Avatar and the future of 3D (Part 1)

I’m not going to apologize for all the time that passes between posts anymore. I write when I have the time, when I have something to write about, and when I feel like writing. Just subscribe to the RSS feed so you don’t have to keep coming back. I do have plans for making this blog a little more active, but it’s a still too early to say when that’ll happen.

Have you heard about this movie called Avatar? Have you? Really? It’s a science fiction thing with blue people and…oh, you have heard of it. What a surprise.

I’d like to give a quick mini-review of the movie, and then talk about something that’s perhaps much more interesting: the 3D tech behind the movie, and where that’s going.

Yes, it’s Dances With Wolves. But it’s more than that.

There are certain stories that get told over and over. Not just in Hollywood, but in fiction in general. Avatar is no exception; we’ve all seen this story. Specifically, it’s a version of Dances with Wolves. It follows the Hero’s Journey formula to the letter. It’s predictable, with few surprises.

But that’s not to say that it’s bad. In fact, it’s a great telling of the classic story, and the classic formula can still be a lot of fun. The Hero’s Journey is something that still speaks to us, whether it’s Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter or Frodo Baggins or even Jesus.

Consider, as another example, the story in Seven Samurai: a small village is being exploited by bandits who are stronger and better-armed than the villagers. Most villagers are content to put up with this, because they fear retribution from the bandits if they refuse or put up a fight. But some of the villagers decide that they’ve had enough, and leave their quiet village to go and find someone who can help them. They find washed-up misfits who are nevertheless willing to help (for various reasons), who help the villagers defend their town and repel the bandits once and for all.

Sound familiar? It’s also the story of The Magnificent Seven, A Bug’s Life, an episode of Firefly, an episode of Enterprise, and countless other movies, books, tv shows, and other works of fiction. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter what the story is, as long as it’s told well. Which is how I think of Avatar: a classic story told well.

The special effects were extremely impressive, and I can’t wait to see them again in 2D (more on that later). Every shot is filled with computer-generated marvels, but they’re seamlessly integrated with the live-action stuff. It’s almost impossible to tell what’s real and what’s fake, except when it’s obvious. The creatures and characters don’t look shiny or rubbery like CG frequently does.

I really enjoyed the look and feel of the technology in the movie too. From the first scene, your eyes are filled with science fiction marvels, from spaceships to vehicles to computers to really cool exoskeleton rigs. The human technology in this movie was very reminiscent of the space marines in Aliens, but far surpasses anything we saw in that movie.

What I thought was really cool is how completely nonchalant the director was with showing us this technology. It’s all filmed as if we see this stuff every day. We’ve all seen movies where the camera will linger on some strange piece of equipment we’ve never seen before, so the audience knows that this particular gizmo does so-and-so. Not here. You see amazing stuff going on in the background, out of focus, and the camera doesn’t care. Exoskeleton walking around? Want a demonstration? Why? It’s so commonplace. We see those every day. Maybe I’m making a big deal out of nothing, but I thought that was a great directing decision.

This movie also has one of the most badass villains I’ve ever seen (and I’m very reluctant to use such a term to describe anything). He’s a grizzled, scarred, experienced leader of a huge military force. He stomps around in an exoskeleton, even when he’s not wearing one. He smokes. Breath mask? Screw that, he doesn’t need to breathe. He’s fucking indestructible, dammit. You don’t get on his bad side.

On the other side of the coin, you have the planet Pandora, an astonishingly beautiful jungle world filled with gorgeous plant and animal life. And for once, it all actually looks and acts like it evolved on the same world; they’re not just a bunch of weird alien creatures.

Ok, this has gone on way longer than I intended, and I’m starting to ramble. Final verdict? Go see it. It’s visually stunning, conceptually fascinating, and it tells its well-worn story well.

 

My criticism and commentary of the 3D experience will continue in a future post.

Continue reading "Avatar and the future of 3D (Part 1)"

Fun with Vaccination

UPDATE (Mar. 3, 2010): If anyone's still hanging on the edge of their seat for this one, it's been more or less resolved. I told the person who was threatening me that I wasn't going to back down, and they've so far left me alone. That was back in November, of course. They had no legal standing on this.

