Florida 5: Pilgrimage.

It is a bright and sunny day in Florida as Colin parks our rental car in Zone 5 and we make our way to the ticket window - welcome to the Kennedy Space Center. Welcome to the history - and the future - of a dream.

For me, this trip is very much a pilgrimage.  I'm a child of the space age, born six months after Yuri Gargarin's first trip into orbit in May of 1961.  My entire childhood was spent immersed in the space race, and I have clear memories of the fuzzy black-and-white footage of Neil Armstrong taking that first step onto the surface of the Moon in 1969.

The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex offers a comprehensive overview of the space program, complete with the actual equipment used for the missions.  These are not mockups or duplicates, these are the spacesuits that were worn, the capsules that returned, and the control rooms that guided their paths.  As such, it's an evocative experience to see - and in some cases touch - the tools used to explore space.

The entrance delivers us directly into the Center's Rocket Garden.  These are literally names out of legend - Saturn, Mercury, Titan, Atlas - and it's interesting to note that NASA chose to use the names of gods, of beings who ruled the heavens, for their rockets and mission names.

From there, we go into the Early Space Exploration exhibit, which details the early days of the space program.  The control room for the Mercury flights seems small and primitive - I'm reminded of that oft-quoted statistic that I have more processing power on my iPhone than in the computers used for the Apollo missions.

In The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe characterizes the first American astronauts from these missions as modern equivalents of single combat warriors, facing their Soviet equivalents as part of the battle for global dominance during the 1960s.

It's easy to see these men in that role, helmed and gauntleted in their clumsy armour of synthetic cloth and metal, faces invisible and anonymous behind golden faceplates.

The weather looks doubtful when we leave the building, so we decide to do the bus tour of the launch sites before it rains.

The tour bus doesn't stop anywhere near the actual launch pads  - in fact, the only stop in the circuit is time limited for security reasons. We drive past the Vehicle Assembly Building, built in 1967 to assemble Saturn V launch vehicles, and the tallest single story building in the world.  We circle around Launch Complex 40, where Space X launches civilian supply missions to the ISS, and take a quick look at Launch Complex 39.

Unexpectedly,the bus doesn't take us back to the Visitor Center.  Instead, we leave the bus at the Apollo Saturn V Center, where we're seated us in the bleachers for the Apollo Control Room and watch a surprisingly evocative countdown to the launch of a Saturn V.

After the video presentation, we proceed to the main event:  a 363 foot Saturn V launch vehicle on its side, broken into its separate stages. I'm awestruck - for me, this is the high point of the entire trip.  Words fail to express my wonder and amazement.

The bus takes us back to the Visitor Center, where we run through pouring rain to the Space Shuttle Atlantis building.

The Atlantis exhibit starts with a video presentation detailing the challenges faced by the designers of the space shuttle, culminating in the launch of the Columbia in 1981. As the echoes of the launch fade, the screen slides up to reveal Atlantis, the workhorse of the space program's five-shuttle fleet with an epic record of 33 missions, 4,848 earth orbits, and 125,935,769 miles travelled before its retirement.

The three-story exhibit is built around the suspended shuttle, allowing visitors to see the entire vehicle from top to bottom.  As I wait for the presentation audience to disperse through the exhibit so I can take an unobstructed picture of Atlantis, I see someone stretch their arm over the railing and brush the edge of the shuttle's open hatch.

A small child sits at a nearby mockup of the space shuttle controls, screaming, "We're going to crash, we're going to crash!"  He's too small to realize that it's inappropriate to play that particular game of pretend in this environment: the loss of lives in the Challenger and Columbia accidents still presents a tragic resonance to the space program.

After Atlantis, both Colin and I are ready for a break.  We have a late lunch, and decide to give ourselves some down time by watching the Hubble IMAX movie. 

Unfortunately, it's not showing that day due to technical issues, so we call it a day - we haven't seen everything the Center has to offer*, but we're just burned out.  As we drive back to our Cocoa Beach hotel, I look back at the day and my only regret is that we didn't have another day to spend there.  I wish there was some way to send a message back in time to my 12-year old self to tell him about what I've just seen.

