Evidence

I am sooooo overworked these days. So I'm doubling up on responsibilities. Today's post is actually a preview of my MicroSoft Small Business Forum column:


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Recently, I attended a scholarly conference on the topic of evidence-based decision making. For those not in the know, "evidence" has been a hot topic in all areas of physical, medical and now social and political science for many years now. The idea is that one should base one's decisions on the best available information, rather than on other, presumably softer, criteria.

It might be surprising to many lay people to learn that Evidence-Based Medicine, or EBM, was fairly revolutionary when first introduced a few years ago. The assumption that most people make is that medical therapies, supposedly rooted in the rigour of Western science, is informed by clinical observations in controlled surroundings. For the most part, they are. But a large part of an individual doctor's decisions about his patient is also based on personal experience, or anecdote, and the personal experiences and hearsay of his teachers and colleagues.

The conference pitted two seemingly opposing viewpoints against one another. On one side was the hard science argument, that good evidence must always be at the core of decisions, especially decisions made by government in response to important phenomena, such as the appropriate policy responses to medical crises. The H1N1 pandemic is a good example.

On the other side was a proponent of the so-called "precautionary principle", which holds that sometimes it is not possible to wait for sufficient evidence to make a fully informed policy decision. Rather, sometimes it is incumbent upon policy makers to act within a milieu of great uncertainty.

Arguments about the degree of evidence required to justify official action are themselves tainted by ideologies. Climate change is a good example. Those convinced that the phenomenon is real (and I count myself among that number) hold that the evidence is sufficiently convincing and the threat is sufficiently dire that the precautionary principle holds: we must act now and not wait until 100% are on side. The deniers would argue that we must wait until every last scientific hold-out is on-side.

But ultimately it is a false dichotomy. First of all, pitting "evidence" against the "precautionary principle" is misleading because the first involves a discussion about the nature of scientific rigour, while the second is a discussion of the nature of decision making.

Second, and most interesting to me, is that the discussion is ultimately a non-starter. Cynics (and again I count myself among them) would argue that decisions are almost never made with evidence prominently in mind. Rather, policies --especially those stated by governmental bodies-- are more likely to be informed by values, ideologies, politics and utility. Only after those avenues have been exhausted do decision-makers turn to the evidence, and then usually it is to justify a decision that has already been made.

I cannot estimate the extent to which this process is also prevalent in the business world, but I would not be surprised to find evidence getting short shrift there, either. But is this really a problem? I hope to explore this in a later segment.

Nothing To Do With Skin

As some of you are aware, I'm the new editor of the national newsletter of the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CSEB). The first issue with me as editor was just published this morning. The newsletter is only available to paying members, but I am reproducing the first feature article here:

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Nothing To Do With Skin
By Raywat Deonandan


I remember well the first time I saw an epidemiologist on a movie or TV show. It was the creepy 1995 John Carpenter remake of the classic British horror flick, Village of the Damned. In the film, Christopher Reeve heroically tries to understand why all of his town’s children are blonde and demonic and possibly alien. At one point, the entire town goes unconscious simultaneously, long enough to attract the attention of the CDC (Centres for Disease Control), who send an epidemiologist to investigate.



A sveldt Kirstie Alley plays Dr. Susan Verner, a tough no-nonsense outbreak investigator who arrives –get this—brandishing a badge and a gun and leading a battalion of policemen. Ahhh, thought I, this is the career for me! Aliens, guns, badges, excitement, action... why doesn’t every young person want to be an epidemiologist?

A more serious portrayal of the outbreak investigation aspect of epidemiology was presented in the 1995 film, Outbreak, in which Dustin Hoffman played a military epidemiologist studying a new, weaponized type of haemorrhagic fever. He not only carried a gun, but also had a helicopter! The famous stills from the film include Hoffman in the biocontainment “spacesuit” that so many lay people now falsely associate with epidemiology. I’ve been trying to buy one on eBay ever since.



And, really, this is the crux of society’s misunderstanding of our science: their conflation of epidemiology with virology and other bench sciences. We all have stories of being introduced at parties as an epidemiologist, and being met with uncomfortable silence, or worse, medical questions about skin rashes. For the last time, epidemiology and dermatology are different sciences! (I’ve been toying for some time with the idea of writing an epidemiology-for-the-masses manifesto called, “Nothing To Do With Skin”!)

A former professor of mine was once held at the US border as inspectors searched her luggage for “possible dangerous insects” after she self-identified as an epidemiologist. All the border guard could hear, apparently, was “entomology”. And I’m surprised that people don’t regularly ask me about the origins of words. (That’s an etymology joke, by the way.)

Now, Village of the Damned and Outbreak were both released over a decade ago. In the interim, we’ve seen real epidemiologists all over the mainstream media in the wake of such emergencies as the SARS outbreak, the Walkerton disaster and last Fall’s H1N1 pandemic. Surely, the media has learned some sophistication in the mean time?

