Glen Thoughts

Pardon the paranoia, but I recently dugg up this little ditty. So forgive me if I’m a little scared of our mechanized friends at this moment.

For those of you too lazy to click on the underlined blue text, you’ve got a lot of nerve. But it is a link to an article on the National Public Radio website about a recent experiment involving robots and cockroaches. To summarize, the scientists were able to make a robot infiltrate cockroach society and guide any group decisions. They did this not by making robots that looked like cockroaches, but by making robots that smelled like cockroaches, seeing as how scent is their primary sense.

This little smelly robot was originally programmed to prefer dark spots to rest (a typical cockroach trait) but then after collecting some data, they changed it, making it prefer lighter nesting places. This influenced the other roaches and had them follow the robot into the lighter areas.

While I think that this is simply fascinating, and I realize that there is enormous potential in having us unlock knowledge about animal societies, I do have my concerns. First off, I think that it is scary to think that scientists are able to program a machine to think like an animal. Sure, cockroaches are pretty dumb, but today if is just insects today, what is to stop it from being fish or birds? And if fish and birds are ok, then what about pigs and cows? And then if those are ok, then what about dolphins or, heaven forbid, humans.

The thought of having a pre-programmed robot infiltrate human society should scare the crap out of you. Sure it’s something that we may not have to worry about for a while, but still, it’s a creepy, creepy thing! I don’t want to end up falling in love with some girl, only to find out that she’s actually a machine in disguise! And to fully integrate into human society they would probably be programed to NOT know their true identity, since it would be some sort of a give away.

Maybe I’m just a technophob, but I have serious concerns wondering just what kind of future artificial intelligence hold for us. In fact I think it could probably look something like this…

Yeah Han Solo is in all of my visions of the future…

I guess the fact that I chose that trailer explains my point perfectly. I have seen too many movies where technology goes horribly wrong. For every Blade Runner, Matrix, Minority Report, Dr. Strangelove, or even Jurassic Park there is a warning about something horrible that could go wrong. While I don’t plan on taking any blue pills any time soon, I can’t help but wonder just what potential for disaster there is any attempt to push the limits of human ingenuity.

While the gains are potentially monumental, the loses are potentially catastrophic. Because if someday a scientist is able to duplicate a human brain and have them infiltrate our society then we have lost something huge. We lose our identity, we lose our ability to be human if someone out there is able to make something “More Human Than Human”.

Until next time,

G

San Diego is burning, the US is getting closer to invading Iran, the World Series is about to start, scientists are now beginning to think that they can treat HIV, and of course there’s still that pesky global warming. Sounds like we should have a lot to read about in the news right? Then why is the most talked about story this week about the sexuality of a fictional character?

Last weekend, J.K. Rowling made the startling revelation that Albus Dumbeldore, the late head of Hogwart’s is in fact gay. This has caused a huge backlash in parts of the Evangelical Right, who already consider the fantasy series to be full of pagan references. This has inspired some Red Staters to claim that some like the late Jerry Falwell, who you may recall first claimed that Tinky-Winky was one of many “undisclosed gay characters” in children’s entertainment, are vindicated.

Now I am not going to try and make an argument against the Falwellers, I feel that would be giving too much credit to a horribly ignorant view point. And you know what? They don’t deserve my precious key strokes.

But what I do have issues with is Rowling’s whole posthumous outing of Mr. Dumbledore. As a fan of the series, I find this deeply insulting, and not for reasons that any of the intolerant Bible-thumpers may.

Rowling herself has called the series a “prolonged argument for tolerance“, and that has always been something that I totally respect about her work. From Harry the wizard in a mogul world, to Hermionie the mogul-born, to Hagrid the giant, to Snape the weirdo with a good heart, the main characters in this series are a host of misfits and oddballs who are able to overcome the prejudice both at the personal level (Malfoy) to an institutional level (The Ministry of Magic).

