Saul's views

The age of crime

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:39:23 -0400

Looking through the news, I am always struck when I see serious crimes – especially rape and murder – by youths. When it is done by someone 18 years old or so, it is always saddening that they are going to waste so much of their life behind bars, but when it comes to someone as young as 8 or even early teens, I am always left in simple shock. It almost seems unbelievable, and the obvious question is always how should one deal with it. I know I’m not alone in having very mixed feelings over these types of cases and it must be a very hard job for the lawyers, judges, and juries involved.

For the sake of the victims involved, the instinct is always to be as harsh as possible to punish the criminal no matter how young they are. If they commit adult crimes like this, they should be treated and punished like any other adult.

On the other hand, we must remember that the underlying purpose of our judicial systems is reform not punishment. We want to change criminals so that they regret, repent, and become productive members of society. Especially when dealing with someone so young we must remember that the crime and their behaviour may be more of a result of the environment in which they have grown up, especially when it involves extreme poverty and a lack of any opportunity, rather than any innate trait of the person.

The real question is whether we think the person can change or not. How would we get them to change is another important question. If one is too soft on them, they may think they can get away with it and nothing will change in the long run. Too hard and they may become even more embittered with the world. More than that, putting them in the wrong type of place and they can even learn worse behaviour and traits.

As always, every instance needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis depending on the people and events involved.

Canadian carbon capturing

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:02:37 -0400

Apparently Canada has a plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as part of our climate change policy that involves transporting it underground. The emissions from carbon dioxide producing plants would be captured, piped to a processing plant, which in turn would eventually “inject” it to specific spots beneath the Earth’s surface. Some people have called this plan “sheer folly” and I think I have to agree to some degree.

First off, capturing, transporting, and storing the gas itself will be a bit problematic. When dealing with gases, containment is always a bit difficult and a leak anywhere along the process could render it all pointless. Unless they plan to do some sophisticated filtering, chances are that many other gases and byproducts of the plants will be trapped. Some of these may be rather toxic or even volatile things that you may not want to haphazardly place underground (but then again, we wouldn’t that being released back into our air either). Others may be very positive outputs, like excess oxygen, that we will likely not want to trap underground. Cost is another major issue. Depending on how big and how far the containment must extend, there may be more cost effective ways of dealing with this, especially if filters and other specialized equipment need to be involved.

I also hope that someone has done some basic testing to determine whether you can The basic argument I have heard is that large pockets of natural gas have been trapped underground for long periods of time without leaking out or causing major problems. This argument isn’t exactly reassuring though, especially if they plan to inject the gas into non-specialized man-made areas. At the very least, these areas would likely become very inhospitable with insufficient oxygen should a human make their way down there. actually trap the carbon dioxide underground, and what are the potential environmental consequences of doing something like this.

A green Earth

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:34:34 -0400

I’ve said it many times before, and I’ll say it again: Green is in fashion. The reasons are obvious; if we’re not careful with our emissions and other dumping, we may change the Earth enough to make human life “incompatible” with the climate and environment. David Suzuki and others like to promote the “every person” and “every little bit helps” mentality and advertise it heavily. (I know there was a very recent back-to-school ad aimed at students in movie theaters where Suzuki suggested using recycled school supplies and using both sides of the paper.) I thought I’d look at things on the other end of the scale in this post.

The reality is that each person in the world does not contribute equally to our collective worldwide emissions. Those in third-world countries contribute very little per person compared to those in first world countries. Yes, lifestyle and worldly comforts have everything to do with it, and everyone loves to point fingers at cars. More than that, the sheer size of a country is going to make a big difference to the per-country contribution, and I am talking about the population here rather than physical size.

The US and China are the big hitters at the moment, responsible for the biggest shares of emissions. As India continues to grow, both in population and industrialization, it will also become a more major player. While it is always a good idea and necessary for each person to play their role and their part in conservation, the official stances of these countries is immensely important for substantial global impact. That is why statements, such as this one made by China, are so important:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8268077.stm

Unfortunately no figures are given, so this statement is really just a promise of a promise (maybe of a promise?), but still a step in the right direction.

Don’t misunderstand me though, this post doesn’t mean that Canada can do what it wishes nor the individuals just because it “won’t make a difference.” I am just trying to acknowledge that population size does play a role.

A parent’s role

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:54:01 -0400

I’ve always thought that this is particularly a tough question to answer:

How much blame can you put on the parents for the actions of a child?

Traditionally, I’ve always felt that the blame lies more with a child than the parents, especially the older the child becomes. I would not look into the eyes of a murder’s parents and tell them that everything is their fault. Each person has their own personality, thoughts, and will, and it is my opinion this is where the major push for actions comes from.

There is obviously something to be said when it comes to abuse or gross negligence (which you can pretty much equate to abuse). Those that are seriously deprived often tend to resort to the worst, but, using the extreme example of murder again, there is a big step between being deprived and resorting to murder.

When an issue is less black and white in morality, such childhood obesity is much harder to place a parents actions within the blame game. This particular article leaves no room for argument and clearly states that the parents are to blame:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Parents+blame+kids/2007553/story.html

but I personally find it a bit extreme. How many parents try their best to get their kids to eat more diverse food, or to join more sports teams only to have their children refuse and resist each step along the way? Basic body shape and genetics play a crucial role in the whole process. Some body types would require forcing a child into the gym many hours each day or to adhere to a very strict diet that aren’t exactly realistic options.

Yes parents should try to keep their children eating at least mildly healthy foods. Yes parents should ensure their children get at least the basic amount of exercise, and should encourage them to walk to some places rather than driving them absolutely everywhere. However, to say that the weight problem of each and every child is purely the fault of the parents is going to far.

How do you connect to someone you don’t know?

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:13:34 -0400

Patrick Swayze is the latest Hollywood star to die, and the public is already mourning his death. While he didn’t have quite the same following and fame as Michael Jackson (he’s not quite making front page news), he still has a loyal crew who remember him from movies such as Dirty Dancing. This leaves me with a very basic question: are people mourning the loss of the actor, or the character in the movie they had come to love?

I’m sure I’ve touched upon this before, but the reality is that as much as people would like know more, they almost never get to know their favourite celebrity. At best, they get to know their public image and what the media puts forward, which I’m sure rarely reflects the truth. With these obvious hurdles, how do people come under the delusion that they know their favourite star? How can they feel such a great loss for someone that don’t even know that it would bring them to tears or leave them in a state of depression? Then there are those who are more delusional and think the stars know them back…

I think it is this same mentality exhibited in those who idolizes sports stars. Some of them are the most despicable human beings to walk the earth, committing crimes, injuries others, stealing, all without a second thought or any remorse. Yet, just because they can walk out onto a field and lead their team to victory in a game, they are worshiped and loved as the best thing… well, “since sliced bread.” Who and what they are is completely ignored, and replaced with this imaginary connection. This isn’t limited to sports stars either, as I think Kanye West’s actions as the latest music awards showed, although I believe he fans are starting to come to terms with reality after that and the behaviour hasn’t been well tolerated.

This need for an imaginary connection to celebrities and the strong feelings that accompany it still baffles me.

MUN muck up

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:45:58 -0400

Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) decided to try to go green with the rest of the world by introducing a new special project aimed at reusing paper. Different offices of the campus were to donate used paper that they no longer needed, which was then to be used to make notebooks and sold back to students. I presume that only one side of each page had been used, so notebooks with one useable side per page would be the result and students were just expected to ignore what was written on the back of each page.

Their eco-friendly plan went awry when one of the offices didn’t bother screening what used pages they sent in. Sensitive student information, including names, addresses and SIN numbers managed to make their way into these notebooks and sold to fellow students. Ironically it was a student-run office that caused the problem, with pages from a fax machine being the ones donated.

First off, it was blatantly stupid and irresponsible of them not to even bother checking the pages before sending them off. They should know that they deal with sensitive information and made the effort to protect it.

I also question the useful of the project as a whole. The true goal is geared towards getting people to use both sides of a page. Simply instituting a campus-wide policy of using both sides of the page would have been far more effective. There really is no excuse for only using one side of a page, especially when most office printers these days can automatically print on both sides, and printing paper is thick enough that text from one side shouldn’t “leak” into the other. Add the extra expense, energy, and waste of the book bindings, repackaging, and energy to move them about and get them on store shelves, and the project really has lost its eco-friendly ring to it.

Army injuries

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:30:23 -0400

See a list of those who died while in the service of the army such as this one:

http://www.thebarrieexaminer.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1752144

is depressing enough. What is even more depressing though is that this ignores the other half – and it’s probably much larger than just half – of what happens to soldiers; I am referring to injuries that do not result in death.

No matter how badly injured a soldier is, or how close he is to death (whether you want to consider this as severely disabled or with a terminal illness), the very fact that he did not die means that they can report it in a different way. The extent of injuries and sometimes even the numbers might be hidden from the public.

Then there is also the reaction from the public to injuries. Because we often do not understand what is involved in each injury, we tend not to impose the same negative response to such incidences. The very fact that we see a list of soldiers who have died here, but I cannot find a similar list detailing injuries shows just how differing the responses can be.

To the individual injured soldier, everything is of course of the utmost importance. Severe injuries and disabilities often leave a person suicidal, wishing for death over the life they have been left. Even those left without physical injuries can be left mentally shattered and unable to continue a normal life upon returning.

The army is well aware of all of these points and even more so of how the media and public react to it. They do the best they can to turn each fatality into an injury, no matter how devastating the injury. This includes incredible money being poured into medical research to enable treatment in the field. So much money is available on the American side, that some of it actually spills over into Canadian research.

Is the army “evil” for doing this?

Not a question I am really trying to consider. They are an organization with a purpose and they are trying to fulfill it as best they can within the given limits of society, budgeting, etc.

Google Books Library Project

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:31:46 -0400

I think I was a bit too harsh on Google in my last post regarding the scanning and digitizing of books. I had focused on all the potential problems they could introduce in the digital form, which I argued may be the only surviving copy of the book in time – errors and all. Google has certainly thought of a lot of these problems and has already taken steps to prevent them.

Once example is the distortion of the scanned images due to the physical shape of the book – especially as you get towards the center – often results in words near the book spine to be lost. Google has patented technology to detect the three-dimensional shape of each page, determine the necessary angles, etc., and then flatten the image. This is especially important when using optical character recognition (OCR) to convert the image into computer scan-able text. This process is especially nice because it doesn’t damage the book as previous methods, such as removing the book binding itself, use to. When Google talks about scanning books, they’ve moved far beyond simple flatbed scanners or photocopiers that most of us are used to.

I also touched upon the topic of access to the books. I should state that books that are out of copyright and in the public domain are being made available in free downloadable PDF format. This certainly adheres to the spirit of the project of making books accessible to all and prevent older out of print books from disappearing from the world. Deciding what actually is in and out of copyright becomes harder as each country has their own laws regarding these, and access may be restricted on some things for countries outside of North America until Google has it figured out.

