head with my ideas or doesn't get needlessly aggressive.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Editorial Patience

I really think I need to start sitting on posts overnight and then doing a second pass, editing for clarity.  So let it be written, so let it be done!

The Problematic Liberation of Science

You known, it's sad the Aaron Swartz killed himself.  He was bright, intelligent and accomplished quite a bit.  He clearly had many laudable goals and/or ideas.  But his worst idea, and one he seemed unprepared for the consequences of, was his idea for how to reform scientific publishing.  For those who don't know, most academic articles are kept behind the paywalls of for-profit publishers, and the authors are not compensated for purchases made.  In fact, as a published journal author (1 article, woo!), I can tell you that not only that, but scientists have to pay handsomely to get their articles published at all.  It's an old model, it's unwieldy, it could be better.  Swartz's idea of fixing it was to steal (acquire without paying for) millions of articles, I assume with intent to publish to the masses because he had already done a similar stunt with the PACER database.   I've seen a lot of commentary about how he didn't really steal anything, or he was trying to save science or bring it to the masses and that what he was doing was a self-evidently good thing. And I would like to argue that a bit, because I find it highly arguable.  

First, was the problem real?  Yes, absolutely.  I think things like paywalled publishers profiting off of the distribution of scientific articles and research is a relic of the past, that could easily be replaced by the internet as long as a suitable source of funding could be found and the peer-review practices were solid.  I think the apparently sky-rocketing costs of access to these articles are directly linked to the sky-rocketing cost of college tuition, if obviously not wholly responsible.  So yes, I agree this is a system that could be much cheaper, and much more open.

I do NOT agree that scientists are hiding something, or that the masses are being denied access to important information.  For the most part, anything you would want to effectively comment on, utilize or completely understand will require some training in the relevant field.   Most people who go get this training will end up with access to these articles through their school or employer.  I have yet to hear exactly who it is could make use of these articles that is being denied access.  I do agree that there's a larger problem in the interface between science and the general public in that the scientists generally write for each other (which is reasonable) and the non-scientist doesn't really have the education to grasp the context, significance or lack thereof of the results.

Second, was the problem pressing?  Maybe?  I don't hear a lot of grumbling about it in my small professional scientific circle, but that's largely because we all work for an academic institution that pays for it and don't have access problems.  But I imagine most scientists would be happy with lower publishing costs.  And they'd probably be happy to be paid for purchased copies of their articles, although that's never going to be a driving motivation for most scientists, because their actual audience is relatively tiny.  Remember, this is written for review by peers, and not for submission to the general public.  This doesn't mean they have something to hide, it just means the research is typically complicated and written for peers who have an understanding of the tools, concepts and methods involved in investigating complicated topics.  But regardless, people with good research tend to get published, and I don't think  that scientists are having problems discussing and peer reviewing research for each other.  So I would say the cost is an increasingly big problem, but does not actually keep scientists from doing science with each other just yet.

So what's my problem with how Swartz handled it?  He went straight for the illegal option.  Cory Doctorow in his remembrance for his friend, also mentions Swartz was big believer in directly challenging authority and subverting laws he found unjust.  This is laudable to some degree, but there were a wide variety of options less sensationalistic than ripping off JSTOR, even if he thought their business model is bullshit.  Bullshit or not, when you fight the system, and break the law, the system fights back.  But he could have used his remaining money to fund a viral campaign of the brokenness of that system, he could have approached JSTOR, individual universities with an alternative or a compelling argument.  He could have done any number of things to convince people, some of whom would not have taken much convincing, that scientific publishing needed to be reformed and he could have done it in a way that conveyed respect for the scientific need to have SOME respected body publishing articles after peer-review for further peer-review.  Because that's how it works, your articles are peer-reviewed by people knowledgeable in your field before publishing, and then reviewed at-large after publishing. How would destroying JSTOR today preserve that system? How would you fund a replacement?  How do you fund the editors that oversee the peer-review?  These are not easy questions.  And it's not so easily fixed by stealing from JSTOR.

But, you say, is more and open exchange of information always better for science?  Well, yes, but the scientists aren't currently having problems communicating with each other.  But, haven't talented amateurs contributed greatly to fields like computer science, shouldn't they have all the data?  Well, yes,  but everyone can have a computer and tinker with code.  Not everyone can do super-collider research, and the people in a position to do it have generally already have access to all of the articles they need.  As hard as it might be to believe, doing science might require more or different education than that required to write computer code.  And talented amateurs contribute to harder material sciences all the time, especially in fields like astronomy, but usually in conjunction with professional scientists.  Even so, JSTOR ended up releasing millions of articles for free, in the last few weeks, so what exactly is the problem?  Who is it exactly that suffers from lack of necessary information to do their research?

