Visually Expressing the Wonderfulness of Existence

Just a random picture of me at the Exploratorium. Posted to illustrate some of what I try to express in writing so often regarding my general attitude toward life. :)

Links I Have Liked Of Late

I'm working on several posts in the background (which is pretty much an ongoing thing for me), but I've been reading some things lately I figured were worth pointing people to. Enjoy, and be informed!

Longevity Links

1.) A good example of properly-applied critical thinking in longevity science can be found at Ouroboros - Research in the Biology of Aging in an entry entitled Sirtuins come under fire:

Over the past few years, sirtuins have generated great excitement — both in the basic study of biogerontology and (more recently) in the private sector. In just over a decade, the field has moved from its founding observations in yeast to wide-ranging results in mammals. Among the adherents of a widely held theory, it is believed that sirtuins act to extend lifespan via similar mechanisms to calorie restriction (CR), and that small-molecule activators of sirtuins (such as resveratrol) are CR mimetics — therefore, the sirtuins are the first molecular target to guide drug design in a bona fide anti-aging pharmacopoeia.

As theories reach maturity (and middle age), they are naturally subject to challenge, and the sirtuin story is no exception. The role of sirtuins in CR has been challenged, sometimes by the very founders of the field. The mechanism(s) of action of resveratrol are also under close scrutiny. Even some of the most famous studies of sirtuins — specifically, regarding effects on median lifespan and exercise tolerance — used animals eating such horrifyingly fatty diets or ingesting such gigantic doses of resveratrol that their relevance to humans must be questioned.

2.) Bill Thomas at Changing Aging reports on a bizarre case of someone being declared 'too old' to serve as an expert on aging:

Professor Gloria Gutman has the kind of credentials that should guarantee a long, fruitful stay at the peak of her profession. She developed and directs the highly regarded Gerontology Research Centre at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She's written or edited 20 books and more than 100 scholarly articles on such issues as housing for the elderly, dementia and long-term care. Her work is recognized beyond Canada's borders -- she's president of the International Association of Gerontology, representing organizations in 63 countries.

But last summer she faced a problem. On July 17 she turned 65. At Simon Fraser, as at many institutions and workplaces across Canada, that's the age of mandatory retirement. Happy birthday! Here's your watch, there's the door. One day you're 64, an internationally respected member of the faculty. The next, you're too old to be employed as an expert on aging.

How weird!

How weird, indeed! I've always figured that while people should certainly be allowed (and enabled) to retire, there's really no sense in forcing them to! My guess is that as more people start living longer and feeling better in their later years, we're going to be looking at a pretty massive shift in how the concept of "retirement" is viewed and put into practice. If someone is doing work they love and excel at, why the heck would you kick them out?

3.) The British organization Help the Aged seeks to:

...free disadvantaged older people in the UK and overseas from poverty, isolation and neglect. Understanding the needs of older people is fundamental to this work and we are committed to supporting and promoting high-quality research.

Research is central to the Charity's mission of securing and upholding the rights of disadvantaged older people in the UK and around the world. We fund vital research on ageing, we influence its direction via the academic and research community, and we promote the effective dissemination of research findings that will have the greatest impact on policy and practice.

Our policy research drives our campaigns and ensures that older people's voices are heard. And through our special trust, Research into Ageing, we currently fund some of the best and most needed biomedical research, which will improve our understanding of health in later life.

I don't personally live in the UK, but I still thought this site/group was worth mentioning -- I particularly like their emphasis on ensuring that older people's voices are heard, and on helping address issues like poverty, which are every bit as important as the stuff that goes on in laboratories.

Autistic Advocacy Links

1.) An older but excellent post from Bev at Asperger Square 8 entitled For Parents makes some great points about the purpose and benefits of autistic self-advocacy for all persons on the spectrum. I wholeheartedly agree with her, and I'm glad I came across this post today, as it tidily expresses a number of things that I think really need to be expressed (such as the following):

If your child is autistic and you want a better life for him or her, I am not your enemy. I want a better life for all autistic people. However they communicate, however well or poorly they score on standardized tests. Whether or not they have medical problems in addition to neurological differences, whether the diagnosis is autism, Asperger syndrome, PDD-NOS or something else altogether, I want the best possible life for every person on the spectrum.

By “better life” I mean physical and mental health and I mean freedom from harassment and discrimination and institutionalization. I want respect for your child and accommodation as needed and I want them to have jobs if they want jobs and friends and partners if they want that. I want your child to be happy and healthy.

...

If you have a child on the spectrum and are hoping to cure him or her, hoping to get rid of the autism, I don’t want to argue with you. Most likely, you and I don’t even use the word “autism” to mean the same thing. If you are one of these parents working to change your child, know that I am working, too. If your quest to change the course of autism fails, perhaps the quest to change societal attitudes will fare better. In which case, your autistic child might have a less hostile world to live in.

That is why I do this.

2.) A recent post entitled My-Blindness (a bit of a play on "mind-blindness", but with a refreshing twist) by Susan Senator, author, bellydancer, and mother of three. Her eldest is 18 years old and autistic. She writes:

I despaired over his autism, because I thought that it was getting in the way of his happiness. But it was really getting in the way of mine. But for him, maybe it was just that he was not ready for those kinds of interactions, and did not make them a priority until he was. Now he loves to be with other kids, other people. And still, he doesn't like talking to them, which is basically all I do with other people I like. So I've learned: Nat has his way, I have mine.

What Nat knows and doesn't know is a bit of a mystery to me. What human is not a mystery to another? We think we know what someone is thinking, we take pleasure in predicting another's actions, or perverse pleasure in recounting another's allegedly evil agendas. But how often are we right?

