Transformers: Less Than Meets The Eye

All my predictions regarding the new live action Transformers movie were correct. There was only one thing I didn't expect, though: the token babe was hot! Having said that, for a Michael Bay movie, it was tolerable.

Odd, though, that all mainstream portrayals of super advanced aliens are rarely actually super advanced. In fact, most mainstream science fiction in general can't seem to visualize technology more than 30 years into the future. This is strange considering that the wealth of imagination within science fiction novels gives clear indications for technological possibilities of the distant future.

I'm reminded of one particular naive but well-meaning friend who quipped one day that the atomic bomb is the most destructive thing human beings will ever build. Tsk tsk. The world of science fiction has inspired the world of theoretical physics --and vice versa-- and the two have come up with a host of much more destructive possibilities. Here are a few:

• First, the so-called atomic bomb is a fission device. We already have much more destructive fusion devices called hydrogen bombs, which are now the staple of any nuclear arsenal.


• Sometimes called an impulse bomb or an acceleration bomb is a device that lets a small amount of anti-matter supercharge a fusion explosion/implosion. See, the energy from any nuclear detonation results from a tiny piece of matter being transformed into energy. Theoretically, minute amounts of antimatter could catalyze that process.


• A full-on total conversion device, perhaps using several grams of antimatter could devastate an entire continent. Several tonnes of matter instantaneously and completely transformed into energy could kill all life on Earth in minutes.


• A quantum black hole, small enough to be microscopic but as voracious as its galaxy-sized brothers could penetrate any shield and devour anything: flesh, machine, earth, matter, energy... anything. After consuming the entire planet, it might be big enough to be seen without a microscope.


• A gravity lens is a device that could focus or reduce gravity in a localized fashion. Imagine being able to lift your enemy's nation physically into space. How would it work? Lots of theoretical and fanciful methods have been proposed, some employing theoretical graviton particles, and others focusing the power of the aforementioned quantum black hole.


• The last option I will mention is, I think, the most elegant: the relativistic missile. Imagine you could accelerate an object (say the size of an airplane) to a speed close to the speed of light, and crash it onto the surface of the Earth. At that speed, the object would likely experience total conversion into energy, resulting in the same outcome as the total conversion or antimatter device mentioned above: complete annihilation of all life on the planet.

The beauty of the relativistic missile, though, is that if it were launched from another planet, then by the time you see it, it's already here. In other words, there is literally no possible defence.

Charles Pellegrino wrote a lot about the relativistic missile. He took its philosophy further, in a way responding to Carl Sagan's pacifist ideas of the 1970s. See, Sagan had reasoned that all interstellar space faring civilizations would be necessarily peaceful and trustworthy because in order to get organized enough to venture into space, a society would first have to solve its internal issues.

Pellegrino, however, argued thusly:

1. Vegetarians don't become top dogs. In other words, only predatory, aggressive species rise to become the dominant life form on a planet.
2. When push comes to shove, a species will always consider its own needs and advantages above those of others.
3. They will assume the same of us.

With that mindset in place, Pellegrino further argued that given the potential existence of the relativistic missile, the only logical thing to do when discovering an alien species is to destroy it. Why? Because if they were to launch first, we'd be dead; and they'd be employing the same logic, thus would also choose to launch first.

According to his reasoning, this is what explains the lack of radio chatter in the universe: loud civilzations who have away their locations were quickly eliminated. The universe might be full of folk, but they're all laying low.

Abuse of Numbers

The image is of a new ad put out by Ernestine's Women's Shelter. It jumped out at me on the Toronto subways this week.

The message is simple, and probably accurate: that there appears to be an association between observing domestic abuse as a child and perpetrating similar abuse later in life. The implication is also clear: that we should use this information to push for appropriate policy change that will address this phenomenon and hopefully reduce the instances of domestic violence.

So what's the problem?

The problem is that I'm a numerically anal epidemiologist and I cringe when I see numbers presented without context. Regardless of how honourable the intent, statistics without context are essentially propaganda.

