Quotations

"There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi." - Luis Walter Alvarez, American physicist, 1911-88

"A monarch is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft which would never sink, but then your feet are always in the water." - Fisher Ames, American politician, 1758-1808

"He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic." - Kingsley Amis, English novelist and poet, 1922-95, from his book One Fat Englishman

This Time Four Years Ago

Four years ago I didn't think it was conceivable for Bush to win an election. Not only had his first four years in office been an absolute farce, but his entire campaign (at least what was visible from here in Canada) had been dirty attacks on Kerry rather than anything about Bush. If you went to Kerry's website, it was all about Kerry and his plan for the country. If you went to Bush's website, it was all about Kerry and how he was a terrible flip-flopper and his combat experience was somehow less patriotic than Bush's non-combat experience.

In non-political news, I had an assignment due in my design course. I forget what it was exactly... I think it may have been circuit wiring or PIC microchip programming, but whatever it was it was tedious, frustrating, long, and due the next day. It was going to keep me and my design partners up all night, so we decided we might as well follow the election results.

Then, the States started to turn red. It was heartbreaking, confusing, and horrifying, all at the same time. The night got worse and worse. Electronics fried. States turned red. The world felt like something was wrong with it. When the end came, it just didn't seem to make sense. Bush had won, this time even with the popular vote. It just didn't make sense. John Stewart looked devastated. The only solace I found was in the website www.sorryeverybody.com.

This might seem melodramatic, but this was only my second year back in Canada after four years in the States and then two years in Moscow going to school with a predominantly American class. In many ways the birth of my political awareness centered around American politics, and I cared about the international consequences of the election in terms of political and environmental fallout. It is the same reason I dislike the conservative government we have in Canada. While the Liberals may have been corrupt and relatively useless (from the little I've followed of domestic politics), at least they seemed to care about our international reputation and the importance of things like international law and environment. While the American government has always been isolationist and unilateral to a frustrating degree, Bush's government brought that back to a level not seen since the Monroe Doctrine (perhaps the failure of Congress to join the League of Nations would be a strong contender too).

Basically, what I am trying to say is, despite all conscious effort not to care too much about the election results, I find myself oddly excited tonight. That scares me, because I was excited four years ago, too, and ended up terribly disappointed. I hope this time the sane portion of the American electorate really has woken up and realised that if they really do care about their country, they need to act.

Some Really Bad Brain Science

Last night before going to bed I watched the pilot episode for a television show. To be honest, I was expecting it to be quite bad, and the only reason I was watching it was to see the familiar scenes from the University of Toronto that had been extensively used throughout the show. The show that I am speaking about is called Fringe. It is like a newer version of the X-Files, just minus the aliens and with an added dose of corporate rather than governmental evil. The FBI headquarters are in the Bahen Centre for Information Technology, one of my favourite buildings on campus. It is home to the mathematics, computer science, and engineering science departments, as well as contains some of the nicer lecture halls and tutorial rooms. The building also has a remarkably distinct architecture that blends old brickwork with modern steel and glass designs (for example, the formerly external wall of the next door Koeffler Centre forms the southern wall of the Bahen Centre lobby). With such a distinct interior design, it is kind of thrilling to see the protagonist of the show charge up the same glass-walled spiral staircase I walk up at least once a week and enter the large room I know as the Great Hall of Computing (of course, fancied up with some extra desks and plasma screens on the wall). Additionally, front campus was used for one of the final scenes (supposedly taking place at Harvard, but really taking place in front of University College here at U of T... ironically, it is only about a dozen meters away from the secret meeting place of the sinister ivy league fraternity the Skulls that Fringe costar Joshua Jackson ought to be so familiar with... I wonder if he felt a little nostalgic returning to the University College building for filming almost a decade after that movie I never saw). Also, there was one building I was sure I've had an exam in but could not place... I think it might have been one of Trinity College's buildings.

Anyway, despite all the exciting University of Toronto locations, the show was immensely bad. Stop reading if you mind spoilers, but I recommend you don't care for this particular show. Not only was it exceedingly predictable (main character is a young blonde lady who starts in a covert relationship with a handsome coworker. While it is nice for the two of them to have a relationship, the audience never got the visceral thrill of seeing it develop, so clearly he is going to either die or be evil. Turns out it's both), but the "fringe science" it was supposed to be dealing with was useless pseudoscience, paranoid (but for the wrong reasons based on misunderstanding) fear of actual science, or blatant misunderstandings of basic science. I felt a particular twinge of annoyance when, in the show's introduction, the names of all the "fringe science" subjects flash up on the screen and, amid such things as precognition and psychokinesis, it lists artificial intelligence (and also nanotechnology, but since I don't study nanotechnology I wasn't quite as annoyed about that one). AI and nanotech are not at all comparable to precognition and psychokinesis. Two of those are pseudoscience, and two are actual science.