3.) Amanda Baggs covers the (ridiculous) case of megacharity "Autism Speaks" censorship of an autistic blogger's T-shirt design on Zazzle.com.*** Several people have written about this incident, but I wanted to quote Amanda's piece because of how she put a particular, important point (emphasis mine):

[A prominent "Autism Speaks" spokesperson] also says, after wondering out loud whether the spectrum is too wide by including Asperger’s at all, that Autism Speaks focuses on the “low functioning” end of the autistic spectrum. If this is so, then they shouldn’t be using the number “1 in 150″ or “1 in 166″ in all their advertising. These numbers explicitly include people labeled with Asperger’s and other people labeled high-functioning. You can’t use a set of people to get money for your cause and then claim that they aren’t the ones you’re talking about.

*** EDIT 6/27/08: Turns out that it wasn't actually "Autism Speaks" prompting the censorship this time -- the t-shirt maker explains here that the whole mess seems to have been the result of a Zazzle employee's butt-covering efforts. Apparently there was a bit of a mix-up over copyright laws and the interpretations thereof, but things have been settled now and the disputed shirts are still available.

(Thanks to Cody at Normal Is Overrated for the heads-up.)

And bear in mind that none of this negates the observation of Amanda's that I quoted above, regarding the apparent lack of math and logic skills rampant in some advocacy organizations -- it is still true that some people are claiming that any autistic person capable of self-advocacy shouldn't have a say in the representation or treatment of autistics, even though plenty of people fully capable of writing and communicating in other ways are part of the "1 in 150" statistic so often employed in the scaremongering process.

Gratuitous Cuteness!

And finally, a cute kitten video I took this weekend - this kitten, named Toby, is currently rooming with Matt's parents, who live nearby. Cute kittens are definitely one of those things that, in my humble opinion, make existence wonderful. =^_^=

What Each Of Us Notices, Exploratorium Edition

I wrote What Each Of Us Notices a while back to offer a bit of an illustration of how I perceive things. I find perception and its variations fascinating, and I also find that it can sometimes be difficult in the realm of the highly word-oriented Internet to remain cognizant of the myriad ways different people might process, interpret, and appreciate the world around them.

Anyway, while I've been working on a few "wordy" posts that I hope to have in a bloggable state soon, I figured I'd do another perception/picture post tonight, as I spent most of today in San Francisco at the Exploratorium. Aside from it being a bit noisy in that echo-y way that reminds me disconcertingly of the school gymnasiums of my youth, the Exploratorium is one of the coolest environments there is -- not only is there science everywhere, there are also a ton of purely visual delights, including many Things That Spin. :D

The photos below are just a few of the images that caught my eye today.

A panel on the wall made of numerous tiny curved mirrors:



A neat spinny disc-shaped thing in the wall:



A portion of the inside architecture of the Exploratorium. Not an exhibit -- just a collection of lines, angles, and surfaces I found really cool:



Matt (my SO) and me inside a giant kaleidoscope (basically 3 mirrors held together at the edges in a triangle shape):



(As always, I would absolutely love to see images -- drawings, photographs, etc. -- from others, so feel free to comment with links to things you feel are representative of how you see the world.)

Oh (Wonderful) Perilous World

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that I've been thoroughly obsessed with Rasputina's album Oh Perilous World! lately. There's just something incredibly compelling about using the cello as a rock instrument, blending metal and classical sensibilities together into a shiny pile of velvet and brocade, and overlaying the whole thing with lyrics that sound like recitations of encyclopedia entries.

Rasputina's lead vocalist and cellist, Melora Creager, began playing the cello at age nine, and is also apparently a history buff, and both of these things come through in spades on Oh Perilous World!. The album's themes are a weird mixture of quirky history lesson and current events (of the generally destructive sort).

While there's plenty to chew on from an antiwar and social commentary standpoint, there's also a layer of pure fun to this album -- an odd juxtaposition, perhaps, but Rasputina manages to make it work. It's the sort of album that makes me alternate between delightedly bouncing up and down in my chair and running to Wikipedia to look up references to Pitcairn Island, Tangata manu, and the apparent "Year Without a Summer" (1816).

The imagery (while decidedly dark) in all the album's songs is refreshingly concrete, which is something I've always appreciated lyrically -- I mean, you can't go wrong (per my taste at least) with lines like:

Grain couldn't ripen under these conditions,
It was brought indoors in urns and pots.
It'd go from ninety-five degrees to freezing within hours,
A brutal struggle for the people and the starving livestock.

and,

Jump the cliff into the ocean
You grab an egg
You swim back
Holding it aloft
You hold it high above the shark infested waters now
Oh my love

I can't help it, I like songs about objects. I like songs that describe physical things, that list dates and temperature parameters and other strings of information. Heck, I'd probably listen to an instruction manual for a DVD player if someone could set it to music -- that's just the sort of person I am, I guess. :P

Anyway, though, while album reviews aren't something I plan to do on Existence is Wonderful on a regular basis, this particular album raised my squee levels to the point where I felt it necessary to mention it here.

Question On Characters in Science Fiction Stories

UPDATE 6/3/08: I wrote this post in the throes of a bit of concern over the originality (or lack thereof) in a story I'm working on. I am feeling much better about the whole thing now and as I work on developing the story in my head, I am finding that the characters are "individuating" quite nicely as they inhabit my brain. Thanks to everyone who offered helpful suggestions and thoughts!

---

I've been on vacation this past week, and in addition to packing up more books for Methuselah Foundation donors, attending my little sister's college graduation, visiting with a cousin from out of town, and doing various other things I don't normally have much time for, I've been working on a science fiction story.

My story presently consists mainly of a piece of graph paper on my desk covered in boxes indicating plot points, arrows, and scrawled notes in teeny-tiny text. I've also been making little cartoony versions of my story's characters in one of those ridiculous-yet-addictive online avatar-maker thingies (except in the case of the robot -- he's an original drawing). And I've been working out a lot of the details in my head as I've gone about my day.

Why am I writing about this? Well, mainly because I'm having a lot of fun with it. I'm terribly excited, almost to the point where the whole thing is so shiny in my head that I can't even look at it face-forward.