As for the copyrighted books, this is where a lot of the controversy surrounding what they are doing is coming. There will be charges associated with obtaining digital copies of these, and this money will be split between different people with the owners of the copyright hopefully making some money too. How exactly this will be done isn’t quite ironed out as far as I know.

As long as Google sticks with its do no evil motto, I’m still quite pro this scanning project, even if it results in some errors.

Streaming music

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:25:37 -0400

I’ve been through the problems present between the music industry and its customers regarding “pirating” a few times before. A few solutions have popped up here and there with iTunes pay-per-song being the most popular by far. The restrictions imposed by DRM were of course a failure and have since been removed from the music – in exchange for slightly higher prices of course. Streaming music (for a monthly fee) was another big option and Napster, one of the first large-scale successful music sharing programs, went that way after the music industry took them down.

Streaming options never seemed like much of a viable option to me. Who really wants to “rent” or “lease” their music. Unlike a car or something similar, your music collection shouldn’t wear out or devalue with one – unless your tastes really change that often. When you stop paying the subscription fee you lose access to your music. Moving to free streaming sites is completely different though Youtube alone has shown that free streaming sites are definitely viable.

In terms of using streaming as a complete replacement for music collection – that’s another issue. The inability to take them with you when you’re not at home, and streaming music won’t really solve that problem. I’m not saying that free streaming music sites won’t make it big – I actually do. People like music and people like free. I’m sure the sites will make plenty of advertising money from their ventures.

Will free streaming music replace pay-per-song services or even CDs etc. at the end of the day? I highly doubt it. The problem is that without internet there won’t be service and until the day where everywhere really is blanketed by wi-fi, it just isn’t viable when on the move. As for wi-fi actually being blanketed across cities… well I’ve already given my doubts on that subject.

Where is the trust?

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:35:49 -0400

My hot water heater rental company came by recently with an energy saver’s kit consisting of energy efficient shower heads, foam pipe insulation and a programmable thermostat. I didn’t know of this ahead of time and so it was a bit of a surprise. More than that, I was convinced at first that it was actually a scam. The first thoughts going through my head were that it isn’t legitimate and it is just someone trying to gain access to my house to steal or do something. It took many internet pages explaining the energy savings program to finally convince me that it was legitimate.

So the big question is how did I get so distrustful? And I don’t think it’s just me.

The idea of a company we use turning around and actually trying to legitimately help us in some way seems so foreign. I think we are too used to most companies, especially mandatory ones like energy-based ones, only looking out for their bottom line and not the individual customers. I’m still amused by the fact that all articles talking about the program still call it a “scheme.” The very word implies distrust and dishonesty compared to words like “program,” “goal” or “plan.”

Then of course the other half of the distrust problem lies in the scam artists that do take advantage of people. There are plenty who use false pretenses to gain access to houses to either steal directly or help in a later plot. Even if the instances are low and the chances of happening to you are rare, the report of a single incidence – especially by a large news source – puts the fear in everyone else.

As a whole, being so distrustful is bad, especially when someone is trying to help you. On the other hand, I think I’d still rather be safe than sorry. I mean, it did sound rather suspicious…

How much paperwork do you have?

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:48:47 -0400

As I was forced to open up yet another bank account today, I started wondering how many pieces of paper out there in the world exist for me, documenting my life and the information that some government or commercial agency feels is crucial to have.

Okay, so the reality is probably that most of the paper has been replaced by digital info on me (I hope), so at least we aren’t killing as many trees. I have also touched upon this topic briefly before when discussing how many number and e-mail accounts an individual is likely to have. The same concepts apply here too. Each person likely has at least a few accounts (chequing, savings, RRSP, etc.) and more than likely each person probably banks with more than one institute. (Please don’t confuse having the accounts with having money in them.) And that is just banking. We each have plenty of ID and every utility or contract that we sign (cell phones anyone?) creates another one. But honestly, if you were to print out all this info and stack it in a pile, I bet it would dwarf each person.

Trying to found out just how much of the information is out there is probably a bit more difficult. As to the number of documents and papers… we could be conservative and say 10 - 20 (although each is document /document is likely to be more than 10). Multiplying by the world’s population is wrong because much of the world is poor and actually doesn’t have these things. (Yes, it’s hard to think of sitting in a first world country, but that is the truth. ) Even in developed nations, some of the older generations still shun things like this, but that is certainly dying off with these people. So multiplying by the population of first world countries is probably more realistic. Unfortunately this is not a figure I have easy access to, so I can’t provide an answer now…

Anyone want to help out and find out?

Is education worth it?

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 21:05:09 -0400

“Stay in school.” It’s a motto drilled into our heads from a very young age. There are countless celebrities who have been recruited to spread this message, and I think it is safe to say that Mr. T is everyone’s favourite. (I pity the fool who doesn’t stay in school.) It’s probably a parent’s worst nightmares to hear that their child is dropping out of school.

The obvious question to ask is if it is worth it. The selling points for school are supposed to be a better job and a higher salary, which in turn is supposed to be a better standard of living. Let’s look at this more closely…

Some of the top earners in the world are celebrities – the very same ones hired to tell us to stay in school. The sad reality though is that many of these people have very low levels of education. School typically takes a back seat to shooting obligations for the younger actors. People like Demi Moore also always come to mind as some of those who dropped out of high school but still went on to be very successful. Obviously staying in school didn’t matter much in her life.

Then there are those who go to school and train hard for a certain profession… but can’t find a job. This problem is compounded when moving to a new country that doesn’t even recognize the degree. How many times have we heard stories about foreign PhDs driving taxis and the like? With much of the manufacturing industry moving out of North America, there are also many people in those areas that are highly skilled but not likely to work in their area of skill without relocating across the world.

Okay, I’ve probably been a bit too pessimistic in this post. The truth is that on average going to higher education will get you better jobs and high incomes. I guess what I was trying to get across is that luck has a lot to do with things as well and so there are many exceptions to this “rule.”

Genetic variation

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:29:31 -0400

Thanks to pop culture most people are aware that variances between people are a result of “mutation” at some point in their genetic line. While not on the extreme of X-Men, mutations lead to “alternatives” in traits. (You should remember though that most mutations are “non-viable,” making life not possible and are an evolutionary dead end.) I remember being taught back in high school that blue eyes are coded in the DNA very similar to brown eyes with just a few small changes. (Hopefully I remember correctly.) I’m not going to ask the hen and chicken question of which came first. What I wonder about though is the prevalence of this natural mutation.

I remember from this same class that though it is unlikely and rare, it is still possible for two blue-eyed parents to give birth to a brown-eyed child thanks to this natural mutation. Taking into account the probability of such a mutation occurring and the population of larger cities, you can actually expect such a mutation to occur for a given number of people in the population. With this in mind, I wonder about the Asian prevalence to brown eyes.

Yes, the mutation is rare and not likely to lead to blue-eyed genes, yet from what I was told you should expect to it happen occasionally. While going from brown to blue is even less likely, due to the dominance of brown-eyed genes over blue, given the size of Asian populations I would still expect this to occur at least occasionally. Yet I’ve never met nor heard of a non-fictional blue-eyed full-blooded Asian. (Sorry the character from Memoires of a Geisha is fiction!)

Maybe they do occur, but it’s not a big deal and the information wouldn’t filter its way to someone like me. Maybe what I was told was wrong and the probability is just so low that you wouldn’t expect to actually see. Either way, it’s an interesting thing to ponder. At some point the mutations had to occur one way or another to make blue, brown, green, etc. eye colours quite prominent across the world.

Zombies and vampires – oh my

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 20:52:11 -0400

It’s amazing how some ideas capture the imagination of the world so much so that persist from one generation to another and continue to remain popular. In particular, I’m thinking of the horror creatures of fiction: zombies and vampires.

Now I obviously call them imaginary and fictional, but it is important to remember that a few hundred years ago when the ideas were first birthed, people actually believed them to be true and took active measures against them. These ideas were definitely a result of the inane fear and lack of understanding of the world; when the mind doesn’t understand, it makes up something it can to explain it away.

Though (hopefully) we all understand that they are fictional, it doesn’t seem to have hurt their popularity. From year to year, there are still plenty of stories, and especially Hollywood movies, that feature these creatures. Granted they’ve evolved a bit, and details of what they are change from story to story, but the basic idea still appeals to us somehow. I myself am a great fan of these types of movies, and even when I know that they will be horrible, I still end up going to see them.

So great is their popularity that you can even find “news” stories written on them like this one where Science ponder ‘zombie attacks’:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8206280.stm

Yes, we Canadians are apparently leading the world in zombie research. Okay, so the work is really just a fun application of an infectious disease model. Let’s be honest though, if they had just published it as such a real-world mundane model, do you think this article would have been written and do you think most people would be interested? I don’t think so. It is only this fascination with zombies that leads us to try and be “logical” about it, applying “science” and “math” to determine how best to deal with situations and what are odds are.

For the record, curing zombies will only put off the inevitable. The zombie movies have it right when the they have the protagonists killing them off left, right, and center.

Post your crime on the Internet

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:14:12 -0400

I’ve already discussed the privacy dangers associated with many internet-related activities and want to touch upon a new “level” in this blog. Making evidence of yourself committing a crime is one thing, but freely distributing it on the internet is quite another. The reality is that once something is posted, it’s going to propagate quite easily and you have to accept that it’s likely that everyone will eventually see it – including law enforcement agents of some kind. Even if you later change your mind and want to take it down to cover your tracks, it’s too. Copying the media is too easy on the internet, and even if you manage to delete your original upload, someone else will just repost a copy of it.

Two recent Youtube incidents come to mind: A family that let their young child drive the family car, and a separate incident where a group of guys fired at some birds from their car, killing some of them. The first incident I would be inclined to think of as being rather harmless. They were on a deserted back road and the chances of them hurting themselves or anyone else was rather slim. I think plenty of parents have let their children have a go at driving before they were technically legal – although most probably waited until their children were a bit older.

The second even sounded like pure stupidity on the part of the shooters. They obviously were not being careful and could pose a potential danger. More than that, they had no intention of doing anything with the birds they did kill, which is not in the spirit of hunting. Posting this video online was just asking to be charged with a criminal offense.

In both cases though, the media attention that the videos received meant that law enforcement agencies would have to take action of some sort, even if they wouldn’t normally, lest it look like they were not performing their duty properly. My recommendation to you is to keep any evidence of yourself committing crimes as far away from the internet as you can.

Education techniques

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:13:53 -0400

Learning and teaching go hand in hand, and it usually hoped that the former is a result of the latter. Most educators also know that different people learn best in different ways. Most people can usually be divided in terms of learning best via visual or audio aids, and most teaching techniques reflect this. Students are provided with notes, often in the form of a textbook and a blackboard/powerpoint presentation. At the same time, the teacher verbally provides the lesson, and it is very common for the audio of lectures to be recorded too.

What is being discovered over and over again in classrooms around the world is that there is a large gap between a student learning a fact and understanding it. Much of our school systems and classes are centered around memorization where a student is simply required to regurgitate the lesson or fact on a test. The ability to apply the lesson in a situation is often not tested.

