The Wrong Side of History

I wonder: In a few generations, when our distant descendants access their history feeds, and take a look back at the 21st century, will they look on the meat-eaters among us with the same horror and embarrassment with which we look back on slave-traders?

I don't think that veganism (or even vegetarianism) will become the dominant mode of nourishment for most people in the developed world anytime soon. Probably not even in this century, if ever. But it is a growing movement. I personally feel that, barring the occasional violent repression, humanity is definitely trending towards increased freedom and equality. As my Dad likes to point out, at the beginning of the 20th century, no country on Earth was a true democracy. Not even the United States. By the end of that same century, democracy was not only the norm, but through the United Nations, democratic nations actually had the power to peacefully impose economic sanctions on states which mistreat their citizens.

So, democracy and freedom are on the rise. People are showing more concern for their fellow humans. But what about their fellow organisms? What about freedom for other types of animals?

Most people, when asked about vegetarianism, will say that they respect it as a lifestyle, but it's not for them. They admire vegetarians' commitment to animal rights, but they don't personally feel the need to change their eating habits. When pressed, most of them will try to deflect criticism with humor: "Animals may be our friends, but they're so delicious!"

This argument doesn't hold much water. Simply because something is easy or pleasurable does not make it morally acceptable. Most people recognize that the meat they buy at the grocery store does not come from animals who have lived a full and happy life on Old MacDonald's Farm (E-I-E-I-O). Even fewer would feel comfortable actually watching a slaughter take place. People feel uncomfortable acknowledging that the meat on their table, until very recently, was a living, breathing animal.

People acknowledge this, but they ignore what they know. I feel it's similar, or at least related to, the tendency to change the channel as soon as a Save the Children ad comes on TV. They feel guilty, and know that they haven't been doing all they could. To open themselves to the suffering of one child means acknowledging the suffering of many more, and facing up to the fact that until that moment, they could have saved lives but chose not to.

Carnivores say that animals aren't human, and hence don't deserve the same rights. We feed and shelter them, and thus it's within our rights to use them as we see fit. They couldn't survive in the wild anyway, and we keep them safe and well fed for their whole lives, which may be short, but hey, they're not missing too much, right? What's more, eating meat is a central part of many cultures, and has existed since the dawn of time. The last time we tried to outlaw something so delicious and fun to consume was during Prohibition, and that didn't go over too well, now did it? Besides, the meat industry built several major American cities (such as Chicago), and many towns still depend heavily upon it for their economic sustenance. In 2009, the U.S. cattle and beef industry alone was valued at $73 billion!

Well, I hate to break it to you, but these arguments all sound suspiciously like the ones that slaveholders used to argue against Abolition. The fact is that vegetarianism is on the rise in the developed world, and those who continue to eat meat may one day find themselves on the wrong side of history.

...

But what about me? I eat meat all the time! I know the moral implications (as you can see in the blog post above), but I continue to eat it anyway. Even for someone like me, who (more-or-less) knows the science and knows that it would be better to make a change, the process is very difficult. We don't live in a society which encourages vegetarianism. It's tolerated, even accommodated, but it's very difficult to avoid eating animals when even Caesar salad dressing contains pureed anchovies.

Going vegetarian would be better for my health, would help reduce or prevent climate change, would make it easier to end world hunger, and is better for the welfare of my fellow creatures.

So what's stopping me? Am I being too hard on myself? Or am I just lazy?

In Which Several Exciting Discoveries Are Made

In the acclaimed 2008 Pixar film WALL-E, there is a scene where one of the residents of the starship Axiom notices, for the first time in his life, that they've got a pool! He's lived there for his whole life; in fact, several generations of his family have lived there for their entire lives, and he never even suspected that they had a pool. No one bothered to tell him, and he never bothered to find out.

I thought that this was meant as a warning from Pixar. "If you don't do something different, your descendants might wind up like this." But now I realize that the warning was actually directed at us.

Case in point: the walk I took today.

After living in Ypsilanti on-and-off for six years, I tend to think of myself as an old hand. I might not know as much about the city as a native townie, but I certainly know a lot more than an incoming freshman, and maybe more than your average graduate. I felt like I knew this city pretty well.