Space flight finds its origins in politics, as much a part of the Cold War as the Berlin Wall or the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, unlike those artifacts of the post-war conflict with the USSR, the exploration of space has continued, and developed over time into a purer phenomenon. Space travel is now a global pursuit: the United States works co-operatively with the Russian space agency, and the astronauts visiting the International Space Station come from around the world.

Which is as it should be.  When we leave Earth, it shouldn't be as Americans or Canadians or Russians, we should enter space as representatives of humanity.

- Sid

* The Visitor Center sells two-day tickets - if you decide to visit the KSC, I strongly recommend scheduling the extra day.

Florida 4: Tourist Trap.

Although I do most of my travel reading on my iPhone, I always pack some paper books to fill in those gaps when the airline may request that I not use my electronic devices, or in case of battery exhaustion on flights without recharge sockets.  Because the highlight of my Florida trip is a visit to the Kennedy Space Centre at Cocoa Beach, I thought it would be appropriate to bring thematically suitable reading material:  The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe, and A Fall of Moondust, by Arthur C. Clarke.

I've started my reading with A Fall of Moondust, which is a conveniently short read at 215 pages.* I chose this novel for a very simple reason:  it tells the tale of an accident involving tourists - tourists on the Moon.

The cruiser Selene offers a unique experience for lunar visitors: a boat excursion on a world without water.  Except it's not really a boat, and the Sea of Thirst is aptly named -  it's not made up of water, but of moondust, a powder so fine as to be almost liquid.

As the latest group of tourists embark on their tour of this unusual ocean, a moonquake opens a sinkhole in the dust beneath the cruiser and swallows it, marooning the 22 passengers and crew of two beneath a blanket of metallic powder that blocks all radio communication and diffuses its heat signature.

The book alternates between the trials faced by the trapped travellers and the efforts by their rescuers to locate the ship, discover its fate, and then invent some way of reaching the people on board before lack of oxygen renders their efforts irrelevant.  As it turns out, there are more subtle perils to threaten the lives of the buried sightseers...

To be honest, Clarke is not at his best working with romantic subplots and personal drama, and as a result that part of the story never quite rings true. However, that's not really what interests him.  The key to the story is the battle between the ingenuity of the rescuers and their relentless opponents:  vacuum, the dust, and time.

The most astonishing thing about Clarke's tiny perfect tale of disaster and rescue is that no one dies.  I strongly suspect that in a movie adaptation, the irritating spinster reporter would be lucky to make it to the end of the first act, let alone be the first one out of the boat when they open the escape hatch.

- Sid

* It's interesting to compare the length of SF and fantasy novels from the 50s, 60s and 70s with the current offerings, there's been a definite upward slope in terms of page counts.  I remember when The Lord of the Rings was viewed as epic not only in concept but in length, with 481,103 words in the story  - not including the appendices - and now we have things like The Wheel of Time series, which clocks in at almost ten times the length at 4,410,036 words.

Florida 3: "Research at beach resorts".

Welcome to Cocoa Beach, and its somewhat faded memorial to the first American in space, Alan Shepard.  Hmmm...come to think of it, what did they name after Neil Armstrong?

- Sid

Florida 2: Does anybody really know what time it is?

We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.

Cooper, Interstellar

I'm just starting the first leg of my Florida vacation - I'm en route to Toronto where I'll be joined by my friend Colin, aka Cloin of the Campbell Brothers, and we'll fly down to Miami together before heading for Key West in the morning.

It's a big full plane, which would make the Civilization Game quite playable, but I'm more intrigued to see that Interstellar is on the list of options for in flight viewing.

I ended up just not getting to Interstellar in commercial release, but it's been on my list of catch-up movies.  It generated a lot of geek buzz when it debuted, with physics luminary Neil deGrasse Tyson publicly weighing in regarding the accuracy - or lack thereof - of the wormhole and black hole science involved in the plot.