This of course differs from subject to subject. In mathematics, it is very easy to force students to show their understanding, and tests usually focus on the application of the knowledge. Biology classes are often harder in this aspect, especially when teaching something on the cellular level or anatomy, where it would be hard to give each student access to such things.

What is being rediscovered time and time again is that students need to be directly involved in lessons with hands on tasks in order to understand properly. Moving from explaining concepts in a class to having students perform the task – even if only a small part of it – in some form of “laboratory” setting quickly enhances understanding and the ability to apply knowledge in different situations.

The obvious problem with this method of teaching is the cost and resources required. Limited number of teachers and limited budgets is what forces us back into classes and learning from textbooks and presentations.

I think you’ll all agree though that “doing” always helps with understanding.

GM and eBay

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:13:34 -0400

I think that most of us are familiar with eBay as an auction marketplace for many of our needs. The service is well over a decade old and has progressed far from its roots as a market for Pez dispensers. The buying and selling of cars on eBay isn’t new either, but thus far has tended to be limited to the buying and selling of used cars by individuals. Like many areas of the website, we are seeing increased activity of commercial entities selling their products via the website. GM is doing the same for cars, and dealers have started to sell new GM cars via the website.

I definitely would say that this new scheme is part of a plan to desperately try to keep GM afloat and away from bankruptcy. It is generally well known that dealerships sell cars with larger-than-necessary profit margins and there is often some room for negotiation when dealing with a car salesman. This can range from extra features included for free to improved trade-in values for older cars. The eBay auctions are providing a similar means. While the cars are not being auctions off directly to the highest bidder, they are being presented with “buy it now” prices and the option to “make an offer,” thus effectively achieving the same bargaining power that has previously been available.

What changes is the human-to-human interaction. People who previously would have been too embarrassed or too nervous to have made a lower offer on a car can do so with the anonymity of the internet. Not having a dealer stare you directly in the eye, put his arm around you, and try to push you to a higher price probably makes the process a lot easier for some.

I’d be really interested to know if this partnership increases GMs profit or even if it increases the good deals achieved by consumers, but I highly doubt GM would ever release that information. I just hope the purchase price includes shipping…

Welsh and drunk driving

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 18:15:55 -0400

Since I recently discussed drunk driving, I feel that I really should discuss this recent case from Quebec. Roger Welsh struck and killed Anee Khudaverdian, a wheelchair-bound woman walking her dog on her 47^th birthday. Welsh had twice the legal limit blood alcohol content, 18 prior convictions for drunk driving, and continued to drive an additional 8 km after hitting Khudaverdian before driving himself into a ditch.

Any arguments I had made about adding leniency to drunk driving restrictions certainly do not include cases like these. This goes well above and beyond any arguments that difference in permitted blood alcohol could or could not result in differences to potential impaired driving. Welsh’s level certainly was not hovering near the legal limit. The 18 prior convictions also showed a clear pattern that cannot be ignored.

The first question to ask is what result punishments for impaired driving truly achieve if someone like this can just go back and repeatedly offend. Welsh is obviously an alcoholic, but one would at least hope that prior convictions would help him separate is disease and the operation of heavy machinery.

The second question, and this is the big one his judge had to deal with during his trial, is whether his behaviour warranted more than just a drunk driving conviction. In short, the question was whether he should be labeled a “dangerous offender.” In the end the judge decided against doing so, but the real difference this would have brought was an extended (and likely indefinite) jail sentence. Now this decision didn’t necessary reflect what the judge truly should have occurred, but more likely he was afraid to set a potentially dangerous prescient that could be abused to rob a person of their freedom and rights.

What occurred here was a very tragic event, and as usual my gut says that the person should be punished for his crime. Let’s just home the sentence he did receive will sober him up more and finally put an end to his offenses.

Gecko tales

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:34:21 -0400

Every now and then I come across something very random but very interesting that I like to share. This one is about the movement of a gecko’s tail once it’s been detached:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/science/15obtail.html

For those of you who don’t know, when a gecko feels threatened, it can detach its tail, literally letting it fall off, and run away. Doing this serves two important tasks: it distracts any would be predator as they pay attention and potentially even attack the tail, and it also lightens the “load” of the lizard enabling it to run away faster.

The detaching of the tail is old, well known news. What is new is that for some – but not all species – the tail actually acts like it has a mind of its own. Originally it was believed that the tail would only do a preprogrammed expected sequence of movements, and you couldn’t expect anything too involved from it since it could no longer receive signals from the gecko brain once detached. In this article, the researchers were studying leopard geckos and note that the tail can do complex and seemingly random actions such as flipping in the air.

The more complex the movement, the more likely a predator is to mistake it for an actual organism and attack it. The fact that they don’t see this type of behaviour in all species of geckos is likely do to the visibility of the tail when attacked by each species. If the tail is not likely to be very visible to the predator, these additional motions will not help much. For leopard geckos, the tails are very visible and therefore these types of additional motions will be very advantageous.

For those who think this research is a big waste of time, don’t forget that major breakthroughs often occur from studying seemingly unrelated and unimportant areas. Understanding how the messages of movement are transferred to the tail may one day lead us to a better understanding of how signals in the human body work and maybe even how to help those that are paralyzed by spinal cord injuries.

Cash for clunkers

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:13:14 -0400

After talking about the ineffectiveness of hybrid rebate programs to encourage people to go green with their vehicles, I thought I’d discuss a different approach that is used in the US. Essentially the government is buying the cars from citizens and intentionally overpaying in the process. People have an incentive to get rid of the car, and cars that are less fuel efficient and that tend to have greater emissions are pulled off the roads.

The benefits to the owner are obvious; they make some extra money off their car. If they upgrade to a newer car, increased fuel efficiency also translates into savings at the gas pump.

In terms of the “green” benefits to the country, this is probably more effective that the hybrid scheme. Rather than choosing between a already fuel efficient car and a hybrid, the most inefficient cars are being pulled off and replaced by one in these leagues. Those taking advantage of the program don’t even have to be buying a new car – which would actually translate into less cars on the road.

Some have argued that this program is just speeding up a process that was going to occur anyway (same argument made for hybrids). Rather than people upgrading or ditching a dying car over a period of many months, there is as sudden immediate spike thanks to the incentive. I’m not so sure about this myself. Cars tend to be “driven into the ground” unless a law or standard forces them off the road. Even if the program just speeds up the process, that in itself is important if you are looking at the environmental impact as that still saves on emissions. I must admit though, how much it saves and the effective impact it does have are not something I would know.

A cost per carbon savings calculation would require knowledge of just how much the government loses for each older car they buy, and I don’t believe such a comparison has filtered its way into the public domain.

Hybrid rebates

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:12:55 -0400

A little background before I really begin: Ontario is among those who have introduced incentives to buy hybrid cars over traditional gas-only ones through the introduction of rebates. Essentially you save money and the government hopes to reduce to the carbon footprint of the country.

Like all things political, it isn’t a stretch to think that there are ulterior motives. Let’s face it, the number one priority of politicians is to stay in power and using that power to enact what is needed is only secondary. In this case, looking “green” is fashionable. More than that, the recent government bailout of GM (read: government acquisition) means that they also need to become cars salesmen to keep their actions positive in the eyes of the people. The fact that you get a bigger rebate for a GM hybrid over say one from Toyota would seem to support this. (You do still get a rebate for foreign hybrids as to not make it too obvious.)

So, regardless of the true intentions, is the rebate system a good idea?

According to a study by the University of British Columbia the answer is no. Most people who take advantage of the rebate were planning on buying a hybrid anyway. While the rebate system does seem to boost the sales/use of hybrids, the carbon savings per government dollar spent isn’t optimal. The first point is that hybrids are often competing against fuel efficient cars so the overall carbon emissions savings is limited to begin with. The second is that cars are certainly not the sole source of carbon dioxide emissions. Spending the money elsewhere would likely result in more carbon savings to the dollar. Then again, spending the money elsewhere might be harder to advertise and not look so good for the politicians come election time.

You can read more about the specifics of the study here:

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/08/04/hybrid-study.html

Where to draw the line on drunk driving

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:38:20 -0400

I think drunk driving is a terrible thing, and laws limiting blood alcohol level while driving along with strict punishment for those who break them has saved many lives. The simple fact is that if you drive drunk, you are likely to make a mistake or reduce your ability to react to situations and end up in an accident, potentially hurting or even killing someone. This is not speculation, this is a fact.

The main question though has always been how do you define “drunk.” Alcohol affects different people in different ways. Some people are outright allergic to it and even a small amount will impair their ability to do most things. Others have built up a resistance to it enabling them to drink large amounts while still retaining the ability to do many things. The law doesn’t have the luxury of going case by case and uses blood alcohol level to simply define the line of what is drunk driving and what is not.

There have been recent changes in Ontario to the legal blood alcohol limit when driving, specifically lowering it. The current law essentially limits you to drinking one beer and waiting a bit of time before driving.

The question I have to ask is whether this lowering of the limit will save any additional lives? Did the previous limit really allow room for some people to legally get behind a wheel when they were in a state to danger their own lives and the lives of others due to the alcohol. The answer to these questions would require controlled tests and comparisons between the performance at the different levels. My gut feeling is that this change doesn’t actually save any additional lives over the previous limits. The only thing it would do would increase the number of drivers charged with drunk driving.

While I really don’t know for sure if my gut feeling is correct or not, I really do hope that someone did a test to actually confirm that the new legal limit would be beneficial before putting it on the law books.

GST “Loans”

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:12:35 -0400

Contrary to what we may think (or want to think), tax money collected by businesses don’t actually stay with the business and are instead handed over to the government, as well… taxes are supposed to be. Yes, they get handed over… eventually. This eventually part is where things can get a bit interesting.

The transfer isn’t automatic nor is it supposed to be. The money is collected and then transferred over to the government in lump sums at preset times. While this is happening, the money can sit in the accounts of the business, and they have access to it just like any other money they have. Interest earned on the amount is kept by the business and if they need a short term loan, they can dip into it and pay it back as needed. This really isn’t any different from those who owe income tax come tax time and pay it off at the last minute. All that money is technically owed to the government, but by hanging on to it you can gain extra money from interest etc. (If you regularly owe the government large sums of money, they tend to start collecting it more often than once a year.)

Where things get interesting is when the businesses hold on to the cash longer than they are supposed to. Supposedly this is what some businesses have been doing lately:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hETOsINjxkzj5k0GSkImw70BtRtw

Playing it right, they are only given a disapproving correspondence and no penalty, and in return they have an edge over other businesses in terms of available funds and extra income. This encourages other businesses that originally would not have done this to follow suit to gain the same advantage. As the news article indicates, there is a strong recommendation to institute penalties for this type of behavior both to discourage it as well as to level the playing ground for businesses that don’t partake in such tactics.