But I've realized how little I truly know. This afternoon I took a walk from my apartment to Michigan Avenue, intending to walk through Riverside Park, and maybe Frog Island Park as well. But once there, I happened to glance across Michigan Avenue, and I realized that although I had walked and driven by this area many times, I had never bothered to see what lay south of Michigan Avenue. I decided on a whim to change my plan; I wanted to see how far south I could walk along the Huron River.

Turns out that's quite a ways, thanks to the B2B (Border-to-Border) Trail, a non-motorized trail that runs along the length of the Huron River, passing completely through almost half a dozen counties in Southeast Michigan. I never even knew that such a long biking and walking trail was even in the works, let alone actually being built!

I can't say for sure how long or how far I walked, but I was gone for quite a while. I saw many strange and secluded places that filled me with a sense of what the Germans call ruinenlust - a love of ruins and abandoned places. I saw broken lamp-posts that had been converted into birds' nests, like some postmodern spin on The Chronicles of Narnia. I discovered a vast desert of gravelly sand; a ring of stumpy, broken stone squares; a rickety, moss-covered old footbridge; an entire park that I'd never even heard about; a disc-golf course; the warren of what appeared to either be a woodchuck or a groundhog; the overgrown remains of a baseball diamond and batting cage, the broken lights watching over all like blind giants; and a swingless swing-set that had been abandoned for so long that trees were growing right up through the structure itself.

I wish I had taken pictures. If I had known what I would be seeing, I would certainly have brought my camera. Maybe I'll make another trip sometime soon, and post the pictures here. Or on Facebook. Who knows? It's an adventure!

My point is: go for a walk. Like, today. Right now. Just put your hands in your pockets, pick a direction, and walk as far as you can. You might be surprised at the things you've never noticed from the window of your car. You might have been living in your neighborhood for years, but have you ever really explored it?

Now seems like as good a time as any to find out.

Animatronics: Not Dead, Just In Storage

When was the last time you saw a film (besides on DVD or through Netflix!) which boasted of using of "the most advanced animatronics available"? Or indeed, any animatronics at all? A long time ago, I'm willing to bet. Ten years? Maybe more?

To look at it from another angle, when was the last time you saw animatronics used in a real-life, face-to-face setting? Chuck E. Cheese's? Some ride at a theme park for a movie that left theaters fifteen or twenty years ago? Okay, I seem to recall encountering one or two robotic puppets at "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter", but they weren't true animatronics, just models of giant spiders attached to robotic arms.

Animatronics just don't seem to get the same amount of love they once did. The reasons for this are threefold:
1) animatronics are expensive, and once you've made one it's set in stone; you can't do a redesign if the creature doesn't test well with audiences;
2) animatronics contain thousands of moving parts, the malfunction of any one of which could cause the whole machine to cease working, leading to costly delays when filming must be halted while repairs are made; and
3) animatronics are subject to many of the same laws of physics which they attempt to overcome. For example, you can't build a three-story tall praying mantis animatronic for the same reason that a real three-story tall praying mantis wouldn't work: an insect that large simply could not support its own weight.

With these fairly major shortcomings in mind, it's no wonder that filmmakers have turned to CGI to satisfy their needs in the special-effects department.

But I feel that animatronic animals and characters have several advantages over CGI. Advantages which suggest that animatronic technology is not yet dead, nor yet completely outdated.

Number One: Animatronics will always look real.
This one gets swept under the rug a lot. When making a film, the director's primary concern is to get the movie finished on-deadline and under-budget. Everything else is secondary. But what director doesn't want their movies to look good for future audiences, when their films are being displayed by historical societies or film-school professors? The temptation to not just do well, but to leave landmarks for those who follow in one's footsteps is a powerful desire in many directors.

For proof, one simply needs to look at Star Wars.

Pop a copy of Episode I into your DVD player, and take a good look at Jar-Jar Binks. (I know it hurts. Just bear with me for a moment.) Look at how he moves, how he interacts with the objects and actors around him. It doesn't quite look right, does it? Kinda... floaty, right? Like he's not really there? Jar-Jar was created just twelve years ago, using the most advanced CGI technology that had ever been assembled at that time. Barely a decade has passed, and he already looks fake.

