**Social media assignment** Mayor of Toronto has wrong public relations “strategy” in crack crisis

If you’re a politician and have been accused of doing something that threatens your job and reputation try to avoid the issues confronting you. Lay low, be quiet and hope the crisis will go away. This is not the advice a communications professional should give a politician when a career threatening political problem engulfs them. It is the strategy Rob Ford, the Mayor of Toronto, is using to avoid his latest controversy.

On Thursday night Gawker editor-in-chief John Cook published a blog post which claims Rob Ford smokes crack cocaine.

Cook claims he knows this because he saw smart phone video of it. The video he watched was filmed by, and is supposedly being held by, local crack dealers who want $200,000 to release it.

Apparently, the video Cook saw, was seen independently by two reporters from the Toronto Star, and shows Ford calling the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada a “fag” and the football team Ford coaches “just minorities.”

Understandably, the existence of this video, which will likely become public at some point, is a major threat to Ford’s mayoralty.

So, what should Rob Ford do? As far as I can tell, he has two options.

Option one, if he doesn’t smoke crack and hang out with street gang members, is emphatically deny he smokes crack and the possibility a credible video exists. It might also include suing the Toronto Star.

Option two is admit a video might exist and explain what he might be doing in it. If it involves drug use with street gangs and making discriminatory comments then he should apologize. His apology should be supported by concrete steps he’s going to take to address his problems.

If Ford does use crack and has been caught on video, but refuses to admit it, he, in theory, will destroy any remaining credibility he has.

People are usually willing to forgive if they see genuine contrition. If his strategy is vague denial until he is forced to acknowledge he was hanging out with crack dealers, assuming he was, he risks losing some of his core support. There’s no doubt some of his people will continue to support him regardless of what he does, but many will abandon him if the allegations continue or a proven true in the court of public opinion.

Two days in to the crisis not addressing it seems to be the direction of Ford’s strategy. He cancelled his weekly radio show on Sunday. He has said nothing other than the story is “ridiculous.” His brother has offered nothing other than “I have never seen my brother involved with anything like coke.”

No one has actually categorically denied Mayor Ford smokes crack. No one has said, “Rob Ford does not smoke crack cocaine.” Rob Ford has not said, “I do not smoke crack cocaine.”

The problem with the dismissive, non-denial, avoidance approach is that Ford’s crack crisis isn’t going away. The video will probably be released at some point.

If it’s released and it’s fake because Ford doesn’t smoke crack then he’ll have wasted two, three or four weeks not denying he smokes crack. In the three weeks people will start asking themselves why isn’t he denying he smokes crack? Why isn’t he denying the existence or authenticity of the video?

Ford’s proxies haven’t even denied the video is inauthentic. The best they’ve done is attempt to sow doubt about it’s authenticity. Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday has questioned how John Cook and the Star reporters know the video is real. He has not said, at least that I’ve heard, “the video is fake.”

The only way I see the avoidance approach working is if the video never surfaces. If the video doesn’t enter the public domain the mayor can try and avoid questions about it for as long as it takes the story to fall out of the news cycle in the absence of the video. Questions will linger, but Ford supporters will maintain their capacity for a kind of reverse plausible deniability.

Ford supporters, in the absence of concrete knowledge about his alleged drug use, can continue to repeat the lines they’ve been using. ‘Have you seen the video? How do you know it’s not fake? How can you trust drug dealers trying to make a buck at someone else’s expense? Drug dealers are evil. How do the Star reporters know the video is real? I’ve never seen Rob Ford test a substance he smokes, verify it as crack cocaine, stick it in a pipe, put it to his mouth, heat it and inhale the subsequent smoke.’

The funny thing is Rob Ford doesn’t have plausible deniability. He knows what he has and hasn’t done. Maybe that’s why he’s so quiet?

Technology will free us

Technology has advanced at a rapid rate over the last two hundred years. In 1813, we didn’t have telephones let alone smart phones. In 1913, cars were just starting to be mass produced and today we’re moving in to the realm of cars driving themselves. Advances in technology continue to make our lives easier, better and longer. Technological advancement gives humanity room to achieve its full potential. Or does it?

I fall in the camp of being agnostic towards technology if not human conceit. Advances in technology have made processes more efficient, democratized manufacturing, freed time, allow us to communicate to a wide audience and have extended life expectancy in the developed world.

Let me add an obvious caveat though. Technology has allowed employers to reach in to our private lives through smart phones, increased our destructive capacity through nuclear weaponry, diminished our privacy through constant public surveillance and facilitated climate altering pollution.

In my “mind” at least, the history of technology over the last five hundred years, when you net the effects out, has been positive.

While I’m agnostic towards technology, because it’s neutral in the absence of human use and abuse, I certainly don’t subscribe to the view that we can engineer our way out of any problems we face or create as a species. There seems to be a certain strain of technological optimism that subscribes to this view.