Making sense of information

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:12:15 -0400

Advances in computing speeds and memory capacity make for good advertising when trying to sell computers. What is hardly ever mentioned is the fact that demands on the computer rise at the same speed if not higher.

When CDs first came out, people were describing the vast amounts of information that could be stored on them, usually equating it to some very large library that would fit on it. In reality, we know that there is a very finite amount of useful info that can be stored, more along the line of a few hundred ebooks. This is because we don’t store information in text alone. There is formatting, pictures, and other features embedded that take up extra space.

Moving into the realm of video games, games have moved from fitting onto a floppy disk or two, to requiring multiple DVDs in some cases. Do we really have games that are 4000 larger? No, the games tend to be a bit longer with a bit some more features, but not in the order of 4000. To move from the 2D to 3D, improve graphics, etc. a lot more information is needed, and we see it growing exponentially.

I think this need for exponentially growing demands on computers hit me most about ten years ago when I tried to upgrade my web browser to the then latest version of Netscape and realized the system couldn’t handle it. Web browsers tend to be among lesser taxing software on a system, and, let’s face it, new versions tend to only have limited improvement over the last. Yet it is exactly this small increase in performance and features that pushed my system passed its ability to handle the information. (In this case it was more of a memory problem in the form of RAM.)

The same can be said about finding useful answers out of collected information. The more complex or subtle the questions we ask, the more data are needed to find an answer. Enter the world of statistics…

You own a super computer

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:11:56 -0400

I’ve discussed Moore’s law and the rapid rate that computer power is increasing. I’ve also discussed modern move to multicore processors for computers. While both of these are impressive on their own, the fact that we have been exposed to them so easily and for so long has probably made us numb to them. That’s why I want to take a step back and just put our “modern” computers into perspective.

Everybody has probably at least heard of the term “super computer” and perhaps even be a bit familiar with it. It refers to specially built computers, usually belonging to universities or large corporations, that are designed to be the fastest/offer to most computing power. They can handle computing jobs that the average computer wouldn’t be able to complete for many years if even at all before it would burn out and break down. These super computers are rather expensive, often big, and access to them is a bit restricted.

So, where do our modern computers fit in? Well, the computer from which you are reading this posting is probably comparable to a super computer from the early 1980s. Yes, if you were to take your computer back to that decade, it could likely outperform all the computers in the world and perform computing tasks deemed “impossible” for the average user. If you’re using a laptop, your computer is also only a fraction of the size and much more portable than anything available then.

Hopefully this comparison instills the same level of contrast in your mind as it does in mine. It makes you wonder what a computer 30 years from now will be capable of. The odds are that we will be alive the find out for ourselves! As for the computer tasks themselves that we can now achieve, especially compared to what we used to be able to achieve, that’s still a topic that needs to be addressed more thoroughly.

Addiction and privacy

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:50:39 -0400

I think this article is great:

http://bestwebnewsonline.com/burglar-arrested-after-checking-facebook-during-robbery/

It combines two major issues: internet addiction and internet privacy. The article describes a robber that was caught because he checked his facebook account on a computer in a house he was robbing and failed to log out. Not exactly difficult clues for police to track him down and arrest him.

So, point 1: the addiction. Checking facebook while in the middle of a robbery when you should be trying to get in and out of a place as quickly as possible certainly spells addiction to me. On the same level are those who insist on checking facebook while in the middle of class/work, every five minutes on their phone, and of course those who must “lock themselves out” when studying for an exam or working towards a similar deadline in order to force them to concentrate properly.

Point 2: internet privacy. I talked about this a lot before and the simple fact is it is so important that I will end up coming back to it again and again. Unless you are very careful, whatever you do on a computer leaves a trail. Even if the robber had signed out of his account, the fact that someone had gone on facebook probably would have remained in the browser history. The IP combined with logging into the account in the first place would likely make it possible to still track down whose account had been accessed. These logs are kept for most websites visited, within most programs for files recently opened, and of course on the computer itself. I’ve seen it happen many time when people access their “recent documents” only to find an embarrassing website, picture, or program pop up in the list, revealing a little too much about the person.

In this case the combination of the addiction and lack of privacy was obviously a good thing – it helped catch the thief. In general though, people really need to be careful about their internet habits and computer settings.

To delete a Facebook account

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:06:38 -0400

Normally I wouldn’t write a blog just explaining how to delete a Facebook account, but I think there are enough privacy issues and concerns surrounding these that it warrants a post. Sadly, the “delete button” on the account isn’t very easy to find.

Short instructions:

Go into the Facebook help area and search “delete account.” You should be taken to a page that has a link to delete the account. It will give you a warning that that the account is only deactivated and not deleted for the first 14 days. If you log back in before then, the delete request is thrown out.

I do want to emphasize that if you look through your settings and options on your account itself, you’ll only find a deactivate option rather than a delete one. Deactivation differs in that all of the information you had uploaded and entered into your account still remains on the Facebook servers and is still accessible by people with sufficient “authority.”

Yes, in theory deactivating your account should be sufficient to protect your privacy from most. However, even if it is not Facebook’s intention or policy for the information to be made public again or accessible by some, as long as it’s sitting on their servers there’s a chance it’ll eventually happen. Considering the amound of private information such as SIN or credit card numbers that are stolen regularly by hackers, I wouldn’t put it past someone to eventually target this information.

There is also the issue of your personal pictures being used for other less-than-desirable applications. When you uploaded images to Facebook, they essentially took control and ownership of them. While you may no longer want them displayed on your personal page, they can still use them for other purposes, and may even sell them for use with third parties.

If you are worried about your privacy because of your Facebook page, make sure you actually delete your account and not simply deactivate it.

Supply and demand

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:11:34 -0400

Supply and demand dominates the very basics of business practice and determines success or failure. While you might hope that there should be some form integrity in business, where honest work is done and a fair price is asked in return, I think this concept goes completely out the window when you hit large scale business.

While I understand that “it’s nothing personal – just business,” there are still a lot of things that really get to me. The first is internet access in hotels. As odd as it may seem, the more expensive and higher class the place, the less likely they’ll offer it for free. Higher end places know their average customer either won’t care about an extra $10/day for it, or is charging it some business account and so it isn’t there problem. Very frustrating and very dishonest.

The very notion of a hotel room is the same. You end up paying 3-5 times the cost of rent on a decent apartment in the area on the low end, and much more for fancier hotels.

Then there is food for sale in “closed” environments like in amusement parks, theaters, and planes. A 50 cent can of pop suddenly jumps to many dollars. A poorly made sandwich or other form of a meal will cost you $10 easily.

All of this comes down to the basic demand by people – you need to eat/sleep somewhere, and, well, the internet is pretty addictive – coupled with the lack of choices. You don’t exactly have Rogers vs Bell vs Acanac to choose from for your internet needs when you’re in a hotel in a foreign city for a couple of nights.

The only way to stop it would be to refuse the services. If no one pays for them, they eventually stop offering them or risk bankruptcy. But then again, the price is obviously balanced just tried that people will be disgruntled but still shell out the money. The supply vs demand curve will ensure this if the businesses remain viable.

My computer thinks you’re hot...

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:05:40 -0400

I’ve always thought that people submitting their pictures to ‘am-I-hot-or-not’ type websites were setting themselves up for disappointment. Anonymous people on the internet are rarely honest, and even more rarely nice. Submitting your pictures is likely just to get you insults or unwanted attention. In this day and age of continual computer automation, it looks like someone right here in Canada (Windsor, Ontario to be exact) has done exactly that. He’s created a program to screen digital images and rate a person’s attractiveness based on that.

Apparently beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder anymore as this program using some very specific traits to make its judgement. The distance between your eyes, or size of other features on your face are used to score you. The program isn’t untested though, and performs very well against human scorings on the same pictures as conducted in tests by the graduate students who developed the program. (We can only hope the human people doing the rating were being honest if not polite.)

While the program isn’t designed to spew out insults or compliments to the person, as many of the website users do in response to each picture, but has nobler goals. Rating the faces is simply a first step to facial recognition and other judgements. In particular, many diseases manifest themselves in facial structures. Down syndrome is probably one we are all familiar with, and the face of those who have it follow a very similar form. Other diseases are more subtle, and when human observers fail to recognize it, enter the program to try and do better. Whether a computer will ever be better than a human observer is still untested and unknown, but like most computer-related tasks, it’ll be at least be able to come to its decisions a lot faster.

As to the most likely applications of this program in my opinion, it may be more realistic to wait for it to hit social beauty-orientated sites than your local hospital.

Food is not a drug

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:06:13 -0400

It’s been a long while since I spoke about the evils of advertising, and, well, I like to think it’s because they’re not very original and tend to keep on using the same tactics. Then again, if we keep falling for it, then the jokes on us. I’ve talked about “trans fat free” and “low in cholesterol” schemes before. What I haven’t touched on is the new fashion of treating food as a health drug.

Pretending to embrace the new “health craze,” companies are pretending that they care about us and want to help. Like snake oil salesmen of old, they are heaping on plenty of promises for those who consume their goods. Vitamin fortified foods and anything with calcium or bran are among those spearheading the campaigns. Oddly enough it’s our “trusted” friends over at General Mills with their Cheerio brand of cereal that has gotten the government upset.

The latest advertising campaign for Cheerios (including “information” on the box) claims that eating the cereal can lower your cholesterol. Specifically they claim you can reduce it by 4% in 6 weeks. Yeah, that sounds just a little like a cholesterol drug. I’ve been trying to look for the supporting proof of this statement, but haven’t found anything solid yet. The company is rather careful to add statements to the effect of “when eaten as part of a diet low in cholesterol and saturated fat” when making their claim.

Canada has actually taken a harder line than the US over the issues, and according to this site:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/food+natural+health+product+drug/1615960/story.html

the respective boxes say:

“U.S. box: As part of a heart-healthy diet, the soluble fibre in Cheerios may reduce your cholesterol. Lower your cholesterol four per cent in six weeks.

Canadian box: A healthy diet low in saturated and trans fats may reduce the risk of heart disease. Cheerios is low in saturated and trans fats.”

As usual, I wouldn’t trust anything a company says to me in the first place, but I definitely have to agree that too many companies are overstepping when making health claims for their products.

The future of digitized books

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:45:00 -0400

So Google has taken on a momentous task of scanning the world’s books to create the ultimate digital library. This isn’t the first attempt at such a thing, but it is certainly the first attempt by an organization with so much money to dedicate to the task. This is especially important because Google is not limiting itself to copyright-free books and has already had to deal with a very expensive settlement to obtain copyright permission for many works. Should Google be able to roll out a proper business model based on distributing these digital works, they are likely to make the money back with some healthy profit. Whether the works themselves should be free and freely disturbed is not the topic I wish to tackle though. It is the works themselves.

Considering the age and the cost to scan and digitize some of the works, it is unlikely that the process will be repeated on many of them. This could very well mean that the digital product that Google is producing may be the only surviving copy of the work for the future. Should there be any errors, or should the quality be very poor, this could greatly limit the access to the work.

