Why Pedophiles Like Children

I was a few days ago thinking about what exactly is so sexually appealing about children. They do not appeal to me because their bodies are so under developed, they are like old people, not appealing at all. Except Sarah Palin, who by the way, is a grandmother. I heard of a MILF but never of a GILF, I think Sarah Palin makes it possible.

But then I realized a reason why pedophiles do like children. It is not their under developed body that they like so much, but a much simpler reason. Children lack hair. A (straight) pedophile does have a similar sexual attraction to women like a normal person does. When he sees a little girl (say ten years) he does after all see a minature woman. She looks like a woman. Okay she is a little under developed but she has similar proportions to a woman.

But for a pedophile there is a big difference between this girl and an adult woman. The girl has no hair (except for her head). Women do. Most women shave off their hair, but some traces of it can still be visible. Especially near the vagina area. Some women have some hair there, while others shave it off. But even the ones who do shave it off still have some remanants of hair.

A pedophile does not like hair. I should said hair different from head hair. Head hair is fine, it even looks pretty. A person with no head hair is less attractive in general than one who does have hair. But for the rest of the hair on the human body it is not appealing any more. Children are precisely the age group that have head hair and lack of body hair. Their bodies are perfectly smooth and clean, free from all hair. Especially their genitals, they are perfectly clean.

This is what attracts the pedophile. He sees a humanoid body which is perfectly smooth, and that is what attracts him to the children. In fact, what I just describe is often the reason why a lot of pedophiles are interested in anime'. In anime' the girls are shown to be hairless. It is a cartoon after all, so the artists can draw human bodies, often resembling little girls, that are perfectly free from any hair.

Maybe I am entirely wrong here as I do not know how the mind of a pedophile works. But this is my best guess that I have to what I think is causing the pedophile to be attracted to little children.

Sales and Designer Clothing

There are two things that seem so easy as everyone else understands them but I just cannot make sense of them. What is up with sales? I hear some people tell me they are going to go and shop in a store because of a new sale?

I have a question. Is it not true that everyday is a sale day? It seems that anytime somebody mentions a clothing store there is always some sort of sale. I am assured that if I got up right now and walked into a random clothing store there would be a sale going on.

Or consider stores that has a "going out of business sale". How many "going out of business sales" can a store have already? If your store is open for seven years it is not exactly going out of business if you have such a sale.

When I pass through the streets of New York City I constantly see sales all around me. Clothing store after clothing store filled with some new sale.

So if it is true that sales happen everyday with every store then what makes them so special? It rather seems that the true intent of sales is to trick the people into thinking that they are saving money, while in all actuality the clothing stores you shop at just screw you over to make more money for themselves by attracting as many people as possible.

How many people live the rest of their lives seeing "SALE" every time they shop and not realize that if they see sales everytime then perhaps they are not as special as people think they are? Am I wrong here? I have no idea. I do not really shop for clothing so I have no idea. What am I missing? You would imagine that eventually people will realize that sales mean nothing anymore if they take place everyday.

The other thing that makes no sense to me is designer clothing. I never cared for designer clothing. All clothes that I have are way cheaper than the same exact clothing one would buy with a magical brand name. I can be wearing a suit, tie, jacket, everything, and the total amount of clothing on me would be over twice as less as someone who buys himself brand designer jeans. What is the point? Does it really matter? They look exactly the same. I would be interested to try an experiment. Buy some Walmart jeans, buy some designer jeans, rip off the labels, and ask someone to identify which one is which. I am sure they will be correct, about 1/2 of the time.

Speaking of clothing I have another thing I just cannot understand. What is up with all the excessive clothing shopping? This seems to be a problem to a lot of girls. I once was hanging out with a girl and before we departed she told me that she is going to go and buy herself something. I asked her how much clothing she owns. She said something to the effect of: 10 shoes, 15 pants, 20 shirts, 5 jackets. I was really surprised with that number. If you multiply all of those numbers together you get 15,000. This is the number of permutations of all articles of clothing she can wear. This means if she was to wear a different permutation of clothing every day it will take her 41 years to go through all of them! She can go through half a life with the clothing supplies that she already had. But somehow that is not enough. She needs more.