Okay, now eject the disk, invite a priest over to purify your entertainment system, and pop in your DVD of Star Wars: A New Hope. Take a good hard look at Chewbacca. He looks really solid, doesn't he? He makes fluid motions, casts realistic shadow-effects, and has a palpable stage-presence. That movie is twenty years older than Episode I, yet Chewie still looks more realistic than Jar-Jar ever could. Why is this? It's because Chewbacca was actually there on the set! Which brings me to my next point,

Number Two: Animatronics have superior stage-presence to purely-CGI characters.


When a CGI character interacts with a flesh-and-blood actor, in almost every case the actor was playing to an empty room, or a blank green-screen. As any actor will tell you, playing a part, any part at all, without another human presence to judge by and interact with, is an extremely difficult endeavor. Even if there was a man in a skintight greensuit standing where the monster's going to be in the final version, it's not the same as actually having the monster standing right in front of you, roaring and spitting venom in your face.

Number Three: Animatronic characters have a warmer, more human appearance.
Even if the character in question is not human at all, animatronics often induce much greater feelings of affection in audiences than any CGI character. Because the machines are bound by the same laws of physics as we are, their motions, by definition, look real and natural. While animators are busy trying to figure out how to convey a sense of weight and solidity in their creations, all a puppeteer needs to do is hit the "ON" switch and play around for a few minutes.



Furthermore, the fact that a puppeteer (or team of puppeteers) controls the machine's every motion means that all their motions will be infinitely more human. The animators don't need to search for the key to simulating natural movement; it's sitting right in front of them, waggling its ears and making faces at them.

Gender, On- and Off-Court

I recently heard a coworker comment that women's sports leagues are so very badly under-exposed and under-watched, because:
1) sports are a male-dominated field,
2) men don't watch women's sports, and
3) women who watch sports spend most of their time watching men's leagues anyway.

This got me thinking. Are we being fair to female players by making them compete only with other women? Are we ghettoizing them for having different bodies, for being female?

Now, I know just as well as the next person that women and men have different bodies and different skills. Women, by and large, are simply not as strong as their male counterparts. But not all women are less strong than all men! Women bring a different set of skills to the table, such as a lower center of gravity and better endurance. Aren't these valuable qualities? Couldn't any good coach find a place on his team for a male player who displayed such attributes?

Some people who I've discussed this with (including my girlfriend) say that women should be divided from men in sports, because without a male presence on the field, women will play much more aggressively. In the presence of men, they become weak and ladylike.

But perhaps this is merely a function of the fact that girls are never pushed to compete against men, or alongside them? What if all sports were gender-integrated from elementary on up? Would boys stop being unconsciously domineering towards their female teammates? Would they see them not as girl players, but as fellow players who possess different strengths and weaknesses? Maybe they'd just see 'em as "one of the guys".


One problem with this approach is the spectators who fund these leagues. They want faster, harder, more brutal plays. Plays which female players simply cannot deliver. But as my Political Science professor said to me on my first day of college, "Rules influence outcomes." Sure, maybe games like basketball and football discourage females from playing alongside males, but maybe that's just a function of the rules. Could the rules of these games be changed in such a way that would allow women to compete alongside men? Not just make it possible for them to hold their own, but to actually excel? For female players, playing in an integrated league, to attain fame equal to that of big names like Kobe Bryant or Brett Favre? Not because they're such brave little troopers, carrying on against all odds in a male-controlled sport, but because they're actually the best players in the league.

I don't know if changing the rules will "solve" sexism. Could it usher in a new era, in which men do not view women as weak or deficient, but as equal partners and teammates in life? I don't know, but I doubt that the solution could be as simple as changing a few rules here and there. I just feel that we're sending mixed messages to our daughters, if we tell them that they can do anything a man can do, as long as they don't try to physically stand up to one.

Book Review: "Hyperion," by Dan Simmons

This might be the only book that I've actually risked being late to work for, even though I was only on the second chapter. That's right: I wasn't making risky delays because I wanted to see how it ended; I just wanted to know what happened next!