Well, one of my favourite current TV shows is Fringe, which is an American science-fiction program about weird science and its intersection with crime. In one episode, someone was systematically murdering “epidemiologists” by infecting them with a virus that that grows to the size of your head. Yes, a single virus the size of your head. Leave aside the fact that such a thing would physically have to be multi-cellular, and therefore not a virus, and we’re left with the disappointing realization that once more the media has confused epidemiology with a bench science; because every murder victim on the list of “epidemiologists” turns out to actually be a virologist or microbiologist.



Yes, I know that some epidemiologists actually are lab scientists, as well. And even more epidemiologists are also physicians. But most are not, at least not in this country. So who is responsible for the failure of society to appreciate the role and contribution of the population epidemiologist? The lowly cubicle jockey with his SAS licence and penchant for odds ratios needs his day in the sun.

Our contributions are profound and dramatic, after all. It was epidemiologists who figured out how to address AIDS at the population level, long before the HIV virus was discovered. It was epidemiologists who eradicated smallpox from the face of the Earth. It’s epidemiologists who regularly figure out where governments should best apply their dwindling health care dollars, and which vaccines to manufacture, and whether something that appears serious really is serious. But you know the drill; I’m preaching to the converted here.

Maybe the responsibility is ours? Maybe we need to engage the world more openly and actively and push for our worth to be acknowledged and our function accurately portrayed? I recall fondly one of my favourite New Yorker cartoons, in which a party hostess is congratulated by her friend, “And it was so typically brilliant of you to have invited an epidemiologist.”



Well, I thought I was doing my part some years ago. I advised a script-writer for the Canadian TV show ReGenesis on some protocols for outbreak investigation and infection control, in order to make the content of the show more reflective of real life. ReGenesis is (supposedly, I’ve never watched it) about bioterrorism and the brave, shiny and young crime fighters and scientists who take on global biological evildoers.

To thank me, the writers created an extremely minor character who would be an epidemiologist and who would be named after me. This new, accurately portrayed Dr. Deonandan would only appear in one or two episodes, but would at last be a fairly representative example of Canadian epidemiology. Better yet, I was promised, she would be female and really quite attractive.



As an enterprising, self-obsessed, heterosexual man, I began to wonder whether I could engineer a new DSM diagnosis, based on me, for someone who is sexually attracted to his own fictional portrayal on television. Some sort of “trans-media narcissism”?

Imagine my disappointment when the Dr. Deonandan of TV turned out to be, not only male, and not only a physician, but a surgeon. Yes, a surgeon-epidemiologist. I’m sure such a thing does exist, and I’m sure they are superstar intellects who do extraordinary niche research. But it’s not exactly the representative portrayal of the population epidemiologist I was hoping for.

Sigh.

So what’s the lesson here? I’m not sure that there is one, except that maybe we should never expect our media to accurately portray any profession and any aspect of science. And that maybe we epidemiologists need to take a more active role in promoting the details of our work, responsibilities, skills and accomplishments to greater society.

Munk'd

A few days ago I hunkered into a lecture hall at the University of Ottawa to watch the most recent Munk Debate, this time between the teams of Nigel Lawson & Bjorn Lomborg vs Elizabeth May & George Monbiot, streamed live from Toronto. Had I known the debates could be accessed from the web, I would have stayed home to watch it with several strong glasses of port. But no....

The topic: Be it resolved, Climate Change is Mankind's defining crisis, and demands a commensurate response.

Nigel Lawson came across as a fussy old fuddy-duddy, underinformed and full of ideological bluster.

Elizabeth May I've never really taken a liking to, given her screechy delivery and overly confrontational demeanour. However, she at least said the one thing that needed saying: that these four are the not the experts; the scientists are the experts. This lack of true expertise hindered further substantial debate, I think. She is a lawyer/politician. Lawson is a journalist/politician. Monbiot is a journalist. And Lomborg is a statisition cum self-promoter.

George Monbiot has been a favourite figure of mine for some time. What an eloquent, passionate and well informed speaker. His website's earlier incarnations were actually the model for the direction my own website eventually took, so I admit to having a slight bias for all things Monbiot. Having said that, even the great George came across as slightly unscientific, given his background as a journalist. His famous self-imposed travel ban, meant as a gesture to encourage minimal carbon footprints worldwide, was suspended for this special occasion, allowing him to physically be in Toronto. I always felt this self-restriction to be a bit precious, if you know what I mean.

Bjorn Lomborg, meanwhile, is no stranger to this blog. I have discussed him in the March 5, 2004 post, the Jan 14, 2005 post, the Aug 31, 2007 post, and the Oct 17, 2007 post. In short, I detest everything Bjorn Lomborg stands for. I will not mince words here. The man is insidious and, in my opinion, simply for sale. His landmark book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, was the Climate Change denier's bible for years, effectively used as ammunition to slow down change on the policy front.