But, you say, aren't scientists just being too secretive?  What are they hiding that they don't want us to know about?  Nothing.  Outside of classified defense research, they are hiding nothing from you.  The reason it seems locked up an inaccessible to you, the casual observer, is an accident of tradition from the pre-interenet days, when published journals were the best way for scientists to present research. Believe it or not, they might be loathe to completely abandon a system with a sound methodology for peer review just because you're excited about your ipod.  And while yes, I wish they would get to re-organizing the publishing into more modern and affordable methods, why on earth would they want scientifically illiterate activists to lead that effort?  Where are the scientists asking the computer hackers to save them from JSTOR?   In addition, I have yet to meet a scientist that won't send you any of his published papers in pdf form if you simply just ask for them.  It's not that you're dumb either, it's that these topics are just very complicated.  If you wanted to read a paper on atmospheric physics and make sense of it, you would first need the relevant training in statistics, and atmospheric science and basic physics and calculus, and by the time you're getting that, you're already in school with access to the paper.

Beyond that, is "scientists are keeping things from us!" really the argument you're making?  I understand that the entertainment, financial and political industries have greatly eroded the public's trust in authority, expertise and the belief that the people in power are behaving with any kind of basic honesty.  Pivoting to science and making the same accusation is just a huge mistake.  There's no conspiracy of scientists because, as mentioned, they don't profit off of their articles and the restriction of information is not malicious and does not yield them more money or power (well, the publishers get both, but not the scientists).  And even with the publishers, it's more a matter of staying relevant than squashing ideas.  You know who else thinks scientists are involved in some kind of giant conspiracy?  Global warming deniers, anti-vaccers, flat-earthers and every other fringe group that doesn't like scientific results because they conflict with their own unsupported biases and decides the whole enterprise must be rotten from the top down.  Scientists aren't keeping anything from you.  That doesn't mean scientific publishing practices aren't a little bullshit, but keep in mind they kind of have scientists by the balls too.  Provide a better, cheaper equally scientifically robust platform to publish in, and they will jump ship, but it's going to be hard, and long, and time-involving  and will require more care than a publicity stunt.

So what are my solutions?  Well, I'm glad you asked.  I think scientific publishing is much more honest and straight-forward than the doubters think it is.  Having said that, I think scientists need to take the lead in pushing peer review away from the old-fashioned publishing houses and into more accessible online journals with the same robust peer review and no charge for download.  I think the general public needs to understand that just because they have google, it doesn't mean they can science, that there remain trades that take years of training and dedication to become competent in, and they are probably not qualified to fully understand the implications of an article if they are not trained in that field.  You don't assume you know more than your doctor about medicine, why would you assume you know more about physics than a physicist?  In terms of communicating with the public, I think we need to hire either better journalists (most science journalists are terrible and misrepresent or misunderstand the studies they're reporting on) or the scientific community needs to make a concerted effort to create an information buffer that translates the science we have into readable language and, crucially, how much evidentiary support a given conclusion actually has (for instance 1 study or 1000 studies and with what degree of confidence).  I've actually been thinking about making a web page for this.

As a larger problem, education is clearly to the internet instead of solely through the traditional institutions of learning.  In addition, university costs are increasingly well above the rate of inflation.  There needs to be alternate methods of acquiring accreditation and qualification that don't necessarily rely on paying through the nose to go to a university.  There also needs to be the same amount of rigor on the internet required in an intense education and I'm not sure how to manage that.  But having seen every yahoo with access to station data that they think disproves global warming calmly and patiently get a crash course on climate science from people who've actually been trained and have years of experience in this stuff, there needs to be some sort of understanding that everyone's knowledge is not equal just because google exists.  There needs to be some standard of evidence and qualification to analyze evidence higher than, "I read about it on wikipedia."

In short, science could communicate it's ideas and methods better, and could probably benefit from more modern and cost-effective publishing practices.  But please super hackers, maybe try talking to people and convincing them to safely and calmly change their behavior and preserve some sense of order and progress in the field before attempting to tear it all down in a fit of pique.  Because that's just about your ego and impatience and it's bullshit.

I Got 28 Problems

For some insane reason, it seems important to me to explain myself, and why I no longer claim Seventh-Day Adventism, or christianity in general.  Well, the last half isn't quite true, but it's true enough.  So I'm going to take a couple of posts to explain it, in more detail than you require.  Everyone is immediately forgiven for choosing not to read this.