UPDATE (Nov. 16 2009): Currently, the caller from this interview is threatening me with legal action. I've modified the post with a few more "seems to be"s to cover my ass. I think I'm fully within my rights to say what I've said here, but since I was called by the caller's lawyer, I'm not taking any chances.

I just got done listening to a recent segment on NPR's Science Friday (hosted by Ira Flatow) where they discussed the anti-vaccination movement, and even after 20 minutes, I'm still quivering with rage and frustration.

Science Friday: Childhood Vaccinations

Ira's guest is Paul Offit, who I'll just let Wikipedia tell you about:

Paul A. Offit, MD, is a pediatrician specializing in infectious disease medicine, an internationally known expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology, the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Offit has been a member of the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Dr. Offit has published more than 120 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety and is the co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine recently recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC.

The interview starts with Dr. Offit and Ira discussing the recent outbreaks of measles due to declining vaccination rates, and the reasoning that people who are against vaccinations give for their stance, and why they're wrong. It's very interesting (to me at least) and they address many of the common misconceptions, in language that anybody can understand. Or so you'd think.

The first caller is a woman who seems to be an anti-vaccinationist. She starts by asking a couple questions that are, I suppose, pretty fair to ask. But you soon discover that no matter what Dr. Offit says, this woman isn't going to change her mind. She seems to be one of those unfortunate people who thinks that if they believe something enough, that makes it true.

Personally, I think the whole anti-vaccination movement is a bunch of conspiracy theorists who would probably latch on to UFOs or Bigfoot or something if such topics interested them. But they see Jenny McCarthy on Oprah telling a sad story about how she thinks vaccines made her kid autistic, and their conspiracy-prone minds latch onto it.

Ira does a great job refereeing this conversation between the doctor/professor and the random caller, and even points out the caller's obvious logical faults, like how she says that no amount of evidence would change her mind on the issue. But this person's mindset is typical of the anti-vaccination movement at large. They're true believers: nothing will sway them.

Dr. Offit does a great job combating the woman's irrationality too. If it were me, I'd be screaming and swearing and insulting her (as I have in this post), but Offit addresses as many of her concerns as he can, far more calmly and politely than she deserves.

I don't know why I care so much about this issue. I'm a graphic designer, and I don't even have any kids. But, I guess I care about humanity or something. I see the ignorant having a negative effect on society, and it infuriates me. I want to do something about it, but the best I can do is confront ignorance head-on, and try to help people to see reality, or at least nudge them in the right direction.

Those of you who know me who have kids or will have kids, if you're thinking about not vaccinating them, you're going to be hearing from me until you do.

• Science Friday: Childhood Vaccinations
• CDC: Vaccines and Immunizations site
• NeuroLogica Blog: Drinking the Anti-Vaccine Kool-Aid
• Science-Based Medicine: Vaccines
• Skeptoid: Mercury, Autism and Chelation: A Recipe for Risk

UPDATE: This post has just been added to the web site Autism Street, which looks like a great resource for people concerned about autism and the anti-vaccination movement. Do'C gives me pretty high praise for my little rant here, which is greatly appreciated.

Continue reading "Fun with Vaccination"

What I do in my spare time (to prove to myself how huge of a nerd I am)

Ever get a problem in your head that you obsess over for days, or even weeks (or longer)? This is the one I've been working on for a while.

At some point, I started to wonder about dice rolling. Specifically, I wondered about the difference between rolling a single 12-sided die and two 6-sided dice. How do the two compare? Obviously, with a 12-sided die (which I will refer to as d12, in grand D&D tradition) every number on the die has an equal chance of being rolled (8.33%), ignoring variations in dice shape, weight, texture, etc.

But what about when you use a pair of six-sided die (d6)? Like a d12 (or any properly made dice) each number has the same chance of being rolled (16.67%). But when using them in a game, you add them up. How does that affect your odds of getting certain numbers?

