Category Archives: Travels of an Intellectual Vagabond

Wherein I wax philosophical, intellectual, or pretentious.

Let's Break Your Brain

Via David Brin’s blog (have you not read anything by David Brin? No? What the hell’s wrong with you?) I found this article regarding another idea about the ultimate fate of our universe; rather than the ultimate heat death as has been occasionally predicted, or the Big Crunch as has alternately predicted, this new model suggests that if there’s enough "dark energy", then the universe will eventually rip apart into little shards that become new universes themselves.  Our own universe may have begun as a shard of a previously exploded universe; this would explain how it was that our universe, at the very beginning, started out in a state of high order instead of disorder, since as the shards rip apart from the exploded universe, they take along with them high states of order.  As the universe transitions from the state of high order to disorder, all kinds of neat things happen: galaxies, stars, planets, life, and so on.  Everything we know, see, etc., it’s all the universe just running down from its original highly ordered state.  Until the universe explodes, creating new daughter universes that will begin their own processes of entropy.  And so on.

The problem with this model, as Brin explains it, is that it requires an actual empty space for universes to explode into.  No big deal, except that standard models of the universe and of the Big Bang over the past fifty years or so have all suggested that the Big Bang did not explode into empty space, because empty space came into being as part of the Big Bang itself.  In a way, the new model of universes exploding into empty space makes a little more sense, because it’s easier to think of empty space rather than… well, than nothing, not even space.  Although I imagine that the empty space into which these daughter universes explode is very different from the empty space that we think of as existing between the galaxies or between President Bush’s ears.  The spacetime into which a universe comes into being is flat, rather than curved as the empty space in our own universe is.

Damn cosmologists.  Just when we get used to one counter-intuitive, paradoxical idea of how the universe works, they come up with another.  I swear, they do this to us on purpose.

Now, if pondering the Big Bang and the nature of the universe, hasn’t broken your brain, perhaps this video — which my younger sister first clued me in to — will do the job. Below the fold and through the cut. Enjoy.
Continue reading Let's Break Your Brain

Urban Legends: Subversion vs. Radical Conservatism

I attended a panel once about urban legends, where the famous story of Dihydrogen Monoxide was brought up. You probably know the story: a kid gets a bunch of people to sign a petition calling for a ban on “dihydrogen monoxide”, listing all kinds of horrific side effects and dangers of the chemical. Later on it is revealed that the dihydrogen monoxide is nothing but water.

I’m not particularly sure that this really counts as an urban legend, since Snopes.com points to a documented case of this happening. On the other hand, I’ve been hearing this story since I was in high school, so maybe this does count. For the purposes of the panel I was at, it did count as an urban legend.

The panelists asked the audience to consider what, if anything, this particular story might have to reveal about our culture. One of the panelists suggested that it contained a very subversive message; and that message was to distrust science. That message may indeed be there in this story, but is it a subversive one?

Brunvard, in The Vanishing Hitchhiker and elsewhere, suggests that most urban legends have a very morally conservative tone to them. The story of “The Hook”, for example, contains a warning to young people to not go “parking” with their boyfriends or girlfriends. The story of the “Hippie Babysitter” contains a strong warning against taking drugs. So for this story of Dihydrogen Monoxide, I would suggest that the message — not to trust science — is, in fact, a very socially conservative message. Our culture, I think, since the 50’s has become more and more anti-science, particularly after we saw the destruction wreaked upon the world by the atomic bomb, arguably the most visible evidence of scientific advancement. We have also seen the near meltdown at Three Mile Island, massive pollution of our water and air, and so on. I think that this has introduced a backlash against science. And this story seems to reinforce that message: You simply cannot trust scientists, because they don’t even speak English. Furthermore, stories like this seem to suggest that scientists aren’t even interested in communicating with the ordinary American, and might even go out of their way to deliberately confuse and make fun of them.

I think that there is also a religious backlash against science as well. Many people believe that scientific findings contradict the teachings of their faith and, so, undermine their faith. I don’t believe that this is necessarily true, but enough people believe this that there are major movements in the United States to alter science curricula in high schools to eliminate the teaching of evolution.

It seems to me, therefore, that rather than embracing a message of subversive distrust in science, this urban legend actually promulgates a reactionary conservative message of distrust in science.