I get the impression, largely from family, but from christians in general that one can't simply leave their faith except in error, inability to truly grasp christian teachings or by clearly choosing to do evil after being successfully tempted by demons.  I get this impression from the hundreds of times I heard someone's motivations for leaving the church described in these ways.  As I am problematically vain about my intellect, I feel compelled to explain that no, it's not just because I am a simple lamb who wandered into a den of temptation and got hoodwinked by the first smooth-talking drag temptress that sauntered my way.  I left because I no longer believed just about anything Seventh-Day Adventists believe, which seemed like a pretty good reason at the time.  I have more to say on that process later, but for now, I'd like to start with the basics.

 I am not a Seventh-Day Adventist because I don't believe in any of their 28 fundamental beliefs.  Even though I was born into this church, and it took me a long time to leave it, I am not living under its shadow, living a "sinful" life in defiance of what I was was taught to be right.  I have decided what was taught to me was NOT right (in part, but in important parts), and that I could not in good conscience try or claim to follow it.  My problems with the 28 fundamental beliefs are many, so let's just start at the top and work our way down.

From the opening paragraph:

Seventh-day Adventists accept the Bible as their only creed and hold certain fundamental beliefs to be the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. These beliefs, as set forth here, constitute the church's understanding and expression of the teaching of Scripture. Revision of these statements may be expected at a General Conference session when the church is led by the Holy Spirit to a fuller understanding of Bible truth or finds better language in which to express the teachings of God's Holy Word.

I don't agree with any of this, but the bolded parts seem the most important.  I do not claim any christian creed, let alone the Bible.  And I certainly don't think there are fundamental beliefs I must take from therein.  Why would I think that?  It starts and ends as a tautology:  believe the Bible is the holy word of God because the bible tells you to believe it is the holy word of God.  This is the basic reasoning inherent in a chain letter, and like a chain letter it boils down not so much to an argument but a threat.  "Believe in this book or die forever."  I have so much more on that topic but it will have to wait until the next post.  For now, let me just say I don't take kindly to random books trying to make me afraid of the unproven and untestable.  And my life experience has not been that Bible believers are the most happy and well-adjusted people.

The second bolded passage could probably fill a post on its own, but it's hugely problematic.  It essentially gives each congregation and the general conference leeway to cherry-pick biblical passages as they see fit or "as the spirit moves them."  Which I might feel is an unfair generalization if they weren't on their 32nd year of discussing whether women are capable of being spiritual and moral leaders of churches and on their first year of tentatively discussing whether running gay people out of their churches might not fit with christian principles.  In short, I know they understand the idea of present and eternal truth because I've heard them preach about it and they freely wear mixed fibers and have a conspicuous lack of red tents dotting their church lawns.  Therefore, if they were serious about discerning cultural from timeless truth and ongoing spiritual growth, they would have a formal method of periodically reviewing church beliefs as culture changes, and would apply what they understand of the context in which those verses were written, the core principles of the bible and  modern society's biases to try and separate the two.  I can't be part of or even a respect a religion that changes "when it feels like it," which is what it must mean to be moved by the holy spirit, a feeling, rather than as is deemed necessary by their intellect, understanding of the basic principles of their religious book and their experience.

As for the 28 beliefs, I will try to be concise, but I feel it's worth it to go through each one.  I'm not going to provide exhaustive reasons for why I don't believe these and I'm not trying to convince anyone else to disbelieve, but I do want to go over them to show that I've thought about each of them.  For the sake of not repeating myself, please note that the primary reason for not believing in any of these as stated is they all require me to believe that the Bible is true sans evidence.

To Live and Blank in L.A.

My review of Mr. Blank by Justin Robinson is up on CMS.  Take a gander if the mood strikes you.

Conceding Authority, Part 2

I think it is now my official policy to add "part 1" retroactively to any post that turns out to have a part 2.  Because I wrote part 1 of this post months ago and now I feel stupid for not following up with it like I intended to.  The issue, as I recall, was Romney's concession speech, which contained a couple problematic "Democrats may have won . . . but I'm right." kind of speech in parts.  Specifically:

We look to our teachers and professors, we count on you not just to teach, but to inspire our children with a passion for learning and discovery. We look to our pastors and priests and rabbis and counselors of all kinds to testify of the enduring principles upon which our society is built: honesty, charity, integrity and family. We look to our parents, for in the final analysis everything depends on the success of our homes. We look to job creators of all kinds. We’re counting on you to invest, to hire, to step forward. And we look to Democrats and Republicans in government at all levels to put the people before the politics.