First of all, the obvious: there’s no way to roll a 1 with 2d6 (that’s 2 six-sided die). Second, since rolling two of the same number is rare, that would mean that scoring a 2 or 12 (the lowest and highest scores you can get) would be equally rare. With that in mind, I assumed that I’d be looking at a Bell Curve of some sort.

Well, the idea kept gnawing at me, and finally I decided to run an experiment and collect the data myself. I created a program in Flash (which was a great opportunity for me to practice using Actionscript 3) that would roll the dice for me and display the result.

Each “loop” in the program represents a roll, in which both 1d12 and 2d6 are rolled at the same time. The program tallies up which number comes up for the d12, and it adds and then tallies the score for the 2d6. For something that’s based purely on random numbers, lots of tests (rolls) need to be done, so I set it to roll the dice 1,000 times. Fortunately, computers make tedious tasks easy (and easy tasks tedious). Eventually I upped the number of rolls to 10,000 and then 50,000. I consider that a very solid sample size.

Here’s the final result. When the number of rolls is low, the numbers are all over the place, but it eventually normalizes once you have a larger amount of data (which shows exactly why you need a large sample size when doing a scientific experiment). Go ahead and re-run the experiment a few times. It’ll automatically stop at 50,000.

As expected, the d12 is a straight line, and shows the predicted 8.3%. But the 2d6 results are much more interesting. The odds of rolling a 7 are double the odds of any roll on a d12. Also interesting is that 4 and 10 are equally likely to be rolled on 2d6 as on a d12.

It’s probably obvious to a lot of you by now that I don’t gamble. These results probably aren’t surprising to anyone with experience in rolling dice, or to anyone who’s familiar with basic Statistics. Oh well.

So, how do we apply these results to real life? Well, let’s say you’re playing Dungeons & Dragons, where the amount of damage your character does to an enemy per round depends on what you roll with your dice. Let’s say you have a choice between a greataxe that does 1d12 damage or a greatsword that does 2d6 damage (actual base properties used). You obviously want the one that does the most damage. But is there a difference? Clearly, with the greatsword, you're most likely to roll between 5-9 and unlikely to roll 2, 3, or 11. It has much more predictable numbers, though you're more likely to get higher (and lower) numbers with the greataxe.

But when you figure out the odds of each number being rolled, a clear difference emerges. The average damage done by the greataxe is 6.5. The average damage done by the greatsword is 7.

I could've gotten those results if I had just found the average of all possible rolls in the first place.

(1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12)/12 = 6.5
(2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12)/11 = 7

Argh. Whatever.

 

UPDATE (Dec 30, 2009): Ever since I posted this, I’ve been itching to add rollers for 3d4, 4d3, and 6d2 (aka $1.50). So I did. And as expected, they show up as bell curves. So the more variables you have, the smoother the bell curve will be. Maybe someday I’ll do this with 1000d1000. I wonder if 50,000 rolls would be enough…

Continue reading "What I do in my spare time (to prove to myself how huge of a nerd I am)"

Why would life be meaningless without an afterlife?

This is something I just don’t understand. I’ve heard it said numerous times (and recently from a friend of mine) that without an afterlife, life is pointless and/or meaningless. To which I respond, “huh?”

I guess the argument is that, if the afterlife doesn’t exist, then your experiences in life are meaningless because your soul won’t live on forever. But that’s like saying that you shouldn’t bother to paint your house because it’s just going to be torn down some day, or you shouldn’t send someone an e-mail because it’ll eventually get deleted.

I don’t believe in souls or any version of an afterlife (in case you’re new here) and from my perspective, this issue is completely the opposite of what theists believe. Doesn’t an eternal afterlife make this life much less meaningful?

When you don’t believe in an afterlife, you realize that this life is all there is, and you need to make the most of it that you can. You only get one shot, so make it a good one.