In recent months/years, Lomborg has begun to rehab his reputation. He no longer denies that Climate Change exists, is a big deal or is human-caused. This is rather convenient, now that the book has made him insanely wealthy and positioned him as a preferred champion for the anti-Climate Change business sector. There is speculation, implied by May during the debates, that his position earns Lomborg a pretty penny. Instead, Lomborg's new mantra is that:

(a) there are more important things we can be focusing on; and
(b) since we don't seem to be making headway on Climate Change, why not apply these energies and monies to --I dunno-- eliminating poverty or disease?

On the face of it, this is not a bad position to have. Indeed, his position seems to have won over many in the audience. The debate statistics show that public response was thus:



In essence, more people changed their minds in favour of the Lomborg/Lawson position than in favour of the May/Monbiot position.

Apparently, Time Magazine once listed Lomborg as one of the most important 100 intellectuals in the world, according to his intro during the Munk Debate. This surprises me, given his brazen anti-intellectual behaviour during the debate itself. Lomborg's position, as I summarized above, is fundamentally untenable, and I'm afraid May and Monbiot did a poor job of explaining this to the audience. It comes down to this:

It doesn't matter that poverty and disease remain as plagues upon the world. Climate Change exacerbates those things, making them increasingly worse. And it doesn't matter that pro-environmental legislation slows down economic development. What is the point of creating wealthy nations if there's no food or water left to buy with your newly created wealth?

These were the basic aspects of environmental and health science poorly conveyed during the debate. I proudly commented afterward that I'm certain my undergrad students could have debated Lomborg into a corner, given how much I've tried to encourage them to think in terms of interrelated networks and systems.

Let's look at Lomborg's claim that we are better off tackling global health than Climate Change. The world needs to understand that many of the problems in global health are either as a direct result of Climate Change, or will be exacerabted beyond repair as a result of Climate Change. As Stephen Lewis once commented during a live address in Ottawa, "I fear we are looking at an Apocalyptic event."

When Monbiot (or was it May?) commented that Climate Change makes HIV/AIDS worse, Lomborg gave us his theatrical hands-in-the-air disbelief pose. "How is that even possible?" he demanded to know. Sadly, only Monbiot bothered to explain a mechanism, but only told part of the story. The incident, though, causes me to ask whether Lomborg is really so uninformed (causing me to wonder how Time would dare list him among the world's top intellectuals) or is he instead disingenuous. If the latter, then he is insidious and dangerous indeed.

Monbiot's mechanism was basic: Climate Change is causing droughts, which forces men off the land and into the company of prostitutes, hence spreading sexual disease, including HIV. In truth, it's more than this. Drought leads to poor nutrition, which prevents proper uptake of the anti-viral drugs that treat HIV (which need good nutrition to work properly). Environmental collapse causes economic collapse and produces more disease issues, further overwhelming healt care systems and prventing a society from addressing its HIV epidemic.

The ecology of much of the developing world, including sub-Saharan Africa, which has the greatest HIV burden in the world, is already operating at the margins. The crops there already subsist at the very edge of tolerance for temperature and humidity perturbations. With Climate Change comes more dramatic perturbations and thus a certainty of widespread famine in those regions.

No amount of structural adjustments, as Lomborg champions, will give such nations the economic might to overcome such famine, not when most of the region is similarly affected.

In short, unlike crises in the past, Climate Change represents humanitarian challenges that one cannot buy one' s way out of. Again, you can't buy water that does not exist. In response to Lomborg's assertion that human societies will develop adaptations, Monbiot powerfully retorted (and I paraphrase): in these parts of the world, the only adaptation is the AK-47.

There are many other mechanisms by which Climate Change exacerbates health, and thus wealth. Among them:

The changing of vector behaviour. Mosquitos and their like determine their ranges by temperature and humidity. As these factors change, the nature of related diseases will also change.

Water quality. Because rivers are changing paths and rainfalls are misscheduling, the predictability of the safety of drinking water is uncertain. Already, 2 million deaths a year, mostly among young children, are due to diarrhea, directly caused by unsafe water. WHO estimates that today 2.4% of diarrheal deaths are due to climate change. (WHO uses very conservative methods to reach these estimates.)

Changing agriculture. Agriculture is affected by temperature, precipitation and soil quality. According to a 2008 article in Science: southern Africa could lose more than 30% of its main crop, maize, by 2030. In South Asia losses of many regional staples, such as rice, millet and maize could top 10%.

Migration. There is a long established intersection between migration and health. The sudden stress of large numbers of people is ecologically bad. Environmental refugees must be fed, sheltered and cared for, and the world has a poor track record of caring for mass migrants. According to a 2007 article by Christian Aid: "The growing number of disasters and conflicts linked to future climate change will push the numbers far higher unless urgent action is taken. We estimate that between now and 2050 a total of 1 billion people will be displaced from their homes."

Insecurity. Ecological collapse can cause war. According to a 2007 report by The Pentagon:
Global warming constitutes a security threat to the USA, as there will be wars based on diminishing fresh water supplies, refugees, and higher rates of famine and disease.

Economic effects. Less money means less spent on health and poverty reduction. As an example, according to a 2008 article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Coral bleaching can lead to collapse of the world’s fisheries in a matter of decades.