The ad states: "approximately 3-5 children in every Canadian classroom have witness their mother being assaulted." Okay, that sounds bad. But what we should be asking ourselves is... is that a lot? 3-5 kids per classroom is about 10-20% of the child population. Are 10-20% of the adult population perpetrators of domestic violence? I don't know the answer. What proportion of kids are from low income families? What percentage come from families with substance abuse issues? What percentange are immigrants? The list of other putative covariates potentially associated with perpetrating domestic abuse goes on.

Without those bits of additional information, the 3-5 kids statistics is valueless and presented only for emotional impact.

The ad further states: "70% of men in court-ordered treatment for domestic violence witness it as a child." The first question one needs to ask is: what percentage of men not in court-ordered treatment witnessed abuse as a child? If the number is comparatively high, then the statistic is meaningless. Without comparator statistics, this kind of context-free presentation of numbers --however well intentioned-- is manipulative and propagandist. Tsk tsk.

It reminds me of a dinner party I attended once, during which a woman piped up: "Did you know that 100% of sex offenders use porn?" To which I assholishly responded, "Yes, and 100% of sex offenders also eat bread." Context is key.

Someone out there is no doubt furious with me for making these arguments. They will shout at the screen: "Does this fool really believe that watching your mother abused would not fuck you up?"

Of course that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is this... It doesn't matter what I believe; all that matters is what the evidence suggests. There might very well be strong evidence that shows that witnessing abuse as a child compels you to become an abuser as an adult; it seems like a reasonable correlation. But that is not the information that has been presented in this ad. Instead, what we are presented with are statistics without comparators: an attempt to slyly let big numbers appeal to our emotions and not to our rational forebrains. And I'm a little offended by that.

If we, as a society, are going to bring statistics into policy debates about matters as important as domestic abuse, they'd better be meaningful numbers rationally presented.

Meta-Art

When I was in New York last week someone tried to introduce me to DJ Rekha (that's her with the headphones on), prefacing the move with, "she's one of the hottest DJs in the city!"

I politely declined, partly because Rekha was already holding court with a small gaggle of admirers, and partly because the curmudgeon in me was asserting itself. I was busy asking myself, "how and why does a DJ become a celebrity?"

My limited understanding of the history of dance music leads me to conclude that the ascent of the DJ began in Manchester in the early 90s, with the birth of the rave scene, probably in the Hacienda Club, home of several of my favourite musical acts of all time (e.g., New Order). There, for the first time, party goers began applauding the DJ, someone who had previously remained anonymous in the background, simply pushing buttons and changing records in accordance with a predetermined playlist.

(Yes, I know, DJ-ing was a lot more than that prior to the 90s. I saw Wild Style, too. I'm talking about the mainstream here.)

Okay, this is where I'm going to get into trouble. All kinds of people are going to be mad at me for writing this, but here goes... Coupled with the explosion of hip hop sampling culture, the rise of the DJ represents, to me, a very sad general trend in society: "meta-art", or the celebration not so much of the creation of content, but rather of its presentation and re-organization.

Don't get me wrong. This is in no way a repudiation of Rekha or of other DJs whose work I enjoy, such as Ottawa's own Emily Jones. I accept that the mixing of beats is a particular hard-won skill, one that I certainly do not possess. But is it merely a technical skill or something truly akin to an artistic talent, and thus worthy of the adoration typically afforded the creators of content, i.e. actual musicians? I'm skeptical, probably because most DJs I know simply play records then boast about how well they played them.

This is in stark contrast to those who actively remix, blend and cough up entirely new songs based upon fragments of existing ones. I still reserve the lion's share of my adoration for those who created the content originally, but some respect must be given to someone who can see the potential in an extant work, and who can tease out an element from it that no one suspected was ever there. Trance music, a whole new genre, arose as a result of the diligent work of dedicated DJs.

But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who simply play records, and maybe match some beats in the process. Nothing wrong with that; but is it art?

There is a similar phenomenon in academia: the editing of books. In lieu of actually creating a published work with one's own ideas and words, one can instead choose to solicit submissions from other writers and collect them into a single volume, placing one's name where the tome's singular author should appear, prefaced in small print with, "edited by."

It's no small feat to edit a book. It takes time, effort, passion, an understanding of the material and an organizational acumen. But, in my opinion, it is ultimately a feat of administration --yes, a minor intellectual feat, but in no way an artistic undertaking; whereas the writing of the actual papers or stories that make up the collection is a true act of creation. DJ-ing, in most cases, is editing for the audiophile set...