Interstellar presents us with an Earth which is no longer on the edge of starvation but past it, with a reduced population living in a global dust bowl à la The Grapes of Wrath. Widowed spaceship pilot manqué Cooper, played by Matthew McConaughey*, grows corn and drinks beer while mourning the loss of the pioneer spirit in favour of survival.

Enigmatic messages from an unknown force point Cooper and his daughter Murphy toward a hidden NASA base which is covertly planning a trip through a mysterious wormhole in hopes of finding a habitable planet.  Cooper decides to abandon his family and pilot the mission, even though time dilation makes it impossible for him to tell his family when he will return.  Elderly physicist Michael Caine promises to have solved the mysteries of gravity manipulation before Cooper's return so that mankind can emigrate to their new home in space - once Cooper finds it.

The other side of the wormhole is a sort of physics playground, with a black hole causing all sorts of peculiar problems for the explorers. 

Even as an amateur physicist**, there were aspects of those problems that I found to be questionable.  For example, at one point the crew visits a planet which is orbiting a black hole closely enough that time dilation has slowed time to a crawl: seven years pass on Earth for every hour spent on the planet's surface.  They leave one crew member in orbit and take a lander for a hit and run visit to the planet in order to determine the fate of previous explorers.  Of course problems ensue, and when they make it back to the ship 23 years have come and gone for the solitary crew member***, and Cooper's distant daughter is now the same age that he is.

But...if the ship is in orbit, it would have to be orbiting in line with the plane of the planet's orbit so that it wouldn't get any closer to the black hole at any time, or else it would suffer from fluctuating time dilation effects.  Actually, why not get the ship into a position so that exactly the same amount of time passes on the ship as on the planet? Or less time?

Similar moments of fuzzy logic continue throughout Interstellar, and the climax is a confusing mix of 2001: A Space Odyssey and arbitrary, illogical deus ex machina intervention by future versions of humanity.  A little advice to our distant descendants:  if you need to twist time and manipulate space so that information crucial to the survival of humanity is transmitted, maybe do your twisting and manipulating so that the information goes to a scientist instead of a pre-teen girl's bedroom?

- Sid

* It used to be that if you wanted to cast someone as an archetypal American, you picked Kevin Costner.  In the fullness of time, Mr. McConaughey has taken over the job.

**  Reading science fiction is like getting a really strange education in the sciences.  With aliens on the side.

*** Who is a little quiet for the rest of the movie, not a huge surprise after more than two decades of solitary confinement.

Florida 1: "We choose to go".

I've actually been back from my trip to Florida for a week now, but I'm going to exercise my prerogative as a science fiction fan (and the owner of a time machine) and do a bit of time travel. I'm just catching up on the blog postings from the trip now on May 2nd, but I'm going to post them for the dates in April when the events discussed took place.

Overall, the trip was fabulous - my friend Colin and I had a great time hanging out and photographing cemeteries in Key West, alligators in the Everglades, beaches in Cocoa Beach, and all things NASA at the Kennedy Space Centre. My thanks to Colin for continuing to provide tireless and uncomplaining* transit services for a single passenger even though he was on vacation - as a non-driver, I would never have been able to cover that kind of territory on my own.

I have to admit that the last destination was really the focus of the trip for me, and it completely lived up to all my expectations. But we'll get to that in due time.  For now, let's turn back the clock and sit down on Air Canada Flight 142, going from Vancouver to Toronto...

- Sid

* Okay, in the interests of full disclosure, he was getting a bit little worn out by the time we were got back to Miami for our return flight.  But only a little.

Spock's Beard.

Dr. McCoy:  Jim, I think I liked him with a beard better. It gave him character. Of course almost any change would be a distinct improvement.  

Mirror, Mirror:  Star Trek, The Original Series

I've mentioned several times that our HR department doesn't seem to be asking enough questions about Star Trek when hiring people, and this fundamental lack of due diligence has reared its ugly head again.