Air pollution. One US model predicts that by 2050, due to global warming, ozone-related
deaths will increased by 4.5% and there will be 60% more alert days.

Heat waves. According to WHO, heat deaths in California alone will double by 2010.

Natural disasters (floods and storms). According to WHO, flooding will affect 200 million people by 2080.

Here is an interesting little graphic showing deaths due to Climate Change in the year 2000, almost a decade ago. The truth today is much more daunting:



There are a lot more data and many more details. There is no dearth of studying on the topic. I don't know how anyone who's familiar with even a fraction of the data can conclude anything other than Climate Change is indeed the single most important crisis facing humanity now and in the next two centuries. More than the threat of nuclear war, and possibly on par with the threat of direct cometary impact, runaway greenhouse affect might very well drive civilization itself into the dust within our lifetimes.

Current Events Quiz

This past week I gave my 4th year global health class a brief quiz on current events related to issues in global health and development. They were instructed to monitor major news sources daily since the start of term, with specific attention to stories that might have a direct or cursory connection to global health and development. This might include stories relating to war, politics and economics.

The reason for scheduling the test is that I was concerned that we are doing a disservice to our students by not making their education more relevant to the current state of the world, and by not engendering in them an appreciation for the daily happenings of society. This is particularly important in global health, a subject that changes hourly and that is dependent on an interdisciplinary familiarity with the changing nature of law, politics, science and general knowledge.

The intent is not to punish lack of knowledge, but rather to encourage the valuing of knowledge. Part of the lesson is to be able to asses one's own level of general knowledge relative to the overall level of knowledge in our society.

Therefore, to provide some hand-waving data for discussing the quality of these questions, I'm doing something I ordinarily would not do. I'm publishing the quiz on this website. You will find the questions below, with the answer key immediately after.

You are, of course, welcome to take the test yourself. I would further encourage you to input your score to an online service by clicking this link:

http://doodle.com/yw6gz78tyb2x6kks

Please note: this is not a formal academic study, and therefore has not undergone any ethics clearance. These data will not be published, though they will be discussed in my class. If you enter your results, those results will be visible by everyone. Feel free to enter a fake name, if you'd prefer. But I would like you to enter your true profession, if you feel comfortable doing so. It goes without saying that this is a strictly voluntary exercise.

Also, please don't cheat. This is not a contest.


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1. In 2009, the Nobel Peace Prize was controversially awarded to what person?

A. Nelson Mandela
B. George W. Bush
C. Barack Obama
D. Al Gore
E. The Dalai Lama


2. In early November, 2009, the people of Germany noted the 20th anniversary of what?

A. The death of Adolf Hitler
B. The fall of the Berlin Wall
C. The founding of NATO
D. Germany’s entrance into the European Union
E. The assassination of Chancellor Angela Merkel


3. Who is Dr. Abdullah Abdullah?

A. One of the candidates in a recent Presidential election in Afghanistan
B. Head of one of the larger semi-legal organ trafficking rings in India
C. The scientist who led the development of an experimental HIV vaccine in Africa, currently undergoing limited clinical trials
D. Recently appointed Deputy Director General of the World Health Organization
E. Author of a controversial study recently published in The Lancet, about excess deaths in the wake of the US invasion of Iran


4. On November 11, 2009, a joint report by the American Cancer Society and Global Smokefree Partnership was published. The report predicts that cancer deaths due to smoking will double in 12 years in what region or population?

A. The Caribbean
B. China
C. India
D. Africa
E. Aboriginal communities in the Western hemisphere


5. Who is the current Director General of the World Health Organization?

A. Margaret Chan
B. Ban-ki Moon
C. James Orbinski
D. John Baird
E. Aung San Suu Kyi


6. In October, 2009, Desire Munyaneza, the first person to be convicted under Canada’s War Crimes Act, was sentenced to life imprisonment after a court found him guilty of seven charges relating to what?

A. The Rwandan genocide
B. The Sudanese (Darfur) genocide
C. War crimes committed during the Congolese civil war
D. The selling of counterfeit HIV drugs in sub-Saharan Africa
E. War crimes committed during the NATO peacekeeping activities in Somalia


7. In December, 2009, representatives of 192 countries will meet in Copenhagen to discuss what?

A. The on-going humanitarian crisis in Darfur
B. The global threat of terrorism
C. Pandemic influenza
D. Global food production
E. Climate change

8. In November, 2009, this man’s war crimes trial at the World Court in The Hague was postponed till March, 2010, to give his new lawyer time to prepare.

A. George W. Bush
B. Radovan Karadzic
C. Wanderlei Silva
D. Slobodan Milošević
E. Ramush Haradinaj


9. In what year is Canada is scheduled to withdraw the bulk of its troops from Afghanistan?

A. 2010
B. 2011
C. 2012
D. 2013
E. 2014


10. After the May, 2009, conclusion of civil war lasting over two decades, the government of this country has just agreed to release the remaining 136,000 refugees forced to live in government refugee camps.