I do not understand. What is up with all of this excessive clothing shopping? My mom is like that. She buys herself lots of clothes and perfumes and never really has much of an occasion to use it. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that. If it makes girls happen then so be it. But it makes no sense. Well, I guess it is not supposed to make sense, they are girls after all, they are not supposed to make sense, as they have no idea what they even want. As Freud said the one question he was never been able to resolve is what a girl wants.

Killing Spree

A few days ago, in New York City, there was a killing spree. Some guy killed four people (with some wounded too, if I remember correctly). Not with a gun, but with a knife. Then several days later another stabbing took place, I think it was two people, or three, again in New York City.

When I heard these stories I was surprised to know that none of them generated the same attention as the recent shooting. Why is that that when there was a killing spree with a knife that killed close to the same number of people as the recent shooting that it does not get as much attention?

It does not make sense to me. Also, where are the knife control advocates? I never heard of them. Knives need to be abolished because they are so dangerous, and what about the children, the children can be hurt! How many stabbing happen every year as a result of knives? How many children accidently hurt or kill themselves with knives every year? Where are these knife control advocates who want to ban all knives.

Nowhere. Well maybe a few exist. If scientology has a place in this world then I am sure knife control advocates have a place in this world too. But I never heard of such a group.

Somehow people understand that if knives are avaliable everywhere, and anyone can carry one at anytime with them with no license whatsoever, then a few stabbings will take place. Maybe even a few killing sprees once in a while. Any reasonable person is capable of understanding that. And most of us understand that if knives are everywhere avaliable then we can expect some murders happening.

But here is the interesting thing. We learn to live with it. We are fine with this idea. It does not bother us really, it does not scare us much. This is the world we are used to. We are used to living in a world with knives. So we are comfortable with such a world.

But guns for some reason just scare the very same people who are perfectly comfortable around knives. Why is that? People often tell me, "if there are gun then you got to admit some shooting will take place". Sure, but what about knives? If there are knives then you got to admit some stabbings will take place also. Is that an argument to attempt to get rid of knives. (I do not believe for a moment that knives or guns can be get rid of by just passing a magical law, just like drugs, but that is a different discussion).

So the next time you hear about a shooting that took place. Just keep in mind that a lot of people die from knives also. But we are just so comfortable living in a world with knives.

I Hate Valentine's

I hate Valentine's day because it is a reminder of that I am alone. This day is not special to me, never has been. My day today went like all other days. I am not bothered that there are other people who are happy on that day. That does not concern me, they certainly can be happy and I have nothing against that. It is just that whenever Valentine's day passes it is a continual reminder of what a social loser and loner I am. I get reminded of this message almost everyday. But on Valentine's it gets magnified by a lot.

There is also a lot of uncertainty on this day. I always wonder and ask myself, will I ever like Valentine's day? That is, will I ever have someone to share it with? Or shall I forever despise it as a dreadful day of the abyss? Do I want to be with someone? From a purely philosophical point-of-view I find all relationships to be irrational, but it still is appealing.

Statistics is not Math

I am proud to say that I never taken a statistics course in my entire life, and I have never intentionally studied it. Why? Because I hate how statistics tries to mascarade as if it is a real math subject while it is not.

Does statistics use math? Of course. But so does string physics and quantum field theory. And so does electrical engineering. But we all understand that modern physics uses mathematical concepts, very often quite advanced mathematical concepts, to solve problems related to physics, and we understand string physics to be physics, and not math just because it heavily uses math. (By the way, the math used in modern physics is actually interesting unlike the math used in boring statistics).

Statistics is a science for collecting and interpreting numerical information. Just because it uses calculus and probability theory does not suddenly transform it into a math discipline.