I have no clue what Google is doing to double check or provide quality testing on the scanned work, but I do hope it is substantial. I think most of us are familiar with just how badly things can go. Columns or ends of pages can easily be cut off due to carelessness or because they fold inwards too much to the spine on a book. If the resolution of the scan is too low or the pages have yellowed badly with age, the scan can often be very hard to read and any attempt to apply text recognition algorithms will fail.

The people who work at Google tend to be rather intelligent and techno-savvy, so I’m guessing there won’t be problems, but we’ll only know for sure as we gain access to enough of these works and people start to use them.

Turn the volume down

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:17:36 -0400

I think most people take their hearing for granted and don’t always take proper steps to protect it. The simple truth is that loud sounds damage your ability to hear. Very loud sounds will make you lose your hearing instantly, while prolonged exposure to lesser but still damaging sounds will slowly erode it.

Construction workers, airport workers, and other people who work in environments that regularly expose them to loud sounds are always provided with appropriate ear protection. Yet with all this protection in the workplace, people often then go and destroy their hearing with a common activity: listening to loud music.

Rock concerts and clubs are notorious for blaring their music too loud and people frequenting these places often notice an impairment in their hearing. However, the problem doesn’t stop there. Portable music players also play a big role with listeners enjoying their favourite songs a little too loudly while working out, taking a walk, studying, or even just hanging out.

This has not gone unnoticed and governments have started to take legal measures to help protect their citizens. In the European Union, MP3 players must now be preset with a maximum volume restriction of 80 dB, which is supposed to be equivalent to the noise of a busy street. This restriction can be changed by the end user should they wish, but the idea is that those who aren’t so technically savvy won’t change it and those who are will at least have to think twice about what they might be doing to their hearing.

I think such laws are pushing in the right direction. There are plenty of people who are too ignorant to know that they are damaging their hearing, and this is a good step towards protecting them. Since the restriction can be changed by the user, it doesn’t take away any fundamental rights of them, and the truth is that if a person wishes to slowly destroy their hearing, the government can’t really force otherwise.

“Clean” Energy

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:42:08 -0400

So it turns out that a lot “clean” energy sources, such a solar power, may require a lot of water for cooling and other purposes. Yes, yes, I’m trying to play as heavily as possible on the clean pun here, but the truth is that major water requirements will mean major problems. One proposed plan for a solar farm in the state of Nevada would require 20% of the states available water.

I’ve discussed previously the problems we’re going to be facing with water shortages in the near future. (A point nicely highlighted in the latest James Bond movie.) Countries like Australia and states like Nevada and California are already starting to experience these types of problems. Between the electricity requirements of a community and their basic need for access to clean water, electricity is likely to take the back seat, pushing these techniques into a non-viable range.

The problem as I’ve stated it is a bit misleading. It’s not that these processes need large amounts of water; they just need to them to generate energy in a easy and cheap manner. Similar methods can be used using much less water, but it would simply be less profitable to the companies. So, as always, the problems come back to a matter of money rather anything else.

I’m sure that electricity and water will always be available to those who can afford it. Where problems arise will be only with the lower “classes” or more specifically those with less wealth. Within each country that runs into electricity and water shortages, we will just see the average standard of living decrease as those within the median income range or below can no longer afford it. This creates a pyramid-like view of society with a few rich on the top and many poor and underprivileged on the bottom and there is a larger divide between the rich and poor, and what I’ve described here is exactly the situation for third-world countries…

Green roofs – Part I

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:03:59 -0400

Apparently you can be green with your roof, installing solar panels for electricity, placing your hot water pipes there to be heated up by the sun, etc., and then you can have a green roof. Rather than worrying about the grass on your lawn or the small garden you grow on the side of your yard, you should instead stick it all on your roof. Supporters of green roofs are making a lot of claims about their benefits and I just wanted to discuss a few of them.

The first is that they are actually better roofs. Now I’m certainly no expert on all of this stuff, but my understanding is that you are lucky to get 10-15 years out of a normal roof. Leaking when it rains, or collapsing under the weight of snow in winter are major issues that you should worry about. Encouraging plant life to grow on your roof that will have roots that can grow into it, that require water and will hold the moisture near the roof, and of course the weight of it all seem to be counterproductive for the lifespan of the roof.

I do understand that these roofs are built to have “root barriers” and “waterproofed” to protect against these types of issues, but how good can they be? If they really were so great and superior, wouldn’t all roofs be designed with them whether or not you’re going to be placing a garden above it? I think at best you might be meeting the average age of a normal roof, but you’ll be doing a lot more building and layers, with the accompanying expenses, to achieve this. As for the plant life itself acting as a barrier against the elements and prolonging the roof life, I’d like to see some solid proof before I can believe this.

Okay, so maybe you’re not trying to be economical with a green roof but would rather support the environment through it. Let me discuss this side of the argument in my next post.

Green roofs – Part II

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:04:36 -0400

In my last post, I argued why it was unlikely that people would convert to green roofs – where grass and other vegetation is grown in a layer of soil on the roof – for economical reasons. Chances are you’ll end up spending a lot more to keep your roof green than with a traditional one. But money isn’t everything, and for those wanting to go the extra step to help Mother Nature, this may be another path. So the obvious question that we really need to ask ourselves is whether green roofs are really environmentally friendly?

The big arguments I’ve heard are: they keep houses cooler in warm weather by absorbing more heat, in cold weather they keep them warmer by acting as insulation, and, of course, they reduce your carbon footprint in the world. I’m willing to accept the argument in warmer weather, but I really wonder what they mean by cold weather.

Most of Canada is blanketed by snow in winter and the weather gets a bit too cold to support grass and other vegetation. Does this mean that your roof goes dormant in winter or, worse yet, just dies off to regrow in spring? If the plants aren’t really active and growing, they can’t really contribute to insulation, and if it is just the soil that is doing this, there are probably better insulation materials out there.

Then there is the ever trendy carbon footprint argument. It obviously takes building materials to put together one of these roofs, with its own associated carbon costs. One source I’ve read estimates that it takes seven years of using the roof to become carbon neutral with the building process. This is a big chunk of the roof’s life – I’d say at least half – so I have to question how eco-friendly these roofs are. I’m also not sure that this calculations accounts for potentially dormant roofs that I’d expect in Canadian winters.

I think green roofs look amazing and are a fun idea, but I’m not convinced that they really provide much other benefit over a conventional roof. If they are eco-friendly, I doubt it’s helping all that much.

Steal from the tobacco companies and give to the poor

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:36:42 -0400

Some recent news: Quebec is suing tobacco companies to the tune of $50 billion for the health related costs they have caused the province. Quebec isn’t alone in doing this and is actually just following suit with the lawsuits from other governments (i.e., Ontario).

I feel the same way as most people: let’s screw over the tobacco companies much the same way they’ve screwed over their customers through the years. Study after study has been published about the health issues associated with smoking, and countless people have died as a result of cigarettes. (Although most are cardiovascular related rather than lung cancer, contrary to what many people believe.) It took a while for them to admit the truth, but the companies now paste health warnings all over their packaging as required by law.

So, even feeling this way, I still have problems with what the government is trying to do. Over the years, they’ve made things more difficult on both the companies and smokers in general. Mandatory health warnings on the packaging were just the beginning. Major taxes have been imposed on cigarettes (aimed at supplementing the health care system for smoking related treatments), and smokers themselves have systematically been herded into smaller and smaller areas in which they can smoke. (I’m not complaining about the latter!)

So why don’t they just go ahead and ban smoking altogether much like they ban many drugs for the safety of the public? I don’t think human rights and freedom have much to do with it. I think the reality is that the government just makes too much money from the taxes they collect from it. If I’m right, then the governments are completely hypocritical to turn around and try to sue them for more money. More than that, these lawsuits could amount to outright theft.

If the government is going to allow tobacco companies to legally sell their products and even collect taxes from it, I hardly see how they have right to then turn around and sue the companies for doing exactly what the government said they could do.

Obama and peace

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 18:35:52 -0400

To everybody’s surprise, including Obama and his supporters, the Nobel prize committee decided to award the Peace Prize to President Obama. This decision has left a lot of people scratching their head wondering what exactly it was that he did to receive the award. Personally, I don’t think he has actually done anything yet to warrant winning this award, and assume it has to be more of a political decision.

Some argue that the very nature of Obama, who he is, how he holds himself, and his attitude to politics, is a refreshing change from Bush, and this alone has lead to an easing of tensions in world politics. What Obama is and stands for is leading the world to a more peaceful time. Though this may be true, I am still left with the fundamental problem that this is merely a general feeling and there is still no proof of any peace that he has brought. More than that, it seems to be rewarding him for simply being elected, rather than any active move towards peace that he has done. I don’t really think that should be the spirit of the award.

Whether he deserves it or not, he has obviously won it and that will not change. Another question to ask is whether this is a good or bad thing for him. Some feel that it strengthens his position and reinforces that he was the right president to choose. Others speculate that because he hasn’t achieved anything concrete yet with respect to peace, this puts a lot of pressure on him to achieve something. If he doesn’t live up to the award in the end, he risks leaving a legacy worse than Bush where all his mistakes are scrutinized and questioned that much more.

I think it was a bit cruel and irresponsible of the Nobel prize committee to award him this so early in his presidency. If they truly felt he deserved it, they should have awarded it to him towards the end or even after his term.

Stupidity can be its own punishment

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:28:57 -0400

One of the truly odd news stories that has been getting a lot of attention is that of two men who snuck into the Calgary zoo after hours, bypassed the safety fences of the tiger enclosure, and proceeded to get themselves injured. One of the men stuck his arm into the enclosure and suffered serious injuries to his arm as the tiger grabbed and mauled it, and the second received milder injuries as he helped his friend to escape.

This level of stupidity is by no means unique. There are many stories of tourists and other visitors that get too close to wild animals, some ending fatally. What is interesting in this case is that the two men still technically broke the law – they were trespassing – and the decision as to whether to charge them needs to be made.

One could certainly argue that nothing the law could do to them now would compare to the punishment they already received from the tiger. If the goal of the law is to deter and punish, it looks like the tiger has already taken care of both. I seriously doubt these two men will try anything similar again in their life. I almost see the tiger attack as being like “time already served” towards any sort of sentence they could receive.

This type of situation and question can also extend to more serious cases, especially those involving parents who lose children do to what may be partially their own negligence. Does the law really need to step in and punish these parents even further after having just lost a child? Would punishing them further change anything?

If you’re looking to obey the letter of the law, the answer must always be yes, they need to be punished by society. Looking further to the spirit and purpose of the law, I really do think these types of situations fall into gray areas where the answer is not very clear.

Letterman confessions

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:25:09 -0400

Part of the latest gossip to hit Hollywood is the affairs of David Letterman, host of the Late Show. Lucky for his network, the story is actually a bit more juicy than that. Robert Halderman, himself a celebrity, attempted to blackmail Letterman to the tune of $2 million, threatening to write a screenplay and book revealing his affairs if Letterman refused to pay up. Much to Halderman’s surprise, Letterman actually went to the police over the matter and a sting operation was set up that caught Halderman.

