I recently heard of a new documentary via Cosmic Variance called Expelled, about how the science establishment routinely beats up on the intelligent design folks, denying them tenure and whatnot. Trailers can be seen here.

One of the points damning evolution the movie makes is that evolution is responsible for the Holocaust (among other things). I admit I have a bit of a soft spot for intelligent design people. By all means I think they should continue to work on their theories as much as they want, and if they come with something vaguely scientific that the rest of us should consider then good for them. In the meantime…

If you claim we should reject evolution because it caused the Holocaust, you might as well claim that nuclear physics is a fiction since it caused the atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The laws of nature don’t change just because you think it would be nice! Evolution, like the inner workings of an atom, is not a legislation that we can repeal once we realise that bad guys can use it to their advantage.

As an aside, a similar argument is sometimes used for the existence of god. Upon discussing my atheism with some missionaries at my door one day, the subject of the afterlife came up. One asked what I think happens when we die, to which I said something along the lines of “Nothing. We just die, and that’s it.”

Surprised, he asked, “And you’re okay with that?”

Does it matter if I’m not? If God doesn’t exist, if there is no afterlife, would he spontaneously come into being just because a lot of people think Heaven would be nice? Sure, I admit, it probably would be nice. Who wouldn’t want to have the possibility of everlasting peace and happiness instead of an absolute end? (Not that you’d care once the end came. You’d be dead, afterall. Sometimes I think people picture sitting around in a dark room being bored until the end of time.) Better yet, if God did exist, could we kill him by wishing he didn’t? I would have thought the all-mighty creator would be a bit tougher than a fairy in Never-Never Land.

The fallacy of the argument is even more obvious in the case of evolution. Go ahead and say evolution (or more to the point, genetics) caused the Holocaust if you want (I won’t believe you, but go ahead and say it). It doesn’t mean you can declare that evolution is incorrect to make up for it. Even if it is wrong for other reasons, this certainly isn’t one of them.

I remember thinking that one of the things I don’t like about old movies is all the silence. But, that’s okay, I thought, it’s just a different style. Not every scene needs to be bookmarked with some contemporary easy listening as cues to what emotion the audience should be experiencing, though it might be nice to enhance the mood a bit more. I don’t know the history at all about when background music started to become commonplace, but I didn’t even realise how ubiquitous it was until I watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy—famous for its soundtrack—without music.

There was an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer without any voice or music. I gather that was a stylistic choice where the lack of soundtrack enhanced some of the stuff that was going on. In the case of this episode of Grey’s Anatomy, however, it was clear that there was supposed to be music, just something about the recording had left it out. At first it had an unfinished quality to it, but I got used to it, and enjoyed the episode just the same.

The real shock came on the episode after that, where all the musical cues came back. What surprised me was not how the actual songs, played under the narrative dialogue for example, contributed to the show, but how at all times there was some kind of elevator music going on punctuating every look or gesture. After being sobered by the previous episode of simple dialogue, it felt like watching a children’s cartoon with over the top sound effects pulling me by the hand through each step of the way. I actually had to stop watching, it seemed so juvenile.

Is this a bad thing, I wonder? Does this subtle but more constant kind of laugh-track enhance the experience or just dumb it down? I don’t even know if Grey’s Anatomy is exceptionally bad in this respect or representative of television in general. I just know it will be distracting me next time I watch a primetime television drama.

On the walk between Tim Horton’s and my apartment, this poster hangs on the side of one of the buildings:

And every time I find myself wondering which answer the poster expects. A philosophy professor once told me never to use questions in an essay, as the answer the reader wants to give may not be the one you expect to hear.

Considering that the poster hangs on the side of a church, and is advertising something called an Alpha Course, it’s a pretty safe bet that the more-to-life the poster refers to is God, or at least something religious. Now, the website for this program sounds like it’s asking neutral questions—”Does God exist?” for example—as if the program really is trying to answer the question, but looking closer at the material on the site, especially some of the video lectures, it’s quite clear that the answer is going to be “Yes”. No surprise.

Here’s the problem. If the answer to the question on the poster is “yes”, that there is something more to life than “this”, why does the “this” pictured look so appealing? I’m sure there are quite a lot of people who would say that climbing to some high peak and revelling in both that accomplishment and the grand picture of nature laid out before is exactly what life is about. Experiencing the world around us to the fullest. So, no, there is not more to life than these grand adventures. That’s why for the longest time I hoped that the poster was advertising a mountain climbing club or a safari adventure travelling group of some kind.