Many statisticians like to identify statistics with probability theory as if they are one and the same. No, this is false. Probability theory is a real branch of mathematics. In fact, till the 1920's most mathematicians did not even acknowledge probability theory as a legitimate branch of mathematics. It was the work of Soviet mathematicians, mostly that of Kolomogrov, who were able to built probability theory on a solid mathematical foundation. And since that time probability theory has been accepted as a legitimate branch of mathematics.

But this legitimacy problem has never been addressed in statistics. All what statisticians do is collect numbers, draw them on various charts and graphs, and then attempt to make predictions about them. Which is why doing this is a science.

The sad thing is that the course I am teaching this semester has a little bit of statistics in it, near the end of the semester. But I hope to skip over that if I could. I really do not want to go through the pain of teaching how to draw a histogram or a pie chart. I rather have more fun time working on probability problems.

Nullhomotopy on Spheres

Quotient spaces are important concepts in (algebraic) topology. But they are also difficult to deal with. The best way to deal with them is to develop an intuition about quotient spaces. I came up with an exercise (inspired a little by Munkres) that I think illustrates the idea of quotient spaces well. It is both intuitive and formal. I hope any mathematics student who wants to become more comfortable with quotient spaces will find this helpful.

Let $n\geq 1$ be a positive integer. Suppose that $f:S^n\to Y$ is a continous function from the $n$-dimensional sphere to some arbitrary topological space $Y$ that can be extended (continously of course) to the $n+1$ dimensional (closed) disk $D^{n+1}$, that is, we can extend the domain of $f$ so that we have $f:D^{n+1}\to Y$ and $f$ restricted to the boundary of $D^{n+1}$ (which is $S^n$) is the original $f$ we started with. Then $f$ is nullhomotopic. The reason for this is very simple. The space $D^{n+1}$ is contractible to a point.

The converse statement is harder to prove, but not too hard, and we will illustrate how to use quotient spaces in proving that $f$ can be extended to a continous function on the whole $n+1$-dimensional disk if it is nullhomotopic.

The intuition here is that the sphere $S^n$ is hollow inside. It has no hole, but it is empty, and somehow if a map is homotopic to a constant map then such a map can be extended to all of region within the sphere. (The $n$-sphere is not contractible to a point, it is intuitively obvious, but just in case you do not trust your intution in higher dimensional spaces, notice that the homology groups of the sphere and a point are not the same, so clearly a sphere cannot be contracted to a point).

By assumption $f:S^n\to Y$ is nullhomotopic so there is a homotopy $F:S^n\times I\to Y$ such that $F_0(s)=f(s)$ for all $s\in S^n$ and $F_1(s)=y$ for some $y\in Y$, we will denote this homotopy as $F_t(s)$. Consider the space $S^n\times I$. You should think of this as a cylinder. To visualize this consider $S^1$ then $S^1\times I$ is really a cyclinder. But in general $S^n\times I$ should be thought as some sort of high dimensional cyclinder. The homotopy $F$ maps the upper face of the cylinder all to the same point $y$ i.e. $F(S\times 1)=y$.

The intuition now is that if we collapse (identify) the top face of the cylinder to one point then we will have defined a continous function on a cone. Formally, we construct the set $X=S^n\times I/S^n\times 1$. Let $\pi: S^n\times I\to X$ be the quotient map, we topologize $X$ by saying $U\subseteq X$ is open if and only if $\pi^{-1}(U)$ is open. Hence, we have constructed a topological space (intutively thought as a cone) $X$.