One of my co-workers is optimistically working away at a beard, and it changes his appearance substantially.  I suggested that if he just trimmed it down to a goatee, he would look very much like the evil mirror version of himself.  He frowned at me, and I said, "You know, evil alternate mirror dimension Spock?  With the beard?"  He gave this some consideration and finally said, "Sorry, no, I don't get it."

A sad conversation, but one which clearly illustrates the fleeting nature of pop culture fame. It's interesting to think that there's a point in the future when no one will understand why it's necessary to wave your arms up and down when saying, "Danger, Will Robinson!", when the significance of "No, I am your father!" will be lost, and if you Google™ "Spock's beard", the only results will say, "Los Angeles based band formed in 1992..."

- Sid

"Move along, move along."

And really, how often do you read the phrase "Now that I'm in love with a geek"? *

- Sid

* Not nearly often enough.

"YOU HAVE REACHED THE END OF CAKE."

I was saddened beyond words last Thursday when I heard that 66 year old British fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett had succumbed to the combination of a chest infection and the rare form of Alzheimer's from which he had suffered for the last eight years.

In the innumerable obituaries and tributes which have followed his death, Pratchett is most often referred to as a satirist, comparable to Jonathan Swift in his trenchant mockery of the everyday world through his fantasy creations.  I realize that satire was part of Pratchett's intention, but to categorize his work purely in that fashion would miss the incredible depth of creativity and perception which characterized his writing.

Terry Pratchett made me stay up late and and get up early in order to read his books.  His imagination was limitless, and his style was simple but eloquent, with every word doing exactly what he wanted it to do, nothing less.

When I think of Pratchett's work, I don't think of satire, I think of the characters.  It is an enormous loss to realize that I will never again read a new story about Sam Vimes of the Watch, Esme Weatherwax the witch, the virtuous Captain Carrot, Nobby Nobbs (whose name may say it all), Rincewind the Wizzard*, Death, Death's granddaughter, or any of the host of other amazing characters who populated Pratchett's novels.  All gone, all ended - or, more accurately, not ended, but left in limbo.

Because of that, somewhere out there a man in a suit** is steepling his fingers together in the fashion of Montgomery Burns and thoughtfully saying, "You know, I bet we could find someone who would take over the Discworld series if we paid them enough money..."

Stop.  Just stop.

Terry Pratchett was a genius, one of those people whose talent was based in a unique perspective, and it would be a heart-breaking betrayal of his legacy for anyone to even attempt to imitate that talent.  If someone does succumb to the lure of lucre, I would strongly recommend that they be thrown into the scorpion pit along with the mimes.

Goodbye, Terry.  Thank you for letting us all see the world the way that you did, and for letting us see the worlds that no one else could have shown us.

- Sid

* This is not a typo, although really, it is. 

** In my world, the villain is always a man in a suit.  Draw what conclusions you wish from this.

Presumably very very rare.

- Sid

All our yesterdays.

 

Yesterday was a sad day - Leonard Nimoy passed away at the age of 83.

The character of Spock as portrayed by Nimoy is arguably one of the most iconic and recognized science fiction characters. He’s the first mainstream alien, he represents an enviable philosophy of logic and thought, but was always seen as a character with hidden depths and passions - after all, it isn’t that Vulcans lack emotion, but rather that they control them. 

But it seems so unfortunate to define Nimoy’s life and career by a single character, although that seemed to be his fate for many many years. Nimoy discussed his ambiguous relationship with his green-blooded alter ego in two books: I Am Not Spock in 1975, and I Am Spock twenty years later in 1995.

As the second title would seem to indicate, time heals all wounds, and as time passed Nimoy came to terms with his inescapable link to this single role from his professional portfolio, embraced it, laughed about it, and ultimately accepted it as a part of who he was.

Regardless, rather than say goodbye to Spock, let us say farewell to Leonard Nimoy:  actor, photographer, artist, musician, director, writer, husband, father, and human being.

