The Star Wars

I do not plan on seeing the latest Star Wars film that everyone is so excited about.

I was intensely devoted to the series as a youth--so much so that I have, to this day, most of the dialogue of the original three films memorized. The films completely dominated my childhood imagination and toy-collecting. Later, I read the novelizations, some of the comic books, and listened to the (surprisingly good) radio adaptation of the film.

This great well of enthusiasm for The Star Wars was steadily diminished, and then actually transmuted into an equally intense revulsion, through the strange alchemy of the Star Wars prequels.

I have no doubt that Disney and J. J. Abrams have succeeded in producing cinematic fare that is less infuriatingly awful than Episodes I to III of the Star Wars saga. However, what the latest film appears to have in common with the prequels (by all accounts) is the absence of any shred (howsoever slender) of authentic human interest or emotion. Instead, all of these films are skillfully but cynically created vehicles for Disney's Galactic Empire of merchandising and tie-ins.

It's true that the Star Wars films were intended as vehicles for merchandising from the beginning. However, the first three films (Episodes IV to VI) at least managed to combine their frenetic action, obsession with sound and visual effects, and barrage of space vehicles and other sci-fi hoo-ha with well-drawn (if simple) characters, genuinely interesting (if occasionally choppy) plot arcs, and dialogue that was at least not uniformly wooden and terrible.

The first Star Wars film (1977) was also genuinely innovative with respect to the wider world of cinema. To wit: the aforementioned sound and visual effects were at the time revolutionary and ushered in a cascade of technical innovations; the pacing and editing of the films set a new standard for action films; and George Lucas' deliriously bizarre but somehow deeply coherent mash-up of the space opera, samurai, Western, and war film genres was genuinely inspired.

So here is a fistful of links to solemnly mark this week's epoch-making cinematic event (ahem). Enjoy!

1. Original Star Wars concept art.

2. Cracked's David Wong on "5 Things 'Star Wars' Fans Don't Understand about 'Star Wars'."

3. George Lucas' Star Wars Rough Draft from 1974.

4. Prescient but spoiler-free review of "The Force Awakens."

5. Thoughts on the issue of race in "The Force Awakens."

A Modern Western View of the Buddha's Awakening

I like James Ford (see his blog "Monkey Mind"), the author of a recent article about the Buddha's awakening, but he has made several incorrect and misleading statements in this piece that seem to be pretty common among Western Buddhists.

Ford begins by suggesting that we will never know what the original teaching of the Buddha was, because of the distance which separates the texts from the life and language of the Buddha:

he preached sermons that were memorized and no doubt polished by those who transmitted them, and then polished some more. Finally, some four hundred or so years after these words were spoken, they started being written down, principally in two languages, Pali and Sanskrit. Neither was the language he spoke in his lifetime.

While it's true that the sutras of the Buddha were not written down until centuries after his death (see chapter 2 of Rupert Gethin's The Foundations of Buddhism), the preceding oral transmission of the texts was probably just as reliable or even more reliable than the later manuscript transmission, because of the elaborate techniques for memorization of oral texts used in south Asia (and still practiced by Brahmins today who recite the Veda).

Second, while the Buddha did not technically speak Pali, the language of the sutras, it is probably very close to whatever dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan that he did speak; Pali was a standardized form of Middle Indo-Aryan that combined features of dialects spoken across northern India at the time.

Third, Ford states that the Buddha was born a prince, the son of a king, and that he was prophesied to be either a great king or a great teacher. This is a story about the Buddha from a later, legendary biography, and is not told in the earliest texts we have about the Buddha's life, i.e. the Sutta and Vinaya Pitakas of the Pali Canon. The story of the Four Passing Sights is likewise from this later source.

Finally, this is not an error or misleading statement, but it should be noted that James Ford's last sentences are reflective of Zen Buddhism (and Mahayana Buddhism in general), but not of Theravada Buddhism, which makes a distinction between the awakening of different sentient beings:

And you and I awake together. All beings. One body.

In the Theravada view (and, apparently, the view of the Buddha himself, as described in the Pali Canon), one being's awakening does not entail the awakening of all beings. That's why the Buddha decided to teach after his own awakening--because he knew that other beings were still suffering, and that there was a chance that at least some of them would attain awakening if he showed them the way. On the Mahayana view of the interconnectedness of awakening, either the Buddha's awakening was impossible (because there were still other, unawakened sentient beings out there), or his teaching of the Dhamma was pointless (because all sentient beings attained awakening at the same time as the Buddha). This view of awakening makes nonsense both of the Buddha's claim to have fully awakened, and of his decision to teach the Dhamma to other sentient beings out of compassion, respectively.

