Normally I have a serious amount of disdain for both drunken student parties and St. Patrick's Day but it has been elevated to new heights. On this St. Patrick's Day (also known as Get Drunk While Wearing Green Day) students in nearby London, Ontario had a gigantic riot, burning a vehicle and feeding the fire with gas and electronics.
Do you understand what you have done you fools? Your behaviour managed to make normal St. Patrick's Day frat parties look *good*. Normally we don't expect much out of those and would count ourselves lucky if all that happens is some breaking of furniture, some puking on sidewalks and an excessive amount of noise but this year we successfully added battles with police and exploding vehicles to the mix.
Most holidays deserve a pretty healthy bit of disdain. Valentine's Day is nothing but a worldwide guilt trip designed to part people from their money or make them feel bad about being single and Easter has pretty much devolved into a gluttonous celebration of high fructose corn syrup - that is, when we aren't being thankful that one third of the Angry Invisible Man In the Sky was only pretending to be dead.
I think St. Patrick's Day may well be the worst of the lot. Inspired by a catholic missionary and celebrated by excessive consumption of alcohol; there is little to love. At least Easter has the tradition of the Easter Egg hunt which is a very pleasant little diversion.
Monday, March 19, 2012
The nail in the coffin
It turns out that neutrinos do not, in fact, travel faster than the speed of light. Ludicrous internet claims of time travel, the end of causality and other nonsense can be put to rest as a new test has found with quite some certainty that the furor in September over neutrino speed was entirely without merit. We found out a short while ago that the original CERN test was in error and now a new test has confirmed a new measurement of neutrino speed clocking them at exactly the speed of light.
So science works, huzzah for that. Now we just need internet memes of 'turns out scientists were right' to travel at the same speed and with the same ferocity as 'Einstein was wrong!!111!!'. I suppose I am not alone in thinking that this is never going to happen. I suppose when scientists are right very regularly and wrong every so often people just aren't going to be interested in the boring 'everything going along as normal' news.
So science works, huzzah for that. Now we just need internet memes of 'turns out scientists were right' to travel at the same speed and with the same ferocity as 'Einstein was wrong!!111!!'. I suppose I am not alone in thinking that this is never going to happen. I suppose when scientists are right very regularly and wrong every so often people just aren't going to be interested in the boring 'everything going along as normal' news.
Friday, March 16, 2012
Back to backs
This morning I was walking across the kitchen toward the computer when I was suddenly seized by incredible back pain. I shuffled towards my chair and just stood holding on to the back of the chair for several minutes not feeling like it was feasible to sit down - anything but standing at ~10 degrees off of vertical was simply impossible. Finally the pain subsided enough for me to sit in my chair and eventually I lay down on the couch for awhile. Over the course of the day things have improved so that now I just have a stiff back and move around slowly with a bit of sporadic pain here and there. I have had back pain before, though never anything serious, and this really gives me a new appreciation for why so much unnecessary intervention has been performed on backs over the past few decades.
If my leg hurts I can just avoid using it, same for most other body parts. Generally with local pain it is possible to soldier on and do things differently but back pain is utterly crippling. When the pain first arrived I just could not move nor even think particularly clearly and although there is no reason that the pain arrived nor any sign of what caused it I was completely helpless against it. If this was something that happened regularly I would certainly be desperate to get rid of it and I am sure my doctor would feel the same. Unfortunately for the great majority of otherwise asymptomatic back pain there generally isn't much anybody can do about it. Rest sometimes works, normal activity sometimes works, painkillers sometimes work, but we just don't have any magic bullets.
I used to be surprised that people were willing to go through surgery for back pain since it clearly wasn't endangering their lives and recovery from surgery isn't fun, never mind the actual cutting itself! Most people suffer from back pain at some point or other and everybody wants there to be an understandable reason and a cure. Unfortunately we relied heavily on scanning people's backs and trying to surgically fix their imperfections without really registering that everybody has back imperfections and they don't especially correlate to pain. It is easy though to make these sorts of decisions when you are far away from the problem and much harder when you see people paralyzed by their pain who are desperately hoping you can provide a solution. Here's hoping my little episode is a singular one as I sure don't look forward to having to live with it on a regular basis and I doubt very much there is any relief medical science can offer aside from painkillers.
If my leg hurts I can just avoid using it, same for most other body parts. Generally with local pain it is possible to soldier on and do things differently but back pain is utterly crippling. When the pain first arrived I just could not move nor even think particularly clearly and although there is no reason that the pain arrived nor any sign of what caused it I was completely helpless against it. If this was something that happened regularly I would certainly be desperate to get rid of it and I am sure my doctor would feel the same. Unfortunately for the great majority of otherwise asymptomatic back pain there generally isn't much anybody can do about it. Rest sometimes works, normal activity sometimes works, painkillers sometimes work, but we just don't have any magic bullets.
I used to be surprised that people were willing to go through surgery for back pain since it clearly wasn't endangering their lives and recovery from surgery isn't fun, never mind the actual cutting itself! Most people suffer from back pain at some point or other and everybody wants there to be an understandable reason and a cure. Unfortunately we relied heavily on scanning people's backs and trying to surgically fix their imperfections without really registering that everybody has back imperfections and they don't especially correlate to pain. It is easy though to make these sorts of decisions when you are far away from the problem and much harder when you see people paralyzed by their pain who are desperately hoping you can provide a solution. Here's hoping my little episode is a singular one as I sure don't look forward to having to live with it on a regular basis and I doubt very much there is any relief medical science can offer aside from painkillers.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Canadian shame
Canada is set to fail where the US so recently succeeded in spectacular fashion: Smacking down an attempt by the government to put ridiculous copyright laws in place. SOPA died due to a massive internet strike and subsequent deluge of calls to legislators in the US but bill C 11 here in Canada looks like it is going to go through, stupidity notwithstanding. To be fair to my country C 11 isn't as bad as SOPA. It actually has a bunch of good things in it that modernize and appropriately regulate copyright but it has a gigantic failing point in that it enshrines the digital lock as something that is illegal to circumvent.
If C 11 goes through as written when you buy a DVD with DRM installed on it and then decide to copy it to your hard drive you will be breaking the law. Despite the fact that you own the DVD and are looking at it by yourself on the exact same screen you have broken the law by circumventing the manufacturer's attempt to lock the material. Even if you purchase a song on a device that later becomes obsolete or unusable you will be unable to legally transfer it to a working device. This nonsense is clearly pandering to the music and movie industries who figure that the government should be doing their enforcement for them and should be doing so even against all sense and reason.
The bill will be finalized soon and as expected the copyright lawyers working for industry are circling the government with fistfuls of cash trying to sell punitive and irresponsible additions to the bill. They would love to have SOPA type laws in it that force people accused of copyright infringement to have their internet access removed; proof is not required and the idea of innocence until guilt is proven is only a suggestion. If the Conservative government was actually interested in fact based decision making or even just doing things for the common good they could perhaps be relied upon to strike out the offending clauses and make the bill a really good, progressive piece of legislation but we all know that isn't likely to occur.
One hopeful note is that the digital locks portion of the bill may actually end up being unconstitutional. I am by no means an expert but a lot of people are saying that it is so out of line with the rest of the bill and so unfair that it will likely be struck down by the courts as soon as it comes before them. The government has no business making laws that punish people for doing things that corporations don't want. If a corporation wants this to be enforced they can simply get everyone making a purchase to sign a contract and deal with it through civil court like everybody else. The government has no damn business being the enforcer for unsigned contracts between buyer and supplier.
If C 11 goes through as written when you buy a DVD with DRM installed on it and then decide to copy it to your hard drive you will be breaking the law. Despite the fact that you own the DVD and are looking at it by yourself on the exact same screen you have broken the law by circumventing the manufacturer's attempt to lock the material. Even if you purchase a song on a device that later becomes obsolete or unusable you will be unable to legally transfer it to a working device. This nonsense is clearly pandering to the music and movie industries who figure that the government should be doing their enforcement for them and should be doing so even against all sense and reason.
The bill will be finalized soon and as expected the copyright lawyers working for industry are circling the government with fistfuls of cash trying to sell punitive and irresponsible additions to the bill. They would love to have SOPA type laws in it that force people accused of copyright infringement to have their internet access removed; proof is not required and the idea of innocence until guilt is proven is only a suggestion. If the Conservative government was actually interested in fact based decision making or even just doing things for the common good they could perhaps be relied upon to strike out the offending clauses and make the bill a really good, progressive piece of legislation but we all know that isn't likely to occur.
One hopeful note is that the digital locks portion of the bill may actually end up being unconstitutional. I am by no means an expert but a lot of people are saying that it is so out of line with the rest of the bill and so unfair that it will likely be struck down by the courts as soon as it comes before them. The government has no business making laws that punish people for doing things that corporations don't want. If a corporation wants this to be enforced they can simply get everyone making a purchase to sign a contract and deal with it through civil court like everybody else. The government has no damn business being the enforcer for unsigned contracts between buyer and supplier.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
A strange kind of bravery
Being a pedophile has got to be one of the more brutal burdens a caring person could bear. Just like with any other sexual orientation (including straight, of course) the sexual attraction to children isn't something people choose. Even those who see nothing wrong with it morally surely see how difficult and dangerous indulging is likely to be and it must be a thousand times worse for those who know how abhorrent acting on their impulses would be. You can choose what you do but you sure can't choose what you want to do. Dan Savage fielded a letter from a pedophile who was determined not to act on his impulses but was very much tormented by them last week and I think it is a really powerful example of how much of a disaster subsumed sexual desires are.
Rick Santorum was pilloried and had his name forever associated with 'the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the product of anal sex' for comparing homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia in 2003. The thing is, in some ways homosexuality is exactly like bestiality and pedophilia - of course so is heterosexuality! The difference obviously lies in that people can engage in heterosexual or homosexual behaviour that is consensual, harmless, and joyful while the same cannot be said of bestiality and pedophilia. The fact that these desires cannot be wished away, nor 'cured' through therapy nor removed in any other way we know of is clearly visible every time a new religious anti gay bigot is found having a drug fueled homosexual tryst.
I am lucky as hell. I want to have sex with women. I have a preference for redheads, blue eyes, a curvy shape, and pale skin. I have the right to marry and have sex with someone who fits those preferences (and the luck to have fallen in love with someone who fulfills most of them) and the rest I can at least indulge through porn if I want to. Pedophiles have no such freedoms or outlets. They can never allow themselves to live out their fantasies and even their virtual outlets are banned; rightfully so as clearly child pornography cannot be tolerated. I don't know how I would behave if my desire for women was considered heinous and unforgivable by society let alone if I considered it so myself and I have a deep respect for those who successfully shoulder that burden their entire lives.
This underlines the fact that we cannot get rid of our sexual desires. We can only accept that the drives we possess have a tremendous power and that when we prevent people from doing what they want to do we create tremendous suffering. We have an obligation to allow those with nonstandard desires to act on them whenever they can do so with consenting partner(s). In the case of desires that cannot be realized morally we should give whatever support we can to the people who have them. It takes a tremendous amount of bravery and will to live with such a burden and we would do well (and likely have many less cases of abuse) if we were better set up to support people in their trials.
Normal can suck it. What we need is for people to admit that we are all a bit freaky in one way or another, support each other in dealing morally with our quirks, and acknowledge that for some people it is much harder than others.
Monday, March 12, 2012
The Truth ruins my fun
I have lots of memories of highschool that are tied up in the ancient FWCI building. I remember fighting duels against Koosh in the art room with a meter stick clasped firmly in each hand, imagining myself to be some sort of fantasy hero. I remember arriving at school early and sleeping in the corner of the basement that had a warm water pipe underneath it making the usually frigid concrete floor warm and inviting; I kept an afghan made by my grandma in my locker to wrap myself in. I have good memories of playing endless games of Risk on the floor during my spares and bad memories of trying to join the basketball team and being a real failure of a basketball player.
The school closed a few years after I moved on and in my mind it sat there, forlorn and empty, its halls no longer echoing with laughter and tears. When I daydream I sometimes thought about getting myself a pair of bolt cutters from somewhere and sneaking back into the old school to wander around and immerse myself in history and memories both sweet and bitter. I thought about sitting on the bench near the music room, napping in a few of my old niches and trying to remember which classrooms contained which teachers back in the day. This reminds me of one of my favourite BNL songs.
Recently an old friend from Thunder Bay visited and told me that FWCI had been turned into condos. This shouldn't matter to me at all as of course I was never actually going to get myself those bolt cutters and break in; pleasant daydreams are one thing and actual break and enter is another entirely. Regardless of the unrealistic nature of my dreams they are now tainted, made dark with impossibility. I can't fool myself into thinking that some day I will return and things will be just the way they once were; I must face the fact that the world has moved on and you can't go home again.
Truth is a fine thing but it sure has a habit of smashing perfectly good fantasies to little bitty pieces. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
The school closed a few years after I moved on and in my mind it sat there, forlorn and empty, its halls no longer echoing with laughter and tears. When I daydream I sometimes thought about getting myself a pair of bolt cutters from somewhere and sneaking back into the old school to wander around and immerse myself in history and memories both sweet and bitter. I thought about sitting on the bench near the music room, napping in a few of my old niches and trying to remember which classrooms contained which teachers back in the day. This reminds me of one of my favourite BNL songs.
Recently an old friend from Thunder Bay visited and told me that FWCI had been turned into condos. This shouldn't matter to me at all as of course I was never actually going to get myself those bolt cutters and break in; pleasant daydreams are one thing and actual break and enter is another entirely. Regardless of the unrealistic nature of my dreams they are now tainted, made dark with impossibility. I can't fool myself into thinking that some day I will return and things will be just the way they once were; I must face the fact that the world has moved on and you can't go home again.
Truth is a fine thing but it sure has a habit of smashing perfectly good fantasies to little bitty pieces. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Healthcare Future
Our ability to predict a person's future from their DNA is getting better and better. There are a lot of really intriguing consequences of this for the way in which our healthcare systems are administered. As the linked article says I suspect this will herald the end of the American style privately insured healthcare system. There are two possibilities as far as that goes:
First, that the insurers are allowed to use genetic information when setting policy costs. If this happens then we will see the 'capitalist ideal' of people paying appropriately for their risk. This will likely price many people completely out of the health system and will lead to incredible abuses of power as individuals and companies wrestle to taint research results and lab tests in a desperate high stakes bid to arrange premium rates to their advantage. This seems like an utter disaster that would escalate costs even above their current ruinous levels.
The second possibility is that patients have access to their genetic information but companies will not; this rapidly leads to healthy people opting out of the system as the companies are forced to price for the least healthy people. Very quickly insurance becomes impossible in this scenario because spreading risk across the whole spectrum is no longer feasible. Quite simply only the extremely rich would be able to afford insurance against most serious illnesses and ordinary people would be stuck insuring themselves only against things that have no genetic component.
Both of these situations range from disastrous to untenable. Given that I fully expect that over the next couple decades we will see nearly all advanced countries who aren't already on the universal healthcare program to join up. In a system fully funded by the government people can safely get their genetic information and use it to try to manage their health without worrying about conflict with insurance companies. Clearly there is waste and abuse in a fully public health system and people who happen to be healthy whether it be from genetic lottery or lifestyle choice do subsidize those who are unhealthy but the benefits outweigh the cost by far. Eliminating the excess overhead of private companies and the intense arms race between patients and their insurers is easily a large enough gain to eclipse any additional costs of the public system.
One really troubling trend is that new treatments are becoming so much more costly than before. As research and new ways of healing people come to rely more and more on extraordinarily expensive equipment I expect we will see that healthcare become gated not by knowledge but by cost. Every new test that becomes available and every new affliction that we can cure creates additional strain on the system. Public systems do not have infinite funds and at some point in the near future I think we will see more and more researchers coming up with new cures and tests that work but which will not be funded strictly based on cost limitations. More knowledge is a wonderful thing but the pace of innovation is going to outstrip our ability to fund everything we discover. How our governments will deal with that time bomb is a question I have no answers for.
First, that the insurers are allowed to use genetic information when setting policy costs. If this happens then we will see the 'capitalist ideal' of people paying appropriately for their risk. This will likely price many people completely out of the health system and will lead to incredible abuses of power as individuals and companies wrestle to taint research results and lab tests in a desperate high stakes bid to arrange premium rates to their advantage. This seems like an utter disaster that would escalate costs even above their current ruinous levels.
The second possibility is that patients have access to their genetic information but companies will not; this rapidly leads to healthy people opting out of the system as the companies are forced to price for the least healthy people. Very quickly insurance becomes impossible in this scenario because spreading risk across the whole spectrum is no longer feasible. Quite simply only the extremely rich would be able to afford insurance against most serious illnesses and ordinary people would be stuck insuring themselves only against things that have no genetic component.
Both of these situations range from disastrous to untenable. Given that I fully expect that over the next couple decades we will see nearly all advanced countries who aren't already on the universal healthcare program to join up. In a system fully funded by the government people can safely get their genetic information and use it to try to manage their health without worrying about conflict with insurance companies. Clearly there is waste and abuse in a fully public health system and people who happen to be healthy whether it be from genetic lottery or lifestyle choice do subsidize those who are unhealthy but the benefits outweigh the cost by far. Eliminating the excess overhead of private companies and the intense arms race between patients and their insurers is easily a large enough gain to eclipse any additional costs of the public system.
One really troubling trend is that new treatments are becoming so much more costly than before. As research and new ways of healing people come to rely more and more on extraordinarily expensive equipment I expect we will see that healthcare become gated not by knowledge but by cost. Every new test that becomes available and every new affliction that we can cure creates additional strain on the system. Public systems do not have infinite funds and at some point in the near future I think we will see more and more researchers coming up with new cures and tests that work but which will not be funded strictly based on cost limitations. More knowledge is a wonderful thing but the pace of innovation is going to outstrip our ability to fund everything we discover. How our governments will deal with that time bomb is a question I have no answers for.
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