I thought it was vitally important that the vial in the image look like Re-Animator fluid. Imagine the carnage that would be unleashed by the unwitting dupe seduced by the promise of a cureall that turned out not to be just harmless linseed oil, but instead the sadistic creation of Dr. West that turns its users into a cannibalistic psychotic zombie creatures.

And Obama had such good intentions. Herbert West is laughing all the way to the bank.

The problem with this whole thing is, it’s not too unbelievable. People can be duped into buying just about anything if it promises to lower cholesterol or burn fat or cure scabies. People like to think that they aren’t gullible, but they are. We like to think that we’re past the days of the soapbox salesman selling his crazy potions and tonics, but we’re not!

With your indulgence, I’d like to offer evidence for my case that Americans (and probably most people) are easily duped by anything that promises to make them better with little or no work.

I work at a natural food cooperative. Some people call it a health food store, which ought to send up red flags because it is not a health food store. Organic potato chips are only marginally better for you than conventional ones. They’re still fried in oil, loaded with fat and carbs. I work at a grocery store, albeit a member-owned cooperative grocery store.

Among the many things that we sell that are genuinely good, we also have a lot of things that pretend to be good but are actually quite pointless. I find it fascinating that someone who wants to get healthy will walk toward the supplement aisle before they head for the produce cooler.

We sell a lot of vitamins. This, in and of itself, is not a problem. We also sell “medicine,” that is, cough syrup and pain relievers and the like. But, what does an organic pain reliever look like? If you look closely at any of our “medicines,” that is anything that isn’t actually a vitamin or mineral, it will almost always be one of two things: herbal or homeopathic. I am fine with herbal remedies. I suspect that they work in the sense that they’ve been used for thousands of years and this seems to be better in many ways than the FDA’s method of testing drugs, which routinely passes drugs that later turn out to have devastating side-effects that aren’t evident until years later.

Just you wait and see what a generation raised on Ritalin will look like in another ten years or so.

Anyway, it’s homeopathy that I take issue with. It’s a form of medicine based on the theory that if you dilute terrible poisons with enough water and in the right way, then the water itself begins to take on curative properties. And not diluted just a little bit. We’re talking about diluting it to the point that, in a given, average-sized lake of homeopathic medicine, there might be a molecule or two an active ingredient.

That’s right, people (many, many people) believe this. And this shit ain’t cheap. People are paying through the nose for inert substances that have no medicinal effect whatsoever.

Moving on. You have no idea how many times I’ve been manning the till when some dupe walks in and starts looking at the herbal supplements and turns to me and says, “Do you have [insert herb that they heard about last week on Dr. Oz]?” Ninety percent of the time the answer is no, of course we don’t carry that. We do carry a bunch of other things that have probably the exact same effect, but no, they want whatever it was that Dr. Oz was so up in a tizzy about. I don’t care that Dr. Oz works at Columbia University. I hope he dies of a heart attack so he never bothers me again. He’s a charlatan. You know what he should be telling people? “Folks, there’s only one way to be healthy and that’s to eat good food and exercise.” That’s it. There’s no other way. No amount of herbal antioxidant is going to replace good, healthy, organic food.

Food is the keyword here.

An important case in point is the acai berry. It is actually good for you. Dr. Oz said it was and as much as I hate to admit it, he’s not a complete idiot. For those that don’t know, acai comes from South America and has been lauded and praised for its antioxidants, polyphenols, and other nutrients that your body does benefit from having. They do have to be shipped from South America, however. This is a problem for conservationists, I would say.

And you know what’s better for you than acai berries? You’ll never guess. Blueberries. Blue-motherfucking-berries. Oh, and strawberries. Concord grapes. Red Beans have more antioxidants. So does red wine.

Blueberries grow wild all over the north country where I live. And it’s true, people do eat them and love them (they taste a hell of a lot better than acai, too–acai tastes a lot like sweet dirt in my opinion). But we have a demand for acai. So we sell it. And I can’t say shit because we make money on it. As much as it rankles.

I’ll close with something amusing. A guy walks into the store and looks around for a while. Eventually he approaches me and asks, “Where are those marshmallows you used to have?” I reply, “I don’t think we’ve ever carried marshmallows.” Which might not be true; I’ve only been there a year. So then he says, “Yeah, you know, those ones you used to have. The marshmallows. They’re made from the Nile river fish.”