- Sid

The God-Emperor's new clothes.

I was raping Frank Herbert, raping, like this!  But with love, with love.

Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jodorowosky’s Dune

I’ve just finished watching Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary dealing with the legendary failed attempt by Alejandro Jodorowsky to make a film version of Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel in 1975. 

Jodoworsky’s production of Dune is a bit like the Holy Grail of science fiction film making, a mystical, almost mythical event that is surrounded by mystery and legend.  For years, bits and pieces of the pre-production work have been floating around: sketches, paintings, storyboards, costume designs, casting and location choices.  This documentary provides a clear view of the process whereby Jodorowsky made his decisions, and offers fascinating insights into one of the most unique and creative film making minds of the 20th century.

However, simply because something is a documentary, that doesn’t mean that it’s unbiased. The greater part of Jodorowsky’s Dune features Jodorowsky speaking about the project, with additional commentary by the producer for the film, Michel Seydoux, conceptual artists H.R. Giger and Chris Foss, and film directors Richard Stanley and Nicholas Winding Refn.  They are unanimous in their praise of the project, describing it as being literally ahead of its time and a great lost opportunity.

What the documentary does not feature is any sort of input from people speaking about the less positive aspects of the production.

Jodorowsky’s script is a million miles away from Frank Herbert’s novel, by everyone’s admission - including Jodorowsky’s. Herbert’s Dune is a brilliant combination of politics, sociology, ecology and religion, but it is firmly grounded in its own reality. Jodorowsky envisioned it as a mystical journey with completely different background, narrative, and climax, which might have been an incredible viewing experience, but which might as well have had a different title as far as its connection to the original.  In fact, Jodorowsky would go on to collaborate with one of the design team, French fantasy artist Jean Giraud, to create a graphic story entitled The Incal which would utilize exactly the same plot elements that appear in his Dune script.

Pre-production was littered with odd examples of excess and indulgence. Jodorowsky speaks blithely of enlisting Orson Welles to play the malevolent Baron Harkonnen by agreeing to hire the head chef from the restaurant where Welles was eating and having him cook for Welles every single day.  Dali, who was to play the Padishah Emperor, was to have been paid $100,000 per minute of his performance, and also demanded a personal helicopter and a flaming giraffe.

Other sources state that when Frank Herbert travelled to Europe in 1976, two million dollars had already been spent on the pre-production planning without even having a contract.  When the script and the lavish production concept book were finally circulated in Hollywood, the studios were polite but definite in their uniform rejection of the entire idea as impractical and unproducible, especially with Jodorowsky at the helm of the project. 

Ultimately, I found that Jodorowsky’s Dune was rather like an inversion of the classic fable from Aesop about the fox and the grapes - instead in this case the grapes would have been the most incredible grapes ever tasted, grapes that would have redefined what grapes meant to the world, grapes that would have altered the perception of a generation of grape-eaters - if only it had been possible to obtain them!

Or it's entirely possible that the grapes - and the movie - would ultimately have proven to be sour after all.

- Sid

"Everybody wants to rule the world."

I’ve just finished re-reading Out on Blue Six, by Ian McDonald, which presents us with McDonald’s take on 1984:  the Benevolent Society, in which everyone is happy – or else.  People are assigned to the job which will make them happiest, matched with their perfectly compatible life companion, and placed into the caste which best suits their psychological makeup.  Causing pain, physical OR emotional, is a crime – a paincrime – which in standard Orwellian fashion is policed by the Ministry of Love.

However, as with most dystopias, the Benevolent Society is flawed. The job which is guaranteed to make you happy may not be the job you have wanted with all your heart for as long as you can remember, something which may challenge and frustrate you, but which fulfills your dreams.  Perfect compatibility does not equal love.  Children are separated from parents in the interests of caste divisions, never to see each other again.  And a society without any kind of pain is a society without empathy, without sacrifice, without progress.

At the end of the novel, the godlike, all-powerful AIs that rule the world award complete control over the Benevolent Society to a ragtag band of artistic rebels, and they begin the slow process of returning some disorder and unpredictability to the world, making it better by making it worse.