It’s not surprising that the public would display so much interest over news involving a celebrity. What’s unique about this case is the high profile nature of both people, as well as the fact that Letterman came forward to the public himself rather than the information being leaked. In true Hollywood fashion, Letterman confessed all during the monologue of his show. He gave no warning prior to starting, leaving much of his audience puzzled as to whether he was making a joke or not. I’m sure there were more than a few nervous laughs coming from the audience during his speech.

So, the question is what should we think of Letterman? One the one hand, he did have multiple affairs with much younger woman who were actually under his employment. Some have argued that this falls under abuse of power. On the other, he has come forward, admitted it, and taken full responsibility in front the world, a level of honesty that we’re not really used to, especially from Hollywood.

But did he confess in such an open manner out of guilt and a sense of remorse? Let’s be honest, the whole controversy has brought him back into the spotlight, helping his career and putting a big boost to his ratings. It has likely hurt his relationship with his wife, but if that was starting to fail anyway (and I have no clue about that), it wasn’t exactly a big price to pay.

Either way, I’m sure his network is more than happy about the ratings the controversy is generating.

Demands on free products

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:03:46 -0400

It looks as if Google is under attack again regarding their maps, or more specifically their satellite and street view images. Two issues have come up. Street View has now been added to a number of Canadian cities and with it comes the usual privacy issues where Google is attempting to blur the faces of individuals and the license plates of cares that happen to be in their images. Errors and other issues are left up to individuals to report to Google for resolution as usual. The second is that Google’s “stitching” software that merges the separate images together for Street View seems to have some glitches. The most notable one is that it makes it appear as if there were two CN towers.

My question for everyone is whether we really have a right to complain so much about these things and nitpick small issues? The bottom line is that these services are being provided to us for free and we are really under no obligation or pressure to even use them. It is not as though our tax dollars are going towards these services. Sure Google makes money off of us via advertising and commissions on sales etc., but that is no different from advertising money going to many other sources.

The truth is that we get what we pay for, and in cases like this I’d argue that we get a lot more than what we pay for. Considering this is a very non-essential service being provided to us, we really can’t complain, nor can we be upset when they use the public to help fix their mistakes and small issues. If the whole service is very profitable then competition itself in the area will become a driving force for improvement, and we’re starting to see exactly that from Microsoft as they infringe on areas traditionally covered by Google. But we all know that goes both ways, and Google has been edging into Microsoft’s markets too.

Cancer: From mother to child

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:16:37 -0400

It has now been confirmed that a pregnant mother can pass along her cancer to her unborn child. It’s rather hard to classify this information. It’s certainly not good news. On the other hand, the knowledge can be classified as good and, who knows, it may even lead to a way of preventing it from occurring in the future, which is hardly bad news. The truth of this “discovery” though is that it is more of an answer to a riddle than anything else.

First off, let’s put this in perspective. This is an incredibly RARE event. Cancer on its own doesn’t occur every day and to everyone, and certainly the chances of it occurring during pregnancy are on the low end. To begin, people tend to develop cancer as they get older (it is much more likely in older age people than younger) and woman tend to be pregnant when they are younger, especially with their biological clocks ticking and eventually turning off with menopause. Even when the two events do coincide, the chances of passing on the cancer to the fetus is itself very rare.

The rarity of the event is exactly why it took so long to confirm this discovery. To confirm it, the same cancer had to first be spread to both hosts and then had to be discovered and examined in fine detail. Only by noting that the cancers in the two had the same DNA could they be confirmed as being from the same source – the mother. (Cancers always have unique DNA, being a combination of the individual’s DNA and the mutations that caused them to become cancerous.)

The key to the whole event was that the cancer cells were very unique in that they were stripped of markers that would identify them as being from the mother and not the fetus. In most cases, the fetus receiving cancerous cells would identify them as being foreign invaders and destroy them. It is exactly this mechanism that protects the vast majority of cases where a mother may potentially have the ability to pass on cancer during pregnancy.

The future of AECL

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:39:22 -0400

I hope you are aware of Canada’s unique place in the world of nuclear energy. The patriotically named CANDU (Canadian Deuterium Uranium) reactor enables the use of only partially refined nuclear fuels, as well as the waste fuel from other types of reactors. One of the advantages here is that you can use fuel for energy that does not need to be refined to the point where it may potentially be used for weapons as well. Considering the current sensitive political situation with Iran and nuclear energy, pushing them to a reactor like this would seem like a viable option. Holding the key, plans, rights, and, of course, understanding is Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a Crown Corporation – at least for the moment.

The government is currently deciding whether to chop it up and sell it off in pieces to private (non-Canadian) corporations. If this happens, Canada’s ability to manufacture and maintain its reactors on its own will quickly disappear. The fate of the CANDU reactor may also fall away into pages of history as the other companies opt and promote their own designs over it.

AECL is just a shadow of its former self, mostly due to politics. Canada has been shying away from buying its own reactors, killing AECL’s reputation in the international market. (Who would buy Canadian if Canada won’t even buy it?) On top of that, many of the current Canadian reactors in use are aging and need repair/refurbishment to run. This costs a lot of money, and the government has also been balking at that. The closure of the Chalk River reactor, formerly responsible for supplying a lot of the medical isotopes, has been giving the company a lot of bad press.

Between the damage to its reputation and the chance of being diced up and distributed, the company is facing a very tough time in its history.

Foreclosure on Geocities

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:55:06 -0400

Today marks the end of an era on the internet: Geocities is closing down. For those of you too new to the internet and not familiar with it, Geocities was a site that offered free web hosting. The name is derived from the “city” theme that the site used to organize websites with similar content into “neighbourhoods” – essentially just subdirectories. For example, Area51 grouped science fiction related websites, while Hollywood grouped celebrity and entertainment-based ones. At the height of its success, it was bought out by Yahoo for a few billion dollars. Not a bad bit of profit for the creators.

The decision to shut it down was done voluntarily by Yahoo and really marks and end to a giant mistake for the company. After shelling out a few billion on the deal, they had obviously hoped to make money off of the very popular site. Their first move after the acquisition, presenting users with a new user agreement essentially stating “we own everything you post,” did not sit well with the users and alienated them. Yahoo quickly changed is stance but similar moves over the years continued to upset users.

While the site never outright failed, it did not make a lot of money for the company and I’m sure it never justified the purchase price. In an attempt to recoup losses, Yahoo tried to push users on to paid services, crippling the free web hosting as part of the process. This final decision to close the free hosting, and Geocities with it, is just another step to push users to the pay models and the Geocities URL now forwards you to a page advertising these pay services.

I think outright closing the website down was probably not the best decision available. This is akin to throwing the last remaining scraps of what they paid for into the garbage and deserting them. The Geocities URL itself was still attracting visitors and potential advertising money, and there were offers from other companies to take it over for a share in any profits. One of these other options was still likely to bring them in further revenue.

Ontario handheld bans

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:53:22 -0400

Turns out yesterday was a busy day. Not only did Geocities close down but Ontario rolled out its new no-handheld-while-driving rule. This goes one step further than the usual no-talking-on-a-cell-phone rule because it also includes texting, hand held video games, etc. The usual exception – or rather lack of inclusion – on talking using hands-free devices also applies. Just ensure you dial before you drive off.

First off, the level of the fine can get quite steep at $500, but most tickets will likely be in the $100 range. That puts it roughly on par with speeding tickets, where $100 is on the low end with a minor infraction, and $500 is hitting to the steeper end just before they slam you with a court summons (around 50 km/h over the limit). All in all, I think the penalties are probably about right when compared to other offences.

The inclusion of all handheld devices also makes sense to me. The spirit behind the law is to make drivers pay more attention to the road, and texting or playing games is just as distracting – if not more – than talking on a cell phone. I still don’t know where adjusting the radio falls within this spectrum of offences.

As for rolling out the new law, supposedly you’re only going to get a warning (and maybe an info pamphlet) until the 1^st of February, so they’re not trying to be overly mean and fine the ignorant. I’m assuming this courteousy only extends so far, and if you’re really driving negligently, don’t expect any real leniency.

With Ontario joining the ranks of Quebec, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland & Labrador, this now presents a very good chunk of Canada enforcing hands-free only driving both in terms of area and population. I would be very surprised if the rest of the provinces don’t follow pace in the near future.

Freaky spiders

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:20:37 -0400

Back to a little bit of what I like to think of as the “curious and weird things in the world.” In this post, I want to talk about the largest web spinning spider found – that is the spider that is the largest among those that spin webs (Spiderman excluded of course): Nephila komaci. First off: the female spiders get as large as 12 cm, giving the species their record. The males only come in around two and a half centimeters, much smaller than the females, but this is pretty typical in the spider world.

Odder than the sheer size (at least to me) is the mating process of the species. In many spider species, the males have to sneak in and impregnate the female spiders when they don’t notice, risking their lives in the process, and often then sacrificing their lives after the process. In this species, the male does something similar, approaching when the female is molting and literally more vulnerable to the male because her legs and body are soft. What’s really weird is that when the process is over, he breaks off his genitalia in the female to prevent others from mating with her, and then proceeds to stay on her back fighting off any other would be suitors for what becomes the duration of his life. And to take all of this even further into weirdness, despite all of this, females with multiple male genitalia have been found…

So where might you find these spiders? They live in southern Africa, including the island of Madagascar. These spiders are actually quite rare and it was only recently that they were discovered in the wild. I have no clue how rare the spider is or if they would be considered on any form of endangered list. Considering the size though, it’s a bit odd in my opinion that they weren’t noticed before.

Facebook after death

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:54:13 -0500

A little while back, I remember seeing a Yahoo question from an internet user asking what happens to your Facebook account when you die. In typical internet fashion, someone wrote back with a joke that everyone has a microchip in their head sensing when they die. After you die, your Facebook account gets deleted. The answer was supposed to be farfetched enough that no one would believe it. Low and behold though, Facebook itself is answering this very question in hopes of improving its image once again with users - and the answer isn't that much different.

After a person dies, their page can either be deleted outright or “memorialized.” For this to happen, friends and family of the deceased are supposed to contact Facebook and provide enough proof (obituary, death certificate, etc.) to show to them that the death is real and not just an elaborate prank and then request one of the options. When a page gets memorialized, the account is blocked form future log ins, and the page is archived to prevent it from showing up in searches, updated status notifications, etc.

The big difference between deleting and memorializing is that the latter enables friends and family to still visit the page if they wish and post comments and memorial related things to the person’s wall. By advertising his service, Facebook is trying to emphasize that they sympathize with their users and want to make the ordeal as painless as they can by not having constant reminders to family and friends if they don’t wish. In cases where the death can be sensationalized, it will also prevent would-be gawkers from searching for the page and info for entertainment value, adding to the hardship and pain of those close to the deceased.

Supposedly this feature/policy has been around for a while, but Facebook is only advertising it now in response to comments from the public about these issues.