However (and I would be very interested in getting some thoughts from anyone else who has written fiction, or attempted to do so), I keep running into one stumbling block that I am not sure how to deal with. I'm not going to let it stop me from writing, of course, but I am curious to know how others handle this kind of thing.



Basically, what's happening is that whenever I come up with a character or plot point, I keep finding all these ways the character or plot point resembles someone I actually know (or me, for that matter), or something that is actually happening in the real world.

Part of me feels kind of silly for being concerned about this. After all, reality is the only place I have to pull ideas from in the first place! And not only that, but despite the speculative and fanciful elements of the scenarios I'm writing about (sentient robots, teenage cyborgs, etc.), I want the story I write to be sufficiently grounded in the real world such that humans will actually be able to relate to it.

But still, I don't want to end up having someone read my story and think that I'm writing about them. I am most certainly not basing anyone in my story on an actual person I know IRL (in fact, I am quite deliberately trying to avoid doing this), but it's more than likely that some people are going to end up being at least partial "composites" of people I've met, known, heard of, etc. Heck, I don't even doubt that some of my fictional characters are going to end up having elements of other fictional characters!

I guess I'm wondering if there's some kind of "check" or test that would-be fiction writers can run their characters through in order to make sure they're "sufficiently original"? Is that kind of thing just a matter of getting good peer review, or what?

Just curious...

On Fascinations. And more Vorlons.

I have a long history of getting really really interested in particular things. I never really know what's going to trigger my uber-fascination circuits -- in early childhood I had a thing about assistive technology (no idea why), followed by a very intense Star Wars obsession (I was actually banned in 5th-6th grade from doing any more Star Wars related projects because until that point I'd somehow manged to work Star Wars elements into every assignment!).

Later, I got heavily interested in "four dimensional space" (a favorite book in high school was The Fourth Dimension, by Rudy Rucker), and was also generally fixated on anything to do with "the nature of the universe" (particularly string theory and Grand Unified Theory ideas). And in college, I got very interested in longevity and related matters.

I generally had 1 or 2 "major fascinations" at any time as a child. As an adult, I find I'm able to maintain 3 - 5 quite comfortably, though I tend to delve deeply into one at a time for weeks or months on end.

And in addition to the major fascinations, there are always various lower-key but still significant fascinations operating in the background -- e.g., ingredients labels, electrical outlets and plugs, aluminum foil, duct tape (and duct tape wallets!), Lego, various video games (though I'm not currently playing any), etc.

Altogether, the capacity to get really really fascinated with something, to the point where I end up exploring it from every possible angle I can find, memorizing facts about it, having the urge to squee with delight when I see something related to it is one of the thing I like most about being alive. It's one of those things that, while it definitely got me into trouble as a kid every so often (and which can sometimes make transitioning between tasks and activities difficult even now), I would never ever want to give up.

Soo...I promise this isn't going to turn into the "All Vorlon, All The Time" blog or anything, but this evening seemed like as good a time as any for a wee bit of fangirl indulgence.

I've been totally fascinated by the Vorlons since watching the very first episode of Babylon 5 a few months back. It's difficult to explain precisely what fascinates me about these particular fictional aliens -- I mean, they're definitely a key element in B5's mythic story arc, but there's much more to it than that for me. It's really the whole package, I guess -- ridiculous-yet-somehow-awesome encounter suits, living ships, terse conversational style, and a questionable but (in the context of the B5 arc) intriguing ethical system.

Now, none of this should be taken as an endorsement of actions taken by Vorlons in Babylon 5 -- I don't need to agree with everything someone (or something) does in order to be fascinated by it. As a species, the Vorlons were actually kind of arrogant, in the sense that the ocean is kind of wet -- though without getting spoilery, I will say that it was clear that not all Vorlons had the exact same personality or perspective (particularly with regard to the "younger races", which in the show included humans). I will also say that for a character that wasn't even in all that many episodes, and who spent most of his limited screen time wearing a sparkly black shower curtain, the series' primary Vorlon (Kosh) managed to project quite a strong individual personality. The whole thing was just really well done, and it was a joy to watch throughout the series.

Right now, I'd say Babylon 5 is a "major fascination", with Vorlons presently being a minor but significant sub-fascination. Welcome to my brain. Below are some of the fruits of this fascination. I am having so much fun with this. :D

My very first Vorlon drawing.


The Duct tape wallet, with drawing attached.


A Vorlon action figure I ordered from Amazon. I was very happy to find one, but not too happy with the "flat" color scheme.


Enter the acrylic paints! I did some Web searching prior to visiting the local hobby shop, and discovered that custom action-figure painting was actually a fairly well-established Thing People Do. So while I was initially apprehensive about potentially making a mess of my precious plastic Vorlon, I decided to take the paint plunge -- and I am really glad I did, because it was a lot of fun.


The "Before" (unpainted) and "After" (painted) picture.


Now I can take moody Kosh pictures! *skulk*


Obsess much?


And I even have a t-shirt now!


I took my basic drawing (the one I initially did for the wallet), photographed it, played with the color scheme in GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), and created a design which I submitted to zazzle.com, who printed my shirt and mailed it to me. In case you can't read it easily, the text on the shirt says, "Understanding is a three-edged sword". Whee!

Babylon 5: More Fun Than A Barrel of...Vorlons?

Babylon 5 is my most recently-acquired science fiction obsession. I'm about halfway through watching the fifth (and final) season on DVD, and have been enjoying every exciting and thought-provoking minute of this excellent series.

I actually watched the first few episodes with my dad back when the show premiered in 1994, but couldn't get into it at the time. I was bitter that Star Trek: The Next Generation (which had been my favorite show) had just been cancelled, and the early episodes of Bab5 just felt too much like "bizarro Star Trek" for me to be able to appreciate them on their own terms. Plus, in all honesty, I simply couldn't make head or tail of most of the dialogue in the show -- I guess I just didn't have the context as a fifteen-year-old to understand what was going on.