Carlo Rovelli on Physics and Philosophy

In this Philosophy Bites interview, Carlo Rovelli argues that physicists benefit from studying philosophy both in terms of (1) increasing their sense of what is possible in conceptual space and (2) increasing their methodological awareness. Rovelli argues that these two factors were crucial in both Newton's and Einstein's ability to revolutionize in the physics of their day. Speaking of scientific revolutions, Rovelli also criticizes the excessive influence of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science among theoretical physicists, because Kuhn does not give sufficient emphasis to the fact that science is a cumulative endeavor, such that even revolutionary advances build upon and encompass previous discoveries.

Ineffective Altruism?

Critics have been stumbling over themselves to undermine the Effective Altruism movement, which endeavors to make charitable giving more effective.

Richard Yetter Chappell offers a convincing rebuttal to a recent critique of Effective Altruism by Judith Lichtenberg (published in The Atlantic).

The critics have the winds of Status Quo Bias blowing strongly from behind, and that alone might be enough to win the day. Sigh.

The Duties of a Professor

Jean-Baptiste Regnault,  Socrates dragging Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure, 1791.

This blog post was prompted by a former student of mine who currently teaches undergraduate students; she recently expressed regret at possibly having acted inappropriately in front of her class.

I too have said and done things in class that I later regret or at least seriously question. It is disturbingly easy to say or do something inappropriate--so inappropriate, perhaps, that one's career would never recover.

We have a big responsibility as professors that often goes unacknowledged. We are held to a high standard of maturity, we are expected to always treat our students with the utmost respect, and we are even expected to model certain values--such as opposition to racism and other forms of bias or discrimination against marginalized groups.

Unfortunately, the popular culture and our own personal habits make it difficult to live up to these standards, because of the pervasiveness of inappropriate humor, cynicism, and sarcasm. Moral seriousness is quite rare, and when it does appear it is typically the subject of ridicule. It's easier for many of us to be rude and inappropriate than it is to be paragons of responsibility and maturity.

In order to fulfill our duties as professors, I think we should reflect on these facts, and make a personal commitment to do our best to treat students with respect regardless of the circumstances, and to model intellectual and other virtues.

We also need to cultivate a healthy attitude of shame when we fail to live up to the appropriate professional standard--a shame that is not enervating, but which is motivated by a sense of dignity and honor--the sense that certain behavior is beneath us (see Thanissaro Bhikkhu's dhamma talk on "Shame, Compunction, and Ardency"). If we engage in behavior that we regard as beneath our dignity, we need to be able to acknowledge that, but also motivate ourselves to do better in the future.

Tyler Cowen Interview with Cliff Asness

An economist interviews an academic/investor (sic) on anomalies in the markets for stocks, bonds, and other investment products. A truly thought-provoking dialogue that reveals some interesting quirks about human nature.

Tyler Cowen is proving himself to be a great interviewer, mainly by avoiding the annoying features of most interviews (idle chatter, unnecessarily long introductions) and by unleashing a steady barrage of creative and thought-provoking questions.

"Buddhist Romanticism" by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Most do not yet realize it, but a defining moment in the history of the coming of the Dharma to the West has just occurred, with the publication of Thanissaro Bhikkhu's treatise Buddhist Romanticism.

In this treatise, Thanissaro discusses how Buddhism has been filtered through the "Dharma Gate" of Romanticism in Europe, the Americas, and elsewhere--just as Buddhism was filtered  through the Dharma Gate of Daoism when it came to China in the first few centuries of our era.

Thanissaro argues that many of the ideas popularly associated with Buddhism in the West, such as the oneness of all things, naturalness and spontaneity, following one's own inner genius, artistic self-expression, relativism, and the notion that religion needs to evolve to reflect changing social conditions, are actually ideas from the Romantic movement, many of which are incompatible with the teachings of the Buddha.

Thanissaro's treatise contains a patient and informative (and intellectually charitable) explanation of the early history of the Romantic movement, with a focus on its development among a clique of German intellectuals and artists in late 18th century Jena. Among other things, he explains how the Romantics regarded the modern novel (Roman) as the highest form of artistic expression, because it focused on the inner life of its characters, in a way that was less suited to other artistic media, such as epic poetry or tragedy. In this way, Thanissaro's work is a useful reference with regards to the history of ideas, as well as containing important insights into how the Romantic worldview continues to shape Western culture and the Western adoption of Buddhism.

