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The great thing about ferrety eyes was they never changed from being ferrety, so you couldn’t read much there.

– Bill James, Pix

Watched Stephen Hawking’s lecture – “My life in physics” on TVO last Sunday night. It’s incredibly exciting that he’s here in Waterloo, though I’m not quite over my tantrum in Perimeter’s direction for not having a public lecture where we could see him in person. Cuz half the people in the “invite only audience” were clearly a) not understanding a damn thing he was saying b) bored c) a politician of some sort.

The night started off with a series of speeches from PI dignitaries (Mike, Turok), politicians (Uncle Dalton, Clement), business people (VP from BMO) and the requisite bilingual Mistress of Ceremonies (which sounds kinkier than it is). Mike was good – he emphasized why theory leads to pragmatic benefits and made sure to emphasize how important private funding is to the program (since Uncle Dalton was in the room). Turok was his usual self – unpolished, happy to have his friend Hawking there, and such a breath of fresh air after the Howard Burton era.

Where it got interesting though was in the political speeches. Beside the fact that Tony Clement can’t do public speaking (or French) to save his life, both he and McGuinty were at pains to reference God in the context of physics – i.e. that the pursuit of cosmology and quarks and the like are pursuits within or of the wonders of God.  McGuinty even went so far as to compare Hawking to Sir Thomas More, of all people, via a quote from Man For All Seasons. Now, I was wondering what Hawking would have said at that point if he could fire off a quick comeback without having to peck it out on his voice machine.

Yes – Hawking also mentioned God in his speech. He argued that, back in the day, when the Big Bang was a theory in competition with the solid state theory of the universe, it was objected to because people thought it was appealing to a Genesis view of the birth of the universe. Of course, time, brilliant minds and “luck” have given us more answers about how this might have occurred through the evolution of the universe and more mystery in that we still don’t have all of the answers.

Nonetheless, it felt like a size 10 foot in a size 5 shoe, at least to me. And the only reason I can think of for the references to be so heavy-handed was appeasement. They are politicians, after all, and how dare we spend money on that godless science stuff.

Hawking’s speech itself was both a history of the field’s big names, and a brief walk through the many important areas of discovery that he’s been involved with. Some of the audience got his jokes, but it looked like many of them weren’t even aware when one was being made. I’m sure some were disappointed he didn’t touch on aliens or anything controversial.

New Scientist Review

He did put in a plug for his support of Perimeter at the end – as he should, now that he has his own wing. As he says, just bringing together all these minds from all over the world has got to be a step in the right direction.

Melle, Melissa and I attended the “No Prorogue” rally (also known as “Stephen Harper is an Arsehole Gathering”) at Waterloo Public Square today. It was a respectable turnout for Waterloo – at least 300 at any one time. Chairs were left in the speaker area for all of the local Conservative parliamentarians but not deigned to take up the offer.

The best speaker of the day was actually a university student–Jennifer (Ed. note: another blogger is saying that Jennifer is 12; if so, I am very impressed), with politicians of various other stripes (Liberal, NDP, Green, Christian something or other and Independent) doing a greater or lesser job depending on their ability to stay on topic. We struggled a bit to see how proroguing parliament was linked to RIM losing out on the Nortel bid, wondered if “transphobia” had anything to do with vamPYRES, and were slightly bemused by the Independent’s long list of woes from taxes to something about Pierre Trudeau being an asshat.

All and still, it was a very Canadian protest. By that I mean the crowd was young and old, families and urban singles. People moved through the crowd saying “excuse me”. The police presence consisted of two constables in a cruiser around the corner having a coffee. People were skating during the speeches. Posters were, for the most part, either witty or benignly straight forward. Point being that it was calm, orderly and quietly strong in conviction – and we are damned lucky to have the luxury for it to be so.

Some of the loudest applause came at a Mercer quote (“Canadians are apathetic until you tell them they are apathetic”) at any mention of Harper being arrogant, calls for parliament to go back to work, and proportional government. Even the heckler at the back agreed with that one.

As one speaker put it (the Green guy, I think), quoting Churchill:

Canada is a solution looking for a problem… and I think we found the problem.

I might add, don’t forget that next time you vote.

A friend of mine moved to China with her family a few weeks ago. Before she left, we talked about her setting up a blog so that she can keep in touch with friends and family in Canada and Sweden.

