Originally written Wednesday, November 24, 2004

What is the point?

What is the point of writing a letter to the editor? What is the point of challenging an assumption or having a discussion? What is the point of me writing this?

Why bother writing about events in Iraq as I have done here? After all, nothing I say will change what is happening there.

Anyone who seeks to change things through knowledge and information is faced with that discouraging question: what’s the point?

I think the answer is simple: the point is to influence a decision, however small, made by somebody in some place at some time.

Change occurs as a consequence of actions. People’s actions are based either wholly or in part on decisions. A key human trait is the ability to make decisions based on knowledge, not just on experience.

So by speaking, writing, and educating, change can happen. The smallest decision can be worth the effort that influencing that decision took.

A case in point: a colleague, Scott, told me he watched Fahrenheit 9/11. He said that he would likely not have watched it were it not for our conversations about current events.

Deciding to watch a particular movie is a minor decision, but change ripples outwards from small events. Decisions to read a particular book or see a certain movie have changed people’s lives.

So if you are out there trying to make a difference and you ask yourself this question, or others ask it of you: don’t be disheartened. The positive effect you have might be far larger than you think!

Originally written Thursday, November 11, 2004

It’s interesting how certain beliefs that seem to be unrelated to each other are combined in very standard ways and adopted by distinct groups of people.

Let me explain. Think about the idea of conservatism. What issues come to mind?

Here are some I can think of off the top of my head:

– corporatism, unbridled capitalism, free markets
– anti-abortion
– in favour of the war in Iraq and the so-called War on Terror
– anti-gun control
– religious
– anti-gay rights

This is a broad range of issues that don’t all have strong connections. For example, conservatives are against abortion because they support what they call a “culture of life”, yet many support needless war, which is all about death. Conservatives support corporatism, capitalism and free markets, yet many are Christians, and Christ said that those who followed him should “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21).

Why is it that people accept beliefs (conservatism, liberalism) that cover just about every conceivable social and political issue, yet are often unrelated and even contradictory?

The issue of faith is especially important. Most people are religious, or at least claim to be, and there’s no doubt a significant number hold their faith as very important in their lives. The successful merging of faith, especially evangelical and born-again Christianity, with conservatism has become an enormous factor in US politics. The same has happened here in Canada although to a lesser degree.

For any revolution to be successful, it must encompass faith. The change that needs to take place in our society and across the globe cannot happen if religious people are left out. How can this challenge be met? What can be done to separate faith from conservatism?

The optimistic part is that the belief system held by religious conservatives really is self-contradictory. How does Jesus’ instruction to “turn the other cheek” when slapped reconcile with a policy of “pre-emptive” war? How can unrestrained corporatism be defended when Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”? (Mark 10:25)

(This optimism might be unfounded. Maybe a contradictory belief system is actually harder to change than a rational one.)

In a recent conversation I had with an insightful friend (that’s you, Luc), we talked about what could be done to break down barriers between groups of people. Most conservative Christians are strongly opposed to gay marriage and often gay rights in general. I think that for many, the root of this opposition (and hatred in some cases) is based on the primitive human fear of the Other.

Fear of the Other has driven human conflict since the dawn of mankind and that fear still drives international events today. One of the best-known ways to break this barrier is simple: make friends. When the Other becomes familiar and friendly, fear dissolves, taking hatred with it.

Would it be possible to create events that brought different groups of people together in an atmosphere that forced or fostered reliance, teamwork and eventually friendship between them? For example, a survivalist trip in the Northern wilderness. The event could be billed to church groups as a way to experience God’s creation, and to groups of gay activists as a way to get out of the city. ;) Create a stressful event – perhaps the “accidental” destruction of all of the canoes once the camping site had been reached – that forces the group of people to rely on each other.

Is this a recipe for disaster or could it see the outbreak of friendship among people who would not normally ever meet each other? (Perhaps it’s both – people finally break those barriers, then die of starvation.)

When Dorothy lived in Kansas, she experienced a very small world. Kansas is the middle of nowhere by anybody’s judgment, even a Kansan’s. But when a tornado swept her away to Oz, her world changed. She became close friends with people (well, an animal, a scarecrow and a robot) that she would not normally have ever met. They joined each other on the Yellow Brick Road and traveled with a common purpose.

