Excitement

Ghoncheh Ghavami

Tam links to Popehat, who is perturbed by a petition to disinvite Bill Maher to speak at a Berkeley commencement ceremony. The petition comes from Change.org. They are unhappy with Bill claiming that Islam is not a religion of peace. Who is Change.org? Never heard of them, so I go to their website, and what do I find? I find this picture (above) of a lovely woman who was jailed in Iran for watching a volleyball game.
Waaaa? On one hand they are condemning Bill Maher for condemning Islam, and on the other they are condemning Islam for being Islam? Do I have that right?

Logical thought is kind of a trick. It sometimes takes a certain amount of work. Not everyone comes by it naturally. Emotions can get in the way. So can years of conditioning. If someone tells you that something is wrong every day for a dozen years, you might start to believe them, no matter how illogical that thing is. Like a woman watching a volleyball game is a sin comparable to driving a car, and we all know that women should never be allowed near any kind of mechanical device, right? Am I right or what?

Sometimes I think studying Computer Science made me like I am, or maybe it just aggravated my natural tendencies. Computers are machines and figuring out how to make them do what you want can be a very frustrating experience. You know what you want, you tell the computer what you want it do, and you tell it no uncertain terms, and it goes and does something completely wrong. Was the computer being illogical? No, you simply missed something, you made some assumption about what would happen, and assumptions never cut it with computers.

I suspect that large segments of the worlds population is unfamiliar with logic and may even be incapable of logical thought. I thought America was above that, but that would be illogical.