I understand that they’re probably trying to show off the majesty of God’s creation by using this photo. But surely the point is that there’s more to life than the regular day-to-day stuff that we all live though. That’s what should have been pictured. “Is there more to life than this?” next to some burnt out office worker or some otherwise miserable person. The answer then, is more obivously “yes”, and more people might be inclined to try the course to get more information on the subject.

As it stands, I still look at that picture and think, “No, that actually looks pretty awesome. Where can I sign up for this mountain climbing adventure you promise?” God disappoints yet again.

About a month ago the big news was that Albus Dumbledore, the loveable headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, was gay.

The cynics among us immediately figured that it was just a publicity stunt to grab more attention for an otherwise finished series. Frankly, when I was the first headline, I would have been inclined to agree, though I quickly realised it didn’t really feel like that was the case. Rowling didn’t issue a press release out of the blue. She didn’t bring it up herself. Somebody asked her about Dumbledore’s love life and she responded by saying that she always thought of him gay. And it seemed consistent with what was in the books—I had picked up on a little homoeroticism in that whole Grindelwald affair—even if it wasn’t explicit.

The reason I’m bringing all this up is that, following the outing of Dumbledore (or the outing of such a possibility, since you might argue that just because Rowling “thought of him as gay” doesn’t mean we have to, but I digress) there was an article published in Time that asked that Dumbledore be put back in the closet as he made a poor role model. An excerpt:

So along comes Rowling with Dumbledore—a human being, a wizard even, an indisputable hero and one of the most beloved figures in children’s literature. Shouldn’t I be happy to learn he’s gay?

Yes, except: Why couldn’t he tell us himself? The Potter books add up to more than 800,000 words before Dumbledore dies in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and yet Rowling couldn’t spare two of those words—”I’m gay”—to help define a central character’s emotional identity? We can only conclude that Dumbledore saw his homosexuality as shameful and inappropriate to mention among his colleagues and students. His silence suggests a lack of personal integrity that is completely out of character.

— John Cloud, “Put Dumbledore Back in the Closet“. Time. Monday, Oct. 22, 2007.

There are many reasons that this is completely ridiculous.

First, Dumbledore was never meant to be a gay role model for anybody. He was never meant to be a gay character at all, or else it would have been mentioned in the text. Having that as some kind of motivation for writing his character doesn’t mean it has to be explicitly explained, which goes for any trait an author sees in their characters.

What does it say about how we see homosexuality if we think it should always be explicitly stated? I would tend to lean the other way—the implication that any gay character should announce his sexual orientation to the world, as if it were a really important and defining aspect of his character, makes it sound like everybody has a right to know it, as if they should be warned before getting too friendly.

Should the two words “I’m gay” really “define a central character’s emotional identity” any differently from “I’m straight”? For someone as intelligent, wise, and experienced as Dumbledore, I would hope not.

Realistically, we might expect Dumbledore to remain in the closet simply because he grew up in the early 1900s or so, when (at least among Muggles) such things were kept secret. But, like Cloud says, this would be out of character for him. I agree with that much, but his not having disclosed that secret to, say, Harry Potter, doesn’t mean that he was ashamed by it. It’s just not something a headmaster needs to tell all his students! It’s perfectly plausible that other professors and colleagues knew, but again, the kind of conversation where that would come up simply didn’t have a place in the story both because of the situation they were in and also the kind of life Dumbledore had at the time. “Dumbledore! Lord Voldemort is on the move! And by the way; bang any boys lately?”

We should note, as well, that one of the major themes in the final book was how little Harry Potter actually knew about Dumbledore’s life. It was a source of conflict that tested Harry’s faith in his mentor and nearly ended the quest Dumbledore had sent him on. That Dumbledore had told Harry nothing of his history, including his family and his relationship with Grindelwald, was a significant point. Telling Harry that he was gay, which would have been out of place anyway, would have completely undermined the story.

Dumbledore is an amazing character. That he didn’t disclose anything about his sex life and romantic interests in past or present, straight or gay, doesn’t say anything about his integrity or whether he was ashamed by it. There was simply no need for it in the story. He makes a fine role model, whether you think of him as gay or not, and for all the same reasons.

Really this post could have been written nigh on four or five years ago, but I only just got around to watching the television series Firefly. I missed its original run on account of doing more exciting things than watching TV, but over the years I heard many references to it, often along the lines of called it the best science fiction television show in recent years.