I keep getting sidetracked, though. What made me decide to write about this show was that one of the important plot developments involved the main character going to drug induced stupor in a large tank of water with a bunch of fancy electrodes hooked up to her head and a pair of metal prongs attached to a bundle of wires inserted into the base of her skull (probably going either into her brain stem or on either side of her spinal cord at the top of the neck, it was kind of hard to tell exactly where they inserted the prongs). That contraption is somehow used to synchronize her brain waves with those of her dying lover (this is before it is discovered he's evil) who is also in a drug induced coma (and apparently frozen to keep the rate of cellular decay down, but that doesn't seem to prevent brain activity nor do they seem to take any special precautions to keep him at a low temperature... it is awfully confusing), and this synchrony of brain waves allows them to communicate subconsciously (which apparently means they meet up with fully coherent forms (matrix style) in a weird, shadowy dream state to talk for a bit and then she is able to experience his memories firsthand). I would like at this point to unequivocally state that that is not at all how brain waves work. Brain waves are NOT how thoughts are formed or transfered, but are rather the electrical dipole created by summated post-synaptic potentials. I think I had a post about this a while ago. For whatever reason, brain waves are one of those things that pseudoscients love to talk about and use to proffer all sorts of weird and entirely unfounded theories of consciousness and consciousness manipulation. It's rather annoying.

Scientist Appreciation: PZ Myers

I haven't done a scientist appreciation in a while, but I have been thinking about this one for about two weeks now. It is a slightly unorthodox scientist appreciation, in that it is primarily an appreciation of PZ Myers' promotional efforts for science rather than his own work specifically (not that he doesn't do good scientific work, it's just not exactly in my field), kind of like my appreciation of Isaac Asimov's contribution to science. Also similar to Isaac Asimov, in many ways it is not PZ Myers' status as a scientist which makes him most famous (although, instead of being famous for writing science fiction, he is famous for his lack of religious views and his willingness to write about such a lack on the internet).

This post, however, isn't about PZ Myers' religion (or lack thereof). It is about his commitment to further an appreciation for science and scientific issues. While much of his blog is centered about intermittently laughing and gnashing one's teeth at the outrageous idiocy of the anti-scientific, I think it is an important contribution to make. Exposing some of the ludicrous claims and fabrications of pseudoscientists might help people think twice about other statements when no supporting evidence is offered. PZ Myers provides an indefatigable stream of commentary, humour, and substantive science and science policy posts. While I may not always agree with his stance on things, when I do not it is very often due to a preconceived notion and ignorant crudility on my part. More imporantly, though, the near constant stream of information provides a place on the internet where those who care about science and scientific issues can gather (if somewhat passively). Since mainstream news doesn't seem to care much about science (after all, look at how much this year's American election revolved around the discussion of science... other than the mocking of fruit fly research), PZ Myers has personally developed an extensive outlet of news and relevant links. Blogs run by skeptics and science enthusiasts may be a dime a dozen on the internet (case in point, look at mine!), but no one does it quite like PZ Myers. For that, he has earned this edition of Scientist Appreciation.

An Interesting Article

I thought this was an interesting article. You might ask why I am posting a link to it, though, since I do read a lot of interesting articles that don't get links... the truth is, I was excited to see that the fellow now lives in Cranbrook. While I'm not actually from Cranbrook, (I'm from Creston, which is an even smaller town in the vicinity of Cranbrook (which forces me to fly into Cranbrook whenever I want to go home to visit my parents)), that whole region is referenced in the news so rarely, I think I am allowed to get a little excited when I see it happen. It does strike me as kind of odd, though, that when the Kootenays make it into the news, it is usually about some sort of connection to weirdly fundamentalist religious offshoots...

Some More Campaign Funnies...

Not to overly pick on John McCain, but I really enjoyed this clip in which, not only does he refer to Obama's VP running mate as "Joe the Biden", but later as Senator O'Biden (some sort of weird combination of Biden and Obama?).



Then, of course, this one is old news, but it still makes me laugh... there's nothing like really awkwardly saying the exact opposite of what you actually wanted to say.

Some Horrified Bafflement

Those that read the blog Pharyngula will already have been made aware of this, but I thought it was worth discussing here too. Apparently, the Christian Children's Fund turned down $17,000 in donations raised at GenCon this year because part of that money was raised by selling Dungeons and Dragons products. I find that such a confusing slap in the face. For a charity to say, "We don't want your money", they are basically labelling you as a vile, amoral, and corrupt element of society that has so tainted the money you are offering that it isn't worth accepting, despite the number of children that $17,000 could actually feed and clothe. The fact that somehow playing an imaginative game can make a person so morally reprehensible that their money is no longer acceptable by a charity I find just utterly baffling.

I suppose I should say one last thing before I end this. I don't understand what fuels the stigma against Dungeons and Dragons. It is a game (a rather fun one, in my opinion). Sure, it takes up a lot of time (which is why I haven't played in years), but that is partly what makes it so attractive for kids in junior high and high school who happen to not want to spend hours drinking, driving dangerously, and pursuing otherwise "high risk" behaviour that is so common in teenagers. It is a social activity for the socially awkward (and the not so socially awkward, as I have known some cool people who play D&D too). The fact that there are angels and demons and a pantheon of gods might be construed as corrupting, but one of the amazing things about D&D is, if you are a monotheistic nut who cannot handle a polytheistic religion even in a wholly and entirely ficitious universe, you can easily change those aspects. Replace the D&D pantheon with a single god (and perhaps his enemy, so for Christians Satan could be included as a force of evil). Then all clerics serve that god, and you can have them fight the forces of the devil for hours on end, making you feel spiritually superior as well as giving you something to pass the hours with.

Anyway, other than professing bafflement and I think some justified indignation, I'm not sure what else to say. There are plenty of other charities out there who do very similar things (like Plan USA), so I would suggest giving donations to them if you are looking for a charity to donate to.