So, years passed, and eventually Babylon 5 faded away into long-term storage in my brain. I didn't give it much thought again until just a little while ago, when some friends brought Bab5 up and asked if I'd ever seen it. I told them that I'd not been able to get into it as a teenager and had also heard that the first season was fairly high on the cheese stick, and was summarily informed, "Oh, it gets much better! You'd really like it!" After hearing this sentiment repeated by several other people, and after learning as well that the series was basically one big long story arc (I love long story arcs), I decided to give it another try. And let me tell you: I have not been disappointed so far.

The first season was a bit rough in some respects, but since my standards going in were so low, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Not only that, but I noticed during the opening credits of the very first episode that Harlan Ellison (one of my absolute favorite authors of all time) was the conceptual consultant for the series -- that alone made me figure the series was worth a careful watch, as Harlan Ellison is well known for being quite persnickety about quality in fiction, and parsimonious as far as what projects he'll actually put his name on.

This second time around, I found myself much better able to understand the dialogue and the situations presented in the show, and I became intrigued fairly early on by the characters (especially the Vorlon ambassador!). I also really liked the fact that the show begain with its story already "in progress" -- that really made me want to figure out how all the characters (and the station) had gotten to where they were.

Aesthetics and Aliens (and did I mention Vorlons?)

Aesthetically, the show seems to have aged incredibly well for a sci-fi series. The opening and in-show computerized graphics (particularly in the first season) are a bit blocky by today's standards, but definitely impressive for their time, and they got a lot better as the seasons progressed.

The costumes are also something of a relief, frankly, if you've seen as much sci-fi as I have, as there's nary a spandex jumpsuit to be seen -- people, whether civilian or enlisted, dress like actual people. The alien makeup is also quite decent, particularly in the case of the Narn (green-skinned reptillian-looking marsupial-people) -- the only thing that took some getting used to was the Centauri hair, but even that didn't faze me after a while.

And then, of course, there is the Vorlon Encounter Suit, worn by the reclusive and cryptic Ambassador Kosh. I am actually kind of freakishly obsessed with Vorlons right now (or, more properly, Vorlon aesthetics, communication, and technology -- I'm not too keen on Vorlon politics, but I won't say more about that here as I'm attempting to keep this relatively spoiler-free). I downloaded a whole bunch of .wav files to my HP Jornada 720 (tiniest of tiny computers) so now if I really wanted to be a pain, I could walk around communicating mostly in electronic-sounding monosyllables and the occasional "IMPUDENT" or Kung Fu-esque phrase (such as "Understanding is a three-edged sword.").

I also drew a picture of encounter-suited Kosh and worked it into a duct tape wallet design, so as of today I am the proud owner of a custom-made duct tape Vorlon wallet (see below).



(I'm guessing that's worth at least 50 Nerd Points. :P)

The presence of extraterrestrial sentients is common in science fiction, and it is always interesting to see how different stories and fictional worlds treat their nonhuman residents. Like many sf fans, I've got a laundry list in my head of things I look for whenever aliens are introduced -- e.g., if they speak English, how does the story account for that? Are they humanoid or non-humanoid? How did humans encounter them? How was communication first established? And so on. Babylon 5 opens after humans have already had contact with various alien races for a number of years, meaning that there was presumably time for members of those races to learn human language, and vice versa. There are also occasionally aliens presented who seem to understand human language but not speak it -- due to anatomical incompatibilities, culture, politics, etc.. Here we usually see a device of one sort or another introduced to "translate".

One thing I really rather liked in this regard was (surprise!) how Vorlon communication was presented -- Vorlons are radically different from humans in some very significant ways, and in terms of sci-fi tropes they'd certainly be considered a very technologically advanced people, but they cannot actually articulate human language, and must employ translation devices in order to do this. I really liked seeing that because whether intentional or not, it was a neat little subversion of the whole "human speech is the triumph of evolution" thing I see so often here on Earth in real life. Regardless of what you might think of the Vorlons from a moral standpoint, I don't think anyone could reasonably argue that they're somehow "suffering" because they can't speak English without assistive technology.

And in addition to having an atypical inter-species communication mechanism, Vorlons are also socially unlike typical humans in many respects. While they certainly share many of the same fears and ambitions as humanity-at-large (albeit on something of a different scale), they're not so much into the small talk, to the point of it being highly amusing whenever humans and Vorlons try to have a conversation. You really need to watch the series to get the full effect, but from the looks of it, talking to a Vorlon is a bit like talking to the combination of a robot, a Magic 8 Ball, and Yoda.



Other species (notably the Narn, Centauri, and Minbari) are all much more humanlike both in their social presentation and linguistic faculties; they have their own languages (and accents, though the accents aren't really consistent and seem to often reflect the accent of the actor(s) more than anything else, at least when it comes to minor characters), and sometimes you see them speaking their own languages, but mostly they are shown conversing in English. Their societies are presented as being somewhat monocultural in the usual sci-fi sense, but at the same time, there's plenty of intra-cultural disagreement to be seen, and Bab5 is definitely a cut above a lot of shows as far as minimizing the "every alien is a walking stereotype" issue.

Story and Plotting

Plot-wise, Babylon 5 manages to be both fast-paced (in the sense of there always being something going on; there aren't too many "lulls" in the series) and thoroughly "fleshed out" with regard to details. It really is the kind of series that you have to start at the beginning and watch in order all the way through, as later episodes play heavily on earlier ones, and in order to know what the characters are going on about, you really have to have "been there", so to speak. This is a huge element of the show's appeal to me, actually: I'm kind of a nut for what are colloquially known as "nit-picky details", and Babylon 5 promises vast rewards here for those willing to exercise their observational faculties and long-term memories a bit.