Recent Study on Religion and Altruism

Here is a short critique of the recent religion and altruism study which has raised such a ruckus on social media. I do not agree with all of the points of the critique. The first point seems the strongest--the study did not control for enough possible confounds.

The second and third points of the critique seem weaker. The second is that the dictator game used in the study is not an effective measure of altruism. It's true that altruism is a difficult thing to measure, but the dictator game is widely used in research as a measure for altruism, and it's not obviously terrible (yeah, that's pretty faint praise--but this is social psychology, and everyone can agree that social psychology is tricky and messy and that we shouldn't expect transcendent perfection immediately in its methods and results, RIGHT?). For example, it has been used to show differences in sharing with strangers among people who live in different countries.

The third critique is that the effect size is small. But this is actually very typical for social science research. There typically are a lot of factors that go into causing complex psychological phenomena like altruistic behavior. It would be more of a surprise if the effect size of having atheist parents were large.

Still, even though this critique is not that strong, and even though I am an atheist and would no doubt enjoy seeing the study's findings confirmed, I am still skeptical about the way the study is being reported.

I am also disappointed about the way the study is being lionized by its defenders and demonized by its critics. It would be better if both sides could just acknowledge the limitations of the study but also acknowledge that it does provide some interesting or useful information that could help guide future research.

But no, people aren't like that. We primates have to band together with our in-group and verbally assault the out-group. The atheists instantly celebrate the study, the religionists instantly look for flaws or limitations in the study. Motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, the works. I.e., the usual disappointment.

More Quantum Woo-Woo?

This article seems to conflate three different concepts: quantum entanglement, quantum indeterminism, and the collapse of the wave function.

It seems that part of the reason why I can't understand quantum mechanics is that most attempts to describe it to a lay audience are so poor.

This experiment seems to give further evidence for quantum entanglement, but that was never really in doubt. The question the article seems to want to answer is the following: what are the metaphysical and epistemological implications of quantum entanglement? Unfortunately, this experiment does not answer that question.

R. Crumb on the Decline of Popular Music

A wide-ranging and fascinating interview with comic artist Robert Crumb. Among other things, here is Crumb's take on the decline of American music and the commercialization of American popular culture after the rise of radio in the 1930's:

The America that I missed died in about 1935. That’s why I have all this old stuff, all these old 78 records from that era. It was the golden age of recorded music, before the music business poisoned the people’s music, the same way that ‘agribusiness’ poisoned the very soil of the earth. In the old days, music was produced by common people, the music they produced to entertain themselves. The record industry took it and resold it, repackaged and killed it, spewed it out in a bland, artificial, ersatz version of itself. This goes along with the rise of the mass media, the spread of radio. My mother, born in the 1920s, remembered walking in the street in the summertime in Philadelphia, and in every other house, people were playing some kind of live music. Her parents played music and sang together. In her generation, her brothers didn’t want to play an instrument anymore. It was the swing era and all they wanted to do was to listen to Benny Goodman on the radio. The takeover of radio happened much later. In places like Africa, you can still find great recorded music from the ’50s. I have many 78s from Africa at that time that sound like some great rural music from America in the ’20s. In the U.S at that time there were thousands and thousands of bands, dance halls, ballrooms in hotels, restaurants had dance floors, school auditoriums, clubs in small towns. A small town of 10,000 would have a least a hundred bands. In the mid 30’s radio spread very fast in America and the depression killed a lot of the venues where live music was performed. You could go to the movies for 10 cents. Then in the 50’s TV finished it all off. Mass media makes you stay home, passive. In the 20’s there was live music everywhere in the States. I talked to old musicians who played in dance bands. This old musician bandleader Jack Coackley in San Francisco told me that in 1928 when you went downtown in the evening on the trolley car to play at a ballroom, the streets were full of musicians going to work, carrying instruments in cases. Same thing happened in France with the death of musette, the popular dance music of the working classes. There hasn’t been a decent popular music in America for a long time.

The Role of Anomalies in Scientific Research

In a recent blog post, neurologist and skeptic Steven Novella explains the useful role played by anomalies in scientific discovery, but also why skepticism about the very existence of an anomaly is often an appropriate initial response.