In the first part, I was more concerned with the initial half of the paragraph, today I just want to add a few comments to the last 4 sentences.

1).  "We look to our parents, for in the final analysis everything depends on the success of our homes."

Well, kinda.  Hannah Arendt is thought to have once said, "Every year civilization is invaded by millions of barbarians; they are called children."  Which is true, of course.  Kids don't exit the womb understanding sharing, restraint and how to talk to people they don't necessarily like and make up after feelings get hurt, their very patient parents teach it to them, and try to model it for them, and hope some of it sticks once they get out into a world filled with adults furiously rationalizing away their own lack of sharing, restraint, friendliness and forgiveness.

I guess we all know that.  My specific complaint is the kind of dog whistle assumptions inherent in this kind of statement coming from a republican.  They've been saying for many years now that the most stable families are a man, a woman and a couple kids and NOTHING ELSE and keep hammering that point home like liberals just HATE the idea of the nuclear family.  Like we aren't all cognizant of the benefits of good parenting and that has SOME effect on how children turn out as adults.  What we've also observed, however, is the messed up kids that grow up with a mother and father and then go kill people for no reason.  Or the perfectly good kids raised by a single mother, or a single father, or grandparents, or gay parents or any human being with a good head on their shoulders.  We've also noticed that most kids leave the nest with some damage, their parents being human and having failed them in some manner, and that it's the job of every new adult to take responsibility for their own behavior and work past childhood trauma.  Whether that child had a textbook nuclear family is kind of incidental to this process.

And of course, what really grates about this kind of message is why they bring it up at all in the context of a political campaign.  They're saying, "Nuclear families are the most important thing . . . . and that's why gay people can't get married."  If families were the most important thing, if liberty were the most important thing to republicans, they would recognize that citizens end up forming all sorts of families, are free to do so, and that the important thing is encouraging the importance of families, all types of families, and making sure they have stable, safe, thriving communities to raise their children in.  The insistence on the nuclear family as the only workable prototype has much more to do fundamentalist christianity, authoritarianism and, in Mitt's case, mormon patriarchy where everyone listens to dad and then mom.  What is important about a family:  the love, support and stability or the specific, arbitrary rules on how to form them as delivered by men in suits and women with big hair?

2).  "We look to job creators of all kinds. We’re counting on you to invest, to hire, to step forward. "

Again, kinda.  The idea of the mythical job creator has really gotten out of hand recently.  The republican version of job creation is:  Give money to the already rich, kiss their ring, and then watch as they rain jobs down to a grateful populace.  This is when they're not describing the wealthy as the hardest working Americans who got where they are by a drive to succeed, an eye for needed goods/services and not listening to naysayers.  I'm no economist, but I'm pretty sure job creation is sparked by demand for a product or service, which requires businessmen and entrepreneurs who want to make money providing this service for more people AND a middle class that can afford to pay for it.  Jobs are created because the demand and opportunity is there, and someone has the resources to increase capacity accordingly.  A .2% addition in tax breaks to their 2 million dollar stockpile and a feeling of being loved and cherished by an adoring proletariat just isn't the deciding factor. 
 Remember, these are the people in suits telling you seriously that they are the only adults in the room.  The ones telling you their feelings must be soothed and no regulations must be given because parents just don't understand.  This whole "pity the job creators" routine rests on the notion that they are currently maligned or unfairly restrained, and if we'd just not tax them or regulate them they'd bring about a glorious capitalist paradise out of the goodness of their hearts.  The fact that these regulations and taxes exist for fairly sound historical and social reasons and the paucity of examples where rich people just created jobs for the hell of it doesn't seem to enter into it. 
There was probably a case to make for the unfair burdens of the wealthy when extreme wealth was taxed at 75 or 90%.  But I find it hard to swallow, in the year of our lord 2012, after the very rich have been getting very richer for 30+ years as regulations and and tax rates have fallen away, that they are the members of society most deserving our pity.  That, if the nation "must sacrifice" and tighten our belts in order to be financially sound, the people who have gained so much from the support and participation of the rest of us should be exempt.  If they were interested in being leaders worth a little respect and praise, they would lead by example and sacrifice first, or, at the very fucking least, be willing to join the rest of us in shouldering the load in tough times.  Instead, they run for their fainting couches at the merest hint that they might own anyone or any country anything in return for their good fortune.  I am not impressed by people who call themselves "job creators" but seem to mean "small gods."