We were talking today and I asked about the blog, and she told me that she hasn’t been able to get one set up. No access to Wordpress, Blogger, Blogspot…or Twitter, Facebook …

I mean, I knew that the government of China blocks Internet content, but it made it more real. And then I got indignant on behalf of the 1,325,639,982 people or so that are there and effectively gagged. They have no right to blog. Just think about all of us who can jump on and blog about our electric ass, or our cat, or our thoughts on healthcare. They can’t do that. They can’t read what we read, or have the opportunity to know what we know. That’s deplorable. This is the same week that Obama hailed China as an economic partner (with no strings attached to human rights abuses).

—

If you want to know how to get around it, btw, sounds like the best approach is to create a blog account outside of the country and these use a POP connection to email in your entries. I’ve offered my friend some help to do just that.

So, Cory. The talk I saw was “Copyright versus Universal Access to All Human Knowledge and Groups Without Cost: the state of play in the global copyfight“. This is another love story, not with a subject, but with books.

Doctorow started his lecture with a homily to books. How we feel about them, how we want keep them and pass them on to our children. I was physically repulsed as he described a job he had at a bookstore when he had to remove the covers and destroy the innards of books that were being returned to the publisher (which was totally his point).

We are at the frontier of figuring out how to move forward in a world of electronic delivery of the arts – ebooks, digital media, and so on – can be accessed, downloaded and shared. But when you bring back the analogies of the “traditional” world of books and mixed tapes, then the absurdity of copyright law is revealed.

Doctorow also talked about “self help” copyright rules and the 3 Strikes premise, which essentially means that any ISP receiving an infringement notice, no matter how spurious, can and will cut off Internet access to the offending household, and you know that there are not many of us (except perhaps that guy living in a cabin in South Dakota, and even he needs access to the Anarchist’s Cookbook), who can make a living or have a life without the Interwebs.

Doctorow asks us to learn about the copyright law in our own countries and at the UN level (and he’s not so happy with the UN), and to participate in discussions as the law is being created.

For, as his informal poll pointed out, none of us are innocent within the system as it is being developed.

During the questions, there was one interesting one referring back to the session I saw with Neal Stephenson and Jaron Lanier – where Jaron had been talking about what he thinks is a more equitable system of delivery. Essentially, we all pay a few cents per use of whatever commodity we want to use — including art, writing, music… Doctorow’s response is that he thinks this is not tenable. He says that experimentation has shown that the cost of us having to decide whether or not this content is worth “5 cents” is  greater than the 5 cents, and so we won’t participate.

Unfortunately, the other questioner was an older “volunteer” with the festival who hijacked the time with simplistic questions (and she asked TWO, which is a no-no). Apparently she did the same at the later session, and I’d strongly recommend that someone explain to her why this is annoying.

I think for this kind of topic, each of us has to think it through and I at least agree that we should participate where we can in the discussion. I do believe that the ability to block someone from the Internet is a very harsh sentence, and needs to be used with care, and I don’t have trust that it will be, since the primary players are lawyers and ISPs.

Now I’m off to fondle my books.

But what publishers of books and music are trying to do, argues Doctorow, is develop a world where, at any time, and with no forewarning, they can reach into your home and essentially “take back” the books that you already purchased. That all that small print in the copyright (sometimes bigger than the ebook they are trying to sell) is basically you signing off on their right to do so.

Ignatieff and Liberals are poised to call a non-confidence vote next week, sending Canadians to the polls, probably by October 1st.

What a dearth of choice we have. First, there’s Harper, whose Napoleonic arrogance is shown in his narrow-eyed, close-minded leadership.  As most recently evidenced when he stuffed the senate–an instititution he wanted to ban–with Conservative chronies. And there’s Ignatieff, whose arrogance is presented in a veneer of intellectual patriotism that leaves me mostly like I need to take a shower. In fact, proximal contact with either of these guys ought to be followed by a decontamination scrub in one of those biohazard units.

Normally, I’d be jumping at the chance to kick Harper to the curb. But I have no sense that Ignatieff will be much better, except for maybe allowing his cabinet members to talk to the media on their own (though they better have read the handbook ahead of time, I’m sure).

With not much difference on the fiscal agenda (really), I guess Harper will tell us he wants to stay [his] course, particularly since Canada is “pulling out of the recession” at the cost of being a couple billion in the hole, and Ignatieff’s big change is that he knows where China and India are located (and probably has at least tasted the cuisine – Harper’s a plain pork chop and potato guy).

Health care will obviously be on the agenda. Ignatieff claiming that Harper is skulking in the corner and avoiding the issue altogether, especially in the face of American scrutiny as they go through their own crisis. Harper’s response on any issue right now is not to discuss it, but to accuse of Ignatieff of being un-Canadian and power-hungry. The equivalent of offering “you suck!” as a retort at the local debating society.

