Jonah wants to know:

There are more persuasive games to be played in order demonstrate that there is truth out there (think science, math, Irish whiskey). But Matt isn’t saying (I assume) that there isn’t any such thing as truth, he’s saying he doesn’t believe in moral truth.

Well, actually, the science and math aren’t examples of truth, either (I can’t speak to Irish whiskey, though I suspect that Goedel would shoot that one down as well). No, sorry, there is no absolute truth of any kind, moral or otherwise, sad to say. Scientific truth is so only in the context of science. If you don’t accept the premises of science, or the postulates of math, then there’s no truth to be found there, either. It’s a cruel world for conservatives.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t defend our civilization from barbarous misogynistic Islamonutballs, though.

For those lacking patience, I give you the two-minute Haggadah.

Speaking of children: We hid some matzoh. Whoever finds it gets five bucks.

The story of Passover: It’s a long time ago. We’re slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh is a nightmare. We cry out for help. God brings plagues upon the Egyptians. We escape, bake some matzoh. God parts the Red Sea. We make it through; the Egyptians aren’t so lucky. We wander 40 years in the desert, eat manna, get the Torah, wind up in Israel, get a new temple, enjoy several years without being persecuted again. (Let brisket cool now.)

Happy Passover.

[via Joe Katzman]

The Speculist has a podcast interview with Jim Bennett, serial space and IT entrepreneur, and popularizer of the Anglosphere.

Among other things, he explains why this may not be the Chinese century.

Jim Bennett describes one.

Phil Bowermaster has a couple of interesting and related book reviews. The Angosphere Challenge would be another good companion.

You scored as Serenity (Firefly). You like to live your own way and don’t enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you. Serenity (Firefly) 88% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 81% SG-1 (Stargate) 75% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 69% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 63% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 63% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 63% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 56% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 56% Moya (Farscape) 50% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 25% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 25% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

There’s a problem with the quiz, though (as there often are with these things).

I wasn’t quite sure how to answer the very first question:

“Peace is achieved through large single government rule (agree, disagree).

Well, I agree that this is certainly a way to achieve peace, but there seems to be a presumption to this (or at least an implication) that peace is an unalloyed good. As some anti-war types are fond of pointing out, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was largely at peace (if you don’t count the random murders and torture that he occasioned on his own people), but it was hardly a desirable state. So I answered yes, but I’m not sure how that answer was interpreted by the test creators.

Also, interestingly, I see that when I go back to look at the quiz, the order of the questions is different. They must randomize it.

[Via Alan Henderson]

[Late morning update]

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that the “peace” question lowered my Firefly score. I think that whoever wrote the question did assume that a) peace is a desirable thing, per se and b) everyone would agree with that–the only issue is how it’s best achieved. What’s the flip side of that question? “Peace is achieved through multiple government rule?” “Peace is achieved through minimalist government?” “Peace is achieved through a well-armed citizenry?” This was a really unuseful question, as posed.

In researching The Tragedy of the Commons, reading Freeman Dyson’s autobiography Disturbing the Universe, and checking out today’s NY Times (subscription required–at least intermittently), I reached the following epiphany. If current trends continue, the world will either be empty or full. We will each live forever or die out because our life expectancy will go to zero. The Tragedy of the Commons was coined back in 1833 by Malthusians. Dyson quipped, “we all thought that energy was going to run out in 1937” and today’s Friedman column worries that social security and medicare will eat up all the budget.

I think that it is good to have social security eat up the budget. As people start to live forever, the only way to get them to cede the good jobs is to offer them a life of leisure. Inflation will take care of any pesky budget infinities. With the right subsidies, the federal budget can be hundreds of percent of GDP. You have to recycle the subsidy dollar and tax it back multiple times per year. That brings up another thing. Taxes will either go to infinity or zero (or maybe negative infinity).

In Joe Haldeman’s Late Twentieth, society has to deal with immortality. I think that there won’t be a radical shift like he extrapolates. If you think of age as a percent of life expectancy, long lives are the same as short ones. Even with clinical immortality, there are always accidents and violence (as he proves in Forever Peace). But suppose we achieve RAID integrity and deaths could hit zero for a good length of time. If trends continued, to update Keynes, in the long run, we will all be dead–or alive.

A “knee-jerk militant agnostic“?

If someone is of sufficiently strong opinion on a matter to be militant or knee jerk about it, it’s hard to imagine that they’re “agnostic.”

In any event, as a skeptic, I can’t imagine being upset about Narnia (which I’d actually like to see, based on reviews). Or the Passion of the Christ, for that matter, though I’ve no intention of seeing it. I wasn’t even bothered by the gay shepherd movie, though I’ve no intention of seeing that, either. I was simply amused by the utterly predictable media reaction to it, in which if it isn’t a box-office success, it’s because we’re all homophobes, and if it is, it means that the nation is now all-accepting of gays, and ready to metaphorically walk down the aisle with them, sexuality notwithstanding.

Considering it’s a “shall-issue” state, I’m thinking there’s going to be a lot less looting in Texas than there was in New Orleans. Assuming that both hurricanes are equally destructive, this provides an opportunity for a controlled social experiment.