But if there’s no afterlife, doesn’t that mean that your “essence” — your life experiences, knowledge, and personality — are gone for good once you die? Well, yes and no; mostly yes. When you die, what’s left behind are the things and people you had an affect on,

If you had a family, you shaped their lives, and hopefully they’ll miss you and remember you. It’s a bit of a cliché, but you sort of live on in your children, if you have any. Through their lives, you shape their minds and personalities, you educate them, you help determine what they’ll do with their lives.

If you’re a teacher in any capacity, you affect many more lives, but naturally have much less of an affect than a parent does on their children. Teachers try to pass on the knowledge they’ve accumulated to their students.

Or maybe you write, or create art, or dig a ditch. Each of us leaves their mark on the world around them in some way.

However, all of this is impermanent. Eventually your writing will be lost, your art will deteriorate, your ditch will erode. The students you taught as a teacher will eventually forget you or die. Your children and their children will (hopefully) miss you, but their memories of you will fade with time, and as new generations are created, you’ll be forgotten; how many people out there even know the names of their great-great grandparents?

We all leave our mark on the world in some way, but inevitably nearly all of us will be forgotten. So does that mean we shouldn’t bother?

Hell no.

That just means that we need to make the most out of the time we have. Don’t just sit and mindlessly watch television. Experience life. Go see new things, go read new books, watch strange movies, learn about the world around you, and soak up every bit of what life has to offer. Create new things, pass on your knowledge, influence the future of humanity in any way you can (in a positive way, of course).

Consider chaos theory: even the tiniest changes now can alter the course of future events. If you’re a force for positive change in life, you’ll affect the future in minor, positive ways. And the more people who realize that all they can do is live life to the fullest to affect the world in their own small way, the better the future will be. It’s sort of like a non-supernatural version of Karma in a lot of ways.

To me, an afterlife greatly diminishes the value of living life at all. Why learn new things if “all will be revealed” when you die? The worst part is that most versions of the afterlife are thought to be places of perfection, where every desire is granted, all pains are lifted, and everyone is rejoined with their loved ones and deities. Why care so much about this life if the next one is so much better? And why do theists mourn their dead if they’re going on to a better place where we’ll presumably be able to join them one day?

If Heaven is real, then what is life, besides just an obstacle to be tolerated until you die, or a waiting room to sit and read old magazines in until the doctor is ready to see you? Far too often, I see people just biding their time until death. People put up with jobs they hate, people they’re tired of, and don’t care about the world around them.

But doesn’t a belief in an afterlife help people deal with the fact that they’re going to die someday? No, not really. The most glaringly obvious point against that idea is that by telling people that there’s an afterlife, you’re really telling them that they’re not going to die, at least not completely. If you never get used to the idea that you’re going to die, then it seems to me that you’re much less likely to live your life to the fullest, because you don’t really believe that it’s going to end. To me, that’s the greatest evil perpetrated by religion, though that’s obviously not the intention.

Getting used to the idea that there is no afterlife, and that once you’re dead you’re really dead, is difficult. I certainly haven’t. Maybe you never do. But that’s true no matter what you believe about death. In all likelihood, dying will always be scary, and losing loved ones will always be painful.

 

As an afterthought, I should point out that I realize that my examples of “living life to the fullest” are very utopian and probably unattainable. Am I living my life to the fullest? Nope. Is anyone? Maybe, but it’s rare. Living life to the fullest is an ideal, a goal. In fact, it’s a pretty vague and indefinable concept.

The real Heaven is a life well-lived, and perhaps the meaning of life is to leave the world better than it was when you entered it.

So it goes.

Continue reading "Why would life be meaningless without an afterlife?"

Communication Breakdown

It’s hard to talk to people about supernatural or paranormal claims, especially when you’re a Skeptic with a capital S. People think you’re just closed to anything that doesn’t fit into a strict naturalistic worldview, which just isn’t true. I like to say that I’ll believe in anything, literally anything, as long as it’s backed up by evidence. That doesn’t usually help though.