It’s by no means clear on what the hell will happen if there is an election day – polls showing the leaders in a dead heat as recently as a few weeks ago. Chances of another minority government: high.

Sigh.

Finally got around to reading Howard Burton’s First Principles: The Crazy Business of Doing Serious Science.

Primary value of which was hearing about the founding of PI (though through a very thick filter of ego), and confirming my previous characterization of the author, as referenced in the title of this post. ‘Nuff said.

It’s a truism that science fiction embeds many a kernal of truth, or the possible (if not the probable). A good science fiction writer sees what is now (or was) and takes it to some logical end to see what happens. Sometimes, the results are pure delight: a la Jasper Fforde, and sometimes the results are terrible: The Road comes to mind.

In the latter category is Mars Life by Ben Bova. Intelligent life has been confirmed on Mars from about 60 million years ago, when it was wiped out, presumably by an asteroid event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth. There are about 200 scientists on Mars carrying out excavations and experiments, and a village is discovered at the bottom of the canyon.

Due to global warming and the decimation of resources, arid areas have become floodplains, the prairies have become desert, and much of the coastline has been lost to much higher water levels. It’s hell on Earth, and sufficient monetary pressure on governments and big business to either donate or make money off the backs of refugees.

Meanwhile, in an increasingly fundamentalist USA, funding for the Mars program is cut and leaders from the religious right are seeking to stop the program entirely, since the concept of intelligent life on another planet clashes with their view of God – i.e. he made humans, to rule the EARTH. This is also a culture in which Darwin has been entirely suppressed, and only creationism is taught in schools.

The battle is to try to sustain the research on Mars with what would be the most important scientific discovery ever, in the face of persecution, lost funds and pressure to open up the planet to tourists.

I found myself alternately swearing and shaking my head in either rebuttal or disbelief, with a palpable sense of discomfort at just how possible this scenario is. As Bova notes in the interview linked above,

I consider religious fundamentalism to be the most serious threat to democracy and individual liberty that this nation has ever faced. Religious intolerance has destroyed great empires in the past. It could destroy the United States of America in the foreseeable future.

Of course, it’s not just the US, but they do seem to have an inordinate number of powerful and wealthy fundamentalists. Even Obama is not immune from their influence, and tactics such as boycotts or blocked advertising aren’t science fiction at all–they are in use today.

It’s very hard to step outside of the facts to try to understand how these people see the world through a little arrow slit of thought and fear and prejudice (so wonderfully detailed by Mark Morford on a regular basis). It’s a mean little world view. An aggressive view. A dangerous view to science, to nature and to tolerance. Scares me more than any monster that a fiction writer might come up with.

Bova does try to show perhaps some alternative, more progressive “spiritual” paths–namely Native myths (Navahoe), and even the Catholic church to some extent. The book itself is in some way an affirmation of a spiritual interpretation to anything that we might discover out there (i.e. God’s work wherever we may find it in the universe).

While that interpretation is unecessary, it’s certainly better than the fundamentalist alternative.

Books that make me think = good stuff.

and why American Idol is like nails on a chalkboard…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

(Link from Robin)

I really like James Bow’s blog – his posts are always well researched and he takes a sensible approach to politics and municipal development that is worth reading. But his post today about Rick Santelli kinda tweaked a mini-rant for me.

I don’t know Rick Santelli from Adam, but he did go so far as to say that he doesn’t want to pay for ‘loser’s mortgages’. I surely agree with James tying that to that fact that the some of the richest people in the US have walked away from the handout table with oodles of cash in their pockets and no guilt about it, and that hypocricy is alive and well in the bailouts.

But. But… I understand the sentiment of not wanting to use tax dollars to bail out people who voluntarily put themselves in debt, who voluntarily bought a lifestyle beyond their means. Sure, the US government and US banks created a bad situation where it was possible to get a 0-down mortgage amortized over 40 years, but it’s up to each person to know whether or not that’s a good idea.

By taking only the government and the banks to task for this mess, it leaves the people who took those mortgages without complicity or culpability – which denies them the power that goes with responsibility and puts them outside of the locus of control in the situation. Every person has the choice to not take full “advantage” of more debt than they can handle–particularly if they are the ones who thought they absolutely needed the big house and the bigger screen tv, and hell, why not if the bank is gonna give them the money.

I am happy as heck for the single mother in Detroit who now owns her own home outright. That’s just a smart investment that SHE made.

But do I want to put my tax dollars toward saving Mr Big House’s ass? No. I do not.