They are able to do this by overcoming any inherent differences they may have, accepting one another and then finally smiting evil in the end. That in itself is a great argument for tolerance, and it is a message that any reasonably intelligent reader/movie-goer should be able to gather. These lessons of accepting people for who they are can easily be extracted from the magical world to the real world we live in right here. Just change mogul-borns to lower socio-economic classes, giants to different races, Snape to emo-kids, and that creepy spider to homosexuals, and ta-da, there we are, a perfect lesson for kids and adults alike. Give people a chance to overcome your first impression and you too can kill Voldemort and excel at Quiddich!!!!

By revealing Dumbeldore’s sexuality, Rowling is hitting us over the head with the moral of her story. It’s completely unnecessary at this point. This would be equivalent to William Shakespeare showing up at the end of MacBeth to tell us “Don’t get power hungry”, or Steven Spielberg telling us “Don’t kill Jews” after watching Schindler’s List. It may be a great message, but they’ve already given it to us.

Secondly, I found this announcement to be offensive, because, frankly, Dumbledore’s sexuality -no matter how fictitious – is Dumbeldore’s business and none of mine. It is something that does not come up at all in the novels, so why bother bringing it up now? For all we know, the series could be full of gay characters. I mean, Crab and Goyle always were a little TOO close to one another, and one never really knew what to make out of Doby the House Elf, after Snape got rejected by Harry’s mother, maybe he embraced a different kind of love, right? In fact, when you think about it, there are very few characters whose sexualities were ever really reveled. Sure Harry had a girlfriend, but maybe he was bisexual, who are we to know? More importantly, who are we to care?

I feel that by referencing Dumbeldore’s sexuality outside of her novels, Rowling has unintentionally committed an act of intolerance herself. She made an issue out of someone’s sexuality, when really it shouldn’t be an issue at all. From the many conversations I have had with homosexual friends of mine, they have told me that they want to just be treated like everyone else. In her outing, Rowling, has treated the homosexual character differently than any other characters. To treat Dumbeldore fairly, she really should list every single character’s sexuality, and that may take a while.

So while I applaud Rowling for her attempt at spreading such great values of tolerance around the world, I really don’t feel that this was the best way to do it. Perhaps instead of talking about fictional characters sexuality, she should wave her magic wand and say “Homosexualis Toleroso” instead.

Until next time,

G

I have recently dug up two frightening tidbits of information that I feel the need to share with you, my beloved blogees. And somehow, neither of them are about Global Warming or Meat. Intrigued? Well read on!

The first one is a frightening news article from the good people at The Observer it is about a computer worm going around referred to as “Storm”. Now this originally came hidden in e-mail attachments with the line “230 dead as storm batters Europe”, but has since changed into all sorts of different forms from eCards, to spamming on blog comments, to YouTube invites. According to the article, the worm is particularly insidious since it does not show any immediate symptoms. Instead, it gives hosts certain roles, like an insect colony. Some computers are assigned to spread the worm, some are designed as “Host Servers” to control the spread of the worm and others are currently waiting for other assigned tasks. Creepy eh?

Nobody really has any ideas who the makers of Storm are, how many people have been infected, and worst of all, what they plan on doing with the infected computers. If the estimates as high as 50 million infected computers is right, then whoever is controlling this worm could spread some major havoc if they really want to.

So I really urge everyone out there to not open any suspicious e-mails of any kind, just flat out delete them, and if you get anything weird from me, please let me know!

Secondly on my pre-Hallowe’en fear fest, is an eerie video featuring some former employees of Fox News. As scary as a potentially apocalyptic computer virus may be, the thought of people telling a series of half-truths and/or blatant lies under the guise of being “Fair and Balanced” has far more dire consequences.

If the line “We weren’t necessarily, as it was told to us, a news gathering organization, so much as we were a proponent of a point of view” by Jon Du Pre doesn’t send shivers down your spine then I don’t know what will. It is frightening that this sort of vicious propaganda can be pushed under the guise of legitimate news. While this clip only targets Fox, there are many other media outlets that are just as guilty of this sort of behaviour.

This is a prime example of one of the greatest ironies of our time is that quite literally, every piece of information is available at our fingertips, yet the truth has never been so hard to come by.