A. Democratic Republic of Congo
B. Nicaragua
C. Sri Lanka
D. The former Yugoslavia
E. Sudan

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Answer key: 1c 2b 3a 4d 5a 6a 7e 8b 9b 10c

Pompeii and Circumstance

Image stolen from here.


Today marks the 1930th anniversary of the eruption of Mt Vesuvius and the destruction of the Roman town of Pompeii, a holocaust that lasted 48 hours. Today Pompeii is celebrated as a still-life museum. It's a weird and disturbing thought to consider how close-- biologically, culturally and even technologically-- those doomed people were to ourselves. Consider modern holocausts and how they may (or may not) be remembered in 2000 years.

Just sayin'.

In other news, NASA's Stardust spacecraft has provided proof of amino acids in the tail of a comet, giving credence to the panspermia, or exogenesis, theory of life, in that it arose extraterrestrially and was seeded on Earth.

What's also interesting is the existence of the Stardust mission itself. I remember in the 1970s reading about futurists' conception of such a mission, that it was decades away in the distant future, if possible at all. And here we are today, collecting comet dust from such a craft, and it barely makes the news.

In even other other news, D-Mack sends us this list of forgotten or underrated science fiction films. I don't like the list. Equiilibrium and Existenz sucked. City of Lost Children and Brazil were not strictly SF. Pitch Black was okay, but was essentially an action film. Same goes for Dark City, which was a great concept and spooky film, but without an inspiring SF ending. I'm sure you will disagree.

Lastly, check this out. It goes best with this music.

The Moon and Me

Forty years ago, my father took a walk to Central Park. He was a day away from his 37th birthday, and had just moved his young family from an impoverished Indian rice-farming village in rural Guyana to the bitter proletariat soup of 1960s New York city, in search of America's fabled economic and political salvation. With my mother left at home, a few blocks away in our scary little run-down apartment, to tend to me and my siblings, my father was no doubt weighted down with responsibility. It was an undeniably courageous act for he and my mother to have abandoned everything and everyone they knew in a desperate gamble to create a better future for their children. Theirs was, of course, a story told a thousand times over in that particular city.

My father's destination was Central Park because that's where the city had set up a big television screen. Hundreds, or maybe thousands of people had convened to watch blurry, otherworldly scenes that were broadcast in black-and-white, in between bouts of loud static. In a display of a completely different kind of courage and emigration, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were taking their first steps onto the surface of the Moon; and the world --for the first time united through a feat of science-- held its collective breath in awe.

This feat was witnessed by the entire waking Earth. A dream held by generations of human beings, going back millennia to the dawn of civilization itself, had finally come true. A man had touched the face of another world. Much was made of the fact that that man was American. Indeed, the moon race itself was propelled by a political race between the USA and the Soviet Union; and the Apollo moon programme was funded by unbelievable largesse from the American taxpayers. Of all the flags of the Earth, there is no denying that the Stars and Stripes deserved to be the first national symbol to rest on the lunar surface.

But it's important to keep in mind that the triumph of Apollo was a transnational achievement owned by all of humanity. The name itself, Apollo, was of Greek origin, inspired by the poetry, tales and dreams of the greatest of early Western civilizations. The theories and mathematics that formed the foundation of rocket technology were Russian, Indian, German and --depending on far back one wishes to take it-- Babylonian. The rocket technology itself was the product of German engineering, admittedly the remnants of Nazi warfaring brilliance, its evil turned to peaceful, exploratory purposes. Half of the engineering staff of the Apollo programme was Canadian, refugees from Canada's terminated Avro Arrow fighter plane programme. And tracking stations scattered in countries across the world, most notably Australia, were critical in making sure the three loneliest human beings in the universe were not lost against the infinite canvass of black space.

More importantly, the moment that Armstrong's feet touched the lunar sand, his achievement became owned by all of us, regardless of race, citizenship, age or gender, forever more. It is therefore doubly frustrating that today, four decades after this most transcendent of human technological victories, a substantial proportion of people still insist that it never happened. It seems that a kernel of self-destruction will always linger in the human spirit, insisting on turning away even the most awesome of inspirations to embrace that most insidious poison of modern society: cynicism.

It must have been an important moment for my father. Like so many others in the park that day, he was a poor immigrant from a poor country, beset with worries and overwhelmed by the challenges of navigating America's wildest city with no guide, resources, roadmap or safety net. The steps he had taken alone from the apartment, to stare up at the glowing screen, were no less significant than Armstrong's dangerous steps from the lunar lander, to stare up at the glowing Earth. Both men had found themselves in an alien land with backbreaking responsibilities. Both had a plan for success, with a high probability of catastophic failure. And both were, in their own particular ways, profoundly alone in their travails.

But both also shared a particular strength: they had each eschewed cynicism and had chosen optimism. They would both work to maximize their chances of success, mantaining the discipline and sacrifice necessary to attain their goals. They had both recognized that the price of failure was far too dear to pay.