...Or so I was thinking as I attended a party at The Cobourg, a bar in downtown Toronto. Ironically, the party was the birthday celebration of my friend Gurbir Jolly, who has also edited two books in which my own materials appear. Then my ears were struck by the sound of a grand mash-up, one that I had to interrogate the DJ about. No, he had not created it himself, but had stolen it from the greatest dance DJ in the world, Paul Oakenfold. So I grudgingly had to accept that the world of meta-art can produce some true innovators, Oakenfold and, of course, Emily Jones and Rekha among them.

I have previously written in this space about my favourite mash-ups. The Oakenfold one is among the best. It's called "Rapture Riders" and is a combination of Blondie's "Rapture" and The Doors' "Riders On The Storm." If you can't see the video below, click here to visit its YouTube page.



So what does all this mean? Am I convinced that DJ-ing, editing and other forms of "meta art" are indeed acts of creation? I need more data, more examples. I will say this, though: given how much I enjoy listening to mash-ups, I can't believe book editors haven't yet attempted to mash-up essays and stories. How would you match beats, though?

Autism Myths

Some time back, my cousin Kamal chastised me for not having any photos of her adorable children on my website. I love these kids with all my heart, but these days I'm reticent to put any more photos of children online, after having been sent a seemingly predatory email in response to a post I once wrote about my cute toddler neighbour. So, Kamal, I will not place images of your perfect progeny on this site, but I will address something else you brought up.

See, Kamal's handsome 6 year old son Joshua is autistic. Being incredibly doting and sensitive parents, Kamal and her husband have managed to invest a great deal of time (and money) in giving Joshua every opportunity to have a normal life. And after years of simply unbelievable attention, Joshua is functioning at a very high level --much higher, I must admit, than I had earlier hoped for!

Kamal had asked that I occasionally bring up some autism issues in this space, and so that is what I will do today. I have previously tackled the issue of the MMR vaccine being linked to autism. Bottom line: the evidence does not indicate a linkage. But there are some other myths/fears/assumptions that need addressing.

This site offers a few debunkings of some of the common misconceptions people have about autistic individuals, as does this site. In fact, if you google "autism myths", you get almost 2 million hits. Probably the biggest little known fact (how's that for an oxymoron?) about autism is that it's a so-called spectrum disorder, meaning that there's a long continuum of potential severities. This essay on the issue was actually written by an autistic person, showing that the disorder doesn't have to be a disability.

Of course, the big question is what causes autism. This is by no means my area of expertise, so please do not turn to me for any deeper insights into this question beyond my ability to parse the existing published evidence. But conventional current thought holds that genes play a distinct role in making a family susceptible to autism (which is possibly why so many families have more than one autistic child) --but what is the environmental trigger that allows those genes to manifest phenotypically? There's still a strong lay belief that one cause may be the cumulative mercury burden of childhood vaccines. But as mercury (usually in the form of thimerosal) is phased out of vaccines, will the autism rates decline?

This is a job for Epidemiology Man. Or Woman. Surely, someone somewhere is doing a population study looking at autism rates in association with the presence of mercury environmentally. This is what we call an "ecological" analysis, which is not very strong, but nonetheless useful.

Time will tell.

Pohl and Vinge

Greetings from the highway in upstate New York, where I am presently on my way back to Canada. Ahhh, the wonders of "mobile blogging" from my pda.

Time in New York always fills me with inspiration and a renewed appreciation for the female form. (The city is a veritable babe fest). Here's a little tale from my trip:

I was walking along Long Beach last night when I noticed a purse sitting alone on a park bench. Any number of people walked past it and ignored it, but it fell to the Canadian tourist to flag down a passing police car (police seemingly infest the beach) and point out the purse.

It turns out that I had flagged the freakin' bomb squad! They approached the purse like it was a dirty nuke, circling it for 5 minutes before poking at it with a stick. All quite fascinating. I can't help but wonder if they're wondering if *I* put it there.