Ruminations on a Zeppo

The cold I picked up in Ireland appears to have mutated into some sort of annoying permanent viral respiratory infection which has knocked me on my ass for the past couple of weeks. I’m extremely fortunate in that I can work from home while sick, which means I can stay close to my nebulizer and all my other medicines, and also be close to my doctor just in case I need to see him at some point. I’d rather be in the office, because sitting at home tends to make me kind of stir crazy.

I have been using the opportunity these past two weeks, though, to catch up on a bunch of DVD’s that my parents gave to me for Christmas. Among these films is a collection of ultra-cheap discs including some Flash Gordon, some Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, and a disc full of giant lizard action (the silent version of The Lost World, The Giant Gila Monster, and a Superman cartoon featuring the Man of Steel fighting a Tyrannosaurus pulled from the Arctic ice). It’s been fun watching these old shows, comparing the narrative style of, say, Flash Gordon, to more modern stories. Make no mistake; these stories are more sophisticated than the modern viewer typically assumes. At least, it’s a way to keep my mind off my lungs.

Also among the DVD’s in my collection is the Silver Screen collection of five Marx Brothers films. This collection includes Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Monkey Business, Animal Crackers, and The Cocoanuts. A few months ago I watched Duck Soup and resisted the urge to compare the governorship of Rufus T. Firefly with the presidency of George Bush (I find it much easier to take Groucho seriously as a national leader than George Bush); the other day, I watched Horse Feathers. Right now I’m watching Monkey Business to lubricate my brain as I try to install PHP OCI8 extensions on our server.

Zeppo MarxOne thing that has struck me in particular about these films is the role of Zeppo. Traditionally Zeppo is considered a minor player in the Marx Brothers movies (this is so much the conventional wisdom that an episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, featuring Xander and exploring his less than central role in the stories, was called “The Zeppo”). It seems to me, though, that Zeppo has a comic persona just as developed, though more subtle, as those of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. Groucho’s the wisecracking smart-alec, Chico’s the crazed Italian, Harpo’s the — well, he’s the Harpo. But what is Zeppo? Who is he supposed to be?

Zeppo, with his clean cut looks and tidy suit, appears to be a straight man; and he plays his roles mostly as a straight man. And yet there’s a certain insanity in Zeppo that isn’t hard to see; from the opening moments of Monkey Business, when he emerges from the barrel with that crazed yet moronic grin, he comes across as almost a surreal parody of the typical guy on the street. His mundane interactions with the women passengers on the ship are quite funny. There’s that scene where he promises, “Mary, I’ll never leave you”, whereupon he jumps up and runs off stage at top speed as the ship’s officers approach.

So, watching Zeppo, it’s easy to forget that he can be just as crazed as Groucho; it’s just that he’s far more subtle about it.  He’s the crazed straight man, the guy on the street who looks perfectly normal but who has those eyes that dart back and forth, looking for a barrell to duck into — or to put over your head.
I recently learned that Zeppo also acted as an understudy to his brothers; rumor has it that he played Groucho even better than Groucho did.   More evidence of Zeppo’s comic abilities.  It’s a shame that he chose later on to leave show business and become a talent agent.  He was even given a larger role in the film Horse Feathers (which he did brilliantly) in the hopes that he would change his mind.  He didn’t.
Perhaps when Joss Whedon equated Xander to Zeppo in that episode, it was a deeper commentary on Xander’s role than it would seem superficially. I wouldn’t put that past Whedon, after all. He’s pretty clever that way.

I dunno. Maybe I’m just ruminating over a subject which has been beaten to death already in academia. Maybe there’s a pile of feathers where once a horse had been flogged to death. Or maybe the asthma is impacting my ability to think straight or write coherently.  But I think it’s an interesting question.

The Not-a-schmuck report, #1

On the other hand, not everyone in the world is a schmuck.

Dean Kamen is not a schmuck. If the man who gave us the insulin pump and the Segway (commercially a flop but technologically brilliant) wants to turn his brilliant mind to the problem of delivering power and clean water to the underdeveloped populations of the world — well, then, I just gotta take off my hat to him.