Another appealing element of Bab5 is its character development -- that is, when decisions are made, things change as a result and don't just magically snap back to the status quo at the end of each episode. Characters are shown dealing with the ramifications of their choices and actions and experiences over the long term, and you can see them changing and growing and reacting differently to new situations.

Additionally, as much as I still maintain affection for Star Trek, Babylon 5 seems to me much more realistic in the way it portrays events as progressing and problems as being dealt with. Rarely is any solution neat and tidy, rarely does everyone agree, and rarely are the results of even the most well-thought-out and well-intentioned plan "perfect". Still, the show also manages to avoid beating the viewer over the head with constant defeat in an attempt to portray "gritty realism"; the Bab5 writers and creators seem to have done a better job than most at maintaining a balance here and also showing how the same outcome can spell positive consequences for some and negative consequences for others.

Babylon 5 also has an extremely rich philosophical thread running through it, a thread quite close to a lot of what I personally consider rather a neat way to look at existence. I won't get too much into it here, as it's really something that ought to be seen in the context of the story, but I will say that the way the story explains life, consciousness, time, and meaning is a beautiful thing to behold.

The Scientific and the Fantastic

Babylon 5 seems to walk the line between hard sf and science fantasy, sometimes edging more into one side than the other, but altogether maintaining a decent overall balance of realism and pure myth-metaphor-made-manifest.

The show's more realistic speculative elements are found primarily in the depictions of Earth and Earth culture -- Earth's ships look bulky and boxy just the way you'd expect human-government-commissioned spacecraft to look in a spacefaring future two hundred and fifty years down the timeline. Earth has also colonized Mars at the point the story takes place; the Mars colony does actually look like something that could presumably happen, as it doesn't employ anything really ambitious like mass terraforming, but rather presents a bunch of climate-controlled domes.

Also, I really really liked the fact that people were still shown using paper and pens in the future -- honestly, does anyone really believe that the future will be paperless? Or that someday there won't be any demand for a zero-power-consumption writing medium? Sheesh!

The medical technology was one thing that stuck out to me as fairly "primitive" -- aside from some newfangled and oddly-named medications and the capacity to treat the injuries and illnesses of a variety of nonhuman extraterrestrials, the medical lab on Bab5 doesn't really seem much better off than the average (assuming we're talking about an industrialized nation) Earth hospital today. People seem to die of the same things more or less at the same frequency that they do on shows that take place in the present day (i.e., stab wounds), which certainly isn't a totally unrealistic potential outcome for the year 2258, but I guess I was just kind of surprised to see so few "sick bay tropes". They don't even seem to have those little laser-y things that knit broken skin and bone back together in seconds. And as far as longevity goes, human lifespans seem to have increased somewhat on average per the Bab5 timelines, though quite modestly. The notion of living to 100 is discussed on Bab5 about as casually as living to 70 is today.

Then, in addition to all the fairly plausible stuff, we have the Plot Devices, which sometimes take the form of actual devices and other times take the form of quasi-supernatural phenomena (though thankfully no midichlorians!). There is no "warp speed" in the Bab5 universe, but there is such a thing as "hyperspace", through which ships can travel to cover long distances in short enough periods of time to make skipping across the galaxy a practical endeavor. Ships enter hyperspace through "jump gates" (which do exactly what you'd expect), or in the case of sufficiently powerful ships, "jump points" created by said ships.

We also see telepathic humans (and nonhumans), suggestions of something like reincarnation, time travel, and a few examples of prescient ability in some life forms (though in Bab5, the future is definitely presented as malleable; when people "predict the future", it's more a statement of "this will happen if nobody does anything to change how things are going now" than a statement of "this is going to happen and there's nothing anyone can do about it", with a few notable exceptions).

/end fangirl rambling

(oh, one more thing: in light of this recent upsurge in B5 fangirldom on my part, I've been enjoying The Babylon Podcast tremendously...check it out if you are similarly inclined!)

More Robot Art!

Well, more of a robot/zombie comic, but comics are still art!

Anyway, below is the comic itself: it's really cute, and was drawn by my friend Margaret, who amazes me with her mad graphics skills. It is posted here with her permission.



(The little robo-guy at the beginning of the comic is named Jim. Read more about him here!)

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon

On Saturday, April 26, 2008 I visited the Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. I'd been quite excited to go (being a shameless robo-fangirl and all) and the exhibit did not disappoint.



Matt (my steadfast and very patient Significant Other) and I arrived in downtown San Jose shortly after noon, where we joined up with two local friends and proceeded to catch a quick lunch prior to entering the exhibit. A large banner hung on the front of the museum displaying a gigantic image of a metal robot with a clock embedded in its chest. The connotation was unmistakable: here, there be robots.

There were no "No Photography!" signs up at the museum, so initially I had my camera out, and managed to get two or three shots of several exhibits before a museum employee informed me that picture-taking was verboten. I apologized and put the camera away, and do not plan on publicly displaying the exhibit photos I took (in deference to the Lords of Copyright), but you can still view images of some exhibits on the museum's Web site. The museum has also released an online video series which includes a fair bit of exhibit footage and commentary.

First Impressions

The exhibit includes paintings of robots, sculptures of robots, quilted robots, model robots, toy robots, drawings of robots, metal robots, and plastic robots.

Implementations range from the simple line drawing to the highly complex electromechanical avatar.

One of the latter is equipped with two flat-screen monitors, each displaying a large humanlike eye (and yes, the eyes follow you).

Another is constructed almost entirely of small CRT television monitors, each showing an identical animated pattern flashing through endless cycles of decidedly psychedelic imagery. The CRT-monitor 'bot was rather unnerving to stand near -- not because of its appearance (I was actually quite excited at all the power strips and outlets all over it, as I am totally Arthur Weasley when it comes to electrical plugs and sockets), but because of the massively multiplied high-pitched whine chorus emanating from all those CRTs.