I realize that this idea is not exactly ethical. But it’s just an idea, the product of a wacky brainstorm session. It’s probably not a good idea to mislead people into unexpected situations. But perhaps something similar could be accomplished in a different, better way. Maybe YOU can think of something. So why not leave a comment and let me know? I’d like to hear from you…

Bringing people together under false pretenses is wrong, even if in the end it would be better for everyone involved. It’s worrisome to think, though, that we may all be brought together because of some horrific catastrophe, like nuclear war and the ensuing nuclear winter, if we do not solve our differences. If that happens, we may wish we had tried every stupid idea we came up with to try and solve them.

Comment by Iliafer:

Thoughtful, nay, insightful, but here’s why your plan won’t work:

Quote:

“Would it be possible to create events that brought different groups of people together in an atmosphere that forced or fostered reliance, teamwork and eventually friendship between them? For example, a survivalist trip in the Northern wilderness. The event could be billed to church groups as a way to experience God’s creation, and to groups of gay activists as a way to get out of the city. ;) Create a stressful event – perhaps the “accidental” destruction of all of the canoes once the camping site had been reached – that forces the group of people to rely on each other.”

This won’t work, because one of the Christian conservatives will undoubtedly bring his hunting rifle on the trip to the great white north – our deer are bigger ;o) Then, when the canoes are taken away and the Christians and gays are forced to live in so-called “harmony”, the stress of the situation will surely cause one of the Christians to blow their stack, take the gun and shoot one or more mouthy gay person (because, gays tend to run off at the mouth ;o) j/k). No matter what, there will be power struggles (a la Lord of the Flies) and eventually someone’s gonna lose it. And, the conservatives will likely come out on top because they are the ones with the guns.

Sad, isn’t it?

Comment by Royboy:

Quote: ***This is a broad range of issues that don’t all have strong connections. For example, conservatives are against abortion because they support what they call a “culture of life”, yet many support needless war, which is all about death. Conservatives support corporatism, capitalism and free markets, yet many are Christians, and Christ said that those who followed him should “go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21).***

“Needless war”, that’s editorial… hence the premise isn’t terribly well founded.

From a religious perspective war is entirely necessary to smite the “evildoers”. This is bolstered with the “me” culture of America where ppl are actually encouraged to buy large SUV’s to keep themselves (and families) safe at the expense of the smaller car they smash into. Meaning “take the fight over there instead of here”. It is this ethos that narrowly won the election for Bush despite transparent shortcomings in execution. (meaning I disagree with the conventional wisdom that values issues won Bush the election) That certainly shored up his core support and got them to the poles… but for the undecideds that put him over the top IMO.

Originally written Saturday, November 13, 2004

The Discovery Channel can be pretty entertaining, and when I’m home briefly between work and class I sometimes watch 15 or 20 minutes of it while I’m eating. (I like the shows they have about engineering and monster machines.)

Yesterday I watched almost a full program about the “Hutchison Effect”. The Hutchison Effect is supposedly a series of effects (it’s not just one) that a Canadian inventor, John Hutchison, invented. Here’s a summary from a webpage that describes it:

The Hutchison Effect occurs as the result of radio wave interferences in a zone of spatial volume encompassed by high voltage sources, usually a Van de Graff generator, and two or more Tesla coils.

The effects produced include levitation of heavy objects, fusion of dissimilar materials such as metal and wood (exactly as portrayed in the movie, “The Philadelphia Experiment”), the anomalous heating of metals without burning adjacent material, spontaneous fracturing of metals (which separate by sliding in a sideways fashion), and both temporary and permanent changes in the crystalline structure and physical properties of metals.

I was immediately skeptical, just from hearing them talk about it during the beginning of the show. It didn’t help that Hutchison looked a little eccentric, or that he did all of his ‘experiments’ in his apartment using cast-away Navy and Army surplus equipment.