America did not provide my father with the economic salvation and opportunities he sought. So he took us to Canada shortly after that historic day. In his view, all the glories of America, the space programme among them, were mostly the domain of White people. He had oft warned me that my path might prove to be harder than my more lightly shaded friends, that some doors might always be closed to me, as they had been to him, due to nothing more than skin colour. Thus is the legacy of growing up, as he did, in a colonial nation beset with the ravages of a race-based class system.

I do not think he could have ever imagined that 23 years hence, I, his youngest son would submit an application to the nascent Canadian Space Agency to become an astronaut. It was the first time that Canadian civilians could apply, and I was determined to be a part of that historic occasion. My applicaton was denied, due in part to the impressive calibre of my competition, and in part to my youth and lack of relevant experience; it was not an unexpected result. But I remember sealing the envelope before mailing it to Ottawa, overcome for a moment by a feeling of awkward profundity and historic contemplation.

It had taken a mere four years in between the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, and the successful orbiting of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Only eight years later, Armstrong walked on the Moon. A couple of decades later, a civilian in a non-spacefaring nation --a non-white, naturalized citizen, no less-- was able to apply to the space programme and be given a fair shot.

In the same time span, my father had successfully made a home for his family in Canada, raising five children to successful, professional adulthood in an era well before the feel-good buzzwords of multiculturalism and global citizenship. He and my mother rest in placid retirement today in downtown Toronto, contentedly contemplating their eventual afterlives, as is the Hindu tradition, considering a completely different type of cosmic migration.

We had come far indeed.

In 2005, NASA announced that it has plans to return to the Moon by 2020. In 2006, Russia announced plans to mine the Moon by 2020. Some sources in China have indicated that that nation also wishes to have a lunar presence by 2020. And even India plans to have a human in space by 2014, and citizens on the lunar surface by --you guessed it-- 2020.

Space travel and lunar exploration as a metaphor for emigration and diaspora is not yet exhausted. As a symbol of national dominance and the supremacy of certain Western powers, it has evolved into something new. What will not change is that, for those who cast aside the easy cynicism of our times, the tendency for some humans to brave unseen dangers to open new worlds will continue to serve as an inspiration for those who seek the betterment of themselves and their families.


Showing off my Yuri Gagarin T-shirt, 2008



The response to my 1992 application to the Canadian Space Agency


Walter and Sursati Deonandan, New York City, 1969


Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, 1969

Pluggity Plug Plug

Today, it's all about me!

There's a new article up at Skiffy.ca. This time it's a review of the really tremendously good Torchwood: Children of Earth miniseries.

My latest column is up at The MicroSoft website.

My most recent radio interviews are now archived on the reviews page (finally updated after 5 years of idleness).

And if you're in Toronto this coming Friday, July 24th, come on down to Ryerson University where I will be judging the first ever SpeakOut Slam Poetry contest! I'm sure it will be a lot of fun, so don't sit at home watching TV, come out and jeer --I mean support-- your local slam poets.

In Other News...

Sean M. sends us The 10 Most Awesome In Search Of episodes. He also points us to the, um, Indian He-Man:



How can we top that? Well, how about news from The Other Ray that someone is claiming to have been impregnated from ...wait for it... sperm from a swimming pool. Yeah.

Ray also sends us the following chart showing just which human broadcasts aliens are presently listening to. We're all screwed; you know that, right?

The Hum

Has anyone heard of this very weird global health phenomenon called "The Hum"? Very weird. Apparently, hundreds of people around the world --typically around certain geographical loci (in Canada, cases are clustered in Vancouver, for example)-- are being driven crazy by a very low frequency humming noise that no one else can hear.

You can listen to a simulation of the sound here.

And this fellow claims to have recorded The Hum here.

Pretty weird, huh? Several explanations have been proposed, running that gamut from medical to environmental to psychological.

Hmm, maybe it's a precursor to spontaneous human combustion? Who knows? Well, the BBC reports that there is now some evidence that the culprit might be oversensitive hearing.

In Other News...

Today's Daily Perv Link (TM) is brought to us by Russians in Florida. How can that combination spell anything other than WIN?

Smooching = Dating

A "friend" (note quotation marks) has generously offered to write a dating profile for me. Because I believe in archiving the minutiae of my life, I offer it here now for your benefaction:

"40 going on 14

C-list shut-in idiot savant given to serial bouts of nonsensical utterings seeks highly attractive, worldly, accomplished, well-traveled partner to go steady with. Will offer juvenile antics, frequent mentions of porn, disrespectful comments about the bodies of women over the age of 22, tacky jokes, and occasional mature insights in exchange for intellectual and physical stimulation. Laughter, among other things, will have to be faked on a regular basis. Asset qualifications include being of South Asian background, financial independence, being a nerd or dork in high school, having a firm body with big boobs and breathing semi-quietly through your nose. Smooching = dating, so respondant [sic] beware. "

And because I'm all about the the awkward segue, I give you this interesting article about the roles of science versus religion by Stanley Fish --a topic that was actually at the core of my second book.