I'm currently reading a very enjoyable book by Frederick Pohl called "The Boy Who Would Live Forever." It occurs to me that Pohl is one of the legendary science fiction writers that the mainstream has never heard of. Vernor Vinge is another. In fact, I would argue that Pohl and Vinge are two of the most visionary writers of my lifetime.

Pohl's groundbreaking book was "Gateway", whose innovation was to tell a gripping tale of aliens, desperation, dystopia and space exploration --through the lens of an ongoing psychoanalysis. The book I'm reading now is one of several excellent sequels to "Gateway".

Okay, typing in a moving car is making me sick. Over and out.

Hindus In The House

Greetings from New York where I am attending the just concluded annual SAJA convention. The special guest star at this year's gala was one of the best looking Indian men in the world, Sendhil Ramamurthy of the TV show Heroes.

Since every woman I know has been asking me, I will announce it to the world: the man is married -- seemingly happily so. Sorry to break the news.

Someone else had also asked about Sendhil's accent on the show, something I too had been wondering about. It seems that in the pilot, he had put on a standard upper class Indian accent, but focus groups had indicated that the accent was unpopular. So Sendhil gradually phased it out over the next handful of episodes until settling on the faux London accent he presently uses. So there.

Another story that I learned about from SAJA sources is this one, about a Hindu priest being invited to lead the opening prayers at Capitol Hill. It seems the gesture was met with protest from Christian groups who felt it was "blasphemous" to acknowledge any religion other than Christianity within the halls of American power.

Now, I'm all for the separation of Church and State, and the pressing for secularism within the official corridors of government power. But if you're going to traditionally allow a "chaplain" into Capitol Hill to perform official religious duties, then it's not unreasonable to expect that chaplain to be from any number of religions. The US religion right has been pressing for more religion in government, schools and in every other official forum. But as this event shows, it's not "religion" they want --it's a specific religion.

Supposedly, Pat Robertson once said, "We want a secular constitution, we want to make sure religious minorities are protected." But he was talking about Afghanistan, and about protecting Christian minorities. It seems to me that the same logic should apply in America, as well.

And Suddenly, The News Room Goes Silent

(Courtesy of Lord Vadum)

Hancock. Heh heh.

Greetings from Cold Spring, New York, where my cousins and I are mooching off of my Aunt and Uncle before heading to Manhattan tomorrow. It's a fun drive through upstate New York, suppressing the giggles as we traversed between Johnson City and Hancock, on the way to Deposit. (Heh heh. Hancock. Deposit. Heh heh.)

I had confirmation that we had indeed arrived in the USA when we stopped for breakfast at the Cracker Barrel and, for less that $8, received 3 eggs, a "chicken fried" steak, two scones, a bowl of gravy, a bowl of grits and a bowl of fried and sugared apples. Mmmmm, diabetes heaven!

As I do every year, I'm in New York to attend the annual convention of the South Asian Journalism Association. I'll check in later with a description of that event.

In the mean time, Cousin Ajay sends us this link of "the best stuff on the web".

And my friend, artist Dipna Horra, is having a big show in London, UK, at the Fluk Factory from July 18 to Aug 4th. So, if you're in London, the opening is on the 18th from 6-8:30pm.

That's all for today....

Only The Dog Knows For Sure

I don't know why this photo cracks me up, but it always does. Speaking of which, today's Daily Perv Link (TM) involves sheep, not dogs.

For those of you in Ottawa trying to find me, I'm presently in Toronto and am headed to New York sometime tomorrow. For those of you in Ottawa who now see this as an opportunity to break into my apartment, all you will find there is some dirty laundry and a half dead house plant. Have fun.

Mass Drivers

Climate Change (specifically global warming) is a scary and mostly destructive reality, as far as human concerns go. The extent to which human activity is involved in climate change is, in some circles, debatable; but the balance of science suggests that human industrial activity, specifically the burning of fossil fuels, produces the so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which trap solar radiation and geothermal heat that would have otherwise radiated into space, thus on average increasing global temperatures. Ergo, it seems likely that human endeavours play a large part in the changes we are witnessing.

Thus endeth the science recap.