The study of radioactive substances leads to nuclear medicine, energy or thermonuclear war?

The idea that we can engineer our way out of anything is a longstanding storm cloud. The strain of technological optimism that reveres our intelligence as a species is extremely myopic, arrogant and very dangerous.

We have gotten away with our conceit so far. We may be able to get away with it for some time to come. If at some point, technology ostensibly leads to our “downfall,” I think our “downfall” will be, in a certain sense, arrogance.

Our arrogance goes a little something like this: If we destroy it we can rebuild it or find alternatives. If we alter it we can control its effects. If we create it we can control it.

3D guns will (hopefully) kill gun manufacturers

Defence Distributed is a 3D gun manufacturing non-profit in Texas. Their mission is to design a fully printable gun and adapt their design to cheap 3D printers to provide wide public access. Yesterday, they posted a You Tube video showing the first successful test firing of a–almost–completely plastic 3D printed gun.

The ramifications of 3D printed guns are potentially widespread.

While I’m not a gun proponent, part of me actually enjoys this. I despise Wayne Lapierre, the public face of the NRA, and his gun manufacturer supporters. They’ve spent the last 3 decades fanning the flames of gun owners’ paranoia by leveraging their persecution complex to sell guns.

Well, guess what, the beast they’ve helped to create may turn on them. As the cost of 3D printers goes down and their sophistication goes up, it’ll become easier and easier for the average Joe to produce cheap and reliable weapons. That is going to be a blow to their sales. Maybe not next year, maybe not in 5 years, but at some point in my lifetime they are going to be hit hard by this technology.

It’ll be real interesting to see how the manufacturers react. I wonder what their position on the 2nd amendment will be when people start undercutting their business?

To the gun-industrial complex, here’s a big middle finger to you. The cat is out of the bag. You can try and get the government to control the technology, but that won’t work. The application of 3D printing is too widespread to control the technology. You can try and control the schematics, but that will be very difficult to enforce. The culture you have helped to create will turn on you.

Here’s hoping you get put out of business.

PS: Anyone or anything that makes Glenn Beck feel uncomfortable is good in my books.

Buddhism, the self and the universe

I recognized at a young age that traditional “western” religious systems did not appeal to me. They require you to believe in a deity. They require you to accept full responsibility for your actions under systems which completely deny your agency. I’ve long rejected them and accepted a scientific world view.

The problem is denial of a deity and adherence to materialism leaves me in the situation Richard Feynman describes at 2:13 of the following video.

While I accept Feynman’s conclusion that he doesn’t need an answer and there might not be an answer, I’m nevertheless left in the situation where I look for explanation. I look for explanation because the realization that there may not be answers is alienating and perhaps I possess geneticist Gene Harmer’s “god gene.”

So, the search, futile though it might be, continues. This is where Buddhism comes in. Buddhism, when you strip away all the cultural detritus of banging gongs, burning incense and worshiping ancestors, including, ironically, the Buddha, is quite interesting. There is a lot about it that appeals to me.

I happened to stumble across the following video of Alan Watts in my WordPress feed the other day. He was a 60s and 70s interpreter of eastern religions for western audiences.

The video expresses some interesting ideas and reminded me of why Buddhism appeals to me. The main idea expressed in the Watt video is the self is not separate and alienated from the universe. The self is very much dependent on and in a fundamental sense a part of the universe.

This view aligns well with a scientific world view, as expressed in the following video.

Anyhow, here are some more aspects of Buddhism that appeal to me.

What I like about Buddhism:

1) The idea that you should be here now. You should be mindful. You should be non-judgmentally aware of your thoughts and feelings in the moment. There’s a focus on the self without the need to propitiate the supernatural big guy in the sky.

2) Meditation without prayer to the big guy in the sky. There’s no need for penitence to god or the Catholic church. There’s no need for petitioning or boot licking the grand narcissist. It’s about self-awareness.

What I dislike about Buddhism:

1) While Buddhists don’t believe in a god they do have some dubious beliefs: reincarnation.

2) The cultural accouterments.

3) They have some mind body distinctions that I’m not entirely comfortable with.

Ah well, no system is perfect. Perhaps I shouldn’t be seeking–ironically–a complete, logically consistent system to identify with. I think I should just adopt ideas and practices that make sense. I don’t need to put myself in a box that I can label.

Cognitive neuroscience poses some uneasy questions about legal culpability

The idea of free will is a cornerstone of legal systems, religions and many eastern and western philosophies. The question of whether we have free will, for me, remains an open and disconcerting question.

The question makes me feel uneasy because my entire world is built around the idea that I have free will. I believe others can choose to make rational decisions and I believe I can make rational decisions. I believe there are physical and social constraints on the choices I can make, but there are a range of choices available for me to make which I have the capacity to take.