So here’s your challenge for the day. I’m going to wave my magic wand, or anoint you, or pull your number out of a very large hat. You, YOU, are the unchallenged ruler of the world.  Your authority is complete, although it is not magical. You cannot repeal the law of gravity* or make time run backward. If you decide that you want a one-inch deep trench that stretches along the entire U.S. Canada border, resources must be assembled, funds allocated, people hired.  (Training is probably minimal, although you never know.)

What would you do?

Given the nature of, well, human nature, there will probably be some moments of excess, as per Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty.  But once those initial moments of self-indulgence were out of the way, imagine the possibilities!

The entire military budget of the United States could be reassigned to solving the problems of cancer and AIDS.  The massive political structures of the Western world, the congresses and parliaments, rationalized and reduced and the excess capital reassigned to free health care and free education.

However, here's the real question. As above, your legislative control is universal, but you can't perform magic.  How many of the conflicts and struggles currently plaguing the world are the result of cultural and religious differences that you couldn't just tell to go away?  Would a law against war actually stop wars?  Hmmm....maybe we do need to keep some of the soldiers....and there's the beginning of the end. Damn, it looked so promising there for a minute.

Oh well, we can always try again.

So here’s your challenge for the day.  I’m going to wave my magic wand, or anoint you, or pull your number out of a very large hat. You, YOU, are the unchallenged ruler of the world...

- Sid

*  There's an H.G. Wells short story entitled The Man Who Could Work Miracles which accurately addresses the difficulties of possessing ultimate power without a clear understanding of physics.  

"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

Artificial Intelligence I: The Limitation Game.

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think."

Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence

On Christmas Eve, I attended an afternoon showing of The Imitation Game, the heavily fictionalized but well acted biopic regarding the life of Alan Turing, the noted mathematician, computer theorist and World War II cryptographer whose life ended in disgrace and presumed suicide following his arrest for homosexuality in 1952.*  As a science fiction fan, I was surprised by the title, which has nothing whatsoever to do with cryptography. "The Imitation Game" is a reference to what is more commonly known as the Turing Test, as detailed by Turing in his 1951 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. 

For those of you unfamiliar with this touchstone of artificial intelligence theory, the Turing Test is very simple.  A judge sits in one room, and in two other rooms are a human being and a computer.  The human being and the computer can only communicate with the judge via text displayed on a computer screen. (I believe that in the original version, the questions and answers were paper based, but monitors and keyboards certainly speed things up.) It is the judge's job to decide which one of the communicants is the computer, based on their interaction.  It is the human's job to be a human, and the computer's job to imitate a human**.

Turing's simple experiment for establishing artificial intelligence is a standard reference for science fiction authors: there are Turing scales for degree of AI, Turing certifications, and more threateningly, William Gibson's Neuromancer introduces the idea of the Turing Police:  an international organization responsible for the elimination of unauthorized or rogue AIs.

Science fiction aside, real-world computers have miserably failed the Turing Test, as demonstrated by the annual Loebner Prize competition, originated by American inventor Hugh Loebner in 1990.  To date, no computer - or more accurately, no computer program -  has managed to win the $100,000 award by successfully convincing the judges of its humanity.  Several smaller prizes have been awarded to the best program, but so far it's really been to acknowledge the best of a poor lot.

However, it's an interesting conceit to demand that a computer convince someone that it's a human. Why should the ability to mimic humanity be a requirement for consciousness or sentience?

It's easy to say that artificial intelligence would need to be based on the human mind, what else do we have to use as a model?  On the other hand, there's no other area of technology that follows this path: cars run on wheels rather than mechanical legs, and cranes don't feature huge arms with hands and fingers to pick up cargo.  Technology has always been used to exceed the limitations of the human form rather than imitate them, and artificial intelligence might do well to take the same approach.

Maybe we need to come up with a new name for the game.