To be honest, I don't live a very green-conscious lifestyle. My experience with most recycling programmes is that the separated items just get recombined later and my work ends up having been wasted. I buy whatever is cheapest, not necessarily whatever is most politically appropriate. And I reason that having ridden bicycles and walked all my life, I am now entitled to a little solitary car driving now that I'm almost middle aged and newly a driver. I believe the only true solutions to the greenhouse crisis will be effected at the industrial and organizational levels, not at the personal level. Am I rationalizing? Most definitely. But there it is.

I support nuclear power as an alternative to coal and oil burning. I thus also support the eventual conversion of most automobiles to electric engines, recharged via electricity produced in nuclear, geothermal and hydroelectric plants. I think calls for conservation as a long term solution are naive; human society will require more energy, not less, regardless of how much conservation we manage to enforce. The increasing electrification of the Third World and an ironically green-friendly global shift from paper-based offices to computer-based information networks indicate a rocketing need for more power in the near future.

And no matter how many gas-burning cars we manage to eliminate, the overall impact on atmospheric carbon production will be negligible so long as we rely upon gas-burning airplanes for international travel. I have no solution for that problem, and I don't think the global economy can survive a loss of air travel. But there is one variable I do wish to address: space flight.

Many people believe that rockets and space shuttles spew more carbon into the air with a single launch than do a thousand cars. The truth is that, for the most part, spacefaring rockets "burn" a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen --the byproduct of which is water. Ironically, releasing so much water high into the atmosphere is proving to have its own negative environmental consequences, having to do with affecting the ozone layer and having nothing to do with greenhouse gases.

Might I suggest, however, that if low orbital space flight can be made cleaner and safer, it may prove to be an effective, economical and environmentally friendlier alternative to basic air travel. Several designs for such vehicles have already been proposed, some employing revolutionary scramjet technology for when such a craft re-enters the thin high atmosphere.

In the long term, cleaner, safer and cheaper alternatives need to be employed for launching payloads into low and high orbits. A while back, the orbital tether --an idea that's been around for 100 years-- was actually discussed in the news. We are nowhere near having the materials or construction technologies necessary to build one.

But we do have the materials needed to build a mass driver. I strongly suspect that some enterprising government or corporation will endeavour to build a mass driver --essentially a rail gun powerful enough to shoot things into space-- sometime in my lifetime. And basic physics suggests that it will be built near the equator, on the side of a mountain with a large body of water immediately to the east. Maybe I should start soliciting geographical guesses now? Any takers?

Dead Soldiers

<--[image borrowed from here]

For those not in Canada, or those not following the news, three more Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Why this qualifies as "news", I'm not entirely sure, since one expects one's soldiers to die when one sends them off to fight and kill in a war zone. In many ways, it's an interesting commentary on modern warfare when a handful of deaths in the midst of actual warfare constitute "news". Reminds me of something a commentator said once, within the context of the Balkan conflict of the 1990s: In modern warfare, the safest thing to be is a soldier.

Do not take that statement as disrespect for those Canadians recently killed. I wish they were alive. I wish they had never been sent over there to die in a questionable mission that most Canadians don't fully understand. If they were friends or family of mine, I would be inconsolable.

I was examining my own personal killing machine --the Deonandan Fruit Fly Killer Mark 1.0-- when I heard Jack Layton on the TV asking for Canada to reconsider its mission in Afghanistan. Seconds later I heard the Prime Minister say, "today is not the day to have a political debate on the future of the mission... Today is a day to express our condolences for these soldiers."

I did a spit take and nearly choked on the irony.

This, after all, is the same man who insisted (correctly, in my opinion) that flags should not be flown at half mast when a soldier dies, because, among other reasons, the country needs to get used to the idea that our soldiers will be killed --essentially to normalize the idea of soldierly death. To now use the deaths of more soldiers to divert criticism of his policies by playing the "mourning card" is disingenuous creepiness in the worst.

The war mongers are fond of reminding us that this armed action is supposed to be in defense of Western democratic ideals. Well, prime among those ideals is the freedom of our leaders (and any citizen) to seriously discuss any topic whenever he chooses. Arbitrarily declaring a "day of mourning" for these three, when none of the other scores of dead soldiers warranted one, has some shades of Ari Fleischer, back in the fascist heydey of the immediate post-911 Bush days. Remember "all Americans [must remember] that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do"?

