Tom Lehrer wasn’t just a brilliant musical satirist, he was also a mensch: a few years ago he signed over literally his entire catalog to the public domain and put the whole thing — including a music files, sheet music and lyrics — on his website at https://tomlehrersongs.com/. So download and stream to your heart’s content. Just take note of the warning at the end of Lehrer’s personal note: “THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON’T WAIT TOO LONG.”

1. We personify the technology. So a clock has hands and a face. God is a watchmaker.
2. We depersonify ourselves. People are “just” clockworks.
3. We move on and find some new reason that we’re different from both animals and technology.

So we decide what really makes us special is that we’re able to create great works. That holds us until the industrial revolution when we get factories. So first we talk about the “arm of industry”. Then we move on to people being a mere “cog in the machine”, and Henry Ford boasting about how he can make a factory work with 2637 workers with just one leg, 670 with no legs, etc. Then we move on and decide that what really makes us special is that we’re tool users. Only then we start to discover animals use tools, so instead it’s that we can solve complex problems, like chess. Then language. Then emotion. And finally we landed on “well, they (computers and/or animals) may look like they have emotions but they don’t really,” which I guess at least has the advantage that it can’t ever be refuted.

I don’t know how historically this account really is — it was just a side anecdote in a class filled with them — but when I look at the latest gushing about ChatGPT and similar large-language models I can’t help but think we’re seeing the cycle repeat itself yet again. If so, we know what comes next.

It’s a sobering thought that, if my wife and I had been born into our grandparents’ generation, it would have been illegal for us to be married in California, because she’s Asian and I’m Caucasian. That ban was also overturned by the California Supreme Court, who in 1948 declared that our anti-miscegenation law violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Only that time there was no way that 52% of the voters could overturn that right simply by passing a ballot measure.

Fear and ignorance always bring out the worst in us, and the rights enshrined in a democracy’s constitution are there, in part, to prevent a majority from acting on those base emotions in a way that tramples a minority. In this case, the State Supreme Court has declared that we voters need to grow up and do the right thing ourselves. I hope we do it soon.

I had the pleasure of meeting Frankie at several of the dance workshops, camps and talks that he taught over the years. He had an incredibly infectious energy and sense of humor about life and the dancing and music he loved, which I think did much to make the swing dance community such a welcoming place to be. He will be missed.

The atheists: When the lion lies down with the lamb, when the president is a Republican Muslim and the Democratic speaker of the House is a vegan Mormon lesbian, when the secretary of defense is a Jain pacifist from the Green Party, they will all agree on one thing: atheists need not apply. A 2007 Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans would not vote for an atheist for president. (By contrast, only 43 percent wouldn’t vote for a homosexual, and only 24 percent wouldn’t vote for a Mormon.) As Ronald Lindsay, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, told me in an e-mail: “Atheism spells political death in this country.”

Indeed. Only one current congressman has confessed to being an atheist: Rep. Pete Stark, a Democrat from the lefty East Bay region of Northern California. If he ever ran for president, he would need God’s help just as surely as he wouldn’t ask for it.

I suppose I can take solace that Stark happens to be my congressman. So at least I’m represented.

(Via Political Animal)

It seems to me I’ve heard this idea somewhere before:

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

We need words like these today as much as we did then, from the highest of offices to the local community.

(via Boing Boing via Schneier)