I think part of the problem is just in how we divide the world around us, by definition. Everybody agrees that the natural world exists (and if they don’t, run!) but people also divide things into two other categories, mentioned above, so they think that reality is split into the natural, the supernatural, and the paranormal (possibly others, but I’m going to focus on these three). The natural, of course, is everything around us that can be studied and explained by science. The supernatural is the spiritual world, the realm of religion and mysticism. The paranormal is stuff like psychic powers, aliens, cryptids, and ghosts.

However, terms like "supernatural” and “paranormal” are unnecessary. They just complicate things, don’t actually define anything, and give many claims more credence than they deserve. It’s time we stopped using them.

The problem with supernatural and paranormal concepts is that, by definition, they’re ideas that have no evidence to back them up. How do I know that ghosts don’t exist? I don’t. How do you know that ghosts do exist? You don’t. If evidence exists, then it’s not supernatural or paranormal. If something exists, it’s part of the natural world. If it can affect the natural world, it’s part of the natural world. If it can be detected, then it can somehow be studied, and it’s therefore part of the natural world.

Rather than breaking down the world into natural, supernatural, or paranormal, it’s time we started using more useful categories for these things. And those are:

• The Proven: Claims that have been verified with evidence. In other words, this is what we now call the “natural” world.
• The Unproven: Claims that have yet to be verified with evidence. However, some claims are more unprovable than others, and this category basically works as a funnel leading to the other two categories.
• The Disproven: Claims that have been shown to be false.

The important thing to remember about this classification system is that claims can fit into more than one of the categories. It’s important to use fuzzy logic when deciding which category a claim fits into. Something can be somewhat proven and still remain partially unproven. Perhaps it’s helpful to imagine it as 3 overlapping circles in a Venn diagram.

We start by piling everything that we once labeled as supernatural or paranormal into the Unproven category. Take Bigfoot, for example. While it’s true that nobody has ever produced real evidence of Bigfoot’s existence, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, there are some ways to figure out how plausible a claim like this is. When one considers things like how many bigfoots there would need to be to maintain a viable breeding population, how wide-ranging they would be, the complete lack of any remains of dead bigfoots, and so on, I think you can safely say that Bigfoot is a mostly-disproven concept, but still somewhat unproven. Arbitrarily, I could say 70% Disproven, 30% Unproven.

Now take a concept like psychic powers. Nobody has ever been able to prove that they have psychic powers, and most of the time a so-called psychic’s activities can be explained by proven methods. We can test to see if specific people have psychic powers, and we can pretty safely say whether a specific person has psychic powers or not (so far: no). So for individuals, psychic powers are mostly a disproven claim. However, we’ll probably never be able to prove definitively that psychic powers don’t exist, so it’ll forever remain in the Unproven category, which is just fine.

Finally, consider quantum field theory. Some of it is unproven, and some of it is proven, but a great deal still lies somewhere in between. There are concepts that are backed up by data and predicted by models, but have yet to be demonstrated definitively. And, some of those concepts will be proven false with further study. So QFT lies somewhere between Proven and Unproven, with a little Disproven thrown in, though obviously any concepts that are disproven are discarded from the theory.

Another useful application of this idea is in the realm of Medicine. Currently, treatments are considered either “medicine” or “alternative medicine”. However, alt-med is a term that gives the treatments it encompasses far more credibility than they deserve. As the joke goes, what do you call alternative medicine that actually works? Answer: medicine. The fascinating thing here is that there really is no such thing as alternative medicine, but alt-med proponents have convinced many of us that there is.

So let’s apply my 3 categories to the world of Medicine. Bear in mind that this categorization method doesn’t really take into account how effective a treatment is, only whether it has an effect.

• Aspirin: Proven. How proven? I’d say 95% or so (again, this numbering is just arbitrary). However, there are some alternate uses that are less proven. It’s frequently used to treat heart problems, which seems to be a viable treatment (I haven’t bothered to look it up) so…maybe 70% for that application?
• Homeopathy: Disproven, assuming that it’s really homeopathic (some products are being marketed as homeopathic even though they’re not, like Zicam). Homeopathy is, quite literally, sugar water. I think in this case it’s safe to say that it’s 100% disproven. The hypothesis behind it is scientifically unfeasible, and there have been many, many studies showing its worthlessness.
• Chiropractic: Ah, here’s a tricky one. There are so many versions of chiropractic, and numerous different theories behind it, that it’s hard to say exactly which parts do and don’t work. The idea that you can cure diseases with spinal manipulation is pretty much disproven. But what about just back pain? In some ways, it’s still too early to say whether it’s effective, although there have been a few studies showing that it’s at least somewhat effective for lower back pain. So this is one practice that is simultaneously Proven, Unproven, and Disproven. Maybe 10%/50%/40%.