I stare at him for a handful of seconds. And then I can’t help myself. I start laughing. A hearty chortle from deep inside my stomach. He starts laughing, too and says, “I guess that does sound a little strange. But I tell you it’s real.”

I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine anything more absurd than catching fish in the Nile–the Nile is incredibly polluted, I’ll have you know–with the intention of making fucking marshmallows.

What a world.

Gelächter ist Medizin.

There was a time, long ago, that people knew the value of a dollar. And this is not in some “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” sense. I mean, they literally knew what a dollar was worth. For most of 1975, a dollar had a specific value such that one troy ounce of gold was worth $42.22. Exactly. There was a time when banks had to make sure that they had enough gold in their vaults to fund all of the paper money that they had issued. Since the Federal Reserve was established in 1913, that meant that all of this gold was kept in the same place. Safe and sound, and ready to be exchanged at a flat rate for paper currency.

You might remember me mentioning gold and its relative value vis-à-vis anything else. I talked about how Nietzsche spoke of gold’s relative worthlessness. Of course, today we have tons of industrial purposes for it but by and large, most of the gold in the world today is socked away in various hoards because gold’s real value is its exchange value. This is what Nietzsche was talking about. We value it because it’s very, very shiny and has little or no use outside of this fact. So for time immemorial we’ve used gold as a currency itself. Gold (and silver) coins were the most common form of currency. You can’t forge a gold coin because no matter what, you still need freaking gold in order to make the coins. So gold always has intrinsic value.

A friend of mine says that gold used to be backed by grain. Which is an interesting idea that I haven’t backed up with any formal research. Anyone with any further insight into this would be repaid handsomely in honor and accolades.

The problem with gold, of course, is that it is also very, very heavy. So carrying chests of it around is awfully inconvenient and requires carts and wagons (or trucks in today’s world) and a security detail (who must all be paid well in order to make sure they don’t rob you themselves). So paper currency, pegged to the value of such-and-such amount of gold was invented. But this paper currency (usually issued by a private bank) had to be backed up by that gold and had the promise of such an amount of gold upon presenting it at the issuing bank. This is what builds confidence in a currency.

During World War II, the Japanese hoarded tons and tons of gold as part of their plan to create a new, stable currency that would become the standard currency for their entire Pacific empire. As terribly as they lost the war, they knew that if they won, they would need to have the confidence of the consumers in their currency or there’d by no way in hell that it would maintain any sort of real value.

But many, many currencies are off the gold standard now. In particular, the US dollar (the third most valuable and by far the most pervasive currency) is not pegged to any specific value of gold. To make this point really clear, consider that gold no longer has value but instead has a price. What I mean is, gold used to, essentially, be our currency, though it was abstracted through the use of paper banknotes. Now, gold is just another commodity with a price and not a particularly standard price either. It’s continually fluctuating. At the time of this writing, the price of gold is 942.80 USD per troy ounce. The gold itself isn’t changing, however. It’s only the standard price that people would be willing to pay in American dollars.

Here’s the thing. Paper money is worthless. It’s even more worthless than gold (and gold is essentially worthless; I mean, you can’t eat it). Paper money only has value insofar as everyone involved in its distribution can agree that it has value. That’s it. If nobody can agree that it has value, then it has no value whatsoever.

Take for instance, the scene in the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe where a bunch of morons (modern humans) have crash-landed on a primitive planet Earth. They quickly decide to adopt the leaf as their standard currency and all assume that they are rich since there are so many trees. But of course this leads to rampant inflation and even simple transactions require the exchange of, say, an entire deciduous forest.

So why is the US Dollar proof that Americans are stupid? Because somehow they have decided to trust the US government and the federal reserve enough to allow them to back the US dollar with–get this–nothing at all. There is nothing backing our currency. It has zero real exchange value. Zilch. Nada. Absolutely nothing.

They have essentially adopted the leaf as a national currency. When the Fed decides we need more, they just print more goddamned money and there’s nothing in the vaults to back it up. They create this crap out of thin air and Americans accept it!

It’s traded on currency exchange markets. It supposedly has an exchange value (and technically does, since people are still willing to exchange it for goods and services) but this isn’t guaranteed by anything except the Fed’s word that the dollar will maintain its value. But what is it worth? We don’t know because it isn’t pegged to anything!

The biggest and most profound evidence of human stupidity is the fact that other countries love the dollar. In a sense, it’s a pretty remarkable currency because, despite its utter worthlessness, it has managed to remain stable (the most important property for a currency to possess) for decades. There has been steady, but not uncontrolled inflation over the years, but it really hasn’t been a huge problem. Most Americans live pretty comfortably in their absurd little fantasies about the stability of the greenback.

Is it going to come around and bite us in the ass? Probably. Is it going to become necessary to peg the US dollar to some precious metal in the future? I have no idea. I’m not an economist. It just seems absurd that people are willing to trust a currency that has absolutely nothing supporting it whatsoever except, what, credit?

QED

Alles dass Glitzern

Click on the image to see it full size. I’m working on a new theme for the blog so that I can include larger format images. It might take some time.

This is pretty much exactly what would happen if William Shatner came ’round to tea at the Prime residence.

So I realized today that I have no really good reason for using Optimus Prime as the subject of so many of these comics (if you can call them that). Perhaps it’s that I see him as the sort of ideal outside observer. An alien not of us, but very sympathetic to us. He likes humans in a way that is not patronizing or insincere. He shows us–the inferior race–a kind of respect that is rare between humans.

Prime is the perfect idealist. His most famous quote (from the comics as well as the various Michael Bay films) was, “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” On the one hand, it’s the sort of magnanimous statement that gives a person shivers, especially when uttered by the always earnest Peter Cullen. But it’s also, when one really deconstructs it, astonishingly prejudiced against beings that are less than sentient. Regardless, I’ve always wanted to identify with Optimus Prime and I respected his sage wisdom (and awesome robot-fu) as a child.

Perhaps I use him in so many comics because I happen to own an Optimus Prime action figure myself, which makes it easy to photograph him from any angle I want. Do you know how hard it is to find a photo of William Shatner in the perfect pose?

The subject of ‘Hidden Portals’ was spawned by a headline that I saw on Science Daily. It’s one of those headlines that really plays tricks on a guy like me. I read something like this and I get really excited. I imagine, of course, teleportation (something that would really put GM out of business). And, thus, that’s the idea that I explored in my art project.

But that’s not exactly what’s going on in the article. In fact, the article is further misleading in that, try as I might, it’s difficult to figure out what, exactly, these researchers actually accomplished. Upon further research into the matter, it turns out that what they have created is not an actual, workable prototype of a hidden doorway, but instead have built a functional conceptual model of a doorway that does not permit electromagnetic waves to pass through it, but would allow other entities (say, a person) to pass through. A mirror that you can walk through.

It’s actually really cool. But this is the thing that’s frustrating about science sometimes. They’ve proved that it’s theoretically possible, but they haven’t actually built it yet. My question is, of course, why the hell not?

It’s a curious thing about science. In fact, it’s the critical difference between science and applied science (i.e. technology). What use has a scientist for technology except as a way of furthering our understanding of the world? They’ve proved that it’s possible to build the doorway. In a sense, it doesn’t matter to the pure researcher that it ever actually gets built. For the pure researcher, actually building the device would only be important if it could be used in further research. This might be an oversimplification of the pure researcher, who is, of course, only human, but the point remains.

Technology, like for instance these new metamaterials involved in the creation of the hidden portal is, essentially, a means to an end. And I don’t mean this lightly. “Means to an end” is a concept that bears considerable weight to a philosopher. Technology is a means to an end. And it is nothing more than that. To a scientist, the end is knowledge and understanding. To everyone else, the end is often creature comfort or experiential. We use technology as a means to the end of enhancing our individual lives or the lives of others. Both are perfectly reasonable ways to use technology.

Without letting this become a lecture on ethics, I think I’d like to bring this whole thing full circle.

I’d like to bring this around to what I find so interesting about Optimus Prime. He is, in a sense, a piece of technology. But he is also a sentient being. He is the ideal exemplar of a higher being that treats lower beings with dignity and respect. He is a piece of technology that doesn’t treat humans as a means to an end. They are an end in themselves. To be treated as an end and not a means. That is the true meaning of “freedom,” folks.

Now, if only someone would build some mirror-portals so that I could buy one.

Freiheit ist nicht frei.

This is one of the possible results of congress enacting the Terminators as Secret Service Agents Act. The world could use fewer jerks.

I found this article on BBC today. Augmented Reality (AR) is a pretty sweet concept. The technology looks very cool, totally validating years of cyberpunk fiction. But there’s a problem with the article as written. And the problem stems not from any direct fault of the journalist, but from a dramatic misunderstanding of the nature of computers and robots.

The article mentions “Terminator Vision” and it is this very concept that is suspect here. By way of explaining, let’s build a mental concept of the flow of information inside of a Terminator’s computer-mind.

In the films (and indeed, in many robot films) when we, the viewers, see from the Terminator’s perspective, it’s a sort of infrared image with a text-based overlay. A Heads Up Display (HUD). I always passed it off as an abstraction, so we could relate, in some way, to how a Terminator relates to the world. However, it never occurred to me that someone would take that as literal. Why, exactly, would a Terminator need to generate this needless text in its image field? It doesn’t need to read it. It creates an unnecessary step in its data processing.

Here’s the algorithm that would be going through the CPU’s image analysis circuit:

1. Input image from eye-cameras
2. Analyze image thusly: separate out faces, identify them, identify weapons, identify surrounding structures and other objects
3. Evaluate possible threat sources
4. Evaluate possible actions based on threats, possibility for combat, and meaningful interactions with human companions (See Terminator 2: Judgment Day)
5. Generate text cues
6. Output: Overlay text cues on HUD for Terminator Higher Brain to then READ and presumably respond.

Why would the Terminator ever need to read this text in order to make an informed decision? The beauty of being a walking computer is the ability to evaluate raw data and process it without forming it into words. It’s faster and far more efficient. I can make allowances for, say, Robocop, who is actually a man with human eyes who might actually need a HUD in order to evaluate incoming data. In fact, any scenario involving a human inside a machine is going to necessitate some sort of AR technology. A cyborg’s lower and higher brain functions occur in the same place (unlike in humans). A cyborg doesn’t need the raw data to be filtered through a process, evaluated, and then passed back through the eyes. It’s ludicrous. Thus, the entire concept of “Terminator Vision” as a euphemism for AR is formed out of ignorance of computer technology. QED.

As for the recent American behavior at town hall meetings: grow up America. Read your history and study other countries. This country is far more likely to turn into Nazi Germany than Maoist China if continue to allow ourselves to be controlled by corporate interests. Don’t people understand that the government is a non-profit organization (or negative-profit, as the case may be)?

I don’t understand how people can allow themselves to be so closed minded about this issue. There is a certain income discrimination going on in health care in this country, and so many people are totally willing to let it continue. I mean, we all know that poor people don’t actually deserve health care, right? Right?

Anyway, one other thing:

Presumably, they would stay in Canada. Where they belong.

tschüs.

There are organisms that reproduce sexually and there are organisms that reproduce asexually. The former outnumber the latter by many orders of magnitude. Hell, even plants have sex on a pretty regular basis–though it’s a sort of kinky, bee-assisted sex. The question is why? Asexual reproduction is far more efficient than its more popular cousin.

In New Zealand, scientists found an astonishing opportunity to test one hypothesis. Snails are known to reproduce both sexually and asexually. In the fresh waters of New Zealand, both types of snail live side by side. So they could watch, over time, the changes in populations.

Here’s the thing. Evolution is affected by pressures. Behaviors and adaptations result for many different reasons, but the need to survive appears to be the primary factor in most adaptations–there are exceptions to this, of course. And so, the fact that sexual reproduction, which is terribly inefficient, is more popular than asexual reproduction is something of a mystery. Aside from the fact that it’s more fun.

They hypothesis that these researchers in New Zealand were testing has to do with parasites. Parasites infect all organisms. Consider that a population of snails that reproduces asexually essentially just clones itself off ad infinitum. Every child is genetically identical to its parent. It inherits all of its parent’s strengths, and, more importantly for this discussion, all of its weaknesses.

The offspring of a species that reproduces sexually is genetically unique, as it’s a sort of random mixture of its parents’ genes. So what’s a parasite likely to have an easier time with? A species that’s always the same, with the same defenses and the same weaknesses to exploit? Or a species whose members are always going to be different, have different chemistries, have different defenses?

The study showed that the population of asexually producing snails showed a marked reduction over time as a result of infection from parasites. The sexually reproducing snails showed a far more stable population trend and far less susceptibility to infection by parasites. The evidence seems to show that the evolution of sex was influenced strongly by parasites.

The thing that I find interesting about these findings is what they mean when examined in light of other things that we know about sex evolution.

Consider: Sex evolved as a defense against parasites. Once it became established as the dominant reproductive activity, sex took on a life of its own.

Peacocks have these long, ornate tails that serve absolutely no survival purpose whatsoever. They are purely a result of sexual selection. They are used to attract a member of the opposite sex. In fact, survival-wise, peacocks must strike a delicate balance between ability to attract mates and ability to escape from predators. The tails are a hindrance in a survival situation, but they ensure that their genes will be passed on. And so there are two completely separate pressures affecting the size of peacock tail feathers. One pressure creates a trend toward a smaller tail and other toward a larger, more showy tail. A very interesting tension.

But then look at humans. We are interesting because, not only are we social creatures, but we are also sentient. The most intelligent species on this planet. Sexual selection in humans is a far, far, far, more complicated affair than even that of peacocks. Look at the bizarre and strange rituals that humans adopt. Look at the prejudices, the tragedies, the arguments, the problems, that all arise as a result of a defense mechanism against parasites.

Sex brings out the absolute worst in humankind. I suppose it wouldn’t be poetic if it weren’t also true that sex can bring out the absolute best in humans as well. Poetry and literature as we know it would probably not be possible if it weren’t for sex.

I just got married. I couldn’t be happier about it. I don’t necessarily believe that monogamy is the only way that humans can (or should) interact on a sexual level, but I have made a choice to join in that sort of relationship. The fact that we can choose what sort of relationship we want to be in is probably one of our biggest problems because anyone that wants to have a different sort of relationship than what is deemed normal is often ostracized or worse.

Perhaps the best literary example of what came about as a result of sex is the Trojan War. Imagine it. Helen of Troy. The “face that launched a thousand ships.” And also spawned one terrible Wolfgang Petersen movie. All of that, because of parasites.

Maybe the Transformers are better off without it.

Maybe not.

Liebe ist in Ihrem Herzen.

Everyone has their idea of a dream honeymoon. This is mine, in case you were wondering.

I’m not really all that sure how many regular readers I have. The information on Google Analytics is mystifying at best. But, in the interests of preserving those few readers that I may have, I want to make it clear that the fact that there will probably be no posts for the next week and a half is due entirely to the fact that I’m getting married on Saturday and have five hundred tiny, almost insignificant tasks that amount to the trials of Hercules to accomplish before 2p.m. on Saturday afternoon. It will theoretically culminate in some sort of “I do.”

Also, I will be gone all next week in Grand Marais, Minnesota, a lovely little town on the north shore of Lake Superior. Bed and Breakfast and all that. It’s going to be great.

Supposedly, Matthew Arnold wrote the poem “Dover Beach” while on his honeymoon. If you read the text of the poem literally; that is, if you take it to be fact, it paints a bleak picture: a man, sitting at the writing desk in the bed chamber, gazing out over the moonlit cliffs of Dover, while a newlywed wife lies on the bed, alone, depressed, possibly shivering against the cool Mediterranean breeze.

I’m not sure if that’s how it really went down, and nobody will ever actually know the truth of the matter. However, the point is, that is not exactly the sort of honeymoon that I am likely to have. So, no blog posts. I may bring my laptop. If I get a few minutes to reflect, or if they discover the theory of everything, I’m sure my Blackberry will tell me so, and I’ll make up some excuse to post the news here. But barring that, you won’t hear from me until early August. Until then, Adieu.

Liebe ist Musik.

It’s a difficult world that we live in. It’s a world of expectations and everyone seems to expect different things from it. As some would have it, we are to submit to the pseudo-random flux that is evolution. A biologist might define evolution as: the change in allele frequencies in a population over time.

Humans have the unique ability in all the animals on Earth to sort of transcend their instincts. We can act in ways that are contrary to the way we have evolved to act, in other words. I’m not trying to get into a free will debate here, but the fact remains that our ability to perceive evolution for what it is allows us to make reasoned judgments about it. It allows us the unique ability to consciously manipulate it.

Creationists often argue that evolution has never been observed in a lab. Apparently they have never heard of the Westminster Kennel Club.

As the technology for gene manipulation becomes every more sophisticated, a debate is growing about the ethical implications of so-called designer babies. I have very clear objections for eugenics, but as long as gene-screening of embryos is freely available to everybody who wants a child–and not available exclusively to the filthy rich–then what’s the harm? Everyone has a different idea of what beautiful is. What can possibly be wrong with giving your children a little extra edge in the uphill battle for survival?

What I wanted to talk about today is a little different than designer babies, however. I’m almost thirty years old. I’m past the point where my genes could be screened and I could be selected out of a pot of possible embryos. My Adonis-like beauty and Einsteinian intelligence were the result of good old fashioned chance. But that’s it. There’s no way I can improve myself further at the genetic level.

But are there other options? I came across this article today on Science Daily and it got me thinking. There’s a lot of technology being developed for people who lose limbs. This particular new technology is promising because it involves laying microelectrodes on the surface of the brain, rather than embedding them within the neural tissue as a way of detecting neural impulses, translating them, and using them as a computer interface or as a method of controlling a bionic limb. I actually really like that the article uses the words “bionic limb,” terminology that used to be the playground of science fiction writers.

So far, the technology is able to improve the lives of crippled individuals. It is not, however, capable of bringing them back to full power, so to speak. The question that we must entertain at this point is: what happens when it is?

What happens when bionic limbs meet–or exceed–the capabilities of our natural limbs?

Bionics and cybernetics are pretty science fictiony, but this article shows that dramatic progress has been made in the field, and perhaps in ten or twenty years viable, lifelike appendages can be attached with all the articulation of a real hand. But maybe they’re better and stronger than before! A wounded soldier with his purple heart proudly pinned on his cybernetic chest stands tall and proud among a crowd of normal people. He smiles benignly upon them, only dimly remembering the day when he was a mere mortal. He holds his metallic fist above his head, a salute to his great-great-grandfather who had nothing but a leather-wrapped stick to bite down on when the field medic went at his gangrenous leg with a rusty hacksaw.

It’s not that far-fetched!

And even if it were, what are the ethical implications? It’s called “transhumanism.” One could call it forced human evolution. It is a movement that supports the use of biotechnology to augment the human body, not just in the case of injury, but as a voluntary act. A purposeful denial of the limitations of our naturally selected man-bodies. The idea that injury, aging, disease, and death are involuntary and undesirable carries a lot of merit.

Buddhists spend their entire lives attempting to overcome suffering, but their approach is holistic. It emphasizes acceptance of things that can’t be changed. Transhumanism, as a philosophy, urges people to reject the notion that their body is a temple that should not be altered. Body-modification as art is one thing. Body-modification in the name of utility, physical improvement, and life affirmation is another matter entirely.

Robocop spent three films trying to regain his lost humanity, and this is one of the possible perils of transhumanism (also called “posthumanism”). Nietzsche’s description of the Overman is one who has surpassed humankind, but still cares for the transience and vitality that humankind represents.

Bear in mind that evolution short-changes us. Humans are not the pinnacle of evolution. We are merely the product of a natural mechanism that allows animals that are “fit” to survive. As any biologist will tell you, an accurate description of it would be “survival of the sufficiently fit.” In other words, that which survives, survives. All a human needs to do is survive to reproduce. That’s it. In fact, that’s easy. All sorts of terrible maladies and suffering can crop up after that deed is done. Cancer. Osteoporosis. Heart disease. Love handles. And what’s worse? We pass those tendencies on to our children because it’s easy to reproduce.

The question is whether or not we want to accept the qualities that natural selection has, somewhat arbitrarily, assigned to us, or do we wish to strive for something greater? Do we make ourselves something new and distinct? Do we push the limits of human potential?

Some extra reading is important. I highly recommend anything by Nick Bostrom. He’s a professor at Oxford and a noted transhumanist philosopher. Specifically, look at:

• A History of Transhumanist Thought(pdf)
• The Transhumanist FAQ(pdf)
• In Defense of Posthuman Dignity(html)
• Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up(pdf).

In the end, it’s not about whether or not you value human life. Everyone except the most staunch sociopaths value human life. It’s about whether you value human life enough to go beyond it.

do svidania

As you may well know, I hold firm to the idea that science is profoundly important to humans, though it’s sometimes a difficult thing to articulate exactly why. And so, at the risk of beating the proverbial horse, I’m going to take another crack at establishing some of philosophical reasons for scientific research.

One of my favorite movies is Hurlyburly. It’s a little obscure, and my reasons for liking it are a little tangential and not necessarily relevant to this discussion, and so I hope that the connection I wish to draw does not come off as pointlessly esoteric.

Anyway, Sean Penn’s character is this totally self-absorbed Hollywood casting director, a low-life bottom feeder of the film and entertainment industry. He is essentially a member of a vast machine that pumps out entertainment to the masses and the part that he plays in this machine is utterly insignificant in the general scheme of things. This–and a lot of drugs–put him in the state of mind of always questioning his place in the world and how he is to relate to the world. He continually asks when presented with some outside information that is not directly relevant to his life, “How does this pertain to me?”

On the one hand, he is just being utterly self-centered. But on the other, I think he’s asking a valid question. Many things happen in the world that have no bearing on our day to day lives. But are we going to make the claim that starving children in Africa are irrelevant? Are we going to say that the potential for revolution in Iran is not important? These things don’t affect me directly, but as Anna Paquin’s character points out in the film, everything pertains to everything else in the sense that everything is part of the same “flow,” as she puts it.

I’m not trying to be mystical about this. These things that happen in the world always pertain to us because everything pertains to us. Even the most insignificant detail, like the fact that I’m sleepless in a hotel right this very moment because my flight home was delayed until tomorrow morning, is significant. It might, say, affect your decision to book a flight with Northwest Airlines–now Delta–in the future. It might affect your decision to decide on a connection at the Indianapolis Airport (I don’t recommend it).

To move on, there were two new studies that struck me as profoundly relevant, not only to our lives, but also to each other. I will point out that they will not necessarily affect how you live your life, but they definitely pertain to you.

First of all, researchers at the University of Missouri have shown that, as humans evolved, there is a strong correlation between brain size and population density. In other words, they have shown that brain size is directly related to social competition. What this means is: our brains are bigger because we compete with each other, and not with other species. This is pretty serious stuff.

And now some research out of Georgia Tech suggests that the fact that our brains are bigger is the reason we have higher cancer rates than chimps who are much less susceptible to cancer.

So let’s look at this. We–not necessarily willingly–gave up a relatively cancer free existence for our intelligence. That intelligence evolved as a result of competition within our species.

Interestingly enough, it seems that population density is also directly linked to culture. So there is a tension that exists when humans are together. But this tension can be utilized purposefully. It stems from competition (since that is the nature of the world) but it in no way means that we are incapable of transcending our natures and working together. We can do great things when we work together and if it means we’re more likely to get cancer, well, I think it means we have all the more obligation to use our brains.

Gute Nacht.

I’m getting married in a couple of months that entails a honeymoon that me and the future missus are planning on spending on the north shore of Lake Superior. A lovely town called Grand Marais. There are bike trails in the area, so, rather than rent bicycles there, we decided to bring our own bikes. This made a bike rack for the old Buick a necessity.

As luck would have it, we received one as a gift recently. While trying to decide whether to install it immediately–the only upside being the pleasure of being seen as the type of people who have a bike rack on the car–or wait till later, I noticed the above label which so intrigued me that I snapped the picture you are now glancing up at with my cellphone.

In case you’re not up on your French or Spanish (or English), the three sentences are informing you of where the rack itself was manufactured. Presumably, if you speak English, it was manufactured in the good old US of A. If you speak Spanish, however, then you be under the impression that it was manufactured in Mexico. But the French could only assume that it was manufactured in China.

To imagine that this exact bike rack’s place of manufacture is wholly dependent on the language that you speak is absurd. So there must be another explanation. I see two possibilities.

On the one hand, perhaps someone screwed up. It’s entirely possible that the person who designed the label got mixed up and the copy-editor didn’t catch the error. Or, what seems more likely, is that the factory that built this bike rack actually exists in some sort of pocket dimension, outside of our objective reality, that happens to have openings into our reality in the US, Mexico, and China. I just find it so unlikely that someone missed this obvious error on the packaging, that this is the only logical conclusion.

The question is, if this company has independently developed the technology to build factories in pocket dimensions, why aren’t they marketing that instead of just building bike racks. The question almost answers itself. They did not, in fact, build the factory. They happened to stumble upon the open rifts to another dimension accidentally and there was already a bike-rack factory there. Perhaps left there by an ancient civilization that had developed dimensional travel technology and presumably enjoyed taking their bicycles with them when they went on road trips.

So all at once, this label is proof of the existence of pocket dimensions, the possibility of accessing them, and the past existence of a great and mighty civilization capable of dimensional travel that, for one reason or another, has long since disappeared without so much as a trace.

Take that, causality.

Just to be clear, I in no way advocate suicide. 90% of the time, there’s a better option. That’s why this story is so interesting. In case you didn’t read the story, here it is: China. A bridge on an overpass. Traffic is at a standstill because a crowd is gathered. Why? A man in debt is threatening to commit suicide by throwing himself off the bridge. One commuter, fed up with it–this is the twelfth time in two months–pushes through the police cordon and shoves the suicidal man off the bridge and onto the inflated emergency cushion waiting below.

The suicidal is hospitalized with minor injuries and the pusher is arrested.

The question is not whether the shover did the right or wrong thing. Hell, if he hadn’t shoved the dude, we would never have heard that this was the twelfth time since April that someone had threatened to jump off that very bridge. We never would have heard the story. I would never have written this post. You, dear reader, would never have read it.

See how one small act has given you some amazing water-cooler conversation? Every single person who reads this post will tell their friends this story. Without fail. Why is that? It’s partly because we have a morbid fascination with suicide and death. It’s also because it’s such an unexpected story. Ask yourself, how do people normally deal with suicidal people?

We mollycoddle them. We try to reassure them: “Your life is worth living for.” We try to talk them down: “Why don’t you just step away from the edge.” This is, in essence, what’s been ingrained in us since we first started reading and watching TV: If you threaten to kill yourself, people will listen to you.

Have you ever had a boyfriend or girlfriend who threatened suicide if you dumped them? Have you, yourself threatened suicide if your significant other dumped you? You’re doing it because whether you want to kill yourself or not, you know that it gets people’s attention. The thought of death makes people act differently toward you. It would be a lot easier to break up with someone if you knew that they would get along just fine without you. A threat of suicide throws all sorts of other thoughts and emotions into the mix.

So what, in essence, did the pusher in the story do? He broke the jumper’s spell on the crowd. He had their attention. He fed off of their energy. It’s an incredibly selfish act because real suicidals, that is, people who actually commit suicide, are far more likely to do it in secret so they won’t be stopped, either by themselves or others.

Consider that Hunter S. Thompson killed himself in a way that might actually be considered courageous. He was not insane at the time. It was likely that he had been planning it for weeks. He was on the phone with his wife when he shot himself. He did it because he was ill and didn’t want to drag it out any longer. He wasn’t happy anymore. He wasn’t having fun. Since he couldn’t enjoy life and because it would be worse if, for some reason, suicide was no longer an option, he decided to do himself in.

Consider that Kurt Vonnegut smoked Pall Mall straights every day of his life because he said it was a “classy way to commit suicide.” Strange then, that it wasn’t the cigarettes that killed him.

The question here is whether or not we are the sort of culture who values the right to choose the time and place of one’s own end. If we did, then no crowd would have gathered for the jumper. He would not have been able to gain the attention of the crowd. No one would have had to push him to make a very poignant point. If the guy were really going to kill himself he would have done it already. The only reason he was able to draw a crowd is the fact that we have made suicidal threats a viable method of gathering a crowd. We treat suicidals like children (granted, they probably have some sort of psychological need to be treated like children, to no longer be responsible for their actions) and this feeds into their pathos. Why don’t we just push them? Why don’t we just tell them to grow up? Where do you draw the line when it comes to something like this? Normal, sane people don’t have the emotional energy to deal with suicidal friends, so why do they hurt us in an attempt to aggrandize their own psychological problems?

And how do we mistake the attention seekers for the people who actually need and deserve real help? These people do exist.

I’m not trying to be crass or insensitive here. And so before you judge me harshly for saying these things, bear in mind that I am only asking questions. Carefully consider what I’m saying and then decide whether or not this is worth thinking about. I am merely trying to point out an interesting disconnect in which some people are exploiting a society’s tendency to indulge people who actually have problems. It’s interesting from a distant, intellectual perspective. It’s deeply troubling from a human one. And I don’t have any specific answers.