And Mark Shuttleworth is also not a schmuck either, primarily because of his work with Ubuntu and Canonical. Another millionaire who wants to bring cheap, available technology to the underdeveloped nations of the world (this time by spreading the Linux operating system everywhere — free is a hell of a lot cheaper than anything Microsoft would be willing to spread to the poor of the world).

Oh, and then there’s Nicholas Negroponte of the One Laptop Per Child program. Not a millionaire, but still a guy who wants to bring cheap, accessible technology to parts of the world which don’t have access now. I like the way he once essentially said “F— you” to both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs because both of them wanted prohibitively expensive licensing costs for the MS Windows and Apple operating systems to be part of the program. And hats off to Red Hat Linux for participating in this program for dirt cheap, if not for free.

These are the kinds of projects I’ve always wanted to get involved in (as well as something like Satellife). It may be a little late for me to get involved, but I’m glad they’re out there.

The reason I hate the news media is that they tend to overlook stories like these, and instead focus on the fray and fracas initiated by the maniacs and robber barons who generally run the country. What these guys are doing is a hell of a lot more important, in my opinion, than who Dick Cheney shot or the latest hare-brained scheme from George W. Bush.

Hm. Maybe I ought to start a regular “Not-A-Schmuck Report”. There are plenty of guys out there doing things like this. Sadly, we hardly ever get to hear about them.

On a related note, I’ve found that the WorldChanging website is worth bookmarking (or adding to your BlogLines feed, if you have one of those).

Snips and Dribbles

Brin on Optimism
Science fiction author and noted astrophysicist (and general pundit/curmudgeon) David Brin has a fascinating entry up at his blog right now entitled, “The Ritual of the Streetcorner“. In it, he quotes a little phrase which I’ve seen elsewhere and which I’ve found is disturbingly accurate for myself: “A cynic is an optimist who has snapped out of it and realized how awful people are”. Brin is essentially an optimist when it comes to the forward progress of humanity; you only have to read his novels to figure that out.

I found this paragraph to be particularly compelling, though:

…[W]hich is more amazing? That the Enlightenment is under threat from a collusive cabal of conniving aristocrats, imperialists and extremist nutjobs? Or the fact that this routine and utterly predictable alliance, which ruled every other urban culture for 4,000 years has been staved off repeatedly, till now, by a republic — and a civilization — that has kept combining redesign and renewal and revolution with an almost infinite capacity for resilience in the face of repetitious human nature? (emphasis in the original)

It’s reassuring, in a way; he seems to be reinforcing that old saw, “In times like these, it helps to remember that there have always been times like these.” So in spite of the fact that our nation seems to be in the grip of authoritarian, backwards-looking autocrats intent on consolidating power into an entity which was never meant to have it (see Jack Whelan’s blog post, “Drift to Authoritarianism“, for some thoughts on this), there may be some cause for hope. Even though people seem, as a group, overwhelmingly stupid, you can go to any complex streetcorner and watch as people negotiate the traffic laws and rules and just seem to make things work. Brin says,

Yes, they [our neighbors] look stupid. I am sure yours do, too. Perhaps, as individuals, they are. But when they are taken together, combined, made free to interact under rules that encourage decent cooperation and competition, something happens. We all get smarter than we ever deserved to be. (emphasis in the original)

Brin’s basic point seems to be that things aren’t as bad as all that. Maybe we will wake up one morning and find that the people in our nation have given up all the liberties and freedoms our predecessors fought and died for simply to forward a manufactured and non-existent “war on terror”, but human beings, on the whole, do have the potential to create progressive societies. Brin calls himself a “flaming optimist”, because cynicism isn’t helpful. Maybe it’s a good attitude to have.

Supraluminal Follow-Up

According to the This Week In Science podcast of January 16th, some of the basic ideas behind the so-called Hyperdrive that I talked about a couple of weeks ago have actually been around since 1950, when the original physicist — whose name, sadly, escapes me, but who was German — in trying to reconcile quantum physics with Einstein’s theory of general relativity, proposed a two-dimensional “subspace” as part of his solution. In 1970-something, another German physicist took these ideas and expanded them to build a better solution to the quantum/Einstein conundrum, postulating an 8-dimensional space as a better model (incidentally, I discovered that this work formed the scientific basis for Buckaroo Banzai’s Oscillation Overthruster — hence, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension instead of the Fifth or Sixth Dimension). Starting in the late 1990’s, this theoretical work proved remarkably effective at predicting certain results in particle and quantum physics (I won’t even pretend to understand the science behind it). The trouble is, as I understand it, almost all of the theoretical work has been done in German because the original scientist refused to learn English.