I don't know if the artist was trying to make a statement about the pervasiveness of electronic "noise" in the world these days or whether that particular piece was there to keep bats away, but it was definitely one of the more abstract pieces in the exhibit.

Another piece is humanoid in form, mostly metal in its construction, but adorned with a pair of deer antlers, one on each side of its head: a mechanized Herne. In its belly behind a clear plexiglass cover sits a smaller metal humanoid, pumping and pedaling away so as to drive different but coincident motions in the larger figure. That one evoked all kinds of weird associations, but most predominantly it seemed an irreverent wink at the notion of the homunculus. And it was probably one of the most damn-cool looking things I've ever seen in an art museum.

On the "low-tech" side of things, a particularly impressive structure stands nearly ceiling-height (in a room with a very high ceiling); it is constructed entirely of Styrofoam package inserts from actual electronic products. It presides over a circle of surrounding, smaller Stryobots and several tables at which visitors are invited to build their own model robots out of provided Lego bricks.

A quote on the wall reads: We Were Promised Robots, in reference to the contrast between the retrofuturist-nostalgia version of a robot-enhanced reality and the actual present and emerging era of pervasive electronics that, while certainly more impressive in some ways than previous generations could have imagined, is decidedly different from what was imagined.

In reflecting upon that contrast, I cannot help but feel at once that things have turned out better than imagined in many respects (and I'm not just talking about iPods and flat-screen TVs here, but about civil rights, womens' rights, gay rights, etc.), but that we as a species still have a tremendously long way to go with regard to things like resource distribution, respect for our neighbors (regardless of who we are or where we live), and sustainable development. I'm not sure how to feel (much less what to do) about the fact of my having a nice shiny computer, a comfy apartment in a reasonably safe neighborhood, and easy access to art museums, while half the world population doesn't even have access to flush toilets.

Did the futurists of the 1950s and 1960s (who envisioned widespread atomic superabundance) expect fair and ethical resource-distribution systems to come about by magic, or perhaps with the help of friendly robot assistants?

The Robot as Self and Other

In film, art, and literature, robots have appeared to cross all cultural and class lines. Sentient robots in stories have been portrayed almost as a kind of enslaved underclass in some scenarios, even as they've busily worked toward taking over the world in other scenarios.

Iconic robots can serve to reflect ubiquitous anxieties present in modern industrialized culture: perhaps unresolved guilt and fear about the consequences of maintaining an underclass or worker class (whether that be the continued and un-addressed exploitation of sentients, or the classic "robot uprising"), as well as a sense that maybe the collective will of the machinery we construct might be essentially shackling us to its agenda, rather than the other way around.

But just as our machines do in life, the robots represented by the exhibit pieces defy confinement to any one role or position, and instead overlap and inhabit multiple contexts. One universal feature of life (especially human life) is that it co-opts pieces of its environment over time, as is required to maintain itself as a process. Humans are particularly adept at this, to the point where we are not only becoming increasingly able to maintain ourselves in the face of circumstances that would assuredly have killed our ancestors, but also increasingly confronted by the blurring of boundaries between self, tool, and resource.

Fictionalized and aestheticized robots are perhaps the ultimate confrontation in this regard, existing as they do somewhere between extension-of-self (in tool form) and autonomous "other", and frequently muddling this distinction entirely.

The Robots: A Cultural Icon exhibit provides many representative examples of this muddling.

One stark set of line drawings (done in classic Chinese pen and ink style) shows a humanlike figure sailing through the air, borne on the back of a birdlike robot, into which another humanlike figure has been inserted or merged. It is impossible to tell who is calling the shots (pilot, craft, or passenger) and perhaps the point is that it is not necessarily useful to attempt to delineate such things in the first place, at least not in any absolute sense.

On a wall in the museum, a projector plays the Björk video, All is Full of Love on infinite repeat. The inclusion of this video in the exhibit was somewhat surprising to me at first (as you don't exactly need to go to a museum to access a popular music video these days), but in the context of the exhibit, viewers are encouraged to consider All is Full of Love in a mindset which is less MTV and more imagery-focused. I'd seen this video before and found it at once unsettling and gorgeous, and watching through it again my reaction was similar.

However, with this viewing of the video I also noticed a lot more of what I like to refer to as "stuff English teachers love", by which of course I mean "stuff that can be interpreted as having sexual connotations". Nevertheless, there is no human flesh to be seen in the video; the closest we get are the stylized humanlike faces of the two gynoids that move through varying stages of construction and deconstruction and entanglement and separation.

The video is also interesting in that it simultaneously shows robots of an obviously fantastic nature, and robots that are more realistic and familiar to anyone who has ever seen an actual industrial robot. The gynoids look more human than the faceless hydraulic mechanisms disassembling them in reverse, but who built the mechanisms? Which type of machine more properly suggests the usual output of human will? And more importantly, what does each of us want the output of our will to look like?



On a less serious note, the exhibit also provides a set of easels at which visitors can sit and draw their own "robotic self-portrait" with provided crayons. Two mirrors printed with "robot face" outlines hang on the wall facing the easel seat, presumably so we'll be compelled to line up our actual faces within the outlines. This was all a bit silly, but too much fun to resist; I spent about two minutes sketching a (very rough) AnneBot.

The idea of the exercise is to draw a robot and think about how your robot reflects how you see yourself. I'm not exactly sure what my result says about me (if it says anything at all), but it was neat to have the opportunity to sit and play with crayons in a public place. And the exercise did get me thinking about how robotic imagery has historically tended to communicate things about both its creators and the cultures they inhabit.

Robots That Think And Feel

Text painted on one of the exhibit's walls declares: "The bipedal humanoid robot with fully developed artificial intelligence may be realized in the near future".

As is commonly the case with declarations such as this, little is offered in explanation of what "artificial intelligence" actually means, let alone what it means for such a thing to be "fully developed". My guess, though, is that when people make predictions about "fully developed AI", they are envisioning artificial "brains" that function exactly the way human brains do, albeit on some substrate other than biological wetware.