(I shouldn’t have to say this, but I AM NOT A DOCTOR. DO NOT TRUST MY OPINION ON MEDICAL MATTERS.)

Well, I could go on and on, but I think I’ve made my point. Concepts like “supernatural”, “paranormal”, and “alternative medicine” are obsolete and unhelpful. Hopefully, by redefining the way we make our arguments, we’ll be able to gain some ground. But probably not.

Continue reading "Communication Breakdown"

Who doesn’t like Communism and Atheism?

A couple months ago, the Atheist Talk radio show (by Minnesota Atheists) aired an episode where their guest was Sunsara Taylor, a member of the Communist Party here in the US. It was really interesting, if for no other reason than because I don’t think I’ve ever heard an actual communist speak their mind, explain their platform, and defend their position. That’s just something you almost never see, even decades after the Cold War.

However, they recently had an episode which featured biologist Massimo Pigliucci, who came on the show specifically to rebut many of Taylor’s claims. And what he has to say is just as fascinating, if not moreso, although that may just be personal bias.

Anyway, I just wanted to post links to these two episodes to get people to listen to them, since they are so interesting.

• Away With All Gods: Sunsara Taylor. #0067, April 26, 2009
• Massimo Pigliucci: Politics, Philosophy and Atheism. #0074, June 14, 2009

If anyone was wondering, my own political views are essentially liberal, with a bit of libertarianism and a dash of socialism. Yea, I know that doesn’t make sense.

Continue reading "Who doesn’t like Communism and Atheism?"

What’s so bad about living forever?

I just read a very interesting article about a girl who hasn’t aged in 16 years (which isn’t exactly an accurate statement, but fits well enough). The story briefly talks about how studying the girl’s bizarre condition could potentially teach us a lot about human aging, and perhaps even how to prevent it.

But I was a bit troubled when I read this:

In the long term, the idea that the aging process might somehow be manipulated raises serious questions about what human beings might do with that knowledge.

"Clearly, that's the science fiction aspect of it," said Walker, describing the social and ethical dilemmas that would arise. "We can't have continued reproduction and people who don't age."

This confuses me, and makes me wonder why a doctor would say such a thing. Surely he has no problem with treating people medically to prolong their lives. Aging is a natural process, but so are cancer and seizures and disease. Thanks to medical science, the average human lifespan has doubled over the past 2000 years or so (I didn’t bother to look up that number, by the way). In a way, aging is just another problem with our bodies for scientists to fix.

The doctor in this story brings up the issue of reproduction among a populace that lives much longer than we do now. That’s certainly a valid concern, but it’s not exactly difficult to think of a solution. In fact, we’ve already got one, and have been using it for centuries: don’t breed as much. In the Western world, people are both living longer and having fewer children. In China, where the problem of overpopulation is a much bigger problem, they’ve instituted policies that restrict families to only one child (with monetary penalties for more).

On the extreme side of things, let’s say that people are able to live 1,000 years. If we assume that people reproduce at the same rate and number that they do now (let’s say 2 kids by age 30) we’d see huge problems with overpopulation within 100 years. You’d potentially get to see 33 generations of your own offspring. But that’s assuming that our habits wouldn’t change in the future from what they are now, which is absurd.

That’s why I think it’s so weird that people are still asking whether we should or shouldn’t extend human life spans. It’s going to happen. You can’t prevent people from learning things that could radically change society. If we find out how to do it, people will do it. If anyone tries to suppress that information to prevent it from being used, somebody else will discover it. Longer human life spans are inevitable.

