Philosophy of the Void

Here’s a post that
proves I spend way too much time waiting for my tall mocha every day at
Starbucks.  Apparently Starbucks has a sweepstakes
right now where you can join an Earthwatch field research expedition in Costa Rica to help out with forest restoration. 
Strikes me as a little bizarre, but it?fs an interesting concept and I
guess it plays well with their earth-friendly image.  What I found very weird, though, is that
although the pamphlet states that ?gno special skills are needed?h and the
promotion is open to all residents of the US and Canada (except those in Hawaii
and Quebec), the official rules go on to state that ?gIf a resident of Canada
wins a prize, they will be required to correctly answer a timed mathematical
skill question… before the awarding of the prize?h  Umm… 
Say what?  I did a quick search on
the internet, and it looks like they had the same stipulations for an earlier
promotion to Italy.  Somebody is either playing a very subtle joke or they have some
serious issues…

Note: see comments.

There’s much talk of performance enhancing drugs in sports these days,
particularly steroids in baseball.  The objections are on several
levels.  There are obvious health concerns, since some of the
drugs have side effects that can cause harm in the long run. 
People also feel that medical enhancements give an unfair advantage to
players who use them, whether across time or in direct
competition.  Is it really a great accomplishment when an athlete
on drugs shatters old home run records?  There’s also a related
concern that sees drug use as a form of cheating.  It detracts
from the purity of human accomplishment by adding an extra factor to
the basic mix of talent and hard work.

This gets me thinking, why don’t we raise similar
concerns about the quality of our art?  At least for a century or
so, creative artists have clandestinely or openly relied on various
illegal drugs and narcotics for creative inspiration.  A US government
experiment
from the 1950’s demonstrates the effects of LSD on an artist’s
sketches.  If the source of creativity is drug induced chemical
reactions in the brain, does the art really have value?  We’re no
longer really celebrating the unique talents or inspiration of the
artist.  For sure, not everybody can become a Picasso by taking
drugs, just as most of us couldn’t get into the Olympics by taking
steroids.  But isn’t there something impure and objectionable to
creativity that requires performance enhancing drugs?  I don’t
have an answer to this question.  After all, spontaneity and
randomness in nature can be breathtakingly beautiful.  Similarly,
the output of unusual chemical reactions in somebody’s brain can surely
produce compelling results.  It would be interesting and
informative, though, if museums created “drug-free” zones devoted
exclusively to artists who do not rely on drugs - just to get a sense
of how much creativity human beings can muster on their own.

Computers seem to epitomize the human pursuit of convenience. 
People really care about reducing the number of clicks to accomplish a
simple task.  If you can ctrl-alphabet something, it’s considered
a drastic improvement over moving your hand to the mouse and clicking
through a few menus.  The services offered by Google
are a good example of this.  All you really have to do is type in
“www.google.com” and then your search phrase.  But if this is too
tedious, you can download their toolbar
so you can just type in the search phrase into a little box at the top
of your browser (this actually has a nice highlight feature that’s
really useful for doing searches).  Apparently, even this is too
much for some people, so you can download their deskbar to do a search without even opening a browser.  

I’m not really sure what makes us do this.  Part of it is probably
just a sense of satisfaction of having improved something, regardless
of whether it really matters.  I have to admit to spending some
time figuring out the shortest way to walk from my apartment to the
subway stop, even though the difference involved was probably on the
order of half a minute per trip.  On the other hand, I guess
sometimes these little conveniences have a big impact.  A while
back I downloaded Mozilla, a
browser that lets you “tab” websites so you can bookmark a whole bunch
of favorites.  After I tabbed all the websites I usually visit, I
spend a lot less time on the internet now.  So maybe it just comes
down to trying a lot of little things because sometimes they really
matter.  Like writing a weblog, maybe.