It’s the small details

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:54:46 -0500

I recently watched the movie Surrogates. As a whole, the movie was enjoyable but certainly not ground breaking nor anything that will really stand the tests of time. But a movie review wasn’t really what I was after in this blog. As I watched the movie, I couldn’t help but think that the idea was interesting, but there were so many things that were neglected in the story. I had to wonder if these were done intentionally or just because the writers didn’t put in enough effort.

Let me go through a few examples. The movie stresses the use of machines by people to remove themselves from the day-to-day risks of life. Yet, if you’re already building and controlling a machine that has superhuman capabilities, why did the movie always show the surrogates driving cars or riding on public transit? I keep thinking of the chauffer in the movie whose life it is to sit in his home controlling a robot that is controlling a car.

Point two is the very need to commute places. If you can remotely control a robot in a different location, why would you transport it back and forth everywhere? Surely you would just control a robot that is already there. Gone is the commute to/from work, or across the globe.

Another major issue is that it is the very sedentary nature of modern life that is killing people. Changing life to encourage even more sedentary styles will only lead to increased death and morbidity in the general population.

Sure these are minor points and not the focus of the movie, but single additions here and there like the machine giving the user a complete workout while they control their robot would have gone a long way to making the movie more realistic. I think it is small details like these that, when addressed in a movie, really help to separate the pop culture interests from the movies that will last from one generation to another.

The electronic textbook

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:42:10 -0500

eBooks are supposedly reporting record sales with triple figure percent growth rates, and Amazon is still reporting their e-reader (the Kindle) is a big seller. The reality though is that eBooks still only represent a tiny percent of books sales. Right now it isn’t the reality but the predictions that are still pushing the area forward. Lugging around lots of “heavy” books on holidays, during commutes, etc. rather than a light e-reader is the main argument – as I’ve expressed in a few blogs now. However, every time I hear this, I keep thinking back to textbooks.

For anyone who has ever had to buy their own, they know that they are definitely very heavy and very pricey. Worst of all, as soon as the newest addition comes out, they become worthless. Second hand bookstores often won’t even bother taking them because they have almost no market for them. You’re left either keeping them on a shelf to gather dust, donating them to a library, or throwing your very expensive investment out.

Honestly – textbooks would seem to be the best candidates for a move to digital. However, I the think the reality is the opposite. Textbooks often have large pages, much larger than any e-reader screen, because you often need to be able to see a lot at once, whether it is a large diagram, table, or even text. Being able to flip quickly between pages, especially when looking up answers at the back, represents a good chunk of time with a text, and doesn’t really sound convenient in e-format. Then there is the ability to highlight, write in the margins, or even annotate directly on the printed info.

To be fair, there is probably one area where digital does win. Textbooks are often used just used to look up a very specific topic requiring. Normally I would automatically think of the index at the back, but this may be the one area where the digital find command may be superior, giving one push to move to digital.

Weighing the pro(s?) and the cons, I know I personally would not be able to study or learn from a digital textbook with the same efficiency as I do from my hard copies.

The Disney image

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:07:03 -0500

The Disney corporation has grown well beyond what I can only imagine had been Walt Disney’s original vision. Spanning movies, shows, merchandise, whole channels, numerous theme parks and other subsidiary companies, it is certainly a company to be reckoned with that has its hands in a lot of enterprises. Throughout it all, Disney has insisted that they display a common image to the public: that of a wholesome family company.

Disney has gone as a far as distancing themselves from celebrities and others originally associated with the company should anything of them come into the public eye that might tarnish this wholesome image. Naked pictures or sex scandals (of any sort) are the most common “problems” that have arisen.

Despite all of this, Disney has joined the “sex sells” revolution in entertainment in its own way. Too many movies and shows run by Disney have kids, some of them very young, pursuing love in some form; I have personally seen eight-year-old children go on scripted dates on these TV shows. Yes, their concept of dates and everything is always squeaky clean and innocent, but you can’t deny that they are still fundamentally dates and bordering on the idea of adult relationships that include sex.

I know everyone has their own opinions on when it is most appropriate to start dating. Some parents have trouble letting go of their children and might prefer to see them never date (but getting married and having children is okay), while others couldn’t care less. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that it is a good thing to encourage “tweens” and prepubescent children that dating at their age is the “norm” and something that they should be thinking about or actively pursuing.

Let me not go as far as saying Disney is encouraging young children to start dating and move towards adult relationships, but on the other hand, I’d be surprised if some children hadn’t been influenced in this direction either.

Gene therapy – Part I

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:55:16 -0500

Gene therapy is a hot topic in the world of biology and medicine, promising to be among the next wave of breakthrough treatments. To understand what it is exactly, we must first understand the problems we hope to cure using it.

There are many inborn and acquired diseases that arise from malfunctioning cells. Many of them involve biological substances, such as proteins or enzymes, that the body is supposed to make but either doesn’t make or doesn’t make properly. Whether the body makes them or no is often determined by blueprints of life in our cells that we call DNA. Specific portions of the DNA that we call genes encode for these proteins and enzymes. People with these diseases typically have “bad” genes that do not have the correct “code.”

Because we know what code is needed to create the biological substance, in theory we could “correct” the person’s DNA and cure the disease. Inserting a functional gene into the person is the basis of gene therapy The big problem holding gene therapy back is how to deliver the new functioning gene into a patient.

Each person is made up of many cells, most with its own copy of DNA. In theory, a new copy of the gene must be inserted into each cell. Luckily not every cell needs to be corrected, and even if only a small portion are corrected, the patient may be cured or at least their symptoms may be alleviated. However, delivering gene into the specific places that need them is difficult on its own.

Viruses are currently being used in developing gene therapy techniques. Many viruses themselves are composed of their own “bad” viral DNA that they insert into host cells and try to take over, causing a person to become sick. By replacing the “bad” viral DNA with the “good” gene/DNA, the virus becomes a potentially effective delivery mechanism, which is then referred to as a “vector.”

Use of viruses and current attempts at gene therapy have resulted in some successes but still many problems that must be overcome.

Gene therapy – Part II

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:35:25 -0500

In my last blog I discussed how people may have “defective” genes, which are portions of the blueprint of life that we call DNA important for making us who and what we are, and this can result in various diseases depending on which genes are defective. If we know what is causing the problem, and we know what the “correct” working gene should be, we can try to insert a copy of it into a person suffering the disease to try to cure them. Viruses provide a very appealing method to deliver the new correct gene into the patient, and are referred to as “vectors.”

Obviously gene therapy isn’t a common treatment in the world yet, clearly indicating that there are still some hurdles to be overcome. In particular, earlier attempts to apply it to humans suffering from severe combined immunodeficiency (also called “bubble boy” disease) led to the death of a teenager and the development of leukemia (cancer) in two others. When considering whether to give such a treatment, we therefore need to ask whether the potential risk to the patient from the treatment outweighs the potential benefit.

In cases where the patient is able to live with the disease, it can be argued that the potentially fatal result of the treatment can’t be justified. In other cases, where the patient is likely to die or become extremely disabled, even if the patient does develop leukemia or die, any extra time or improvement in life the treatment can offer may be justified.

This is exactly what occurred recently with two young boys suffering from X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a disease that was brought into the spotlight in 1992 by the movie Lorenzo's Oil. The HIV virus, after being deactivated, was used as the vector to deliver working genes into the boys. Only about 15% of cells started developing the correct enzyme from the new gene, but this was enough slow the disease.

Hopefully the technique will develop to the point where no ill effects result, but even if the boys do develop leukemia or something worse, leaving the disease completely untreated could be equally as cruel.

Full-body gaming

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:12:11 -0500

I think Nintendo proved with their Wii that gaming interface is a major factor in video games of the future. Make it novel and fun, and you may dominate the market. Make it bad and, well, you gain some infamy. I think we also tend to remember the bad ones a bit more. Clunky Dreamcast controllers and the neck-hurting Virtual Boy both stand out in my memory.

So what is the next area to conquer? Following along in the steps of the Wii controllers, console makers want to continue to enable people to step into their games and interact more. Flailing your arms with the Wii remotes or standing on the Wii fit are one thing, but using every motion and movement to control a game has yet to be achieved. And this is exactly where games are headed.

Cameras, especially ones with two lenses to enable depth perception, will be used to map an entire person and their movements. Feature recognition, especially of the face and limps, will be needed. Companies are even hoping to be able to read the expressions off of people’s faces. And this is where I see disaster striking.

If companies try to recognize a male vs female face, or when someone is squinting or acting surprised, they open themselves up to misunderstandings. A woman whom the system insists is a man, or an Asian person whom the game continually accuses of squinting may feel slightly insulted. They may even feel insulted enough to initiate a lawsuit. (As for the latter error, I’ve already seen evidence of commercial cameras that try to detect faces and people blinking making this very mistake.)

Please don’t misunderstand me. I think the idea of motion mapping is very interesting and can work out really well. I just see the companies rushing their products to market too quickly, hoping to be the first, and making these mistakes. The line between a good interface and a bad one is very thin, and the manufactures can too easily find themselves on the wrong side of it.

Black box firearms

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:27:45 -0500

I think the black boxes placed in airplanes have gained a bit of a mystical status in the eyes of the general public. News sources are always talking about them whenever there is a plane malfunction or incident, and they always seem to be the “magical” key that will answer all of our questions. The reality of course is that they are just recording devices that will give investigators info on various things, including the status of the plane and what communications were going on within and to/from the plane. Now imagine if we could do something similar with firearms, creating a “black box” for them too.

Such a device could record if/when a firearm is fired, and when it is reloaded. In theory, the device could also determine where the gun was shot and what direction the bullet must have gone given enough sensitive detectors – although I’m a bit skeptical about this being achieved. The device could likely record audio as well, but I’m not sure how useful that would be. The device would necessarily fit into a “void space” in the firearm, such as the typically hollow handle.

Such a device would be ideal for law enforcement agencies, especially when investigating “accidents,” and can even be used more generally to monitor how much ammunition an officer/gun has used and when they might be low (or when the officer is using it excessively). It certainly would be an added level of “Big Brother watching you,” but, in theory, if everyone is obeying official rules and regulations this shouldn’t matter…(!?) I’m going to have to assume that anyone using a firearm for illegal activity would deactivate such a device, so the only ones affected by it are the ones legally using the firearm and obeying all laws.

Considering that these devices are likely to be costly, and the use/monitoring of them would also be costly, is all the added cost worth what we can get from using them?

Islam prejudice

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:41:43 -0500

Between 9/11 and other conflicts, public opinion and public fear have turned against those of the Islamic faith. They’re depicted as the enemies in our movies (always under the label of “terrorist” of course), and they’re scrutinized more heavily at borders and checkpoints. Much of it is the fault of extremists. Terrorist attacks, threats, and kidnappings are meant to and do instill fear in the public, and threats to public and individual safety must be dealt with. Some of it, however, is our fault and is unfair.

