Why Do Epidemics Happen?

2007.05.31 - Thursday

Because "well-educated, successful, intelligent" people like to think that the rules don't apply to them, and that their travel plans are more important that dozens, even hundreds of other people's lives.

"I'm a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person" the man, who declined to give his name, was quoted in the newspaper interview as saying. "This is insane to me, that I have an armed guard outside my door, when I've cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing."

Man knew he had TB before flying to Europe

The pieces of the puzzle come together, and the case begins to stack up against our unidentified suspect. So, it turns out he was notified he had a strain of multiple-drug resistant Tuberculosis on May 11th, and was told not to travel. On May 12th, he got on a plane to Europe for his wedding in Greece anyway, leaving before health officials could hand deliver a letter emphasizing the danger. On May 21st or 22nd, tests came back positive for XDR TB. The man was located and contacted during his honeymoon in Italy, and was told to turn himself in to local health authorities for isolation and treatment. Instead, he got on a plane and flew to Montreal, then drove back into the US. He took a Czech Air flight to Canada deliberately to avoid being caught by the US no-fly list.

Now, he has the audacity to ask why he's being put in armed guarded isolation. Throughout this entire ordeal, I can't find a single piece of evidence that suggests he was thinking of anyone but himself. He didn't even seem to care about possibly exposing his wife and presumably both of their families to one of the deadliest bacterial diseases that we know of. Obviously the hundreds of people he could have infected in a public place like an airport, and on trans-continental airplanes, probably wouldn't even register with such a creature. Unbelievable selfishness, beyond redemption.

As for this guy's "education", I don't know where he got it, but it seems rather sub-par to me. I don't think I personally know anyone who wouldn't be scared out of their clothes when told they're infected with a drug-resistant Tuberculosis. A lot of people won't even come into work with a cold, for fear of getting the whole office sick. I'd personally be scared not only of my own possible death, but of inadvertently giving it to someone else. When someone tells me about a disease, especially if I'm not familiar with it, the first two things I wonder about are treatment options, and how contagious it is.

I'm starting to think that we just can't trust people anymore. Giving them verbal warnings or even written, legally backed restrictions to travel and public outings just don't seem to work sometimes. It might be safer to simply quarantine these people immediately upon their contact with the health system. If we ever do have a serious outbreak of something like this again, it's just going to have to be a consideration. This isn't about rights, or due process. These people aren't criminals, yet. They're carriers of deadly infectious diseases which have the potential to kill hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. In a world of almost instantaneous global travel, how long can we keep taking chances by simply trusting people to make the socially responsible choice? So far, they don't seem to be doing a very good job.

Canadian "Justice" Watch

2007.05.30 - Wednesday

Men escape jail terms in crash that killed cabbie

Sick! I don't care how old you are, 140 km/h in a 60km/h zone is beyond excuse, beyond reason. To take someone's life, and be sentenced to no partying for a year and a piddling driving ban is an insult to the very word "justice". If they'd been just playing around with a gun, instead of a car, do you think we'd be looking at the same kind of sentence?

Thanks to our unquestionable precedent-based system, this is the most someone will ever get for this kind of crime again. Pathetic.

The Constellation Program

2007.05.28 - