"Stand back, I'm going to try science!"

I have just started dating a fabulous woman named Karli.  This post could easily be just about that, she is an extraordinary person* and I'm very happy and a little bit in shock, but I'll try to stay on topic.

We had our First Official Date** on Friday, and the venue was a surprise for me.  Karli had mysteriously asked if I liked science, and my reply was "Yes, of course."  And then I said, "But don't tell me anything else, I'd like to be surprised."

In the fullness of time, Friday arrived, and after dinner I found myself happily standing in line at Science World, located at the east end of False Creek.  In the ten years I've been living in Vancouver, I've never made my way to Science World - I'd seen hordes of small children surrounding the building when I've walked by, and that had left me with the impression that it was pretty much a kid's attraction.

Little did I know that, as with many similar attractions around the world, Science World presents an After Dark evening event on a regular basis, for which the age limit is 19+, and alcohol is served.

So, in we went, and spent the next three hours, drinks in hand, exploring the various interactive exhibits - hampered only slightly by the knee-level child-friendly setup for most of them.

Given that science fiction is at least half science***, I think it's common that a lot of SF fans keep in touch with scientific developments.  After all, things like the exploration of Mars by robots or landing probes on comets were science fiction topics twenty years ago, and it's gratifying to see how we are slowly moving toward the realization of that science fiction future, the one in which we begin to explore more and more of our solar system and perhaps even start living on other planets. 

But in some ways this is also a challenging time for the scientific community.  The cover story on this month's National Geographic sums it up:

 

How strange and unexpected is it that we can be standing here on the edge of the universe, just starting to reach out and touch it, explore it, learn about it, and there are people who are presumably educated and otherwise intelligent who are unable to accept the basic physical truths of that universe? 

But there's hope.  After all, when NASA first posted a live video feed from Mars, the volume of interest was so high that it repeatedly crashed their servers.  Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has 1.28 million followers on Twitter™.  And on Friday night, I shared Science World with a genial, happy group of people who thought it would be a fun thing to spend Friday night playing science games.

Thanks again, Karli, I had a wonderful time.

- Sid

* She is smart, clever, perceptive, and gorgeous - based on votes to date, at least, six people have voted gorgeous, one beautiful.  Okay, seven people, I'm going to vote gorgeous as well.

** Previous to Friday we were in beta testing.  User comments were favourable.

*** Well, by letter count, exactly half, but that's not really how it works.

Toadies, Sycophants, and Lickspittles.

There's a particular cliché that seems to have become a fixture in adventure movies: the villain's cringing, cowardly sidekick, who licks his master's boots while abusing all below him.  These cardboard characters tend to suffer from bad dental hygiene and blemished skin, often provide comedic relief, and generally come to a bad end. In The Mummy, it's Beni, with his ambiguous accent and fez; in The Two Towers, it's Grimà Wormtongue, who comes to a much worse end in the book; and In The Battle of the Five Armies, the final segment of The Hobbit film trilogy, this character is Alfrid, flunky to the Master of Laketown.

Alfrid is thoroughly detestable. He abuses women and cripples, he sleeps on guard duty, he disguises himself as a crone to avoid fighting the orcs, and is despised by one and all.  Astonishingly, he seems to make a clean getaway at the end, sneering at the bravery of Bard the Bowman and escaping with his false bosom stuffed with gold to boot.

Seeing Alfrid march off triumphantly in the movie, it occurred to me that I'd like to see one of these one-dimensional toadies achieve redemption - can't we let one of them rise above themselves, just once?

At one point in The Battle of the Five Armies, orcs are overrunning the town of Dale, and every able-bodied man is locked in desperate combat except for Alfrid, who has concealed himself in an alcove to avoid discovery.   Exposed by circumstances, he is put in charge of the evacuation of the women, children and wounded by Bard, who presents him with a sword and sends him on his way.

Of course Alfrid ditches the weapon and pushes aside the weak and elderly to ensure his own safety, but let's imagine for a moment that the story went a bit differently.

There's a scene shortly afterwards where Bard sees his children menaced by a troll - Bard is a hundred feet away, and it's obvious that there's no possible way for him to reach his family in time to save them.  As in all of the Hobbit movies, the scriptwriter's solution is improbable physics, with Bard leaping onto a nearby cart and riding it down the street in a bouncing, unrealistic roller-coaster ride that eventually stops the troll in its tracks and saves the day.

But imagine that instead of Bard rescuing the children, Alfrid had just for one moment found his courage and taken action, used the sword he'd been given and attacked the troll.

I don't demand that he succeed, he only needs to distract and delay the monster long enough for Bard to save both the children and Alfrid. I don't want him to be killed, either.  All I want to see is that moment when he overcomes his cowardice, that moment when he realizes that he can be more than he is.

And on that basis, some less clichéd naming conventions would be a big help for these poor souls.  Imagine how differently Aragorn son of Arathorn would have been viewed if his name had been Alfrid Lickspittle.

- Sid

Artificial Intelligence II: We're Going to Trust You on This, Okay?

Any number of websites rely on some kind of system to determine whether or not they are being visited by actual humans as opposed to web bots of some sort, requiring users to type in numbers from a photo or answer a question about the Beatles.

These systems are called CAPTCHAs, which stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart - Alan Turing's Imitation Game flipped on its head, a filter to reveal primitive artificial intelligences rather than to prove consciousness.

However, the latest generation of CAPTCHA is completely different.  Apparently now they're willing to just take my word for it.

- Sid