I’m not suggesting that security agents not profile – it’s done for a very real and effective reason. I’m just suggesting that harassing a woman with her young children as a “security threat” is probably not helping anyone. I’ve also heard of people with names similar to Hussein being harassed for no other reason than this similarity. Let’s not forget some of the media circus that surrounded Obama during his election just because of the similarity to Osama.

A much more extreme case of this is described here of a pregnant mother who was attacked and killed in a courtroom, in front of her child, and her husband was shot while trying to help her because security mistook him for the attacker:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8325451.stm

Both the actions of her attacker, as well as those in the security room were definitely influenced by pubic hatred and fear.

Public safety and response is one thing, but outright hatred and prejudice will only breed further mistrust and problems. This can only lead to worse situations. If people feel that the world hates them and won’t help them, their only option is to turn to those who will, and these people are often the extremists.

If you paint a people as the enemy and evil, no matter what the truth is, eventually they will start to believe you and react in response to you in the manner in which you accuse them.

Book thieves

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:23:03 -0500

So you buy a book and finally decide to sit down to read it. The only problem… the book is no longer there. Sounds like a book thief, right? Maybe not if the book you tried to sit down with is a digital one. There have been reports that Amazon has deleted copies of 1984 and other books by George Orwell deleted from their collections. (There plenty of Big Brother jokes connected with this, and I’ve read a few myself.) I certainly hope they issued a refund to the users at the same time, but I have no clue. It doesn’t sound like the users were warned ahead of time.

This event was actually a result of Amazon selling digital copies of the books without the proper permission from the copyright owners, and they were trying to fix their mistake by removing all the digital copies. The fact that they were able to go into private collections of users is the result of the user agreement that the consumers agree to when purchasing the book.

What we are seeing here isn’t something new; it is merely another facet of digital rights management (DRM). We’re mostly familiar with this from MP3s and other forms of digital music. At heart, you aren’t really buying the media, but “renting” it in a form, which enables stores to cripple how you use it and even your access to it. The idea of it all is just a bit foreign when it comes to books.

So, the real question of tomorrow may not be just a matter of how comfortable you are when reading a traditional book versus a digital one, but it may be what rights do you have to your book. Just because you put a book on your virtual bookshelf doesn’t mean it will be there later when you come to read it. For chronic hoarders like myself, this isn’t a pleasant notion.

Buried alive in a hospital bed

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:24:56 -0500

I think the idea of being buried alive is a fear that lives in the subconscious of many people. Not so long ago it was a reality, and even a means of punishment, for some people. Imagine being incorrectly pronounced dead and buried, only to wake up to this nightmare. (There are a few similar modern cases as well, but let me not tackles those events now.) I’d like to think that medicine has progressed enough to the point where this is a very rare event if it really happens at all anymore. That said, I think there are some fates equally as bad that do occur, and may even happen on a more regular basis. One of them centers around a condition called locked-in syndrome.

People suffering from this syndrome lose all control of voluntary muscles except their eyes. Though they can’t control their body, nothing is wrong with their minds and they become a prisoner of their own body. While this sounds pretty scary on its own, the fact that some people are misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state or a coma when they are fully awake and aware is worse.

One such incorrectly diagnosed case has recently come to light:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1230092/Rom-Houben-Patient-trapped-23-year-coma-conscious-along.html

I can’t even imagine what it would be like to sit 23 years with everyone ignoring you and treating you like you’re in a coma. I’ve very surprised the man did not go completely mad, and his comment that he “dreamed himself away” is probably a bit of an understatement.

I’m also a bit surprised that the man was kept alive for so long while everyone thought him to be in a coma. For each case like his, I would expect there to be many more where the hospitals eventually pulled the plug or feeding tube, letting the person die. That truly would be an experience much too close to be buried alive.

So, with this new horrifying revelation, I start to question again how modern our medicine really is that we can bury people alive like this.

Computer compatibility revolution

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:24:55 -0500

Computers in science fiction stories always seem amazing. They’re easy to use, can achieve amazing things, and never seem to have any issues. How often do you see a computer in a movie being rebooted because it froze or, even better, when was the last time that someone in a sci-fi movie struggled to use their PC? Yeah, I want one of those too.

The fact that Windows 7 has recently come out to effectively fix the mistake that was Windows Vista doesn’t instill much faith in me of reaching our visions for “perfect” computers of the future. Anyone who’s tried to get computers with different operating systems talking to each other via networks (even different versions of Windows) knows that the idea of interfacing random computers without any issues – especially between supposed “alien races” – is truly a work of fiction.

Beyond the technical difficulties of getting a computer to actually work nicely and flawlessly, I’m always more amazed by the computer skills and knowledge of everyone Luckily for almost any computer shop out there and specialized little companies with names along the line of “Geek squad” or “Dial-a-Nerd,” most people certainly do not know how to use their computers properly. The idea that people of the future will instinctively know how to use and master them is a bit too wishful. in the supposed world of the future.

You can certainly make arguments along the lines that as more people grow up with computers, the more computer literate the public becomes. However, even among those born in the computer generation, very few actually know how to master a computer. The ever evolving nature of the technology also means that no matter how familiar you are with a computer now, there will still be a learning curve when using computers of tomorrow.

All this ranting is just to say that whenever you see a “perfect” computer and computer user in science fiction, take the idea with a grain of salt. The realistic analogue of that futuristic computer probably will still need to be rebooted regularly, and the user will probably still be calling up tech. support as he gets stuck.

This is not “pron”

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:09:35 -0500

Maybe I’m buying into the “sex sells” phenomenon. Maybe I’m letting my writing flare slip too much into the world of sensationalism. All true I’m sure. Regardless, today I am writing my blog on pornography (or pron as it is often mistyped).

I’m not all base and shock though. I do like to link what I write about to something with a solid base and maybe even a bit of meaning. What I’m really writing about is a recent study by a Universite de Montreal scholar on the habits of men and pornography.

The scholar originally set out to find “porn virgins” – men who hadn’t been exposed to pornography before. They couldn’t be found. Not a terrible surprise there. The habits of 20 university students were studied in the end. What was found was that about 90% of exposure occurs through the internet now, with 10% through video stores. Exposure to pornography occurred around the age of 10, actively sought out, and corresponded to the age when they became curious about sex.

What I find most interesting is the link between pornography and their sex lives. There wasn’t really one. They easily differentiated between the fantasy of porn and reality. In fact, most rejected the image of porn star in their lives, opting more for the societal norm.

So the bottom line is that exposure to pornography did not “damage” these men. This makes a pretty heavy blow against those who see it as pure evil, a danger to woman, and leading to violence. This is added to similar proof that pornography in itself cannot change a person or their behaviour; showing heterosexual pornography to homosexual men will certainly not change their sexual orientation or behaviour. (Seems a bit obvious, right?)

I’m not suggesting pornography is good, endorsing it, or anything else like that. I think it’s just interesting to see some proof supporting the obvious. Pornography just “is what it is” and is nothing more sinister than that.

Is public transportation an essential service?

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:40:44 -0500

If you weren’t already aware, the transit workers in London Ontario are currently on strike and the end is not yet clear. This strike has stopped all bus services across the city, including shuttle buses set up by The University of Western Ontario for students. The reason behind the strike? Money as usual.

The workers are currently getting paid around $21/hour but feel that they should be getting more. They’ve compared their wages to various other workers in other cities, coming to this conclusion.

This strike has left people with only a handful of options – get a car, take a taxi, bike, or walk. The hardest hit are those in lower income brackets who can’t afford their own car, and certainly can’t afford the luxury of taking a taxi every day. Some have compared the realities of the strike: people earning $21/hour are demanding more money and in the process pushing people who earn $10/hour out of job because they can’t make it to work.

This problem leaves many wondering if public transit should be considered an essential service, preventing strikes like this from happening in the future. If many really are losing their jobs over this – especially within a bracket that does not have a lot of money and can’t really afford to be out of work – it is certainly essential for many to keep going.

This strike also lies in a bit of an odd area because it is a government business. In usual cases, if workers strike they lead to lost revenue for their employers. If they strike too long they can push the company out of business and lose their jobs in the process. When the city is the employer, it’s not really possible for the business to completely fail, so they have some job security there. In the end, it’s the tax payers and those who rely on public transit that lose most.

Tiger in the dog box

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 01:58:23 -0500

Celebrity news reporters are loving it. Tiger Woods having an affair leading to an argument with his wife that causes him to have a car accident. I’m pretty sure this ranks really high on the “bling bling” scale in their offices.

Okay, so there are so many directions to go with this. First off, is it true? Everything seems to be pointing to a big yes. So, should we really be discussing this? If we are nice and courteous people, probably not. But humans seem to love gossip, and too many people make the argument that Woods is a public figure, living his life in the spotlight and he chose this life for himself. I don’t know what to say there.

We can also talk about Woods as a person. Is he “bad”? Well, I’d like to think that a “good” person would remain faithful and not succumb to things such as affairs. But I’d hardly say an affair makes him evil. Being a celebrity and rich do seem to correlate a bit strongly with affairs. I’d hardly say Tiger is unique in the area either, and for each celebrity that does come into the spotlight because of an affair (or even each affair that comes into the spotlight – some celebrities have many!), I’m sure there are plenty of affairs that manage to remain hidden.

Is Woods trying to do the “right” thing? Well, it sounds like he’s definitely trying to preserve his marriage. A good chunk of his money has been pushed into his wife’s accounts and he’s reworked his pre-nup with her to encourage her to remain married with him for at least two more years. But bribery is hardly something that I would call “right.” And if his wife is really only with him for the money, that can’t be a very healthy relationship either.

Whatever questions we want to ask, I think one simple thing is true: Tiger Woods is definitely in the dog box!

The Space Traveler’s Wife?

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:43:46 -0500

I recently watched the movie The Time Traveler’s Wife. Yup, definitely a “chick flick.” As far as chick flicks go though, I’d say it was one of the better ones. I haven’t read the book on which it was based otherwise I’m sure I’d be saying the movie ruined the book. I do know that the movie pushed the emphasis off of the wife and onto the “time traveler” himself, and probably lost some of the points the author was trying to make about relationships. None of this is really what I want to talk about though. So here we go…

The focus of the story is on a man who has a “gene” that causes him to randomly travel through time. What is glossed over in the story is that he actually lands up in a different time and place in each instance. It is the fact that his travelling through space is so easily overlooked that makes me interested. Why is it so easy to overlook?

Is it because jumping around in space is something we’ve almost come to accept? “Beaming” in Star Trek or the theoretical physics concept of black holes – perhaps even the recent movie Jumper – might have helped with this. Maybe it’s the idea that time travelling somehow seems harder that we tend to focus on it. (I believe that anything that physics predicts would let you “jump” through space would also have a big effect on time too.) I admit that the ideas and the story of the book have little meaning without the time travelling, and the space travelling that accompanies it just makes the story more convenient and easier to write.

I guess where I’m going with this is that yes travelling through time is a cool idea, but there really should not be any reason for us to be more impressed with jumping through time than through space – in terms of a “technical” point of view.