The thing is, it isn’t.

Not that it isn’t a good show, because it is. Aside from an annoyingly repetative soundtrack, it’s well done, with good effects and really entertaining characters. (I particularly like Kayley and Jayne, myself.) As a character driven show it certainly hits its mark quite well. The reason I wouldn’t call it the best science fiction show is because it isn’t science fiction. It’s space opera.

I first heard the term from Robert J. Sawyer in reference to Star Wars. Space opera are typically big cartoonish stories that have little to no actual science in them, even if they happen to take place on spaceships or distant planets. They’re just fiction that happens to be in space, which is not enough to be called science fiction.

In a television series like Firefly, I don’t expect a lot of hard science, or even much explicit science at all, in the same way you’d expect realistic medical problems in a hospital drama, although it would be nice. What I notice is that Firefly doesn’t make use of its setting at all. The point of science fiction is that it opens doors that wouldn’t normally be available. The best science fiction uses this to reflect back on real situations that we are familiar with in the real world, so that we don’t get lost in spaceships and laser blasts but remain connected to the story on a very human level.

Sure, this is just television, but aside from a couple specific (so far underdeveloped) instances, Firefly doesn’t even try to open those doors. The show is a western drama. You could replace the spaceships with horses and a stagecoach and for the most part still tell the same stories. In fact you’d even use most of the same footage—most of the planetary settings are all low-tech wild west style towns already. The only advantage of having a spaceship is that the wild west bandits can have something akin to a pirate ship to haul their cargo in from place to place.

The two aspects I would like to see a lot more of (and maybe I will—I’m only halfway through the series) are in the Reavers and the character River. The former is a great way of exploring human nature, what brings men to madness, and dealing with daemons within. The later could be anything—she remains very mysterious—but could effectively bring up questions of metaphysics or, through her experience in the Academy, all sorts of ethical problems. Maybe these are all high-falutin’ ideas that have no place for Average Joe Television, but they would make good science fiction.

Should I, I wonder, take these times between posts to compose some long, thoughtful, and fascinating piece of writing? Should I post more smaller posts of little oddities I come across, like a photo of my poor blistered hand or that funny thing my professor said? Maybe I should just talk about the things I’ve done (we came fourth at the regatta the other weekend, for those interested). Maybe I should be doing homework.

Today marks the end of a four day weekend for myself. Thank you Thanksgiving, thank you Thursday conferences in my only Monday/Wednesday/Friday class. The total body of work that I’ve done, however, pails in comparison to what might have been possible.

Possible.

I’ve learned in my logic classes that the word ‘possible’ should raise make some warning lights go off. Certainly warranted in this case.

Another regatta this weekend is tightening up my schedule quite a bit. All the usual griping about assignments and papers amplified by the loss of two days. More of the same.

I’m going to write a story in November. I think the combination of the short deadline placed on me by the concept (more warning lights, but I think we can ignore them) of Nanowrimo and my still being haunted by it will bring out a big influence by the spooky and charming narrative of Anne-Marie MacDonald. I picture two men my age (write what you know). Some homoerotic tension, but low on the homoeroticism. An island, a raft, some insight and slight of hand. And some mystery, in both the common sense and the sense opposite of dramatic irony. Again, I think, being influenced by Anne-Marie MacDonald.

“… because their hands knew how.”

Until then I’ve got a paper in front of me and a man expecting me for soup in just over 30 minutes. Both are mysteries of their own. One of oblique mathematical concepts (!) and one of a Sartrian emotional relation between consciousnesses.

Now it’s me who’s being oblique. Best to leave it at that.

Remember when I used to blog almost every day? Ah, those were the days. Days when I had something to say. Days, maybe, when I had nobody to say them to, but that sounds a little sad so let’s just gloss over that. Days when I have cool experiences I want to document for myself and share with others. That’s a nice one. Now I just feel disorganized, without any rhythm or routine. There’s something to be said for knowing what you’re doing a few days down the road. I’m keeping busy and doing interesting things, but my schedule is erratic and unpredictable. Usually I just take it in stride, adjusting my plans as things come up, tending not to stress about anything too much, but at this point I feel like I’m not getting anything done, waking up at random hours each day, never managing to make a lunch for work, and I still haven’t managed to get groceries. At the very least I made a nice big dinner tonight—chicken baked with cheese and tomato sauce, mashed potatos, caesar salad with grilled spicy shrimp, and a nice helping of strawberries for desset. That’s worth blogging about.