Purveyors of pseudoscience often point to anomalies as evidence for their own pet hypotheses, which would typically both put an end to further inquiry and not result in further useful predictions. Genuine scientists look at anomalies as opportunities to question their assumptions--either assumptions embedded into their underlying theory, or assumptions about the equipment and research methods.

Novella's story about an alleged anomaly--namely, neutrinos which traveled faster than the speed of light--also handily illustrates the limitations of Karl Popper's falsificationist view of scientific methodology. Specifically, in the case of an apparent falsification of a scientific theory, there is always the possibility that the theory was not in fact falsified, but rather some auxiliary hypothesis that was used to set up the test. An attempt to test a theory also always involves background assumptions about one's equipment, methods, and so on. In the case of the neutrinos, the research team which reported the results was at first unable to discover any problem with their equipment or methods, but later they discovered a wiring problem that caused their measurement of the neutrinos' speed to be inaccurate.

I would love to be able to use this example in a class on the philosophy of science!

Antoine Bruy, "Scrublands"

Photographer Antoine Bruy has an excellent "in progress" project documenting the lives of people living "off the grid" in Europe.

And here is an article about the project.

Copper vs. Orphan Black

I recently began watching the BBC America series Copper, which ran for two seasons from 2012 to 2013. The series is not without its flaws, including a somewhat slow start to its main story lines (as noted by a review in Variety published shortly after the series' initial release), but overall I found the series to be an excellent period piece, which does a better job than Scorsese's Gangs of New York in terms of presenting the actual history of the Five Points neighborhood during the Civil War (which is not to say that Scorsese's film is not excellent in many other respects!).

It is surprising or at least disappointing that Copper was cancelled and BBC America's other original series, Orphan Black, is still running strong. While the premise of Orphan Black is intriguing, the lead actress is fantastic, and the showrunners clearly know the tricks of their trade, I had to stop watching the show on account of the increasingly absurd, byzantine layers of conspiracy and melodrama, together with the sense that the main story line is becoming less plausible and less intelligible with each startling new revelation. And despite the fact that a PhD in evo devo was extensively consulted by the showrunners--they even based one of the main characters on her--whenever anything science-y shows up on screen, it always comes out either as clearly fallacious or as unintelligible gobbledigook. Sigh.

Five Points, Manhattan (George Catlin, 1827)

Psychology Replication Study

Many of you may have heard of the recent psychology replication study, published in Science, in which researchers attempted to replicate 100 hand-picked psychology studies, and were only able to successfully replicate 39 of them.

I am a huge fan of this study, among other things because it encourages other scientists to attempt replication (which everyone agrees is not done enough in the sciences). The result also opens up a bunch of cool interpretive questions about scientific method and statistical analysis.

One obvious mistake to avoid is concluding based on this study that only 39% of the original studies were "correct," in some sense of the word. Just as some of the initial 100 studies probably really were flawed and gave misleading results (which I believe can be thought of as "false positives" without being too misleading), this is also probably true of some of the failed replications as well (which can analogously be thought of as "false negatives").

But can we get more precise with the implications, even to a first approximation? I have an amateur interest in philosophy of science, but am wholly ignorant of experimental design and statistical analysis. So I could use a hand (hence this post).

Can we use Bayesian theory to get some clarity? Of course, we are going to have choose some semi-arbitrary numbers, like the probability that each of the initial findings is a false positive, the probability that each of the initial findings is a false negatives, and the probabilities that each of the attempted replications is a false positive or a false negative.

Apart from the general probability of false positives and false negatives with both the initial findings and the attempted replications, there are more particular factors to consider. One is the expertise of the experimenters; replication may be difficult, because specialized skills and practice may be necessary to successfully create the controlled conditions which will show the initial experimental result. There is also the obvious question of confirmation bias among the researchers who authored the initial studies. And so on.

Are Science Fiction and Fantasy Shockingly Offensive?

Liz Lutgendorff criticizes NPR's list of top 100 science fiction and fantasy novels for being "shockingly offensive" due to their misogyny.

I actually agree with Lutgendorff that there's a lot of sexism in the science fiction and fantasy genres. But is not aesthetically sound to judge an entire genre using a single moral or political principle. I also agree with Lutgendorff's implicit assumption that morality is relevant to aesthetic evaluation, but her article seems to imply that it is the only or the most important principle of aesthetic evaluation, which is false. 