- Sid

*  At that point in time, homosexuality was a criminal offense in England.

** Based on the way that people react to tests, I actually suspect that in practice they both end up trying to imitate a human.

Perhaps not a bad description of the performance, either.

And now, my lovely and talented co-worker Christi modeling her new chibi-C'thulhu hoodie, a piece of swag from one of her favourite local groups, the H.P. Lovecraft tribute band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets.*  She's accessorized her look with her plush C'thulhu doll, the perfect gift for anyone looking for a puffy elder god toy.

I certainly appreciate the sentiment expressed by the design, but maybe let's not rush into this whole "worship" thing, given the manner in which C'thulhu's cultists traditionally celebrate their deity:

In a natural glade of the swamp stood a grassy island of perhaps an acre's extent, clear of trees and tolerably dry. On this now leaped and twisted a more indescribable horde of human abnormality than any but a Sime or an Angarola could paint.

Void of clothing, this hybrid spawn were braying, bellowing, and writhing about a monstrous ring-shaped bonfire; in the centre of which, revealed by occasional rifts in the curtain of flame, stood a great granite monolith some eight feet in height; on top of which, incongruous in its diminutiveness, rested the noxious carven statuette.

From a wide circle of ten scaffolds set up at regular intervals with the flame-girt monolith as a centre hung, head downward, the oddly marred bodies of the helpless squatters who had disappeared.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of C'thulhu

I realize that everyone needs a hobby, but Christi, seriously, maybe stick with your personal band project instead. After all, isn't "braying, bellowing, and writhing" a pretty good description of what your audience is doing anyway?

- Sid

* I'm so pleased by the number of obscure references in this sentence.

Adventure Time.

 

I've discussed my love for travel in previous blog postings, but I don't think that I've discussed how much it scares me.  My family didn't travel at all when I was a child, and as such I had to teach myself how to go on trips, an experience which took me completely out of my comfort zone.  I've done enough travel now that I've become competent at the various mechanics involved, booking plane tickets and hotels, going through airport security, finding my luggage, that kind of thing, but it's still very much an adventure for me.

2013's trip to Scotland proved to be an excellent source of blog content:  visits to Monty Python castles, found objects like police boxes and Tron churches, and of course a winsome geek or two.  2014 was a much less ambitious year for travel, but 2015 should turn out to be far more interesting, with travel destinations that will combine both the past and the future.

In April, my friend Colin and I are heading to Florida for a week in the sun, with the Kennedy Space Center prominently featured on my list of requested site visits.  This is where it all happened, this where they made history: the Saturn rocket, the Mercury and Gemini missions, Apollo, Skylab, the space shuttle, the ISS, and now that NASA is returning to a more active role with the new Orion rocket, it's going to be a central part of the next stage of space exploration.

My friend Terry is moving to Japan in a few weeks, and I've decided to pay him a visit in September.  In my mind, Japan is an idealized window into the future, with Tokyo in particular a Gibsonesque silicon metropolis that's just a little bit ahead of the rest of the world.  In addition, Japanese geek culture, in the form of manga and animé, has become a strong alternative to the Western superhero and Disney-dominated approaches to comics and animation. 

 

As an example, the life-sized* Mobile Suit Gundam statue and theme site located in Tokyo's Odaiba district has become a popular geek pilgrimage, but I also plan to make the more traditional pilgrimage to Kyoto, Japan's cultural and spiritual centre. Visiting Kyoto is like a trip into Japan's past, a glimpse of a time and a place which is almost the opposite of Tokyo's fast-forward vibe.

I have to admit that I'm a bit nervous about Japan, even nine months in advance.  I managed to survive a week in Paris in 2011 with my limited French, but travelling in a country where I can't even read the street signs** is going to be a real challenge, even with a locally based tour guide. But what would life be without an adventure now and then?

- Sid

* "Life-sized" is perhaps an odd way to describe a 60 foot tall recreation of a giant battle robot from an animated series, but you know what I mean.

**  This is a joke - apparently there are no street signs.