So, if this work — which involves, as I mentioned, eight dimensions of space as well as hypothetical particles called “gravitophotons” — holds up, then one of the implications is the possibility of an actual FTL hyperdrive. Now, according to the scientists who have been working on that aspect, what would be required would be a huge ring surrounding a superconductor of some sort, which would be capable of producing 25 Teslas of energy (this is apparently a huge amount of energy), which would then be capable of attracting or producing the gravitophotons, which would make transit between the dimensions possible, and, thus, the hyperdrive — which is dependent, somehow, on the ability of the gravitophotons to repel gravity. It turns out there is already a working machine in Sweden that can produce the energy necessary, so it is technologically feasible. Since any ships built with this drive would have to be built in space, though, it may be economically prohibitive. For now at least.

Physicist Lawrence M. Krauss, though, writes in his new book that this sort of work involving extra dimensions isn’t necessarily at all useful in physics. I don’t know if this has any bearing on the issue or not. Nor do I know if this new theory of gravity, which dispenses with the notion of “Dark Matter” and introduces theoretical particles called “gravitons”, has any import.
Krauss, by the way, in an interview on the Skepticality podcast, made the astonishing suggestion that the universe may, ultimately, not be understandable; we may, in other words, never be able to form a complete predictive theory which explains the entire universe. This may be disconcerting to scientists of all stripes, but it’s pretty interesting fodder for writers. I’ve already got a story idea based on this. I just hope it doesn’t provide fuel for the anti-science pseudo-Christians who are trying to force Intelligent Design into our schools.

On the Religion Front

Theologian Bart Campolo once summarized Christianity thusly: “Love God. Love people. Nothing else matters.” (source)

I love this. What a great summation of the Two Great Commandments that Jesus gave. Sure, it’s cute and pithy (which is always dangerous), but it pretty much captures, for me, how I understand Christianity. Those two commandments are pretty much all that matters; everything else is (occasionally dangerous) fluff.  Of course it would never fly in the sickening parody, based on hatred and self-worship rather than faith and worship of God, that passes for Christianity in much of our culture today.  Or is that just my cynicism leaking again?
Rib Update

Ribs still hurt, mostly in my left side. Every now and then I worry that it might be indicative of something horrific in my digestive system — a tumor in my large intestine, perhaps, or liver/pancreas/spleen/muscle/etc. cancer; however, the lack of any other symptoms at all sort of reassures me on this point. My health insurance provider won’t pay for the bone scan, so I need to go back to the doctor and discuss other options. I’m just wary of doing that, since I’ve been to the doctor so many times already.

That’s all I got today. See ya later.

Supraluminal

I just think that the word “supraluminal” — which means “faster than light” — is cool. Isn’t it? It’s actually a really pretty word. Something you’d name your daughter, right?

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, more or less. Nothing in our universe can travel faster than that, not if they want to remain, you know, real. It’s not just a matter of not knowing how to do it (we once didn’t know how to travel faster than sound, and thought it was impossible); it’s a matter of the entire infrastructure of modern physics breaking down utterly if it were possible for something to travel faster than the speed of light. When you hit that speed, time stops, your mass increases to infinity, and you effectively become a point in space, as I understand it. Photons, having no mass, can travel at the speed of light without becoming black holes, but nothing else can.

In a way, it’s depressing for those of us who like science fiction and the possibilities of intergalactic stories. The distance to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is so great that it takes light four years to reach us from there; we say it’s four light years away. Any engine that we human beings come up with for space ships is not likely to even reach a respectable percentage of the speed of light, so a journey of one of our space ships to Proxima Centauri is likely to take hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

But this past week, two German scientists came up with a paper theorizing a way to send ships to distances in space in much less time. The Moon could only be a couple of hours away, Mars a three-day ride, and Alpha Centauri no more than eighty days. This means faster than light travel. Which is impossible. According to Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy, the paper relies on the existence of several new particles that we haven’t yet observed, on parallel space (something else we’ve never observed), and incredibly complicated mathematics which I doubt I’ll ever even come close to understanding.