After two years the final book in the Harry Potter series is just two days away. It took me a few books to really start getting into it, but by the end of the sixth one I was in deep. Now as the day where all sorts of remaining questions will be answered gets closer I’m definitely obsessing a little bit.

Rumour has it some pages, including the epilogue, of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows have been circulating on the internet and spoilers have been popping up everywhere. I haven’t read any of these (unsubstantiating and, reportedly, contradictory) stories about what happens, but I do have some ideas of my own—predictions, if you will, and nothing but predictions. I’m putting them down in writing in case some of them are right so I can say “I knew it!”.

1. Harry will not die
There’s nothing in the prophecy that says that both Voldemort and Harry need to die, as some people have said—it merely says not both can live. So, the flip side of this is that Voldemort will be killed, by Harry one would assume. It will be a happy ending, technically, but I’m sure it will not be all sunshine and lollipops.

2. Harry is not a Horcrux
We know Voldemort made Horcruxes, and Dumbledore suggested he was going to made his last one with Harry’s murder. The theory I heard is that Voldemort somehow realised his killing curse on Harry was backfiring and quickly cast the spell to make a Horcrux (using the murder of Harry’s parents). It would explain the strong connection between the two, but I dont see why Voldemort would have deserpately wanted to make a Horcrux when he already had five under his belt. Besides, it would be pointless—Voldemort would destroy his own Horcrux by killing Harry (which he would still need to do, because of the prophecy).

Even if Harry does turn out to be a Horcrux, the first prediction still stands, we’ll go a ways through the book under the impression that he will have to die to kill Voldemort, but I’m sure they’ll be able to find a way to extract that piece of Voldemort’s soul and destroy it without killing him.

3. Dumbledore will remain dead
There has been plenty of suggestion that Dumbledore’s death was a fake, and I’m not going to make any bets that it wasn’t. Rowling has said, however, that he will not do a “Gandalf” in the seventh book and come back to life. Frankly I still have my doubts about what happened in the Half-Blood Prince, but I guess the Avada Kedavra curse was just what it seemed. I do think Dumbledore will play a significant role, though, through memories, instructions, or clues left behind. We still need an answer to why Dumbledore had James’s Invisibility Cloak, after all.

4. Fred and George Weasley will get what’s coming to them
I have no basis for this other than sheer conjecture, but I don’t think these guys can get away with their hijinks forever. They make fun of everything (I loved “U-NO-POO”), are connected to the Order of the Pheonix, and some of their products support the Ministry (clothes with built in sheild charms). The Death Eaters aren’t going to let them slide forever. If the man with the ice cream booth in front of the bookstore can disappear misteriously, so can these guys.

5. Snape will redeem himself

[14:39:24] Greg says:
But I’m undecided on Snape.
[14:39:29] Meg says:
Me too
[14:39:33] Meg says:
I feel good about him though
[14:39:50] Meg says:
But I think that’s because he’s delicious
[14:40:13] Greg says:
Delicious like poison.
[14:41:27] Meg says:
Wonderful gloomy, sadistic, chocolate-covered poison

There are two possibilities: The first is that Snape is not really a Death Eater, and his killing Dumbledore was part of some great plan of Dumby’s. If these were the case, the death was probably fake anyway. Snape turns out to be a good guy afterall. Unfortunately I don’t think this is the most likely. The second is that he really is a Death Eater. If this is the case—or even if we are never clear on what his motivations were for the last few books—I think he will see him repent and come back to the good side. Of course to convince anyone, he’ll have to do something pretty fantastic, which brings us to my final prediction:

6. Snape will die
A tragic death of a misunderstood hero. Probably the one thing he’ll be able to do in the end is to sacrifice himself by fighting Voldemort, to destroy a cursed Horcrux, or to directly saving Harry’s life. Too many people love Snape to really let him end up as a bad guy, but I think this is the only way to convince us he’s not.

We’ll know if I’m right on any of these by the time the weekend is out.

I just got my first MP3 player. The original promise was a free iPod mini from my sister as a birthday gift, but the package that was supposed to contain said iPod turned out to contain a note about why there was no iPod and a guilt cheque to make up for it.

This turned out to be fine because with that cheque I was able to go buy my own MP3 player which was decidedly not an iPod, although it might be described as iPod nano-ish—a sexy little Samsung K3, in red of course. Almost by virtue of being not an iPod it is better than an iPod—its cheaper, has an FM radio, and is not a symbol of conformity.