Hyperion is a masterpiece of science fiction, let me say that right off the bat. I haven't encountered a book that made me think this hard about so many complicated issues in a long, long time. As I listened to the book over the course of no less than 18 CDs, I felt as if my brain was being punched. The sheer weirdness of Simmons' alien flora and fauna is literally awe-inspiring(the Tesla trees and the Motile Isles being among my favorites). His characters are deeply flawed and deeply human, and no brief description of them here could possibly convey their myriad personalities, to say nothing of the incredible ways in which they grow and change in the week or so during which the story unfolds.

I have heard Hyperion described as 'a sci-fi homage to the Canterbury Tales,' and the comparison is fitting. Simmons describes the journey of seven pilgrims to, and across the surface of, the planet Hyperion. It's a backwater hole, not even important enough to have its own farcaster. But it is important as the site of the (literally) anachronistic Time Tombs, and the home-world of the mysterious creature known only as "the Shrike."



The Shrike, a cryptic being that lives backwards in time, appears to be made of living metal, and can teleport itself through space and time with little or no effort, is the object of veneration for a powerful religion known as The Church of the Final Atonement. It's not clear what the Shrike is supposed to represent in this book (War? Death? Violence? Humanity? God? Technology? The Unknown? The Unknowable?); indeed, our opinion of the creature changes radically with each pilgrim's tale.

I could literally go on all day about this book, but I'll spare you. I couldn't possibly do justice to any of these magnificent stories. Instead, I can tell you a bit about the premise of the first tale (the one that I almost missed work for), in order to whet your appetite:

In the first tale, a Catholic priest named Father Lenar Hoyt tells the story of his mentor, Father Paul Duray. Several years ago, Duray was convicted of falsifying archeological findings, making them seem to suggest that intelligent creatures had worshiped Jesus Christ before humanity had left Earth - a desperate attempt on Duray's part to save his dying church and his dying religion.

After being exposed, Duray was exiled to the planet Hyperion, to do missionary work in the southern jungles. According to his recovered journals (which have mysteriously come into Hoyt's possession), it was there that Duray discovered solid, undeniable physical proof that intelligent beings had indeed worshiped before the sign of the cross (and in a manner shockingly similar to our own), millions of years before human life even evolved!

But soon Duray is crushed by the realization that, even if he survives a second trip through the Tesla trees, no one. is ever . going. to believe him.

The story is called "The Priest's Tale, or, The Man Who Cried God."

Happy reading.

Gender Rolls

Last Friday night, I was hanging out with my brother Eric and my friend John, playing some D&D. (Well, actually it was a D&D adaptation of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, but that's beside the point.) Since The Wheel of Time deals a lot with gender, I decided it would be a good opportunity for me to try something I'd never ever done before: play a female character.

Afterward, I was struck by the fact that such a decision should not have been anything unusual. I've played dwarves, monsters, vampires, elves, demigods, and wizards. I've played people from other countries (both real and fictional); I've played as warriors and mages, saints and sinners, the faithful, the faithless, and even the insane. But despite my eagerness to learn about roles and society by playing them out, there was always a slight hesitation, a sense of unease at the thought of playing a woman.

Why should this be? I wondered. Am I afraid of showing any feminine qualities? Am I secretly sexist or something? (I do this to myself all the time. I have no idea why.)

But nobody I know (at least, nobody I play with) has ever, to my knowledge, played any character not of their own gender. In a game where you could play as literally anyone, become virtually anything, why is it that so many players refuse to step outside their own gender, when they would eagerly play a character of a different race, religion, status, socioeconomic background, profession, alignment, age, and even species? This seems like an odd line to be unwilling to cross.



(Maybe they just don't want to deal with
having to actually roleplay the clothes.)

Many players might argue that "I'm a man, and therefore I don't know how a woman would think, so I just won't play as a woman." Well, yeah, but you play as dwarves all the time, and no one knows how they think! They don't even exist!

Hang on, maybe I just hit the nail on the head.

Since no one knows how a dwarf would act, no one can accuse you of getting it wrong, or of being culturally insensitive. You're free to make it up as you go, rather than having to mimic reality.

Then again, maybe players are simply afraid of getting it too right. The players of tabletop RPGs are for the most part male, and dislike showing any side of themselves that might be labeled "feminine", for fear of setting off a wave of all-too-familiar hetero-normative panic.