 

Some rambling follows

This whole issue reminds me of a book (and its sequels) that I read a few years ago (and I may be remembering certain aspects incorrectly). The book is called Eon, by Greg Bear. One of the many things it deals with are the “descendants” of humanity, removed from us by thousands of years and very advanced technology. The less-advanced Naderites (and if you’re thinking that they’re somehow related to Ralph Nader, you’re right) are more or less human as we are now, but the Geshels are much more interesting.

The Geshels have fully embraced the technological augmentation of the human body to great effect. For one, their life spans are very long, and they can even have multiple lives, though they’re limited by their society to just a few. Their brains are backed up in great computer networks, and even after they’ve used up all of their lives, their knowledge and personalities are saved, so that future generations can benefit from their experiences and interact with the “dead”.

Geshels also aren’t limited to the typical human form. On one end of the spectrum, there are those who look nearly identical to modern humans. On the other end, there are those who have chosen to completely forego human forms, instead existing as balls of light or energy. What’s so interesting about this to me is that this makes you wonder exactly what constitutes “human”. Where do you draw the line, and can a line be drawn at all?

Being so different from modern humans, reproduction for Geshels is also quite different. Parents merge parts of their knowledge, experience, and physical and mental traits, and a new “human” is created, which grows up in a virtual environment until a certain age, when it’s allowed to choose what its new body will look like, what gender it’ll be, and so on.

Sounds really cool.

Continue reading "What’s so bad about living forever?"

New site design goes live!

Woo! In case you haven’t noticed (and I’m sure everyone who reads this blog checks it hourly) the new site design that I’ve been bitching about since December has finally gone live! I finally got some good ideas for it a few days ago, and have been working on it ever since, and here’s the (mostly) finished product.

I’m still fixing some formatting and spacing and stuff, so if something seems weird, just give it some time. And in a week, if it still seems weird, drop me a note.

Continue reading "New site design goes live!"

Damn you, Twitter!

I’m a Twitter-hater. I admit it.

I just haven’t been able to figure out why Twitter is so popular, or what use it is to anyone who doesn’t already have e-mail, text messaging, Facebook, RSS newsfeeds, blogs, and message boards. I’ve read about it plenty, I’ve heard people gushing about how great it is, and in the past month or two, I’ve noticed that nearly every person on the internet whose opinions I care about (podcasters, bloggers, reporters) has been pimping friggin’ Twitter. Gah.

So, I give up. I’m tired of fighting it. I’ll give this fad a try. I thought the blogosphere was stupid (even though I’ve been blogging since before the term “blog” existed") and it obviously grew on me – I now have 4 blogs and have set up numerous others for other people. I thought text messaging was stupid, but I’ve found that it’s often quite useful. I thought podcasting was absurd, and now I’m subscribed to like 30 podcasts. I thought MySpace was for teenagers starving for attention, and I was right. But, I thought similar things about Facebook, and now it’s the site i use the most. E-mail was something I grew up with, so no problem there.

So maybe I’ll be wrong about Twitter. I’m willing to find out.

 

If you want to follow me on the goddamn Twitter, I’m @dubiosity. I think that’s how it’s written. I also added a box on the right.

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Choosing death: should Daniel Hauser be allowed to die?

Many of you out there have probably heard about the case of Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old who was recently ordered to receive chemotherapy for his cancer, instead of sticking to “alternative” treatments like a special diet, vitamins, and ionized water. At the moment of this writing, he and his mother are on the run to avoid the chemo and deal with the cancer their own way. (Look at me! I’m writing something that’s actually current! This must be what being a journalist feels like!)

I could focus on criticizing their choice of treatment, but I’m not going to (beyond this paragraph). It should be obvious to most of us that this family has bought into some crazy, dangerous nonsense. This is a perfect example of why “alternative medicine” is dangerous: not because most of it is completely worthless, but because it causes people to forego real, scientifically-proven medical treatments.