Such "AIs" have existed in literature for quite some time, however, they are conspicuously absent from the real world. My guess is that they will likely continue their absence indefinitely. Even if "artificial humans" were feasible to construct, humans of sufficiently differing internal architecture seem to have a tremendously difficult time communicating effectively with one another -- even the oft-cited human superpower of "empathy" seems in practice often restricted to persons sufficiently similar to the self.

So the question emerges: how do robots, both fictional and actual, reflect how humans think and feel about the very processes of thinking and feeling?

In some depictions, robots are assumed stonily indifferent and consequently feared. After all what could be more dangerous than an enemy who does not see you as an enemy, but as a pile of raw materials to be exploited or recycled? In other cases, the perceived hyper-rationality of the robot is valorized and sought as an ideal, "perfect" state in which the purity of reason might shine forth without the messy complexities wrought by amygdalae and endocrine systems.

As far as I'm concerned, both these reactions are rather puerile. Robots and emotion are inextricably intertwined, no matter how you look at it, and it makes little sense to infuse them with such superlative and impersonal power whether you're drawing them or thinking about actually building them. So it was refreshing to see at the exhibit a range of different depictions, some of which went for direct subversion of the stereotypes.

One piece that compelled much in the way of lingering and staring on my part was a small, unassuming-looking "shadow box" hung on the wall in one room. Its area probably did not exceed a square foot; it commanded attention not by looming over you in the imposing manner of the giant Styrobot in the adjoining room, but by drawing you in like an open window into a miniature world.

A toy robot sits on a chair in this piece, in what looks like a handmade doll's-house living room. Tissues (both boxed and used) clutter the area; the robot also clutches a crumpled tissue in his hand. A portrait hangs on the rear wall of the shadow box/living room, depicting (presumably) the occupant's Robot Grandma. A tiny model television with a real, working screen plays clips from Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

And if you look closely, you can see a tiny lacquered tear on the watching robot's cheek.

Even if we are truly talking about robots as tools -- actually emotionless mechanisms employed in the extension of human intent -- we are still dealing with emotion-infused machines, as the emotions in that case are ours. (Sometimes our machines even prosthetically become parts of us as well, to the point where having someone else touch or take them without our permission feels like a bodily violation, because that's exactly what it is.*)

And if we are talking about fictional robots equipped with some measure of autonomy via artificial-intelligence mechanisms, you would be hard-pressed to find a literary example of a robotic character that has not been anthropomorphized in some way. And a particular challenge for artists and roboticists alike is that of determining how to "blend" mechanical and human attributes effectively for whatever purpose the robotic character or actual robot is being invoked.

On that note, I've been to a few AI-themed lectures and listened to numerous episodes of robot-related podcasts (such as Talking Robots, which I highly recommend), and one thing that seems to be coming up a lot these days is the notion of robots being designed according to [typical] human reciprocity expectations.

What concerns me (a little bit) here is that perhaps the reason why we see statements like "We'll have fully functional artificial intelligence in the near future!" on the walls of art museums is because so many public and popular demonstrations of robotics technology feature creations that set off human "comfort and familiarity" cues.

Of course this is not problematic in and of itself, but whenever I come across an article about how robots are beginning to demonstrate social reciprocity, I can't help but be reminded that actual existing people (who might not show these typical reciprocity signs in easily-recognizable ways, due to being autistic or otherwise atypical) are still being written off as "empty shells".

Don't get me wrong -- I think robotics research is super neat, and I can see how studying human reactions to a robot's nonverbal behavior might yield fascinating insights into multiple aspects of social cognition. But at the same time, I think it is interesting to look at the assumptions behind the display (or lack thereof) of certain "signals", in humans and in robots.

Hence, one of the things I've always appreciated about "robot art" is how it often actually manages to acclimate people to atypical expressions of both emotion and cognition. Iconic robots do not always look or even act typically "human" (R2D2, for instance), and yet, people come to love them anyway.

Closing Notes

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon definitely lived up to my expectations (which, admittedly, were along the lines of, "This exhibit will contain cool, robot-themed art pieces"). The exhibit was not large (it spanned only part of a single floor in the multi-story museum), but it didn't need to be. I was actually rather pleased at how the setup and structure of the exhibit allowed visitors time and space for reflection on individual works -- the pieces were not crammed or crowded together, and while there was a guided tour option, this was not mandatory. The environment was also quiet and clean and not sensory-overloading (hooray for sensory accessibility!). It probably took about two hours to go through the entire exhibit (and that time span included several instances of lingering a long while to examine particular pieces) -- a pleasant length for a weekend afternoon outing.

I have definitely been inspired by what I saw, not only to write about it as I have here, but to keep exploring the cultural and artistic contextualization of robots in addition to the mechanisms by which actual robots operate in the real world.



After all, we and the robots we build, draw, and create as characters are essentially vectors along which the stuff of the universe explores different avenues of expression. And what is so strange, given that, about the idea that all (whether it be biological or mechanical) could indeed be "full of love", as Björk's video suggests, hopefully without irony? Perhaps the separations we try to enforce between what is "life" and what is hard cold material are in fact, overly facile.

In any case, it will be interesting to keep watching the interplay between real robots, humans, fictional robots, and robot-themed art as the world and its people change over time. And while there is no way to predict what shape this interplay may take in the far-off future, one thing seems likely to remain certain: our iconic robots have (and will continue to have) much to tell us about our individual and collective fantasies, fears, dreams, and priorities.

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*Before any econ-libertarians get excited, I'm not talking about things like taxation when I talk about people feeling justifiably violated when others touch things that are "attached" to them. Rather, I'm talking about situations where someone is (for instance) using a wheelchair, and someone else comes up and starts pushing them without asking. In other words, symbolic value in the form of money is one thing, but prostheticized objects are quite another.