This guy lives in an apartment that has to be seen to be believed, it’s packed chock full of all sorts of crap, although it looks pretty organized. I’m talking wall-to-wall oscilloscopes, digital readouts, metal boxes, dials, knobs, chains and pulleys.

They started showing clips of this “effect” in action, specifically ones that showed its apparent anti-gravity powers. Each clip was a fairly close up shot taken from about 5 feet. They showed a wooden floor (you could see the bottom of a broom sitting on the floor) and a household object sitting on it. The object would then move a little bit and then levitate off the screen! Stuff like nails, a hammer, a wrench, a bowl, a bottle of 7-Up, tin foil, etc.

This was pretty interesting, I thought, but hardly conclusive evidence. I was trying to think up ways that you could make an object “levitate” like that, say, using magnetism, when it showed a very interesting clip. The clip was of a cup of a thick white liquid or syrup, about the consistency of creamy plaster. You could see a glob form at the top of the liquid, then rise out of the cup and go up off the screen! It left behind a spike in the liquid, if you know what I mean – like it globbed upward, and when it separated there was a kind of liquid string pointing straight up.

This had me impressed. How could you make THAT levitate? It’s one thing to fake levitating a piece of tin foil, but that was pretty convincing!

But I was still skeptical. I started trying to think of how you could do this as the show progressed. They then interviewed a guy from a US intelligence agency. They sent a team of 6 or 8 observers up to Canada in the early 70s to do tests and observe this phenomenon (I think the LSD craze permeated into the US military back then too). Well, it didn’t work out too well, because although Hutchison claimed that things happened during these tests, they ONLY happened when the observers weren’t there.

How convenient.

Then Hutchison went on about how he was worried that the US government could be using his invention to create weapons. As he talked, I suddenly realized how he’d faked his levitation videos.

In each case, the wooden floor is NOT actually a floor, it’s just a piece of wood. The videos are taken UPSIDE DOWN. He uses an electromagnet above the piece of wood to hold the object in place, and he’s got the end of a broom stuck on there to give the illusion that it’s a floor. Then, he slowly reduces current to the electromagnet, and the object loosens and then falls. Turned upside down, it looks like the object is actually going UP, not down!

In cases like the pepsi bottle or the white liquid, it would be simple to just put metal in the base of the container and hold it in place that way (the 7-Up bottle was closed, by the way).

The show was ending, and convinced that I would find other skeptics on the Internet, I ran upstairs and looked it up on Google. Well, there’s stuff all over the place, but not really any skeptics, at least none that really talk about how he could have faked his experiments.

Then I found a site that had a different video I hadn’t seen. You can see it right at the top of the page. It looks like a metal object jumping around. Hmmm, I thought – that doesn’t fit in well with my upside-down electromagnet hoax idea. Then I read farther down the page and found this (bolded emphasis mine):

I’ve received a number of messages about the above video-links pointing out that a string is clearly visibly holding up the toy-UFO that Hutchison is experimenting with. I asked John for more information on the purpose of the string, and received the following reply:

“The string is not string but #32-gauge double polythermalized wire on a takeup up reel with 20 to 50000 volts DC. The the main apparatus was turned on, causing the toy plastic ufo to fly all about in amazing gyrations. This was a pretest to gryphon films airing this fall for fox TV. I did not need the extra high voltage 2000 time period so the toy levitated without a high voltage hook up during the filming for gryphon there was a string on the toy no high-voltage dc but interesting movements.” – John Hutchison

This is the most ridiculous explanation I’ve ever heard. Someone sees the string attached to the object, and his excuse is, “no, that’s not a string, it’s a wire?!!! Then he tacks on a pile of mumbo-jumbo to try and mask the fact that he’s bouncing the object around on a wire!

Although videos are easily faked, it would have been easy for him to make the videos a lot harder to criticize. He must have known that people would have a hard time believing that he can levitate objects using some equipment he bought at the neighbourhood surplus store, or that an aging hippie who wears cut-off jean vests has managed to leapfrog ahead of Einstein and NASA. Levitating the object while pouring a glass of water from a pitcher would have been a good demonstration. Or simply standing next to the object. Or showing the object COMING DOWN again – I found that very interesting! The videos don’t show where the objects go, and it doesn’t show them coming back down. I wonder why?