The bigger issue here is whether it’s ok for the government to step in and choose someone’s medical treatment, and how far we as a society should allow someone’s faith and beliefs to go, and whether society as a whole has any say at all. Essentially, the question is: should we let Daniel Hauser die?

Further, I think it’s hard to discuss this issue without also bringing up another case that’s also relevant: the Terri Schiavo case. Both Hauser and Schiavo have been the subjects of litigation to determine their fates, though obviously with very different aims and outcomes (so far).

In Schiavo’s case, the courts became involved to determine whether her husband had the right to end her life. In Hauser’s case, they had to determine whether his parents have the right to take a course of action that will cause his death. In both cases, things would be much simpler if the subject of the litigation were capable of choosing for themselves, but in both cases, they’re not. Schiavo was braindead, and Hauser is a minor, and has been thoroughly brainwashed by his parents and the cult they’re in.

The libertarian in me says that the courts/government should have absolutely no say in these matters, and that people should be free to choose any course of action that they like, even if it ultimately leads to death. But the liberal side of me says that we need to try to save the sick and helpless, even if it’s from their own bad decisions, perhaps especially from their own bad decisions. In Schiavo’s case, the libertarian side seems right; she was effectively dead already, so there was no point in keeping her hooked up. I don’t think even my liberal side would try to argue that there’d be any point in keeping her alive. (I don’t seem to have a conservative side.)

However, in Hauser’s case, my liberal side seems much more relevant. While I’m uneasy at the idea that the government has stepped in to make a decision on this boy’s fate, I think it’s more or less a good decision. He shouldn’t have to suffer and die because his parents believe in nonsense. But where do you draw the line? Do parents have a right to refuse treatments that conflict with their beliefs if that means their kid will die?

There are countless cases of parents and relatives unwittingly allowing their children and loved ones to die or suffer serious injury because of their adherence to one worthless treatment or another. What’sTheHarm.net is a great resource for looking into such things. In many cases, those same parents & relatives have been prosecuted for criminal negligence and even homicide.

And then, there’s religion. A fairly well-known example of misguided faith is the case of Madeline Kara Neumann, an 11-year-old with diabetes whose parents prayed over her instead of getting her proper medical treatment for her diabetes. She died from untreated diabetes.

Whether or not you believe in a god, I think the evidence is quite clear that praying for God to save you isn’t going to do anything. It’s fine if someone prays for a friend who’s battling cancer (as long as they’re receiving treatment too) or prays for general good health. That’s ok, and it may even be a little bit helpful, if only for the placebo effect that positive thinking can bring. But even most firm believers in a particular deity don’t really seem to expect prayer to work in any tangible capacity, or at least not subconsciously. Nobody expects God to regrow their amputated limbs, or cure their birth defects.

I also should point out that I’m not trying to say that scientific medicine is perfect. It’s clearly not, and there are plenty of side-effects to even the most effective treatments. However, it’s backed up by evidence of its effectiveness, whereas alternative treatments almost never are. As the old joke goes, what do you call alternative medicine that actually works? Medicine.

And chemotherapy certainly isn’t a picnic. I only know about the basics – hair falling out, constant feelings of sickness, aching – but surely it’s better than slowly dying of untreated cancer.

Getting back to Hauser’s case, having the government step in and force the kid to get treated is somewhat disconcerting, but in this case it’s a good thing. Will such action be necessary in the future? Probably. And who’s to stop the government from expanding its influence in medical decisions to impose its will when it’s not necessary? Well, us. Citizen activism, I guess. Going forward, we’ve got to be vigilant, and always keep an eye on what the government is doing. This is why it’s so important to have transparency in government, and open digital recordkeeping of everything the government does. And such things will be far, far more important if we ever get around to implementing some form of universal health care.

But Daniel Hauser isn’t out of the woods yet. He and his mother are suspected to be heading to Tijuana, which is sort of a Mecca for alternative nonsense. Hopefully the police will find them before the mother is able to subject her son to something that’ll cause real harm.

 

Well, let’s see if I’ve provoked the wrath of the alt-med community with this one, like I did with my previous post on the anti-vaccinationists.

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