The problem is biology, physics and social systems play a powerful, perhaps determinant, role in constraining and “enabling” my action.

So, what the hell am I talking about? Well, here is a video about a 1980s experiment by Benjamin Libet. Libet’s experiment found that when asked to make a conscious decision to stop a clock by pressing a keyboard button, subjects had electrical activity in their motor cortex, which is responsible for movement, before they had activity in their prefrontal cortex which is responsible for cognition.

Here is a video by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku explaining Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal and its impact on free will.

The first video asserts that cognition may not drive action. In fact, there may be a kind of “reverse causality.” It seems extremely counter intuitive, but might action be driving cognition?

The second video asserts that we can’t know place of an object with absolute certainty if we know its velocity and thus there is uncertainty. If physics says that I have free will, because there is uncertainty, cognitive neuroscience tells me that I may not have free will because action could precede thought.

Life surely isn’t this deterministic? Newton be damned.

Beyond Libet’s experiment, cognitive neuroscience has other implications particularly as it relates to free will and the law.

Psychopathy and other brain disorders have significant biological components to them. If brain disorders (including psychopathy and psychosis) are biological, and it’s clear they are, even if the form and severity they take is influenced by environment, then how can those who are affected by them be held legally or morally culpable for their actions?

A psychopathic serial killer usually knows the difference between “right and wrong,” but they have an inability to care. That is a significant handicap in regulating their behaviour.

If we make a mechanistic assumption about free will such that people don’t have any, I believe psychopathic serial killers should be locked up permanently. I just think cognitive neuroscience shows us that there’s a significant legal fiction involved in holding psychopaths, for example, morally and in some senses legally responsible for their actions. If only because morality may be an illusion given biological determinism.

I’d probably take a similar view regarding psychotics who show a predilection for violence. Yes, they may be violent only when they’re detached from reality, and thus can’t be held legally responsible, but they’ve shown they’re violent when they’re psychotic. How do you know at some future point they won’t become psychotic and violent again?

Depending on how deterministic I want to get, the argument could easily extended out to criminal justice system in its entirety. If a woman is suffering from post-partum depression what capacity does she have to regulate her behaviour? Her capacity is very limited. Does that mean she shouldn’t be punished for her actions if she murders her child? No, she should be held responsible and punished. Assuming free will, if she weren’t held responsible then society would be condoning her actions.

Speculating about the Boston bombers

It turns out the Boston bombers are from Dagestan, a Russian district beside Chechnya.

IF the bombers are Chechen, and they were attempting to raise awareness about the Chechen situation, they have certainly shot themselves and the Chechen people in the foot.

They have successfully provided Vladimir Putin a gold-plated justification for exercising full and brutal force in the region in the leadup to the Sochi Olympics.

IF they thought the U.S. is somehow to blame for the goings on in Chechnya that would be curious. The U.S. has routinely condemned the Russians for their actions in Chechnya.

Now, every time Putin does something in the region, he’s going to say to the Americans and anyone else that objects to him, “remember the Boston Marathon bombings? Do you want that to happen to you? How can you question me for dealing with an internal terrorist threat?”

IF they were run-of-the-mill Al Qaeda sympathizers who were seeking vengeance because of U.S. foreign policy then I’m not sure there’s much to say. Al Qaeda sympathizers have been analyzed for over a decade.

IF their ostensible motivation had nothing to do with Chechnya, rest assured, Putin will make it about Chechnya.

Searching for life in our universe

To channel Pink Floyd is anybody, or perhaps more accurately, anything living out there? The Kepler telescope is trying to determine precisely that. Its mission is to discover planets that are just the right size and distance from their parent star that “life,” as we understand it, could exist.

Artist’s depiction of Kepler 62-f courtesy of NASA

Today astronomers at NASA announced that they had found the “two best candidates for life”–according to some news outlets–since the first exoplanet–or planet outside our solar system–was discovered in 1995. Kepler 62-e and Kepler 62-f as they’re affectionately known are approximately 1,200 light years away.

My very conjectural perspective on the search for “life” in or outside of our solar system is, surely, it must exist. I find it very hard to believe that earth, in the incomprehensible vastness of our universe, is the only place where life exists.

In the Milky Way astronomers believe there could be up to four hundred billion exoplanets. Yes, I said four hundred billion. I’d probably be understating things if I said earth was a dust particle on an elephant’s arse on an astronomical scale.

How on god’s green earth could life only exist on earth? I suppose it’s possible, but it utterly defies any common sense notion of perspective.

Whether intelligent or other life exists elsewhere, I don’t suppose it changes my perspective on human existence that much. It’s still absurd. I suppose absurd but amazing.

Drake equation on intelligent life: