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.

I imagine the recent negotiations to have gone something like this. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I like to imagine that Uncle Bill threatened Kim Jong Il with a Roman spatha.

I for one am glad that Bill Clinton gets a little attention. He gets to be the goddamned hero for once. And you know what? Despite everything that anyone says, the right thing happened. Two innocent women were freed from a very bleak future.

This is vitally important. It is not possible to see this as a bad thing unless you are a terrible person.

So anyway, NASA has released an image that was captured by the Spitzer telescope. I like Spitzer and I am a huge fan of the things that we get to see because of Spitzer. And this new image is not a disappointment. It’s an interesting spiral galaxy with a strange eye-shaped structure at its center. I think the most notable feature, however, is smaller galaxy that appears to caught up in orbit around the larger galaxy’s nucleus. It makes a lot of sense from a physics standpoint. The moon orbits Earth which orbits the sun which orbits our own galactic center. Why not have larger, binary galaxies? All around pretty sweet.

The thing that I wanted to focus on, however, is not the image itself, but rather, the language used to describe the image. And exerpt:

• “The ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy is causing the ring to light up with new stars.”

I know that I’m not the first person to point this out, but if we want to be perfectly accurate with our language and consider that this galaxy in the image is about 50-million light-years away, shouldn’t the above quotation be phrased more like this:

• “The ring around the black hole was bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy was causing the ring to light up with new stars.”

I mean, really. The image is of the state of that galaxy fifty million years ago. I’m not an astronomer, but I am a linguist. When astronomers discuss these things, do they use past-tense language? I’m really curious about this, because it seems to me that by using simpler language to ease communication, then some information is lost in the discussion. By using present tense, you must make the (to be fair, usually accurate) assumption that the reader understands that “is” actually means “was the case fifty million years ago.”

On the one hand, I’m curious about the type of language that professional astronomers use. On the other, I feel like I ought to lobby for the use of accurate language when describing celestial objects like distant galaxies.

Perhaps the most viable solution would be to take Rush Limbaugh, freeze him, stick him in a pod and launch him to that other galaxy so that he can report back to us about what it’s doing. With any luck, we’ll miss and he’ll be lost in the inconceivably vast void between galaxies forever.

Would it be easier to just send him to North Korea where he would be forced to do hard labor for ten years?

Singen Sie mich adieu.

Scientia Pro Publica has a new edition out. One of my articles was accepted, which is totally cool.

This week’s edition was published by John over at A DC Birding Blog. There’s a very good lineup of articles in this edition and I hope that everyone can click on over and check it out.

The next edition is in two weeks, over at Pro-Science. Look for it there, or, if you like, you can submit an article by clicking right here.

Ciao Bella.

Some years ago, I wrote a post on my old blog about Harry Potter and certain moral issues pertaining to it. At the time, I had primarily been lamenting the fact that these kids at Hogwarts never take an English class. I mean, they’re growing up to be illiterate wackos with the power of the cosmos at their fingertips. Dangerous to say the least. But at the time I was also taking issue with the fact that they never learn science. It’s not like it doesn’t exist. There’s the muggle world, where tons of people are doing science every day, but the wizarding world is totally ignorant of this fact to their own detriment. Finally, I figured that the existence of magic ought to be utilized for humanity as a whole, and not just for the people who could wield it.

I was, essentially, being deliberately obtuse. Obviously I understand that nature of the narrative. I am a huge fan of the Harry Potter books and enjoy the films as a visualization of the stories that were so carefully told in the novels. Rowling is a wizard of a sort herself. A wizard of words, if that isn’t too cheesy for you. But it’s more than that. Her prose itself is not really that sophisticated. It’s more her ability to build a universe that doesn’t fall apart two days later. The world in Harry Potter is actually quite stellar. It’s an entire mythos that’s very fun and engaging.

In some fictions, we get pretty generic settings. Take for instance, one of my favorite sci-fi television shows: Firefly. It’s an incredibly generic sci-fi setting that is only held together by the strength of its characters and the writing. I mean, a sci-fi western is a really cheesy idea that has been literally done to death. And yet, a stellar cast with great chemistry, great acting, and helluva decent script make the show what it is.

But in Harry Potter, we have a setting that carries its characters. Let’s face it, most of the characters are cardboard cutout archetypes, Harry Potter being the worst, most boring offender. He’s an utterly one-dimensional character who, despite this fact, we actually manage to cheer for. Who is he really? In a high-school drama, he’s the jock. Think about it. If it weren’t for that British accent, you’d have exactly the character in the above image.

I watched the new film last night and it did not disappoint. I’ll spare you the details, because they’re not relevant. Suffice to say, it is and does exactly what it’s supposed to be and do. It is satisfying in that you can watch it once and never have any pressing desire or need to ever watch it again. In a sense, it was a blessing to get it over and done with at the midnight showing.

It was fun, but the films, moreso than the book, have this thing called set dressing that highlights some of the holes in the world that Harry Potter inhabits. A lot of crazy stuff is happening left and right. Terrorist activities by the Death Eaters, right? Just what in the hell is the British government doing about it? I’m talking about the government that governs sixty million beer swilling britons, not the Ministry of Magic that oversees a few thousand (?) magic-slinging ones.

I mean, isn’t there a public outcry to, oh, I don’t know, do something? All I want to know is, how they’re spinning it. I think it’s perfectly possible for the right spin to be spun and still manage to maintain the same narrative, but there’s just this part of me that is absolutely dying to know what’s going on in the muggle world!

Is that because I’m a muggle and, thus, sympathize with them? Is it because I’m a compulsive critic who’s always looking for flaws and problems? Who knows? I invite anyone and everyone to think up headlines that might appear on TV and in muggle newspapers to explain these catastrophes and post them in the comments section.

verbotene Künste.

On my old blog, I wrote an analysis of the original Transformers movie in light of memetic theory. It bore the title, “Do you really think we can trust the Decepticons?”

It was common in eighties action cartoons, like Transformers, to have an episode where the “good guys” and the “bad guys” team up to defeat a common foe. It happened in He-Man. It happened in GI-Joe. It happened in Transformers. One could presumably imagine a conversation, not necessarily with Captain Picard and Jeff Goldblum (who is not quite dead yet), in this episode of Transformers. The penultimate line in the image, the dramatic crux upon which the entire exchange rests, would be delivered completely without irony. As a child, I would have been too caught up in the drama to notice this lack. Or even to understand that there probably ought to be a snicker or a guffaw.

I read Roger Ebert’s review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen after I saw the movie. Though I suspect that if the order were reversed, I might have made a concerted effort to enjoy it even more than I did. In fact, in light of some of the reviews, I find myself looking for reasons to like the movie. I don’t know why I dislike Ebert so intensely. I mean, it’s obvious that he’s not seeing eye to eye with me ever. I mean, can everyone agree that he’s utterly incorrect about Star Trek?

Everything Ebert says is true: the plot is nonsensical, the characters are vapid and shallow, the movie is loud. The question: what’s wrong with that?

I guess it’s a question of expectations. I was expecting something on par with the first movie. What I got was something that actually corrected several of the problems with the first movie. I went to the film expecting (and desiring) a 2.5 hour robot slugfest. And you know what? Michael Bay delivered. This shit was crazy!

In the first film, it was difficult to see much of the action. In this new iteration, he did a few things to make the action more intelligible and i applaud him for it. First of all, he chose his environments with more care. The scene where Optimus dukes it out with Megatron and Starscream in the woods was great because the camera could sit farther back, and the robots stood out against the vegetation. It was easily one of my favorite scenes in the film.

His use of slow motion was nice as well. This gave us an opportunity to see, in detail, the results of some of these blows. I mean, a giant robot has to put some pretty tremendous power behind a punch. I could barely contain myself when Bumblebee stripped that dog robot down to its spine, or when another robot got its face ripped in half.

A friend of mine pointed out afterwards, using the word “Cronenbergian,” the use of fluids and ichors and sinus invasion with some of the robots. It was seriously that creepy in spots.

I liked the look of the robots. In particular, his use of very small robots was cool. Hordes of tiny robots are to giant robots what hordes of scorpions are to grizzly bears. They are all terrifying, but for very different reasons.

There are obviously a ton of plot holes and problems with this film. It’s not a “great” film. It’s not even a “good” film. But it certainly isn’t terrible and it’s for this reason that the film manages to succeed. It has excellent pacing for it’s length. There was always something happening and I wasn’t bored. I was looking for a particular type of entertainment and I got it.

This movie shows that a movie doesn’t have to be great in order to deliver on a promise.

The question of why this movie is far superior to the Wolverine movie of earlier this summer is much more complex. They both appeal to the same primitive emotions. They both aim at the same goal: a re-imagining of an old franchise. But somehow Wolverine felt like it was written by a fourteen-year-old. Transformers 2 felt like it was written by an adult for the fourteen-year-old in all of us. Except Roger Ebert.

Look at that old pretentious fuddy-duddy:

Assumed to be fair use.

Sayonara

The biggest problem with Mac’s “I’m a Mac” ad campagin with Justin Long and John Hodgman is that John Hodgman is so much more charismatic. I mean, is there anyone out there that likes Justin Long? Anyone that doesn’t think he’s a totally obnoxious ass?

They make a lot of claims in these ads about Mac’s superior security, stability, and performance. I’m sure there has been endless debate on all three counts, with PC users vehemently defending their machines, cobbled together from parts made by twenty or more different companies–reminiscent of the Road Warrior, the electronic version of a rat bike–while Mac users sit back with their user-friendly, cute-as-a-button, yuppie machines. The fact remains that a computer is only as useful as a user is able to make it.

There are a few things that I’d like to say that might level the playing field as far as Macs are concerned and the first involves a story about a virus. One of the Macintosh’s selling points is the fact that they never get viruses. The reason for this, of course, is not because they are more secure. It’s because they have a far smaller market share than Windows. About 90% to 10%. The danger is that as Apple’s market share grows (and it is currently doing just this) it will attract many more hackers.

Imagine you’re a hacker and you want to write a virus. Your primary goal is, of course, to infect as many computers as possible. The best way to do this, would be to write a virus for the most ubiquitous platform: Windows. That’s why PC-users get more viruses and why Mac-users suffering from malware are few and far between.

I suppose it’s interesting that this new Mac virus was found primarily to be haunting popular porn sites. Presumably the people suffering from attacks from this virus are Mac-users who happen to have a penchant for the naughty. And perhaps even more interesting is the fact that, Mac-users, inexperienced at dealing with viruses and with fewer bits of free software to rid themselves of these viruses, are having a much harder time cleaning their systems.

I really feel for them. It’s like forcing a five-year-old to oversee the merger of two large corporations. They are simply ill-equipped to deal with this.

I wonder if you are familiar with one Alan Turing. He was a cryptographer during World War II and his story is fascinating. Most importantly, he is considered by many to be the father of modern computing. His “Turing Machine” was a thought experiment that is the basis for modern file systems and, while modern computers aren’t directly based on it, the “Random Access Stored Program” machines that today’s computers evolved from Turing’s original ideas.

And this brings me to a point that has always struck me as bizarre about Apple Inc’s logo. You see, Alan Turing was a homosexual. This was illegal in England at the time and this was eventually discovered by the powers that be. He was stripped of his security clearance and convicted of the very same crime that Oscar Wilde was. He avoided jail time by submitting to chemical castration. A horrifying atrocity.

I’m not sure if this lead directly to his death or not, but the fact remains, he was found dead with a half-eaten apple next to him. The autopsy revealed that he died of cyanide poisoning and it was ruled a suicide. That’s right. The official theory is that he killed himself with a poisoned apple.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to draw a connection between Alan Turing’s death and the Apple logo, but that doesn’t make it any less odd, especially considering that the Apple logo has a single bite missing, implying that the apple is only partly eaten, just like the one that killed Alan Turing.

Is this deliberate? Apple Inc’s Wikipedia page says that the logo was inspired by Isaac Newton and the apple that inspired the theory of gravity, but that seems like a ludicrous idea with only a very tangential connection to a modern home computer, whereas the apple that killed the father of modern computing seems far closer.

It just strikes me as odd, that’s all.

Anyway, while the Macintosh is in many ways a superior machine to most PCs, it is definitely not what the ads sometimes make it out to be. They are just as prone to glitches (I’ve operated some seriously glitchy Macintoshes) and, as we shall see, just as prone to viral infection as their more versatile counterparts.

Adieu.

Spoilers follow.

If you were to follow my Twitter, you’d know that I watched Terminator Salvation yesterday. You’d also know that my reaction to the movie was positive. And so I won’t bore you with a review of the film, but instead, an analysis. Lots of people who make lots more money than I do have already reviewed the crap out of it and they got to see it before it was officially released. I am not in a position to get special screenings and so I’ll take the high road and rely on the far less time-dependent nature of analysis. I mean, they’re still analyzing Plato and that was sooo last millennium.

Most good science fiction stories are based on a simple idea. It is usually possible to distill the essence of the story into a “what if” type of question. Since the Terminator franchise is science fiction, it seems to follow that there’s an idea somewhere in underlying story, the action, the explosions and the scary freaking skeleton robots. The first Terminator movie is by far the best thing the genre has created. And the germ that lies at the heart of this now sprawling franchise might have a pitch that looks something like this:

What if a robot assassin from the future were sent back in time to kill a woman before she can give birth the savior of mankind?

From this germ, the idea is expanded. We already have, of course, the robot apocalypse. We also have time travel. And then, to make things even more crazy, the savior, upon discovering this plot, sends one of his best soldiers back in time to stop the robot assassin. Even better? The soldier sent back is the one who will sire the savior of mankind.

It’s a brilliant story, but it can only go so far.

We can make one decent sequel. The robots try again, sending a more advanced robot this time, armed with the newest in CGI technology. This time, the savior sends a reprogrammed robot assassin back in time to save his own rebellious teenage ass. It follows pretty well. It makes sense. At the very least, it’s fun. It still needs little to no extra explanation. It holds its own as a science fiction story. Maybe it’s not as good as the original, but it’s got our attention. We get all that emotional garble that is admittedly pretty seamlessly integrated, but still shows a very common tendency in science fiction to ask the question, “What if robots had feelings? Does that make them human?” The thing that saves it is that most of the world didn’t know that it was a cliché, though plenty of science fiction nerds did.

I have a confession to make. I have never seen T3. It looked really bad and while I usually will get around to seeing just about everything that even remotely appeals to my science fiction sensibility–I saw Wolverine twice and I hated it the first time around–I somehow managed to miss this one. Based on what I’ve read, I haven’t missed much and that doesn’t surprise me. It seems like a backhanded attempt to make further cash-money by rehashing the same damned plot from T2 with a hot chick terminator. Absurdly bad sci-fi.

That brings us to Terminator Salvation and what it means for the franchise and what it means as science fiction. Schwarzenegger was apparently treated to an early screening and was “underwhelmed.” To be fair, he didn’t see the whole movie, but he said he “wasn’t sure who the terminator was,” which is a pretty telling remark of a)Schwarzenegger’s complete ignorance of anything of substance and b)the fact that this is not a “terminator film,” in the sense of T1 and T2. It’s a completely different type of story. You see, Terminator 2 was really a remake disguised as a sequel. Same plot. Same characters. Slightly different take.

What are the common elements of the first two films? Robot assassin, time travel. T4 is missing the time travel element, though it retains the robot assassin designed to blend into a human society. But at its heart, it draws from a completely different science fiction mode. This is a post-apocalyptic film. It’s in the vein of Mad Max, A Boy and his Dog, and, well, most of Harlan Ellison’s stuff. The other films were, more properly, pre-apocalyptic films. In the original films, Judgment Day is a sort of vaguely defined event some time in the future. It’s a fearful event just beyond our vision. It’s mysterious, terrifying, and the fact that it is unknowable is what makes it so terrifying. In T4, it’s a history lesson. It happened a while ago.

This is what I mean by the fact that it totally abandons the original concept of the former films and draws upon something artificial, that is, the specific mythos of the original films with which to build its story. The first two (or three) films were based on the same idea and were, in essence, iterations of the same idea (two different tellings of the same idea, though passed of as sequential). This new creature continues chronologically, but not necessarily building on the original concept. It is, instead, based on the specific plot events that transpired in the original films.

The original film is pure and undiluted. Characters were created to fill necessary roles in a drama based on a “what if?” question. The new film is answers the question “What happens next?” if Judgement Day were to actually occur. Thus the original idea is diluted and it is now about something completely different. Put another way, the first film answers the “what if?” question and the second film, answers a second “what if?” question using the end of the first film as its initial conditions.

Again, at its core, it could be any robot apocalypse movie. The fact that it draws from an established mythos is beside the point. All this gives us is easy plotting: John Connor has to save his teenage father so that he can send him back in time to shack up with his mother. The rest of it is essentially the same as any apocalypse movie (zombie, robot, nuclear, or otherwise): Survive.

In other words, the proper way to make Terminator 4 would be to say, “Let’s make a robot apocalypse movie” and then use the Terminator mythos as a convenient vehicle for setting up the scenario that plays out in the film. In many ways, it feels like this is exactly what McG did.

Understanding the film from this perspective, we can see that it’s actually pretty stupendous. Post-apocalyptic movies should be terrifying. That giant robot is damned terrifying–the sound effects are pretty key in establishing this tension, I might add. In fact, zombie and robot apocalypse movies have a lot in common in this respect.

In some ways, it is still a “Terminator” movie. Skynet employs a lone robot assassin in an attempt to kill John Connor. The twist is that the robot assassin doesn’t know that he’s a robot assassin. He thinks he’s a human. That’s cool. I can get behind that.

In the end, however, this is just too different a film to actually be thought to spawn from the same original idea as James Cameron conceived it. As a standalone story, it’s solid–decent action, tolerable acting, fair-to-decent scripting, excellent pacing–and that’s how it should be viewed.

After all, it’s been a while since we’ve had a good robot apocalypse movie. At the very least, it’s a hundred times better than the last two Matrix films, though for accomplishing that, I don’t think we should give McG a medal or anything. Just a pat on the back, I think.

I went and saw Star Trek. It’s good. Not great. Not even the best Star Trek film. But I liked it. And that being said, the debate about whether it is or is not Star Trek is a little absurd. The thing that really impressed me about this movie is that they did something that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a franchise like this. They managed to maintain narrative continuity while changing the past. Old Spock from the future is not from the same future that New Spock will one day inhabit. It will be a totally different future with all sorts of different adventures and, probably, a lot more sex.

This means that they can produce a number of new films (probably somewhere between three and four) set in a new alternate world that remains cohesive with the original series and films. It’s actually a pretty elegant solution to a problem with origin stories. Look at the disaster that is the Wolverine movie. They tried to make a film that outlines Wolverine’s back story but also introduce some sort of new story, and they find themselves in the position where they try to do far too many things with one film. I mean, the film I wanted to see was Wolverine in his youth, fighting all sorts of wars, living in Victorian Canada, etc. That would be interesting. Better yet, they should have had Ang Lee direct it; he’s got lots of experience with Victorian films and action films. Combine the two and we’ve got something very interesting.

“I say, Logan, those are some very sharp claws you have?”
“Why, yes, I believe they are. Why, did you know, that I can slice through metal with these?”
“Indeed? What are they made of?”
“Oh, it’s this wonderful new material called ‘adamantium.’”
“I say, that is fascinating. Will you be coming round for tea this afternoon?”
“I do think that sounds delightful.”
“Wonderful, I’ll have the butler make up some cucumber sandwiches.”

That’s the film I wanted to see. Instead we got garbage that was obviously written by fourteen-year-olds.

Instead of falling into these usual pitfalls, we got something unique, quirky, and altogether new. They rewrote the story, made it something fresh, and included some things that old Trekkies can relate to without having the opportunity to be overly critical about plot continuity. Zachary Quinto’s Spock is not Leonard Nimoy’s Spock, but he captures the same essence of what it is to be Spock. Since he’s the only one we see on screen with his future (and former) self, he’s perfect for comparison, but I’d even say that Chris Pine manages to pull out a pretty convincing Shatner without actually being too Shanter-ish. I mean, the only one who can really do Shatner and not be a parody is Shatner. He makes the character his own, while managing to convince us that he is, in fact, James Kirk.

Simon Pegg was brilliant.

Another thing that’s truly remarkable about the film is the fact that it is not a parody. It does not poke fun. Perhaps it’s the fact that Star Trek has already been parodied to death that made something like this possible. It couldn’t be a parody. It’s been done. They were forced to do something new. Something that really seemed like serious science fiction in the vein of Star Trek became inevitable. And that’s what it is: standalone science fiction in the vein of Star Trek. It is not the original series. It’s not TNG. It’s not the original films. It’s an entirely new beast and whether or not it’s actually Star Trek is beside the point. The film is damned fun to watch and has a lot of things going for it.

The first time I encountered the idea of alternate realities was Back to the Future II. You know, the one where Michael J. Fox goes to the future and buys the sports almanac and then future Biff Tannen (not unlike future Spock) steals the Delorean and brings himself the sports almanac in the past so that he can get rich and not be an old loser. In fact, it’s pretty much the same plot as Star Trek, now that I think about it.

In many ways, by making this an alternate reality film, they’ve freed themselves of the constraints of a franchise held in the clutches of legions of anal retentive fans and fact-checkers.

As a parting word, I think it would be best to say up front, that while I am not a “Trekkie” I did once go to a Star Trek convention and found myself sitting right next to John Delancie. Yes, that John Delancie. But that’s a story for another day. Suffice to say, I was too star struck to say hi, but I did get his autograph.

The film is not without its logical flaws (why exactly did they send Spock with quite so much of the doomsday goop?), but it just goes to show that a solid narrative style, reasonably good acting, and a fun tone can keep any story from falling flat.

Discuss.

The purpose of the above image is not necessarily to draw attention to any specific comments by the eminent republican. In fact, I wanted an image of just some average dude purchasing some carbon offsets and then being confused about their purpose. But when I spotted this image, it was just begging to be further photoshopped. C’est la vie.

I live in Minnesota. We have beautiful summers and hellish winters. But that’s not all. We also happen to have perhaps the best public radio station in the country. Minnesota Public Radio is about all I listen to. This is due to two reasons:

1. Every other radio station in my town is terrible.
2. MPR is actually very, very good.

So it’s not usually a complicated process to find anything to listen to. That said, they are currently running their member drive. I don’t know how much you know about PBS or NPR or any other public service like this, but since they are not commercial, but are instead a sort of consumer co-operative, the vast majority of their funding comes from donations. And twice a year, they spend a week begging for money. It’s pretty obnoxious, but it’s just something you have to get through. The plus side, of course, is that if you do decide to donate money they often send you some pretty neat stuff. Books, mugs, duffel bags, that sort of thing. Sometimes CDs of past quality programming.

Tonight as I was listening to the radio, they offered a free gift with a donation that I hadn’t expected. They are offering a carbon offset with every donation. This immediately struck me as weird because I had assumed that carbon offsets were stupid. I’m still not convinced that they’re not, but since MPR was endorsing them, I decided to do some further research. The folks begging for money were telling me that one of these offsets was the same (as in equal to or identical to) as not driving your car for ninety miles or not throwing away six hundred aluminum cans.

This is what always struck me as strange about carbon offsets because wouldn’t it be easier to just not drive for ninety miles? In my experience, it’s always easier to not do something than to do it. Entire corporations have managed to be supposedly carbon neutral through the practice of purchasing these carbon offsets.

My understanding of how this works is that when you purchase carbon offsets, that money goes into a pool of cash that goes towards the planting of trees, retrofitting power plants, and a whole slew of other things that reduce carbon emissions. The idea is that despite the fact that a huge corporation that is not actually carbon neutral can pretend to be carbon neutral because they are funding a bunch of carbon-sequestering activities that would not have been performed otherwise. Supposedly, this earns them the right to belch out more greenhouse gases.

Perhaps it’s better than nothing, but it presupposes the notion that there’s already a ton of CO₂ in the atmosphere. What I mean is, they are not being penalized for all the CO₂ that’s already there. That’s nobody’s fault because we didn’t know better forty years ago (that’s a lie, but let’s roll with it). So by selling these carbon offsets (by planting a few trees) these companies or people–in the case of members of MPR–get to burn petro-chemicals and drive their cars guilt free for a period of time. Does this strike you as odd?

Wouldn’t it be better to buy these offsets and drive your car less?

It’s hard to be carbon-neutral. We all realize that. But the real challenge and the thing that we actually ought to do is be carbon-negative. You think that’s crazy? Well, at least I tried. Now it’s on your head.

Discuss.

I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t put in a few words about swine flu. Forty-ish confirmed cases in the U.S. Deaths in Mexico. It has been elevated to WHO alert level four, pretty close to being classified as a global pandemic.

First, it’s important to note, that this image that I borrowed from the BBC’s article cited a little further on, is actually a picture of the Spanish Flu virus. And so, it’s merely a visual aid in that respect.

The question that is worth asking is what is the flu and what is it that’s important? A virus is nothing more than some strands of DNA or RNA wrapped in a protein shell. It’s basically a fast-evolving, semi-living machine for replicating random bits of DNA. It’s interesting because DNA’s primary goal is self-replication. That’s what it exists to do. Dawkins calls it the Selfish Gene. In complex organisms, the game that genes play is astonishingly complex and involves things like mating rituals and natural selection, but when it comes to viruses, that game is very, very simple: infect a host, find some cells, bust in, harvest the resources needed to replicate itself a few thousand or million times, and then hopefully be transmitted to another host. It doesn’t do the virus any good if the host dies before it can be transmitted.

Viruses like influenza are successful because they don’t often kill their host and they are able to jump from host to host. We get sick, we might get someone else sick, the virus lives on, and we get better, becoming immune to that specific strain of the virus. The problem arises when a strain is good at infecting but gets a little zealous about the messing up the host. People start dying. Ebola is a particularly good example of this because it wreaks terrible havoc on the host, killing very quickly. The reason ebola isn’t a successful virus is because it often kills too quickly. It has a short incubation period and this makes it unlikely that it will get passed on. It fails because it can’t reach pandemic status.

So what’s the deal with swine flu? Well, the simple fact of the mater is, we’re overdue for a flu pandemic. In 1968, Spanish Flu killed a million people worldwide. Swine flue isn’t a big deal yet, but it’s transmitting well and it has killed people. Everyone in the US has recovered, but people are dying. Apparently healthy, young people have died from it and the strain that’s floating around the U.S. is genetically identical to the one in Mexico. It’s also a new virus and so there is no natural immunity to it. We have no vaccines.

It’s not what it’s doing right now, which is really not very much. It’s what is possible. So, here’s the deal. Take everything that media says with a grain of salt. Much of media is engaging in some very alarmist reporting. They don’t, for the most part, know what the hell they’re talking about. The CDC and WHO are the people you should check in with because they know what they’re talking about.

It’s possible that this thing could get as bad as it has in Mexico. The simple fact of the matter is that we don’t know.

What can you do?

Wash your hands. Stay calm. Keep informed. Don’t listen to Fox News, they’re a bunch of alarmist morons who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. But above all, don’t make it something that it isn’t yet.

The problem with large scale catastrophes is that it is always a matter of “when.” A pandemic will occur. Whether it’s going to be swine flu, ebola, or e. coli, it’s going to happen. You can protect yourself by staying informed and acting with as much knowledge as possible. And even then you could get sick and die. That’s life.

Just remember the closing lines of Oedipus Rex: “Count no man fortunate until he is dead.”

It’s nothing to worry about.

Discuss.