And Then There Were Five...

ABFH of "Whose Planet is it Anyway?" has tagged me with a "5 things" meme. I don't often do these meme-things, but considering my prior entry was a bit on the "serious" side, something a bit less serious seemed like a rather refreshing idea.

5 things found in your bag:

(1) A tiny computer (Lately, an HP Jornada 720 -- more on that below).

(2) Chapstick. Currently melon-flavored. (I am allergic to actual melons, but melon chapstick is fine as it contains no actual melon!)

(3) A .04 tip fine-point black rollerball pen. (I am a total pen fiend, and very much enamored with the fine-point variety.)

(4) My wallet, which is made of duct tape. (Another random hobby of mine is making duct-tape wallets. I do not have any interest in selling them, though -- each one takes something like 6 hours to make, and it makes my fingers all sticky, so...not exactly something likely to be lucrative).

(5) A very simplistic cellular phone. Probably one of the few remaining ones on Earth without a built-in camera. I basically use it only for monosyllabic conversations involving transportation and other utility-oriented concerns, as I am not a fan of phones in general (I prefer e-mail, IM, etc.).


5 favorite things in your room:

(1) My collection of horrendously ugly polyester shirts. They're brightly colored and will probably outlast most of the human race, as most of them were actually constructed in the 1970s and still show no sign of fading.

(2) My original AT-AT Walker toy. I swear, it's as big as a dog! Now, if only I could actually get it to walk...

(3) Several rolls of duct tape, in colors ranging from classic silver to red to blue to green to plaid.

(4) My soft, fluffy Hello Kitty blanket (Wow, that is quite possibly the girliest thing I have ever written on this blog...)

(5) Those cool magnetic toys you can build things out of by attaching little sticks to little metal ball-bearing things


5 things you have always wanted to do:

(Mind you, these aren't things I think I WILL be able to do, necessarily -- some of them are straight-up fantasies. But I've still always wanted to do them!)

(1) Go to outer space on a big, huge, comfy, super-fast ship and explore the universe looking for weird natural phenomena and evidence of possible alien civilizations.

(2) Work as a researcher of some kind, in either physics or biology.

(3) Live past age 120 in good health and help others do the same if they so desire.

(4) Become a published author of science fiction.

(5) Grow kitten ears. Yes, on my head. (I think it would be cute.)


5 things you are currently into:

(1) Babylon 5 (the TV series). I am currently watching through the whole series on DVD for the first time, having originally dismissed it when it first came out as full of "boring political talk". And I am mightily impressed -- I might have some posts at some point inspired by some of the series' philosophical aspects.

(2) Robots! I collect small robot figurines, I build robots out of Lego, I draw robots, and probably half the t-shirts I own have pictures of robots on them. I am also writing a science fiction story right now wherein the two main characters are robots. I have always liked robot characters in science fiction. Robots are neat and generally awesome, and often cute. Hooray for robots! Ahem.

(3) Photography - I was lucky to receive a very very nice digital camera for my birthday in December, and I have discovered that I really like taking pictures of things.

(4) Tiny computers! I am a total geek for "obsolete" hardware, particularly when it comes in the form of small portable computers. My current darling is the HP Jornada 720, which is basically a fancy-for-1998 PDA with an adorable tiny keyboard. I bring it with me everywhere, as it has a battery life of about 9 hours (seriously!), and fits right in my purse. The Laser PC6 is another favorite -- it's perfect for long seminars, etc., as it can go about 20 hours on a charge.

(5) Longevity-related stuff (a longstanding thing for me that isn't likely to change anytime soon!). Biogerontology is extremely interesting, and I help out as I can with the Methuselah Foundation.

5 people you’d like to tag:

I don't tag people, but anyone who wants to do this one can. It's a free Internet. :P

Something To Leave The House For: Robot Art!

I am so going to this: an exhibition of robot-themed art at the San Jose Museum of Art. From the web site:

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon examines the development of robot iconography in fine art over the past 50 years. In 1920, the term robot was coined from a Czech word robota, which means tedious labor. Since then, the image and the idea of a robot have evolved remarkably from an awkward, mechanical creature to a sophisticated android with artificial intelligence and the potential for human-like consciousness. As robotic technology catches up with the wild imagination of science fiction novels, movies, and animation, dreams and fears anticipated in these stories may also become reality. Artists included in the exhibition have responded to the technological innovation with optimism, pessimism, and humor, presenting work that ultimately explores our ambivalent attitudes towards robots.

I'm not sure when I'm going yet, but I will be sure to write a report here once I've been. Yay for robot art!

Sci-Fi Recommendations

Escape Pod is a (more or less) weekly podcast featuring original short fiction by a variety of authors, from the well-known to folks who are just starting out. I've been listening to it for just under a year now, and while I definitely enjoy some stories more than others, the sheer variety of styles, themes, plots, and characters presented never ceases to amaze me. Much thanks to host Steve Eley for hosting Escape Pod and keeping it going for the past few years.

Anyway, I am mentioning Escape Pod not just to go all fangirl on it, but to draw attention to the story Friction, by Will McIntosh, which aired February 8, 2008. It's a fairly simple story, with few characters and (seemingly) simple settings, but everything about it just fits together brilliantly and the overall effect is (at least for me) difficult to put into words.

It doesn't exactly correlate with any of the things I usually blog about here, and in some respects it's a bit of a mournful tale, but it's also quite hauntingly beautiful. I don't take life for granted to begin with, but this story made me feel even more the fierce awe of conscious existence. It might not be to everyone's taste but I liked it a lot, and figured I'd point it out.

Other Escape Pod stories I've quite enjoyed (stories quite different in style from Friction, and from each other, for that matter) include:

- Start the Clock, by Benjamin Rosenbaum

- Impossible Dreams, by Tim Pratt

- Anyone Can Whistle, by David Walton

- Save Me Plz, by David Barr Kirtley