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With your feet in the air, and your head on the ground . . .

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{Tuesday, May 25, 2004}

 
This is kind of bizarre. I went online to try to buy a back brace, maybe an elbow brace, maybe an underarmour tee. I tried one store, didn't like the selection of back braces. I tried another store, and it had the exactly the same collection. Weird. Then I tried five other stores, and they all had exactly the same eight items under the category "back braces".

Check it out:

Sportchalet
Modells
Dick's Sporting Goods
The Sports Authority
Fogdog
City Sports
Oshman's

Try the game yourself! Just find a sporting goods store on the web and search for "brace". Let's see just how far this conspiracy stretches . . .

Are all of these major national sporting goods chains owned by the same company? Do they sell exactly the same sets of items in their brick & morter stores? Is it just that they've all contracted out online operations to some other company, which sets up one store with a bunch of slightly different fronts?

There is, perhaps, a hint in the URLs for each of the links I list above. I didn't notice it until I was assembling this post, but they all read exactly the same, after the domain name; they're all of the form: "http://www.zzzzzz.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=17985444&cp=710547". The numbers are exactly the same for all the sites.

I want an SEC antitrust investigation . . .

More, though, I just want the back brace I liked the design of in the store, in the right size. It's got a "micro-suction" system that's supposed to wick moisture away from your skin, a key feature. It is apparently impossible to purchase on the web. It's made by Nike (yes, I know, shoot me, I'm supporting sweatshops), but I couldn't find back braces anywhere on their "niketown" store site. And it ain't one of the 8 braces sanctioned by this shadowy internet sporting goods cartel.

So anyway, in conclusion . . . WTF?!?

posted by Miles 5:00 PM

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{Tuesday, May 18, 2004}

 
Jess and I came back from a movie (Troy) last night, and got off the T in Central Sq. a little past midnight. When we came out of the subway, the street was alive; cops blocking off the street a block away, people bustling around, sounds of a crowd. I wondered what was going on, for a few seconds; then I remembered.

"Hey, want to go check out the gay marriage thing?" I asked Jess.

So we did. We got there around 25 after midnight - 25 minutes after Cambridge City Hall opened its doors for special hours, in order to be the very first place in the state of Massachusetts where gay couples could go to get legally married.

The scene was festive; a throng of thousands filled the street and lawn in front of City Hall, and every time a couple went in or came out, hand in hand, the crowd errupted with cheers. It really struck me as one of the most deeply joyful gatherings I've ever seen. It didn't seem political; I guess there were a few Christian protesters, there, but they weren't noticable. It was, by and large, just a really big group of really happy people. Happy, I think it's worth noting, in a quiet way, despite the volume of the cheers. I've been around Bostonians euphoric over the Patriots winning their first Superbowl. This was just as ecstatic a crowd, but it was a completely, completely different kind of ecstasy. It was deep. And it was meaningful.

It was rare.


Congratulations, all around.

posted by Miles 1:00 AM

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{Tuesday, May 11, 2004}

 
I love "Boondocks":


posted by Miles 9:46 AM

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{Saturday, May 08, 2004}

 
I haven't posted in a long time. Doh!

It, uh, means life has been exciting. :-) I went to Jazzfest in New Orleans last weekend, for my dad's big 50th birthday / retirement party. It was a wonderful trip . . . thanks, Papa!

So, what do you get, after such a long blogging hiatus? A history of the last few weeks?

No, what you get is some thoughts on why Dawkins, Pinker, & evolutionary psychology, generally, might be completely wrong. Say what?

Here's the idea that hit me:

Dawkins central idea is that selection should work, in an important sense, at the level of individual genes. Thus the book titled "The Selfish Gene". Good. I love the book.

But. Genes are relatively simple things. They act in complex ways, but to the extent that you can take a reductionist approach and break things down into the dissociable effects of different individual genes, you (by definition) have genes with simple, limited effects.

The central idea in evolutionary psychology is that our behavior can be expected to conform to our genetic "interest" - so, we should be more generous to close relatives than to strangers, for instance, because our close relatives share a lot more of our genes.

Looking for Devils in Details, however, isn't there a problem at the intersection of these two central ideas? It's the genes that are selfish; our behavior is based on our genetic interest. Shouldn't this mean (and this sounds circular, but it's not) that our behavior should be based on the genetic interest . . . only of the genes that determine our behavior? Essentially, the question is this: why should "my" gene responsible for (e.g.) identifying close relatives care about the extent to which those close relatives share "my" genes for hair color, blood type, or any other physical, phenotypic features?

If any of y'all reading this have a good answer, drop me a line.

Maybe I need to go back and read Dawkins again - it's been awhile.

Or maybe I'm right, and the world's wrong. Er, well, Dawkins, anyway.

But what the heck would it mean if I were? I don't know, really. I think it would just require a re-evaluation of the appropriate "level of analysis". That is, there are genes, and there are organisms, and there are groups of organisms, and most people have trouble getting their heads around how exactly to deal with these different levels in analyzing natural selection. Maybe, I'm saying, Dawkins isn't exactly right, either.

posted by Miles 9:53 AM

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