Perhaps Lutgendorff is not making an aesthetic argument at all, but rather a moral or political argument about the badness of the science fiction and fantasy genres. In that case, her argument still seems rather tone-deaf to the aesthetic merit of some of the works she discusses (Terry Brooks' Shannara novels excluded, inter alia). This seems to be an example of a larger social trend to reduce all of moral, aesthetic, and spiritual evaluation to gender politics or to some other narrow (if nonetheless important) political principle.

The Flip Side of Critical Thinking

Have philosophy professors been neglecting half of their discipline? Jennifer M Morton, professor of philosophy at City College New York, argues that in addition to critical thinking, philosophy should be thought of as teaching "constructive imagination." 

Her article is a little wordy, and I'm not sure she sufficiently expounds and expands upon the promise of this notion, but it is indeed promising. I sense a new movement just around the corner for "Constructive Imagination" in liberal arts courses. Just please, could we avoid the frenzied use of buzzwords and self-congratulatory smarm, this one time? Morton's idea is too important to be gradually smothered through the usual academic mechanisms and machinations.

Via Daily Nous.

Bee-lieve It or Not

We can thank the beekeepers for maintaining the honeybee colony population in the face of colony collapse disorder.

The blog post doesn't discuss the fact that the number of bee colonies is still way down from a 1989 high, nor the ecosystem effects (if any) of beekeepers' more rigorous application of the traditional methods for replacing lost colonies. It does discuss the increase in the price of honey which seems to have been caused by these efforts.

I still feel some more context is needed to understand the full story of what is happening with the honeybees and CCD. While I am a believer in the free market, WHICH IS MAGIC just as the blog post says, something is missing (or several somethings).

THEESatisfaction

This duo has single-handedly restored my faith in MODERN MUSIC and TODAY'S YOUTH.

Here's the official video for their song "QueenS," from their first album AwE NaturallE (2012, on the Sub Pop label):

And here they are channeling Sun Ra (and so much more!) from their second album, EarthEE (2015, also on Sub Pop):

Of Lions and Poachers

Brent Stapelkamp, the UK researcher who has been tracking Cecil (and other lions) for years in Zimbabwe, does not want a ban on lion hunting. From the article:

"Hunting can be a valuable component to conservation. If a property has a hunting quota and that money comes back from hunting into the management of the land, it's not going to be at risk," he said. 

"So we have to be careful. The world reaction might polarise things and hunting might be banned outright. 

"I think we have to be very cautious about how this momentum can be used."

Many people have claimed that sport hunting can actually help conservation efforts, in large part because it gives landowners an economic incentive to try to protect and preserve populations of game animals, but it's interesting to hear similar thoughts being expressed by a researcher on the ground who was actually working with Cecil.

"An Honest Liar" (2015)

Not only is this film a layered look at the role of truth and deception in The Amazing Randi's own life, it gives evidence of the stubbornness of people's will to believe in the paranormal and the supernatural, even in the face of decisive refutation. 

Uri Geller, who has been exposed as a fraud repeatedly over the years, both by Randi and by others, still makes a living doing his tricks--even though he stopped referring to himself as a psychic, and now denies that he has psychic powers. It's pretty frightening that even exposed, admitted frauds can still find people to support their flim-flam, and make millions of dollars in so doing. As the film points out, people WANT to believe, and they will, even when the person deceiving them no longer bothers to hide the deception. That's powerful stuff. 

Update Regarding Ed Burger's "One Mind"

Edward A. Burger's forthcoming documentary "One Mind" has finished filming and is now in post-production. The film examines life in a Chinese Chan (Zen) monastery. 

Mr. Burger's previous work includes the film "Amongst White Clouds," which provided an introduction to the Chinese Buddhist hermit tradition.

These film projects were inspired in large part by Bill Porter's book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, which chronicled Porter's travels searching for Buddhist and Daoist hermits in the Zhongnan Mountains. More recently, he wrote a book called Zen Baggage, which chronicled his pilgrimage to sites associated with the earliest Zen Patriarchs. Porter is most well-known as a translator of Chinese Buddhist texts under the nomme de plume Red Pine. 

Same Study, Different Headlines (Bonus: POTUS Sips a Cuppa in the Land of its Origin)

This is what a cup of coffee looks like, in case you were wondering.

Compare: 

1. "Here's more evidence that coffee is good for your brain." 

Vs.:

2. "High coffee intake can increase risk of cognitive impairment."

Opposing or even opposite headlines about the very same study seems to be a common problem with the media's reporting on scientific research. In this case, there seems to be a relatively simple explanation for the disparity (in other cases of this sort, it often takes some digging to figure out what explains the opposing headlines). To wit: the study found an association between low coffee consumption and cognitive impairment, and between increasing coffee consumption and cognitive impairment, but not between high coffee consumption and cognitive impairment. 