But it really sounds like bunk to me. Cool as interstellar supraluminal travel would be, I think that these two German scientists are either working with bad data or are trying to fool everyone. I don’t know the science involved at all, but it just sounds too good to be true. And some reports suggest that a working prototype of an engine based on these principles could be around in just five years, which is also too wonderful to believe.

On the other hand, maybe they are on to something. Once upon a time, Cold Fusion was considered impossible; now, two decades after a pair of scientists falsely announced that they had come across it, others are beginning to wonder if it might be possible after all. So maybe this German supraluminal drive just might be possible.

But I doubt it.

Premature thoughts for 2006

  • New Scientist magazine on 13 Things that Do Not Make Sense.  This is a fascinating article compiling a list of thirteen apparent anomalies in our understanding of physics, chemistry, and cosmology.  The author does a good job, I think, of reporting the anomalies without much editorializing, and certainly with no fanciful forays into non-scientific speculation.  The most important thing to take away from this article, I think, is the fact that even though science has come a very long way in the past century, there’s still a lot that we just don’t understand.
  • Pure Energy Systems News on Milestones and Trends in Renewable Energy — 2005 and 2006.  Again, fairly interesting stuff to consider.  We’ve got a ways to go before any of the renewable energy systems proposed form a truly viable alternative to the systems we have in place now (if only because fossil fuel energy production systems are so deeply entrenched in our economy), but there are certainly some very promising ideas out there.

One thing I found really interesting was the fact that cold fusion is mentioned in each article.  Despite the dubious results from Fleischmann and Pons sixteen years ago and the the near unanimous declaration that cold fusion was just “bad science” and probably impossible according to the laws of physics, there appears to be some serious academic interest in it again: enough so that MIT allowed a cold fusion colloquium to take place in its buildings.  I don’t know enough about the physics involved to declare myself whether cold fusion is or is not possible, but the idea and its implications are certainly exciting.

On another note, I have decided that this year I’m going to reduce my political commentary to an absolute minimum.  I’m not usually one for new year’s resolutions, but this one’s been coming for awile anyway.  What finally clinched it for me were Monty Python and the Marx Brothers.

Last year, my wife gave to me a DVD collection of the entire Monty Python’s Flying Circus television series.  I was watching some of the discs recently, and saw a sketch dating from 1971 about a group of little old ladies in London who had taken upon themselves the task of enforcing morality in Britain.  This they did by running around the streets and beating up with their purses anyone who was, in their view, immoral.  The “culture wars” which, some insist, are taking place in our society today, are really nothing new.  They’ve been going on since forever, and they’re not unique to American society.  I don’t see it changing anytime soon.  It’s not worth commenting on, therefore, and not worth getting myself upset about.  Sure, I think it’s tragic that conservative groups have managed to gather enough signatures to make a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in Massachusetts.  And I find any group going on about “traditional family values” frankly ludicrous, worthy of mockery by Monty Python.  And I find it appalling that Pat Robertson and his “700 Club” are broadcast on the Family Channel (if anyone demonstrates the paucity of Christian charity in what passes for Christianity in popular culture these days, it is this man).  But these guys have been around forever.  They won’t go away.  The trick, then, is to not listen to them, and to not let them infect your own reasoning abilities.  I can’t afford to let them upset me.  That’s giving in.

The Marx Brothers are responsible for my increased cynicism regarding politics.  For Christmas this year, my parents gave me a collection of Marx Brothers movies, and last week I watched that timeless classic, Duck Soup.  It may be different, stylistically, from the comedy that we’re used to in our modern culture: instead of the ultra-paced bam-bam-bam comedy that we’re used to these days, Duck Soup was largely just Groucho Marx standing around making wisecracks at unwitting victims.  Brilliant wisecracks, filled with double entendre and other layers of meaning, of course, but the delivery is different.  You can’t help loving Groucho.

But anyway.  Duck Soup is essentially political satire, striking at the political leaders and forces that act arbitrarily, without reason or considered thought.  The message of that film is as timeless today as it was in 1933, if not more so.  The temptation to draw a comparison between George W. Bush and Rufus T. Firefly is almost overwhelming; however, that would mean I’d be comparing Groucho Marx to Bush — who has neither the wit, the intelligence, nor the panache that Marx had.