I for one will not tolerate any politician telling me what I can think or discuss, or when I can do so. Stephen Harper should be ashamed of his words, and no one who takes seriously the idea of living in a truly free Western liberal democracy should suffer such thoughtless politicization of our rights and ideals.

Who? Me?

Auuuch! I'm hung over and I pulled a muscle in my back (the right lower trap, if you know your anatomy). Rebuilding the bloody computer continues, hence my light (but pithy) blog posts.


Doctor Who Update

I know, this is rapidly becoming the Doctor Who Blog. What can I say? The show had a great impact on me during my formative years. I ignored it entirely until I spent a summer in my ancestral village in Guyana back in 1979 (or was it 1980?) The village was completely devoid of anything resembling a Western convenience --no indoor plumbing, no telephones, no TV, no pavement, no street lights. I spent all of my time swinging in hammocks, chasing farm animals, and reading anything I could get my hands on. I read pretty much every book in the village, and the local kids would scour their homes looking for more things for me to read. It was that summer that I read the entire Nancy Drew catalogue (I'd read the Hardy Boys books years earlier). And a woman across the street from my uncle had in her possession a large soft cover tome describing the adventures of the Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton.

I had heard of the show, but it had always seemed silly to me. But that book explained to me the show's basic concepts: a traveler in time and space, getting into adventures and assuaging crises using just his intellect; quite an attractive package for a brainy, geeky child with a longing for adventure but no illusions about his physical skills. Further descriptions of British staples, such as Nelson's square and Picadilly Circus were deliciously provocative and exotic to my young eyes. Since then, I have always held a fascination for all things British.

Anyway, therein lies my lifelong relationship with the Doctor Who franchise. With that background in mind, I report the latest bit of Who news: the unbelievably babe-a-licious Freema Agyeman will not appear in the first half of the next season of Who, and will instead join the loathsome cast of the imbecilic Who spin-off, Torchwood. Well, she can only make that piece of television flotsam better.


Killing Fruit Flies

Okay, remember my ingenious fruit fly killing trap? Well, I still wake up every morning to enjoy its renewed and mounting body count. Then it occurred to me.... Surely, there will be a handful of flies clever enough to escape from my clever trap. Those genetically gifted flies will have been artificially selected by me, and their dumber cousins killed off. The result is that I will have inadvertently bred a new generation of smarter flies!

That's not good. So I watched the trap carefully yesterday. And sure enough, I observed one particularly industrious fly, after hours of exploration, actually escape from the trap! I reveled in its cleverness for about half a second, before acting upon my Darwinian duty and swatting the little bugger. Evolution be damned.

Now, my apartment is quite hygienic, so I had assumed the buggers were in fact the dreaded drain flies, and not fruit flies nesting in the carcass of a forgotten hunk of fruit. But I made another discovery: there are more flies about the neighbour's door. That's right: it's my filthy neighbours who are the source of my infestation. Grrrr.

Raywat Hears A Who

My beloved computer LANDRU died an untimely death, at the hands of XP, a few days ago. I thought I'd managed to back up everything of worth, but now I am finding that that was not the case. I'm kind of afraid to be poking too strenuously into my backups right now, for fear of what I might not find. Long story short, the new LANDRU is up and running, with XP re-installed.

All this is due to the migration from PalmOS to Windows Mobile. I still have not found a way to convert all my Palm Desktop data to Outlook format. So for those of you awaiting emails from me... I'm minimizing my computer time these days, so you'll have to wait a little longer.

In a gush of both procrastination and sentimentality, I decided to dial up a few episodes of "classic" Dr Who, now that the present season of the new Who is complete. In my youth, I stopped watching at the start of the Colin Baker years, and did not return to the fold until Chris Eccleston brought our favourite Time Lord back to the small screen. I didn't think I'd missed much, since those lost years are known for their reduced budgets and discontented stars and producers.

But I was wrong.

Last night I watched an entire season of Colin Baker episodes, the ones making up the arc called, "Trial of a Time Lord". I was verily impressed. There's a certain cleverness and maturity that classic Who had that the new ones haven't quite grasped yet. I'm still a fan of both, but I think it's worth considering what has been lost.