In other coffee news:

Quoth the president of the United States, during a state visit to Ethiopia:

Of the many contributions Ethiopia has made to the world over the centuries, I’m certain that Americans want to thank you for one in particular, discovering something that sustains people around the world, day and night, and many people in the White House, and that is coffee. Thank you, Ethiopia. We are large consumers of coffee in the White House.

I thought coffee was invented in Yemen. (Addendum: According to the ever-useful WIKIPEDIA, coffee is definitely native to Ethiopia, but there seems to be some uncertainty and some dispute about where and when it was first used by people as a stimulant, and about where and when where it was first domesticated.) Either way, Ethiopian coffee is truly excellent. (As is Ethiopian cuisine, music, art, architecture, etc.)

Bullying as Aphrodisiac?

Jennifer Wong of Simon Fraser University

A disturbing new study shows that high school bullies have higher status, more self-esteem, less depression, and even have more sex than non-bullies. In addition, the usual interventions to stop bullying are ineffective, but the researchers have identified one that works: give bullies a putatively high status job, such as being a door-greeter at their school, and the bullying decreases.

Beware the Internet Mob

"Justice for Cecil."

The shaming of Walter Palmer strongly resembles a witch hunt. Who among us would survive such scrutiny? Even if we haven't killed a lion, most of us have done some stupid or immoral things. Sometimes repeatedly. "He who is without sin, throw the first stone." (Right?)

Clarificatory update: I actually agree that it was wrong to kill the lion for sport, that the wrongness was made worse by the fact that lions are endangered, and was also made worse because of the role this particular lion was playing in the ongoing research on how to protect the endangered lion populations. So I agree with many of the grounds that people are citing to justify their criticism of and use of social sanctions against Mr. Palmer. But the response to Palmer seems excessive in the light of his actual moral error, and is yet another example of the angry internet mob's frightening power. You could be next!

Second clarificatory update: Lots of people cross moral lines and should be punished, whether through the criminal justice system or through social sanctions. I am not opposed to using social sanctions against people who commit moral crimes, or against people who break the law. We should shame murderers, rapists, and thieves, for example, and Palmer also deserves a certain amount of social censure. But we also have a duty to make judgments about what legal punishments or social sanctions are justified in a calm, rational manner, lest we inadvertently make moral errors ourselves through disproportionate responses to others' immoral actions. Anger, hatred, scorn, and the other passions associated with moral outrage have a way of burning unchecked. It's not that we should forgive everything and punish nothing, but we owe it to ourselves to be careful in how we go about judging and punishing others. I fear that the internet is enabling and encouraging us to give into crude vigilantism and a mob mentality (even in cases where someone really did do something morally wrong). The short of it is, you can't reduce considered moral judgment to instant, unchecked outrage. I don't like where this is going, and I fear it will not end well for our society.

Third clarificatory update, now with more Reason: Three points worth bearing in mind: First, even if outrage is sometimes morally permissible or obligatory, what seems to be happening is people are equally outraged by all immoral actions, regardless of the severity of the immorality. For example, people seem just as outraged against Palmer (or even moreso) as they would be if he had killed a person, or 20 people, or 200 people.

Second, even if it is correct to be just as outraged against Palmer as many people are, there is still something troubling about the way the Internet and social media are causing people to focus excessively and obsessively on the particular day's cause celebre, and ignore everything all of the other crimes that are going on in the world. This excessive, obsessive focus is feeding our lack of proportion and perspective, and is leading to the harassment, firing, bankruptcy, etc. of people around the world (sometimes people who have legitimately done something wrong, but don't necessarily deserve the level of harassment they receive, occasionally people who don't seem to have actually done anything wrong in the first place, and therefore don't deserve any level of sanction or harassment).

Third, there is a case to be made that outrage in general is not morally permissible, at least if 'outrage' entails burning anger or hatred. As the Dhammapada puts it: "Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal." (Dhp I.5).

Addendum: It seems others have been writing about this as well. 

Pictures of People Dressing Up as a Mummified Girl from the Nordic Bronze Age

The remains of a teenage girl from the Nordic Bronze Age were discovered near Egtved, Denmark in 1921, and nicknamed "Egtved Girl". 

A google image search revealed that, for some reason, lots of people have dressed up as her over the years. Here are some of them.