I will summarize my take on the debate this way: science tells us everything about the how, but is incapable of addressing the why.

The Uncanny Valley

io9.com had a contest recently for submitting a funny caption for this still from the new TV series, Caprica:



The winner was Joey Comeau, whose entry was, "Well, I think we've side-stepped our uncanny valley worries."

Now, to many of you that will sound like sheer unfunny nonsense. But it represents an opportunity for all of us to learn about what the "Uncanny Valley Hypothesis" is. Proposed by Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori, it essentially states that the more human-like a robot appears, the more we like it.... until it looks a bit too human, then we think it's just creepy... until it starts to look and behave almost exactly like a human, at which point we like it again. The graphs below are taken from an article by Dave Bryant:



As you can see, the "valley" is the point at which the graph dips down in each case.

Bryant makes the further case that these analyses are proxies for overall anthropomorphism, and might reliably predict people's reactions to anything non-human that might resemble humans somewhat. It's a good gauge for predicting a population's reaction to a genuine alien presence. Bryant presents the following "uncanny valley" graph for overall anthropomorphism:



As Bryant puts it, this explains why we are horrified by human zombies, but enchanted by talking squirrels.

Yuri and the Wonder Twins

Apparently The Wonder Twins are back, if only in toy form:



As a commenter on io9.com put it, "I especially like the Praise Satan grins they're sporting."

Now compare this new buffness and boobishness to the original:



In other news, today marks the 48th anniversary of the historic flight of Yuri Gagarin, hero of the Soviet Republic and the first human being to both enter outer space and orbit the Earth. Here's a picture of me and a couple of students, from earlier this year, in which I am sporting a Yuri Gagarin T-shirt. It was given to me by a charming and gorgeous Ukrainian woman I was dating last year, and was purchased in the Ukraine, where Gagarin's is still a household name:



It's so very sad that most people in the West today have no idea who this great man was. His accomplishment ranks up there with those of Columbus and Champlain, yet the might of American media has erased his name from our school books. I once polled my students to see how many could identify the name on my T-shirt; none could. Some even thought "Gagarin" was the name of a clothing line.

So let me set the record straight. Yuri Gagarin was the first human being in space. Yuri Gagarin was the first person to orbit the Earth. Alan Shepherd was the first American, and second human being, in space, though he only did a sub-orbital flight. The Americans didn't make orbit till the flight of John Glenn, a whole year after Gagarin. In the interim, another Soviet, Gherman Titov, became the second human to orbit the Earth, but the history books have all but forgotten his name.

If I ask people who the first woman in space was, they always answer "Sally Ride", which infuriates me no end. Sally Ride was the first American in space, and flew in 1983.

The actual first woman in space was Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who did the deed two decades earlier in 1963.

In fact, Ride was actually the third woman in space, beaten by a year by yet another Soviet, Svetlana Savitskaya.

The USSR may be gone, and there may have been a great many things about that regime that we find unattractive. But let's not forget that they were the ones who took the real pioneering steps in manned space exploration. Today we remember and honour Yuri Gagarin, hero of the Soviet Republic, and with him the legion of lesser known cosmonauts whose legacies do not benefit from the mighty machine of American media.

Why We go To Mars

Why does anyone care what this doofus thinks?
Hmm. Just ate a mountain of chilli and am dizzy from the meat. Or I'm dizzy from a sinus infection. I don't know. In either case, I'm dizzy. So if I don't make any sense today, blame the dizziness.

I also just finished watching a year old episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, in which Ashton Kutcher went on a tirade about, "Why are we sending stuff to Mars when we have child slavery right here on Earth?!" Yes, he said those words, or something close to them. I don't remember exactly.

Now, I see young Mr. Kutcher's point. Our spending priorities have often been in discord with our spending needs. As a metaphor, his rant is well taken. But I actually think he was serious about dumping on the whole Mars thing, and on America's space program in general.

Kutcher was once a student of engineering, though he dropped out before finishing his degree. So I would assume that his passing familiarity with applied science would give some deeper insight into the value of the space program. Apparently not. So let's look at the issue for a moment.

First, let's break down the numbers. The 2009 NASA budget was $17.2 billion, which is comparable to the budgets of both Delta Airlines and Pfizer. According to one breakdown, that's about $1 per week for every American citizen over a whole year. I spend 20 times that amount on coffee alone. Not to be glib, but as a tax expenditure on the American federal budget, it's not particularly large.

A 1992 article in Nature estimated the economic benefits to the American taxpayer wrought by the space program:

• $21.6 billion in sales and benefits
• 352,000 (mostly skilled) jobs created or saved
• $355 million in federal corporate income taxes
• $95 billion to U.S. economic activity
• $1.5 billion return on investment in the form of sold commercial goods and services

This does not include the economic impact on local communities benefiting from the influx of new industries and professionals, nor on the long term economic advantages of all the spin-off products and technologies. For example, many of the materials advances of the space program gave us the stuff from which our current generation of outdoor gear was developed; the economy of sales of camping gear does not factor into the above calculus.