The man is obviously a total charlatan. And I am extremely unimpressed with the Discovery Channel. I realize that they are in the business of entertainment BUT they also claim to educate. Yet there was not a single skeptic or critic on the entire show!

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the defense, “it’s true, I saw it on the Discovery Channel” when people are confronted with skepticism about some bizarre claim. The Discovery Channel is BOGUS, people!

If you want to read some skeptical views on a variety of hoaxes, frauds, and outlandish claims, go to www.skepdic.com, which includes a criticism of the famous Philadelphia Experiment mentioned near the beginning of this post.

Videos

January 29, 2006 – added some videos that purport to show Hutchison Effect.

Originally written Monday, November 08, 2004

Not long ago, I was talking to my good friend Wayne about George Bush and the latest terrible events in Iraq, including the recent study estimating that since the beginning of the war 100,000 civilians have died. (The majority of the deaths, by the way, are women and children and the majority were caused by American air strikes). I believe at the time I was explaining that I’d like to create a life-size George Bush out of pumpkins and sticks in my backyard, and then invite friends over to have a few drinks and subsequently a few whacks at Mr. Bush with a hefty stick.

That was when Wayne said to me, “Ade, don’t get consumed by hate.”

As usual, he’s right. And oddly enough, that’s what started this blog. This is going to be where I whack Bush’s pumpkin head with a literary stick. In the process, I hope to tackle various other vegetables posing as world leaders, and give my opinions on a wide variety of subjects. I hope you enjoy reading them, and I hope you take the time to comment, both on what I say and how I say it. What you think is what I want to know and by listening to you I hope to learn how I can improve what I write.

The challenge we face to take this planet back from the murderous lunatics who are bent on wrecking it is enormous, but we have to do it or suffer the consequences. I hope you’ll share your thoughts and ideas about how we’re going to do it. And if at some point you can’t take it any more, drop me an email: there’s a pumpkin with an uncanny resemblance to W in my backyard waiting for us.

Originally written Monday, March 21, 2005

Terri Schiavo is a woman living in Florida through the grace of medical technology who has been at the centre of a media firestorm for the last few days. She has been in a “persistent vegetative state” (as described by her doctors) for the last 15 years, after suffering severe brain damage due to a heart attack. She has no cognitive abilities as a result and will never recover.

Her husband has been fighting her parents in court, because he wants her feeding tube to be removed and they don’t (he says it’s what she would have wanted, they seem to be victims of wishful thinking and claim that she responds to them). He has won various court battles, right up to the state Supreme Court, but now Bush and the rest of the Republicans have taken up the issue because they claim they care about her. Perhaps they do, or perhaps a leaked Republican internal memo calling it a “great political issue” that can be used to stir up the pro-life religious right is more at the heart of their “concern”.

The controversy this is generating prompted a piece in the National Post called “Learning from Terri Schiavo”, written by Peter A. Singer, who is director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. In the piece, he recommends that people create a “living will”: instructions on what to do in situations where one is alive but is incapacitated to various degrees. You can actually download a living will template from the Centre, which contains all the information you need to create one.

I started thinking about this, and realized that there are certain things I would like to make clear in the event that I am seriously incapacitated for any reason, especially since various family members and friends could quite likely have some serious disagreements about what to do in that unfortunate event. This type of instruction is deeply personal and very private, and for that reason, I’ve decided to share it with you. Be warned that if you are upset or disturbed by frank discussions of (my) mortality this is not for you!

The template lists common medical conditions where others are called upon to make decisions about life-saving treatment. It lists mild, moderate and severe strokes; mild, moderate and severe dementia; permanent coma; terminal illness, etc. Then it lists the procedures that could be called upon to continue life: CPR, ventilator, dialysis, life-saving surgery, blood transfusion, life-saving antibiotics, tube feeding. It also outlines what living with a particular degree of illness would be.