Let us get a sense of what $X$ is, just as a set. It will consist of points $\{(s,t)\}$ for all $0\leq t<1$ (we are slighly abusing notation here, $(s,t)$ is not really a pair, but an $n+2$ coordinate in $\mathbb{R}^{n+2}$ because $s$ is itself an $n+1$ coordinate) and it will consist of the point $\{S^n\times 1\}$. A cone is homeomorphic to a disk, by a simple projection operator. That is, define $p:X\to D^{n+1}$ by $p(\{(s,t)\}) = (1-t)s$ (remember $s$ is an $n+1$ coordinate so $(1-t)s$ is just a scalar product) for $0\leq t <1$. And set $p( \{ S^n\times 1\} ) = 0$. Check that $p$ is well-defined and then check that $p$ is also continous. Proving that $p$ is continous is easy but tedious so I will not do it. For example, if $U$ is open in $D^{n+1}$ and it does not contain $0$ (as an $n+1$ coordinate in $D^{n+1}$) then $p^{-1}(U)$ will be set of points $\{(s,t)\}$ in $X$ which have the condition that $s(1-t)\in U$. To show that such set of points is open in $X$ pull them back under $\pi$ (the quotient map) and check they are open in $S^n\times I$. Then consider the case when $0\in U$ and $U$ is open in $D^{n+1}$. It is straightforward but tedious so I will not do it. I think it is more important to have intutition that will convince you that $p$ must be continous. Cleary, $p$ is also a bijection. To prove that $p$ is a homeomorphism we will need to show $p^{-1}:D^{n+1}\to X$ is continous also. But we will use the following useful trick. Since $p:X\to D^{n+1}$ is a bijective continous function from a compact space to a Hausdorff space it forces $p$ to be continous (this is true for general topological spaces).

Now we will use the "univeral property" of a quotient map. So far we know that $F:S^n\times I \to Y$ is a homotopy. We also know that $\pi:S^n\times I\to X$ is a quotient map. So we can "factor" $\pi$ through a continous function $g:X\to Y$ such that $F=g\pi$. Remember that $F(s,0)=f(s)$, so it follows that $g(\pi(s,0))=f(s)$ that is $g(\{(s,0)\})=f(s)$. Finally consider the composition $gp^{-1}:D^{n+1}\to Y$. This is continous. We claim it has the desired property that $gp^{-1}$ on the boundary is the original $f$. To see this write a point in $D^{n+1}$ as $s(1-t)$. On the boundary of $D^{n+1}$ we have $t=0$, so under $p^{-1}$ the image is $\{(s,0)\}$. But by what just said $g(\{(s,0)\})=f(s)$. Therefore, we proved that if we set $h=gp^{-1}$ then $h:D^{n+1}\to Y$ is a continous function with the property that $h|_{\partial D^{n+1}} = f$. And with that we proved the theorem.

Suicide is not the Answer?

There are a lot of things that people repeat over and over until it gets accepted as some universal truth. The police are on your side, the soldier is fighting for your freedom, US is the land of the free, respect your elders, family are more important than anyone else, and so forth. One of these thing that I keep on hearing people say is that "suicide is not the answer".

Why not? See the interesting thing about indoctrinated lies that people learn from constant exposure to these ideas since they are children is that these concepts never have much of an argument to them. They are never really justified, just repeated to the point that people repeat it themselves. I heard many times that suicide is not the answer in my life. But no one ever said why it is not.

Suicide can be a means to deal with a problem. Suppose that a person is in a lot of pain. He has no more reason to keep on living. Why should he continue to suffer if he can die peacefully? I would argue that it makes more sense for him to kill himself (or delegate that right to someone else so that his friend can kill him) in such a condition.

A lot of friends think it is noble to say "I will never assist you in suicide", but why is that a noble statement? You are a friend, you are supposed to be there for him in his darkest hour. And your friend has thought through his position and came to the sad conclusion that his life needs to end. If you do not help him then you are a bad friend. I am not talking about whether you can make yourself to help him or not. That is a different issue. You might want to help him but be too weak to assist his death. I am talking about a friend who refuses to help him and think he is doing the right thing. Why not assist?

Or perhaps a dreadfully lonely person who has lived half his life, all alone, and cold. He has no goals, he has nothing to aspire to. He just works everyday. And been doing that for most of his life. Does such a person really have a life? Not really. He is really a drone, in a way, for his employer, a personal machine for his boss. Say this person wants to end his life. Is it really so bad? How is suicide not the answer? Why should he continue to live through his terrible life until he dies?

Suicide is sometimes the answer.