Ultimately, what it all boils down to is, as the great sage (whoever it was) once said, “At times like these it helps to remember that there have always been times like these”.  The same arbitrary and reactionary forces that were mocked by the Marx Brothers in 1933 and by Monty Python in 1971 are still with us today in 2006.  I wondered the other night whether there have been any honest and beneficial political innovations in the past two hundred years at all?

Looking at all this in context, though, I feel like there is actually good cause to be optimistic about our society’s future.  We’ve certainly become more tolerant of the cultural and religious diversity in our society over the past century, and despite the (somewhat successful) reactionary efforts of the so-called right, I don’t see this trend reversing itself.

But I digress.  the main thing I was trying to get across is that I’m planning on cutting back on my political rants, because I’m going to try to cut back on how upset I get about what happens in politics and our culture.  The reactionary and arbitrary forces that drive much of politics have been there forever and will be there forever.  So I’m planning to focus my news reading on the signs and forces that are moving our society forward, instead of holding us back.

It might work.  I dunno.  I guess the real test will be in November 2006, won’t it?

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, historian Jared Diamond attempts to answer the question of why some societies succeed over others. More specifically, he sets out to discover why the European civilization apparently managed to spread out over most of the globe, conquering along its way, while the societies and civilizations on other continents — the civilizations of Africa or the New World or Australia, for example — did not. The perennial example that Diamond uses in his book is the fall of the Incan empire to the Spanish Conquistadores: the Conquistadores brought about the fall of the Incas in a decisive battle where thousands of Native American warriors died, but not a single Spanish soldier did, even though the Spanish were vastly outnumbered. Diamond suggests that the Spanish victory was due to their superior weaponry and their superior political organization.

Continue reading Guns, Germs, and Steel

The Top 10 Intelligent Designs (or Creation Myths)

The Top 10 Intelligent Designs (or Creation Myths)

Flying Spaghetti Monsters aside, this article from Live Science presents a list of the top ten creation myths of all time, from the Norse pantheon to the Judeo/Christian/Moslem ex nihilo myth.

Y’know, as a Christian, I do believe in “intelligent design” (insofar as a human defined quality like “intelligence” can be applied to God), but “intelligent design” is NOT science and should NOT be taught in science classes. It’s an interpretive framework, if anything, and as such belongs in classes on philosophy or religion. Not science. True, science has its own set of faith-based axioms (that the Universe can be explained entirely using natural laws and that these laws can be understood by human reason), but it has worked so well for so many things that it is foolish to dilute it with religion. How many vaccines for smallpox has science provided? How many such vaccines have been provided by Christianity? You get the point.

So, it seems to me that God apparently chose to use a method for creating the Universe which seems random. I don’t have a problem with this myself. It’s not incompatible with my faith. And if I believed that I could explain away everything that God does, then, well, that’d be some sort of sin anyway, now, wouldn’t it?

Urban Legends: A Quick Thought

While at Dragon*Con a couple of weeks ago, I attended a panel on urban legends. It was pretty interesting, though in some cases I think I knew a bit more than the panelists about specific urban legends and their provenance.

One of the urban legends discussed was the “dihydrogen monoxide” story. Yes, it is based on a true event, but it has spread throughout our culture so that many people, even though they assert its truth, do not know where it originated. “This kid at this high school by neighbor’s cousin’s kid was going to did this thing…” This, I suppose, is what has caused this story to move into the realm of Urban Legend.

The moderator of the panel remarked that this particular story demonstrated one important property of urban legends. In particular, this story possesses an almost “anti-science” theme, or seems to convey the idea that science cannot be trusted. This, he said, shows that urban legends are incredibly subversive, and work from within to disrupt our culture.

I’m not certain I agree with his assertion about the theme of this particular story, but I am pretty sure I disagree with his comment about the “subversiveness” of urban legends; this legend, if the moderator’s analysis of its theme is true, undermines public faith in science, and this strikes me not as a subversive theme, but a very conservative one; almost reactionary. Most of the urban legends we see — “The Hook”, “The Babysitter”, and so on — have very distinct morals: “Don’t park with your boyfriend late at night”, “Don’t trust your baby to a hippie babysitter”.

Do these themes, therefore, count as subversive or reactionary? Or am I misunderstanding the terms completely?