3).  "And we look to Democrats and Republicans in government at all levels to put the people before the politics."

I don't have much to add to this one.  As jokes go, it was pretty funny.

Attitude and Gratitude

I am sometimes disheartened when I read something that I was going to write about, like I have just taken too long, and the world couldn't wait, and everything I have to say is already being said by someone else.

Which is probably the wrong way to look at things of course.

Now I try to see all the people talking about the topics I'm interested in as validation and opportunity to engage and saving me some time.  Yes there's still a lot of bullshit in the world, but I think we do live in an exciting and eventful era with a lot of interesting new ideas and rediscoveries of old ones.  The times they are a changin' and we are in the thick of it.  There's nothing disheartening in that.

2013: The Year We . . .

In the spirit of 2010:  The Year We Make Contact (one of my favorite movies, adapted from one of my favorite novels by one of my favorite authors), I peer into my quantum split-screen and strain possible tag lines for 2013 from the flotsam and jetsam of probability space.

2013:  The Year We

• Fix Everything
• Fix Nothing
• Get Naked
• Lose Language
• Find Jesus
• Lose Jesus at the Outlet Mall
• are Found
• are Lost
• Have a Pretty Idea of Where We Are, but  Are Too Embarrassed to Ask
• Never Stop
• Never Start
• Brush Better
• File Paperwork
• Buy More Things
• Uncover Conspiracies
• Find Enlightenment
• Pull Back the Curtain
• Float Away into Space
• Live Underground
• Send Text Messages by Kite
• Only Drive Backwards
• Stop Being Shitty to Each Other
• Decide to See What Being a Little More Shitty to Each Other Would Feel Like
• Evaporate
• Condense
• Discover the Present
• Find the Future
• Lose Ourselves in the Past
• Crack the Planet
• Find the Wormhole
• Discover the Terrifying Secret of Cheese
• Trip the Light Fantastic
• Realize it was All Just a Dream
• Flail Helplessly About
• Finally Crown Nicholas Cage our Rightful King
• Find Hidden Truth
• Realize No One Cares
• Start to Give a Shit
• Finally say, "Fuck It."
• Fart without Fear
• Enjoy What We Have
• Want Even More
• Make Contact and It's Scary
• Make Contact and It's SO BORING
• Learn How to Fly
• Don't Stop Believing
• Realize Argument by Picture Meme is Ineffective and Childish
• Mediate More
• Go Too Far Down the Rabbit Hole of Our Own Minds
• Realize Everything is Fucked Up and Bullshit
• Go Door to Door Selling People More Shit They Don't Want or Need
• Just Vote the Entire Government Out
• Sit Back and Just Watch Things Disintegrate
• Try to Be Better
• Give Up
• Can't Shut Up
• Don't Speak Much More than a Whisper
• Go Crazy
• Realize We've Been the Only Sane Ones All Along
• Discover the Secret To Consciousness
• Discover The Equation that Describes Everything
• Drop the Ball
• Drop the Other for a Matching Pair
• Leak Everywhere
• Use the Force
• Grow Wings
• Breathe Deeply
• Discover the Perfect Philosophy for Life, the Universe and Everything
• Kill the One Guy Who Can Fix Everything Before We Give Him a Chance to Speak
• Believe Every Goddamn Thing We Hear
• Believe Nothing Except from Behind a Double Blind
• Stop Letting Other People Tell Us Who We Are
• Give Much More Than We Take
• Take Much More Than We Need
• Perfect Our Trajectory
• Are Translated
• Are Lost in Translation
• Stop Being Afraid
• Can't Leave the House
• Find the Happy Medium
• Lose the Tormented Psychic
• Eat Lest We Be Eaten
• Decide to Grow the Fuck Up
• Wallow in Endless Nostalgia
• Fall Down
• Skin Our Knees
• Pick Ourselves Up
• Pull the Other Down
• Decide Self-Help is Bullshit
• Eat Too Much Garlic
• Walk Both Ways Up Hill
• Spin Around Until We Throw Up
• Make Peace With the Hipsters
• Declare War on Wars
• Lose the Plot
• Find the Thread
• Have Enough of Our Excuses and Bullshit
• Hold Hands
• Decide to Be Kind, Because Why Not?

There's a universe of possibility out there.  I am looking for the best one.  I'll let you know if I find it.  Until then, may the universe you resolve from the possible to the observed be the one that makes you happy.

Happy New Year Blog

I promise to write on you more.