For example, it says that if you were to have a mild stroke, you would have “mild paralysis on one side of the body. You could walk with a cane or walker. Meaningful conversations would be possible, but you might have trouble finding words.” And so on. A severe stroke means “you would have severe paralysis on one side of your body. You would be unable to walk, and would need to be in a chair or bed. You would not have meaningful conversations…you would need a feeding tube for nourishment.” Etc.

Instead of laboriously addressing each condition and each treatment, I’m going to give you the condensed version of what to do.

Anything that can be described as mild or moderate: if someone who has even half a clue looks at me and goes, “hmmm, that looks mild or moderate”, then dang it keep me plugged in! Don’t withhold my Cheerios just because I have a string of drool hanging from the left corner of my mouth. I may not be making much sense on the outside, but inside I’m swearing that if I ever get out of this high-chair I’m going to make you pay for that last head-pat and “gosh, doesn’t Adrian look darling today!”

Anything that can be described as severe: well, that all depends on what it is and on what it takes to keep me going. I’m not exactly sure why, but severe dementia does not seem like a compelling enough reason to me to say, withhold my food and water via feeding tube. After all, you don’t have any clue what’s going on inside my head – perhaps I’m floating through clouds and conversing with marigolds. Severe brain damage is another story. If I’m in a “persistent vegetative state” like Terri Schiavo for longer than a couple years or so and there’s no way I’m coming out of it, then it’s time for me to go. I want my friends and family to get on with their lives, not sit around my bed trying to find hints of communication in eye blinks or involuntary muscle twitches. In both cases, I would rather that extraordinary measures were not taken to keep me alive. Food and water is one thing, liver transplants are another – someone else could use that liver more than me, after all.

Permanent coma: According to the template, “you would be permanently unconscious…you would need to be in bed, and you would never regain consciousness.” This terminology seems slightly deceiving. It seems to me that you wouldn’t know if a coma was temporary until the person woke up, and until they do, you could claim that it was permanent. If you pull the plug too quickly, then you’d certainly be right that the coma was permanent, but I dislike that particular brand of certitude. For this reason, I respectfully request that you give me a few years to snap out of it, say five to seven years. And in the meantime, please be creative: I might wake up if you play some good beats, replace my usual water with a tasty rum & orange, spoon feed me streak (medium-rare please), etc. No, sex is not out of the question either, as necrophiliac as it may feel to you. (The word “you” is used very specifically in this last sentence, if you’re uncertain if I really mean you or not, then no, I don’t mean you. You know who you are. And aren’t.)

Terminal illness: keep me going, but please don’t drag it out. Just like you, I have to die sometime, and there’s no sense in prolonging life unreasonably. I would like to have proper and caring medical treatment but I do not expect or request exceptional treatment. And if anybody approaches you with a hare-brained scheme to, say, download my brain into a computer, or freeze me for revival in 2250 (just in case they need a decrepit, diseased North American for some reason), the answer is always yes.

After death: just because I’m already dead and can no longer influence proceedings, does not mean you can do whatever you want. Here are some quick pointers. Follow these or run the risk of haunting.

– No stuffy funeral home with worn carpets, strategically placed tissues and plastic flowers. No queues of somberly-dressed people. No obsequious funeral directors with their cans of niceties. Put me somewhere else please: someone’s house would be great, or maybe a classy establishment somewhere that has a liquor license. Perhaps inform people as they arrive that they can’t say anything just for the sake of saying it: they ought to either say something original, or just smile. Their presence is enough.
– No religion. I’m serious. No cross on the coffin, no cross on the grave. No priests, ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams, shamans or witchdoctors. No spouting a bunch of nonsense about me and where I am now (how on earth do THEY know?), where I’m going, what my life or death was supposed to mean, especially from people who don’t know me.
– Instead, a little happiness please. A little realization that this is all part of the great cycle of life. Some words from anyone who knew me that want to say something – in fact, encouragement of those people. Some drinking. In fact, a lot of drinking, if people are so inclined. Please, for safety reasons, no high kicks. If things get too stuffy, Levo is nominated to burst the bubble.

Comment from Alevo:

I still think we should stuff you. We can make your love wand particularly rigid for that special someone. If she moves on, at the very least, you’ll make a provocative coat rack. Which is more of a contribution than most can hope for in death.