Author: admin

One of the more interesting developments last Tuesday was the passage of a law in three states, including California, rendering it illegal for couples to marry if they are incapable of having children. The law extends to cover all barren women, impotent men, and couples in which the woman is over the age of 50 at the time the marriage license is sought.

“We fought long and hard for this law,” says Fred Wilmhite, leader of SANE (Society Against Nonmoral Entanglements). “For too long certain people have treated the sacred institution of marriage simply as a license for wanton sexual congress. Well, the day of reckoning has now arrived. The sanctity of marriage is based on its role in society as a solemn institution for the raising of children, and we must never lose sight of that principle.”

The new law was widely applauded. Even His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI praised the decision. The Vatican, which rarely comments upon the passage of U.S. laws, issued a special holy writ commending the American people for their historic decision, and expressed the hope that similar sanity would soon prevail throughout the United States and the world.

Harvard Professor and renowned legal scholar Harold Schustenblatt agreed to be interviewed for this article. “The urge to engage in sexual intercourse for purposes other than normal procreation is natural,” he said, “One might even say that it is part of the human condition. But, ipso facto, so is the urge toward murder, or theft, or the improper fondling of certain small furry animals.” Upon making this last point Professor Schustenblatt suddenly appeared to become nervous, taking a long moment to clean his glasses before proceeding with his learned disquisition.

“One must accept that society itself has real needs, and that the individual cannot – must not – be permitted to subvert those needs simply to satisfy his or her own wanton lusts. Were we to allow every man and woman who wanted only to engage in sexual intercourse to hide their actions under the cover of matrimony, where would we go next? Wouldn’t the law then require us to permit ten year olds to marry? Would you want to be responsible for legally sanctioning sexual activity between preadolescent children?”

We hastily agreed that we would not, and thanked Dr. Schustenblatt for his time. In spite of his busy schedule, the great man was quite gracious, spending considerable time after the interview playing with our pet hamster Sonya, and even offering to watch her for us on weekends.

Many constitutional scholars believe that this new law is only part of a larger trend. Once the precedent is firmly established that the sacred institution of marriage exists in the United States for the purpose of forming a family, tolerance for sexual relations between childless “married” individuals will likely continue to decrease.

As of this writing, there were no plans to revoke the marriage licenses of childless couples who were already wed when the law was enacted. And yet this generous tolerance toward the recognition of such sinful unions is not universally shared. Kevin Schmidt, senior Pastor of Bountiful Hills United Methodist Church, puts it rather eloquently: “Even were we to accept the absurd notion that women over fifty are even still interested in sexual congress, it is clearly not in the interest of society to permit them to continue to engage in carnal acts at a time when they are no longer capable of conceiving children. I mean, at some point we must draw the line and say no to acts of moral indecency.”

Pastor Schmidt, at the hale and healthy age of sixty three, followed the dictates of his church and his conscience by divorcing his first wife – the mother of his first three children – when she was no longer of childbearing age. He is now happily married to the former Desiree Gladstone, age twenty two, who as of this writing is six months pregnant with their second child.

A small but vocal group of dissenters, particularly the group PETE (People for the Ethical Treatment of Eroticism) has begun asserting that the use of phrases such as “the sanctity of marriage” as a justification for any U.S. law is a blatant violation of the separation of church and state. Government officials have been duly alerted, and these people are being watched, to make sure they don’t try to slip into each others’ beds just to have sex, under the cover of marriage.

I was going to post a blog that would comment on the election, or perhaps suggest a subtely skewed take on that airplane conversation I had with the young mystery actress. Or else I was going to compose a poem that may or may not be interpretable as a comment on my personal relationship – raising the veil or lowering it, depending upon how you choose to interpret my iambic pentameter.

But no.

Because on the way here, walking back to my computer, I had a revelation. One of those lovely and transcendent revelations that you who happen to be between revelations may find irrelevant and possibly insufferable.

I realize how astonishing it is simply to be here. To breath this air, to think these thoughts with these amazing brains of ours, to feel the joy and pain of physicality flowing through our veins. The accident of a conversation, the poetry of a glance. We truly are such stuff as dreams are made of, as Mr. Shakespeare was kind enough to point out.

I suppose that if we were ever to truly let ourselves realize the full power, the wondrous ecstatic joy of being here – a human being on this planet – we would go mad with the intensity of it all.

And so I allow myself, for just this moment, to tear away the curtain. I let myself admit the sheer delight that fills my heart, the honor I feel to be able to converse, to share converation with you. And you. And you.

I know that it is not cool to admit vulnerability such as this. But I cannot help it. Life is joy, and joy is life, and I am just so incredibly happy to be here with you.

Now that we have averted the threat of Sarah Palin getting within blow-torching distance of the U.S. Constitution, I can now go back to lighter-hearted pursuits. Although I’m still trying to keep my eyes on the big picture.

I recently saw a demo of a personal planetarium. It was a kind of dome turned on its side (you look forward instead of up), 12 feet across from left to right, and it cost about $40,000. For that you get an inflatable dome, projector with special wide-angle lens, and a personal computer complete with Universe-hopping graphics software.

Not having $40,000 to spend, and not really sure where exactly I would put the dome if I did, I’ve been opting for an alternate one-person solution that comes in at considerably lower cost – Ken’s handy dandy homegrown personal planetarium.

First you find the biggest LCD computer monitor you can get your hands on. Fortunately we have one of those cool Dell monitors in our lab, the 30″ diagonal ones with a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels. It costs about $1300 these days, and it’s essentially the same as the largest Apple monitor. I suspect they’re actually made by the same people, only on one the casing is black so you’ll know you’re in league with the Evil Empire, and the other it’s white, like an iPhone on steroids.

In either case, the other component of the planetarium is something you can get for about $15 at your nearest drug store. Go to the section where they sell the reading classes. Usually there’s a giant rack of them, with all different perscriptions. Find the strongest one – I found one with a prescription of 3.25 diopters. Try to get glasses with the largest lenses you can find.

If you put one of those suckers on, you can focus perfectly at a distance of about five inches. Anything further away looks freakishly blurry, but something five inches away is crystal clear and gloriously magnified.

Now all you’ve got to do is look at your super-big monitor with your super-strong reading glasses, from about five inches away. Voila – your very own planetarium. The image on the screen fills your entire field of vision. It’s quite amazing.

Of course you need to either write or find some sort of appropriate software to undo the perspective distortion of the parts of the screen that are off to the sides. But that’s just software – these days you can probably get a high school student to write that for you.

Every once in a while it’s nice to be able to see the big picture.

What can I say?

Oh yeah, I remember…

Yay!!

 

It’s important to say, nonetheless, that John McCain’s concession speech was quite lovely and gracious, and I think we should all applaud him. Tonight in his concession speech we saw the John McCain we knew eight years ago, the one who had seemed to have gotten lost in the heat and rancor of this campaign.

Even though we are being inundated by it, I still cannot get used to this strange claim that Barack Obama is “black”. Objectively, of course, it’s a nonsensical statement. Ethnically he is fifty percent of what people commonly call “black” and fifty percent of what people commonly call “white”. To call him “black” contains no more intrinsic logic than to call him “white”.

I realize that there is a strange contradiction at work here. On the one hand, it is certainly a wonderful thing that the next U.S. President might be a person whose ethnicity includes a group that has historically been so abused in the U.S.. The statement “a black man is President” conveys a sense of hope to millions of people who always thought that they were automatically slated to receive a raw deal, by virtue of nothing but sheer unreasoning prejudice.

Yet the very idea that somebody who is of mixed parentage is called “black” also works in exactly the opposite way. It’s an echo of the same old trick that the U.S. has been using to harm defenseless people for a century and a half: The ugly notion of “tainted blood”.

There was a time in the U.S., not all that long ago, when somebody could be labeled an “octoroon”. This was a term indicating that one of your great grandparents was of African descent – in other words, that you were one eigth black.

If you had this small amount of African ancestry, then until 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education) you were legally considered black, in the sense that white people could exclude you from most respectable accommodations (hotels, train cars, etc), whether or not you could afford to pay for them.

Think about how extraordinary this is: Someone whose entire connection with African ancestry was a single relative who had died before they’d been born – someone who had this one relative whom they had never even met – was nonetheless considered to be of African descent, and therefore unfit to be treated with respect by society.

Seen in this context there is something insidious about reflexively saying that Barack Obama is “black”. It perpetuates the pernicious tendency of our society to label individuals according to whatever component of their ancestry has the lowest perceived status. As though being “white” is some sort of angelic club of purity, from which all outsiders must be excluded. As though the blood of non-whites is somehow tainted.

And what’s bizarre about this is that (as I have said here before) anti-black racism actually has nothing whatsoever to do with people of African ancestry. These sorts of racist ideas are entirely a sickness of “white” people, a deep and horribly disfiguring disease of the psyche, a festering sore upon the soul, a moral incapacity that can cripple and deform the hearts of otherwise decent people, rendering them incapable of feeling for others with the full empathy which one human is capable of feeling for another.

I suppose on one level we should all pity “white” people who feel the need to identify Barack Obama merely as “black”. By clinging to such an absurdly reductionist label, they are publicly declaring themselves to be crippled in an essential way.

I for one welcome an ethnically mixed president. Perhaps his presence in the White House will help these poor damaged racists to heal. Maybe an Obama presidency will help people who have felt a reflexive need to label anyone not like themselves in an insidiously pejorative way. Perhaps these self-shackled souls will finally be made free, and will at last become ready to take their rightful place as proud members of this glorious human race.

Today on a flight from New York to Toronto I got into a long conversation with a very pleasant young woman. She told me she was an actress and I said “I hope you’re not somebody famous and I should know who you are.” It turns out that she is indeed famous, one of the leads in one of the highest rated shows on TV. Not having a TV I kind of miss these things sometimes. But in a way it was nice. I could relate to her as the person, not the famous role, since I’d never seen her on TV.

And it turned out that she was very interested in the work we’re doing at the University using computer games to help get kids – especially girls – more interested in learning math and science. Since the character she plays on TV is one that girls look up to, I said she might be a good public spokeperson for that, and the idea intrigued her. We exchanged info and we’ll see what happens.

You never know who you’re going to run into on any random day.

Today at the 2008 Machinima Filmfest I did a public demo in which I used a sensor device we invented in our lab to capture the motion of my hands, in order to make two animated characters walk around on a screen. It was a simple thing, this digital puppetry, but very important to me – bringing together two different areas that I’ve worked on, both of which I really care about.

The sensor measured the pressure from my hands and fingers. By varying position and pressure of my fingers, I could make each hand convey goals (walking, leaning, squatting, …) to one of the characters. The characters were “smart” enough to understand how to turn those pressure signals into human-like movements.

We had a panel discussion afterward, and somebody asked whether the goal for Machinima (a genre that records the actions of characters in a computer game and uses the results to make movies) was greater and greater realism.

I answered that people are not trying to make the actors in movies look realistic. The realism comes about only because the filmmakers happen to be using the materials at hand – actual people. The goal for a medium should not be to slavishly imitate another medium – that would miss the point. A book glories in the infinite possibilities afforded by printed words on paper, the theatre by the immediacy of seeing a live human before you, cinema by using moving images of real people to create a dream reality.

Machinima should be finding its own true nature, not trying to imitate conventional cinema. From what I’ve seen at the festival this year, I think it is well on its way.

Our society fears death. And so we build an entire web of serious boundaries around it, talismans to protect our psyches – the solemnity of religion, the highly ritualized cultures of hospitals and the military, the hiding away of homes for the elderly. Even the complete lack of thought that most people give to wondering just how that hamburger or lamb chop ended up on their plate.

It is easy to see why this is so. Most of us deeply fear the cessation of our own life. We know it will happen, but that inevitability creates an existential contradiction: To dwell on our own death too closely – to acknowledge that this life we are experiencing is all temporary – might drain the meaning from our lives. And so we fortify ourselves with a world of carefully constructed symbols to guard against such thoughts.

Which is what is so wonderful about Halloween. It is the one time of year when we get to laugh in the face of death. We dress up in silly costumes, pretend we are visitors from beyond the grave, decorate our houses with toy skeletons and teach our children how to carve pumpkins into grinning demons from hell. In short, we have fun.

I love wandering around New York City on Halloween night. It is the one night of the year when strangers smile at each other, all enjoying the same shared joke. Normally serious adults wander around the streets in outlandishly ghoulish outfits, and by unspoken agreement all cares are put on the shelf for one magical evening.

And in a way this is logical. The only way to truly laugh at death, to be able to summon an easy and untroubled laughter in the face of death, is to not fear it. And so on All Hallows Eve we instinctively go back to that one time of our lives when death had no real meaning.

For just this one night of the year, we each return to our childhood. For childhood is the only time of our lives when we know what it feels like to be immortal.

It’s been forty seven years since John F. Kennedy said, in his inaugural address: “And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” In that time so much has changed in this country, but at our best I think we’ve retained a core belief that hard serious work and a spirit of pulling together can make the world a better place for all.

In the last eight years this core belief has been buried. Our government has asked nothing from us other than to consume. Such disasters as the attack on the World Trade Center, the devastation wrought by Katrina, and other tragedies around the world such as the horrific tsunami that hit Thailand on December 26 2004 were followed not by a call from our government to rise to the occasion, to jump in and contribute our time and efforts, but rather a strange sort of spiritual void. If we were told anything, it was to shop more.

I think that this is relevant as we examine the two presidential campaigns, and how the populace has responded to them. McCain’s message is oddly dispiriting. When not engaged in oddball lunacy like trying to tie Obama to the Weather Underground, his focus is almost entirely on faulting Obama for the phrase “Spread the wealth”. And that’s where McCain’s strategy misses the mood of the country.

We’ve all just gone through a strange period of time where the encouragement of unbridled greed, a government policy that smiled upon go-for-broke lust for wealth at all costs, has led – literally – to the bankrupting of our entire system of capital flow. And in the midst of this mess McCain is building his message around the anti-tax symbol of “Joe the Plumber”.

But what does that symbol really represent? Rather than reinvesting our wealth in new Joe the Plumbers, citizens trying to build up their small businesses and contribute to our GNP and national competitiveness, McCain’s example seems to encourage an “I’ve got mine Jack” message of everyone for themselves. The image of America he’s projecting seems to be a pack of jackals fighting over the last scraps of food.

Obama’s message, on the other hand, seems to be that of a kind of corporate CEO who wants to reinvest in order to build up the corporate wealth. Encourage new businesses, give tax breaks to the small entrepreneurs just starting out, use the revenue base to help develop new economic centers of growth. And he points out that this kind of plan is only effective if it’s long term. We need to invest in education – and also adequate health care for those kids we’re educating – because not to do so is tantamount to eating your seed corn.

It’s the message that any sensible leader conveys – and that Kennedy phrased so eloquently in 1961. Fundamentally people don’t want to be jackals. It’s a sickly, ugly feeling to realize that for the last eight years your government has been encouraging you to trade away your humanity, your core sense of decency and interconnectedness with your countrymen, for a temporary illusion of fiscal security. More calls to naked greed and selfishness are the last messages that America is in the mood to hear right now.

While McCain’s message fails to connect, Obama’s message succeeds because it is sensible, and fundamentally it fits the American ethos. Collectively we direct our tax money – and our time in volunteering for public service – not to create some sort of blind senseless socialism, but as a kind of cooperative capitalism in which we increase our pool of productive citizens, and the collective well-being of those productive citizens. This is what America does best, and it’s about time we got back to it by putting in the real work – the hard work – that we know we are capable of.

My friend Jon and I were talking over dinner this evening about the theme in Science Fiction stories of “circular causailty” triggered by time travel. In its most common form, this theme shows up as an invention that exists in the future and is brought back into the past by a time traveler, thereby causing the future invention to exist.

Nowadays most people are probably familiar with this concept from James Cameron’s “Terminator” series of films (and more recently TV serial). In the second film of the series, we find that the computer chip which causes machines to be sentient was “invented” by the scientist Miles Dyson (played by Joe Morton) who had actually lifted all the ideas from a computer chip that had traveled back from the future.

Long before Cameron was throwing these concepts around, Robert A Heinlein wrote “The Door Into Summer”, originally published in 1956, a novel in which an inventor travels thirty years into the future through suspended animation, discovers that ideas he had been vaguely thinking about are now ubiquitous inventions, and then sets about time-traveling back to the past to recreate those inventions, in order to make sure the future turns out right.

There are other stories with this general theme, but I think those two may be the most iconic. In my opinion this entire concept breaks an important implied contract with the reader. Allow me to explain.

Sci Fi generally starts off with some non-real premise – time travel, parallel universes, an encounter between two intelligent species, an unexpected mutation. A world is then rendered that is quite consistent within the ground rules of the initial premise. This is why Sci Fi can be so useful as political or social allegory – it removes us to a “safe” alternate place to allow frank discussions of technological hubris, prejudice, xenophobia, overpopulatin, and other issues that may be more easily assayed with the dispassion that comes from distance.

What disturbs me about the concept of circular causality is that it does something else entirely: It destroys the distinction between “human mind” and “the world outside the human mind”. Where do these inventions come from, if not from human minds? They are, after all inventions. The authors are clearly not suggesting some sort of deity at work. Rather, the inventions seem to spring full blown from the Æther, a kind of heavy handed Deus ex Machina imposed by the author for plot convenience. By presenting us with a logical impossibility, the author gives us no self-consistent premise from which to push off.

When it resorts to this kind of transparent intellectual fakery, Sci Fi runs the risk of losing its immense allegorical power. When an author posits an invention that invents itself, he leaves us an allegory that uninvents itself.