A fourth option: most tabletop RPGs are created by male designers, with a largely-male audience in mind. As a result, RPGs tend (in both theory and practice) towards a male perspective and a male play-style. From a tween or teenage boy's perspective, a female character lacks the strength for how he wants to play (i.e., hack-and-slash), and her social skills would appear irrelevant and "lame" to him.

But I have noticed an interesting corollary to the above observation: playing a female character is not at all uncommon among the male players of MMOs like "World of Warcraft". Perhaps this is because online play tends to involve very little roleplaying, so boys don't feel like they're required to "act all girly" if they do choose to play a female.

Is this a sign that boys of today are more comfortable with female roles? Or does it suggest that our boys increasingly view women's bodies as objects, as pretty shapes to stare at while they run around an online environment?

Only time will tell.

"Sorry, but the cure for cancer is in another castle!"

This Jane McGonigal woman (not to be confused with the Hogwarts professor of a very similar name) has been popping up all over the place in the past few days. I want to tell you a little bit about her, because what she has to say is important. It might not be a very popular stance (especially with parents of overweight children), though it's a stance that I feel has been gaining a significant amount of traction in the past few years.

McGonigal's book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, has at its core a thesis which is both unexpected and infectiously optimistic: that the person you become when you play a game is NOT a separate being, or even a secluded facet of your personality. The hero you become when you play games is an amalgamation of your best, most human qualities, including curiosity, optimism, problem-solving, persistence, imagination, and self-confidence.

McGonigal says, in her NPR Science Friday interview with Ira Flatow, that one of her favorite definitions of a game is "unnecessary obstacles that we choose to overcome" (emphasis added). Children who grow up playing games approach the world differently than those who don't; to them, no problem is insurmountable, with enough patience, cleverness, and teamwork. Their digital (and tabletop) alter egos flourish in the game-world, like plants in a sunny window. They're given permission, no, encouraged to see the world in terms of manageable challenges, missions, and levels. If you can't beat the problem now, just wait a while and come back when you're at a higher level, or when you've learned a new technique or picked up a better gadget.

In that same interview, McGonigal lists several free online games which are actually making measurable contributions to making the world a better place:

foldit - Protein chains are vital to the operation of all living cells; they transmit neural messages, break down nutrients, and teach your cells how to divide. Instead of remaining as long strings of molecules, they tend to clump together in predictable ways, which influences how they perform their various functions. If they fold up wrong, they can cause all sorts of problems, from malformed cells to cancer. Foldit allows you to simulate this process by designing your own proteins. If the protein you design proves itself especially resilient, then the scientists at the University of Washington will actually synthesize you protein in a lab and use it in the fight against cancer! How cool is that?!

EteRNA - Allows you to build and simulate your own RNA molecules, one of the most basic building-blocks of life. The user-interface is extremely intuitive, the "physics" are satisfyingly solid, and the overall mood is "curiosity rewarded by discovery." If my high-school biology class had involved playing a game like this... well, things might have turned out differently. Who can say?

Civ. D. - short for "civil disobedience," this game has not acutally been created. Yet. McGonigal proposed the idea at the D.I.C.E. summit last year; essentially, players would guide a peaceful revolution from start to finish, beginning with protests and sit-ins, right up through installing a new cabinet and drafting a new Constitution. It would be like Sim City meets Oregon Trail meets Tahrir Square. I see a lot of classroom applications for this one, if anyone ever gets around to making it.

But there is a caveat, a point of diminishing returns. Those who play a game they enjoy often do better at tasks they attempt in the following 24 hours, such as making a presentation or closing a business deal. But subjects who averaged more than 20 hours of games in a week received no more benefit than those who stopped before that point. In fact, after 28 hours of gaming per week, researchers found that those players actually performed worse in most social interactions, and were also found to be more depressed and lethargic.

Turns out that moderation is still the key to leading a productive, happy life. Who'd 'a' thunk it?



Addendum: All this talk of games that are good for something more than escapism has caused me to unearth an old gem: flOw, by Jenova Chen. This game was her graduate thesis for her degree in Game Design. It's totally sweet, wordlessly simple, and highly entertaining. I highly recommend it, even if you're not usually a fan of video games. This one might change your mind. So go ahead, give it a click.