Since Kutcher mentioned Mars specifically, let's note that the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) missions cost NASA about $820 million. The remaining Mars budget has been cut to about $340 million.

This seems like a lot of money --and it would be, for a single person. But it's a pittance for government. And let's not forget that this money is being spent on employing thousands of people and on building and sustaining industries that keep entire communities afloat.

Indeed, because of the space program we have microcomputers, temperature resistant fabrics, velcro, magnificent breakthroughs in distance and telemedicine, manufacturing and material sciences, not to mention a global satellite-based communications and GPS system.

Mind you, the same logic could be applied to the military, which has dramatic economic downstream ameliorations. But while expenditures on the military eventually end up killing lots and lots of people, expenditures on the space program are not meant to kill, but rather increase scientific knowledge, propel technological advancement in a slew of areas, and ultimately open up vistas for cheaper and more efficient energy production, food production, medical care, manufacturing, propulsion, communication and computing.

So let's gut the military, but keep on financing the space program. Solutions to many earthly problems lie beyond our gravity well. For instance, I've argued in this space many times that the time has come to explore the building of orbital power satellites to solve our terrestrial energy demands.

Meanwhile, reports indicate that Ashton Kutcher will get paid $10 million to pretend to be a florist in his next movie, and will receive 10% of the movie's gross receipts. Zod only knows how much this overreacting doofus is actually worth. Exactly how does his wealth or his movie about a florist impact the werewithal of society? Maybe we should liquidate his assets to fight "child slavery".

Bring Back Kirk

Hmmm, what shall I write about today? Discord in the middle east? The upcoming prime ministerial showdown in Canada? How about Obama's reactions to emerging global concerns?

Nope. Today we talk about Star Trek... and not just because Majel Roddenberry is dead.

I re-watched Star Trek: Generations the other day, the one in which one of my boyhood heroes, James T Kirk, is killed. I really enjoyed that movie; I think it had a lot of heart, even though it was clearly made on leftover change. What I didn't like was how they killed Kirk. See, I was one of the few people walking into the theatre who had no idea they were going to off the good Captain. I sat there with my mouth hanging open when it happened.

As Kirk said inThe Final Frontier, he always knew he would die alone. Well he wasn't alone. He was killed first when Malcolm McDowell shot him in the back. Then, when test audiences protested, the studio spent an additional $5 million re-shooting a very lame sequence in which Kirk dies when a bridge falls on him. A bridge!

A timeless icon of American culture, a man who fought (and defeated) Klingons, Romulans, the Gorn, humpback whales and even the god Apollo himself was taken down by... a fucking bridge?

Kirk should have taken command of the Enterprise D, as the original script idea had called for, and led the Next Generation crew into battle against the Klingons... but not before first goosing Commander Troi and knocking Worf on his ass.

There are several websites dedicated to both regretting Kirk's death and calling for his resurrection --like this post by Battlestar Galactica writer Ronald Moore and, of course, BringBackKirk.com.

My favourite of these sites, though, is the ever popular Top 100 Reasons Why Kirk is Better Than Picard. Here are some gems:

• When Picard went back in time he brought back Data’s head. When Kirk went back in time he brought back a blonde.
• When Sisko met Picard he told him he hated him. When Sisko met Kirk he got his autograph.
• When Picard has a problem he talks to Guinan about it. When Kirk has a problem he shoots it.
• Kirk’s Enterprise did not have a day care.
• The only Klingon serving on Kirk’s bridge would be a dead one.
• When Sarek mind melded with Picard, Picard cried a lot. When Sarek mind melded with Kirk, Kirk decided to hijack the Enterprise and bring Spock back from the dead.
• Kirk’s dress uniform does not actually look like a dress.
• Kirk would never allow his first officer to get more tail than he does.
• Picard’s first officer is named after a bathroom code.
• When Data hijacked the Enterprise, Picard was helpless to stop him. When Spock hijacked the Enterprise Kirk fought him to the death.
• Picard once wore formal Klingon robes for a Klingon ceremony. If Kirk ever wore Klingon robes it would be because he took them off a dead Klingon.
• When Kirk disguised himself as a Romulan, he stole a cloaking device and used it to escape to Federation space. When Picard disguised himself as a Romulan he ate some soup and then got captured.
• Kirk went to the center of the universe, met god and wasn’t impressed.
• Style: Kirk did it first, he did it better and he did it wearing gold velour and Beatle-boots with a space girl on each arm.

I also just finished watching UFC 92. Frank Mir is an inspiration. And the deaf fighter, Matt Hamill, was fascinating, especially how his corner has to communicate with him. That got me to finding this, a tape of some of the more brutal moments in MMA history. Dig John McCain's contribution:




As well, here's a rare online clip of the now famous war between Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin, a match that in many ways changed mixed martial arts history in North America by showing a regular broadcast TV audience how unbelievable this sport can be.


In Other News...

Here's a BBC documentary on how much science the new incoming US President needs to know.

And here's a slideshow of the the biggest douchebags of 2008. Enjoy!