I’m disappointed, however, in its navigation. In the same manner as the iPod, you can browse through songs based on their ID3 tag, selecting artists, albums, or genres. What I don’t like is that this browsing to find a single song is the same as setting the playlist, whereas I think the two things should be separate.

If I want to listen to Jay Brannan’s Soda Shop, as I sometimes do, I can do it by finding Jay’s name in the artists list. However, Soda Shop is the only song by him that I have, so my playlist is that one song over and over. If I want to listen to the whole album (being the soundtrack from Shortbus) I have to have to foresight to navigate to it from Albums > Shortbus > Soda Shop instead of Artists > Jay Brannan > Soda Shop.

Similarly, if I’m playing all tracks on shuffle, hit upon Soda Shop, and decide I’d like to listen to the rest of the soundtrack, I have to backtrack to the main list, choose Albums, find Shortbus, and start the song again. There should be an option, while listening to a song, to change the playlist to other songs only by the same artist or from the same album, or even just to other playlists with that song on it, without having to stop the song.

The difficult part is putting in all the navigational tools you have at hand with a desktop music player like iTunes or Amarok while only using six or seven buttons. Amarok has a very nice way of queueing tracks (better than iTunes’s method) that I would love to see in a portable player. It would be nice as well to be able to add songs to playlists on the fly without necessarily playing them.

Most of these, if not all, are things that could be implemented on MP3 players today (and for all I know they might already be) rather simply. Just put an option to apply filters to the playlist according to album, artist, etc, another to queue the track, and another to add the track to some existing playlist. None of this qualifies as “future” features for navigation because there’s nothing that new and innovative about them.

The feature I would really like to see is one that requires a little more innovation and will be nice to see sometime down the road.

Have you ever been listening to a song and have it remind you of another one? That Jay Brannan song often brings to mind other songs from Shortbus just because they’re all from that same soundtrack. Sometimes, though, there’s a specific song that I want to listen to next, and it might not have anything to do with what I’m listening to. James Blunt’s Goodbye My Lover might conclude only to have me wanting to hear Boston and St. John’s by Great Big Sea, or Rip Slyme’s Joint might bring to mind something by HY. In these cases—even if my feature wishlist above is implemented—it’s a pain to go navigate through various menus or walk through the tracks to find it. What’s the solution?

The MP3 player should just know what I want to listen to.

Oh baby yeah.

If I start mentally humming the intro to A Moth is not a Butterfly after that Julie Delpy waltz from Before Sunset, the player should pick up on that and queue it up for me. Or maybe I’ll just keeping singing Butterfly to myself, in which case the player should realise I’d probably like to listen to it again. And, of course, if there wasn’t anything specific I wanted it would just default back to the standard playlist.

It wouldn’t even have to be that specific at first. There might be some way of just picking up on my mood, and the player could gauge what sorts of songs I might enjoy based on that. The software that came with my K3 already makes an attempt at classifying my music based on its style. Maybe if I’m feeling upbeat it would play an upbeat song for me, or if it saw I was drifting to sleep something more mellow. Hell, that’s 90% of the point right there anyway.

Does anybody have an old EEG machine we could modify and jury-rig onto some headphones? (For maximum brain proximity, of course.) If only I were an engineer/neuropsychologist I could whip something together, apply for a patent, and be making millions in no time.

I’m having trouble with this whole cause and effect thing.

When I was young and got sick, there were a few things that my mom would feed me. I don’t think chicken soup was ever one of them. What I do remember is jello, toast, 7-up, and canned peaches.

It’s been years since I lived at home for any appreciable length of time, so now when I get sick I have to take care of myself, but those same things that my mom used to give me to make me feel better still work even though I have to get them for myself.

There have been a few times lately that I found myself craving those things even without being sick, and its always a bit odd. At least a few times I’ve found myself standing in the grocery store, looking at the rows of canned peach slices, knowing that I want to eat some despite also knowing that they’re not something you just go and eat when you’re feeling nice and healthy like this.

But I buy the peaches anyway, saying to myself, if I’m craving them I should buy some whether I’m sick or not. And every time I’ve done that, two days later I’m in bed with any combination of a headache, soar throat, and fever. I bought some peaches on sale last week and since yesterday I’ve been sneezing and grimacing every time I swallow.

So, either my body knows it’s coming down with something before my brain does and has been conditioned over years to know that when I get sick I should each peaches, as if that might ward it off, or else its the peaches that make me sick in the first place. Which is more likely?