Until next time,

G

We did it!!! We finally did it!!!!

That’s right, this week for the first time in 31 years the Canadian Dollar traded at par with its American counterpart. After spending the late 90s and early 00s trading around 70 or 80 cents US, we are finally on an even currency field with our neighbours to the south. It seems that every major media outlet has been constantly reporting our exchange rate over the past few weeks as we inched closer and closer to that magic $1.00US mark.

On Thursday, the day we broke even (henceforth referred to as P-Day), the excitement was almost palpable as many Canadians were excited about our currency reaching that magic number. Sure there may be all sorts of frightening side effects of our currency rise such as a lessening of tourists coming north of the border and exports going south, but economic uncertainty doesn’t matter because we are even with the Americans!

The Canadian psyche is such an interesting one to look at sometimes. While we have a wonderful country, and are a leading middle power (does that term even make sense?) in the world, we are very clearly the Jan Brady of the G-8. Like all good middle children, we seek and revel in any opportunity we have to look better than our older siblings.

Don’t believe me? Well how much sweeter did our 2002 Gold Medal taste because we beat the States in the finals? How patriotic did you feel when the Blue Jays won the World Series? How many times do you point out that a famous actor/musician/inventor is Canadian? How many times do we try to point out the “stupidity” of Americans with such shows as Talking to Americans?

We celebrated when our hockey team won the gold, but the Americans still took home more medals than any other country during those Olympic Games. We proudly sang the national anthem as a Canadian team won the championship at the Americans National Past Time, but our “Canadian” team had no Canadian players. We proudly talk up Mike Myers, The Bare Naked Ladies, or Alexander Graham Bell, but they still did most of their best work south of the 49. We laugh at Americans for thinking that Canada is covered in snow all year, but we further our own prejudices by thinking that they are all stupid.

Our country clearly has some deep seeded insecurities when it comes to our older sibling. We always long to feel better then them at something and this is no different. We celebrate our rising dollar, but a typical American is still 20% wealthier than a typical Canadian. Once more, we celebrate a small victory but continue to loose the forest for the trees.

This story is already blowing over and unless our currency skyrockets even more, things will once more be about “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia”, and we will be left looking for some other way to get our parents attention.

Until next time,

G

It’s 2007, out Space Odyssey is a good 6 years behind. But with further funding cuts to NASA and the Russian Space Program being a shell of its former self, we stand here looking for someone to stop both Stanley Kubrick and Hannah Barbara from becoming filthy liars. Who should be the one to step up to the plate?

Why who else but the good people at Google! That’s right, the people who brought you both Google Earth and Google Sky have team up with the X-Prize foundation to offer $30 million (U.S.) in prize money for private companies to land a robot on the moon and takes some video and pictures (Check out the full article on BBC with all of the details). Part of that money includes $5 million for taking pictures of old Apollo equipment to prove (or disprove?) that yes, the moon landing was real.

So if this is the first step, will the next prize be to a company that sends tourists to the moon? How about setting up a lunar base? How about landing on Mars? What’s next after that? While this is all very exciting, I can’t help but wonder about the long term consequences in removing governments from space travel. What rules would govern a company that has set up shop on the moon? And what if a corporation is able to set up a base on say Mars before NASA is able to? Does that mean that the company would own that section of the planet and able to set up their own government?

Maybe Chuck Pahalniuk was right in Fight Club in saying “…when deep-space exploitation ramps up, it will probably be the megatonic corporations that discover all the new planets and map them. The IBM Stellar Sphere. The Philip Morris Galaxy. Planet Denny’s. Every planet will take on the corporate identity of whoever rapes it first…“

Enough corporate terror talk, I’ll give you what you really wanted to see…

Should any of you be interested in attempting to land a robot on the moon here is the promotional poster/link for more information. I warn you though, I’ve already started finding ways to duct tape my camera to a remote control car. All I need is a rocket and I’ll be rolling in the dough.

I never knew that the original moon was outdated, I figured it had served us well for long enough, but what do I know? I guess we need a full lunar upgrade…

Until next time,

G