Kafkaesque Bureaucracy

I work for a governmental agency and today someone accidentally sent out an email and put the entire organization in the CC line, rather than put them in the 'To' part. Some people didn't think they should be getting the email, so they responded and asked to be taken off the list, but the way the initial email was formatted caused their replies to go to the entire organization as well, EVEN IF they didn't hit 'Reply to all'. Everyone in the organization began to get emails at a dizzying pace, at this point.

Then people began replying to the replies saying things like "Please stop hitting reply to all!" or "Ok. Stop it. Send it to the sender only. Hit reply. Not reply to all.", or "DON'T REPLY TO ALL! YOU'RE CLOGGING MY EMAIL!", which everyone also recieved. Yet, at this point, the mass of email replies everyone was getting ALL said this same basic message. Now, either these people intentionally hit "Reply to all" themselves (while telling others NOT to hit "reply to all"), in order to get their vastly important message out, so that everyone could be enlightened, or they didn't hit "reply to all" (so as to follow their own advice), in which case the only person who would theoretically see their reply was the original sender. In which case their email would serve no purpose as no one would see it. Not to mention the mind boggling irony in sending out messages saying "stop replying to all, you're clogging my email!", whilst recieving 100s of emails that all say "stop replying to all, you're clogging my email!"

That this many people, literally hundreds of people, could all be so dense not to realize that them attempting to tell others not to reply in order to stop a problem, had become the entirety of the problem itself, is unbelievable. If they followed their own advice, and everyone else did as well, the problem would cease.

I realize this is a bit dizzying and convolved, but I just found it fascinating and comically surreal.

Dissecting Propaganda - Why We're Fat

The implication of these pyramids is that the government is keeping us fat through it's farm subsidy policy. A corrolary of this implication is that the solution to our 'obesity problem' is one that must be addressed through government action, or reform of government policy.

What's missing from this data is a third pyramid titled "What food people like, and choose to eat, the most." If this pyramid were shown it would undoubtedly mirror the pyramid on the left very closely. In other words, the government doesn't arbitrarily set subsidy policy independent of the will of the people. A salad costs more than a Big Mac because the demand for salads is lower. Government subsidies are the way they are because we choose to live, and eat, the way that we do. If we all ate like rabbits, farms would go out of business, and the government would have no reason to continue subsidizing them.

None of this is to say that I'm in favor of farm subsidies, I'm not. It's simply to point out the misleading nature of graph comparisons like these. They're intended to make us feel like victims of some greater force beyond our control, when really, if we're victims of anything, it's our own eating habits. So while they want you to see this data and think "Uncle Sam is responsible for making me fat!", what the data actually reveals is what any child knows; what tastes good often differs from what is good for you.

'Why' Questions Are Inherently Questions About God

When you ask 'why', you are asking 'for what purpose?', 'for what reason?' or 'to what end?' Inherent in any question of 'why' is the assumption that there is a rational intelligence behind whatever system, or set of facts the question is being asked about. For example, if you ask 'why' the sun rises every day, a scientist might (errantly) explain the various physical mechanisms and facts that we know lead to the sun rising. The scientist is really answering the question of 'how', and not 'why'. When you ask why the sun rises, you're asking for what purpose. Even asking the question implies a recognition of a will, and of an intelligence, responsible for making the sun rise. For it makes no sense to ask 'for what purpose' or 'to what end', or 'why' a random, chaotic, un-planned event happened.

If you are a naturalist, that is you believe the natural world is all that exists, then you can only rightly ask 'why' questions about human decisions. Why this person did this, or why did that guy do that. You can't coherently ask 'why' questions about any natural phenomena that occur independent of human will, for the question becomes nonsense. 'Why is the sky blue?', 'Why do earthquakes occur?', 'Why does the mockingbird sing?' Forget about being answered, none of these questions can even be asked by a naturalist. They must either be recognized as incoherent, or the 'why's must be replaced with 'how's.

Therefore it's my contention that the very fact that 'Why' questions preoccupy so much of human inquiry, probably the vast majority of it, is evidence that God exists. If we are solely the product of natural phenomena, then what evolutionary paradigm could our mental preoccupation with the nonsensical question of 'why' possibly serve? As a matter of fact, in evolutionary terms, that very preoccupation would be a quite costly, and dangerous distraction from more pertinent questions such as 'when' 'where' and' how' to secure our next meal, for example.

But if we are the product of a will, and of an intelligence, made in that image, then it follows that we would want to understand the reason behind events occuring. And that the rational being that created us would endow us with rational faculties of our own, and a curiosity to understand not only the what, where, when and how, but also the why.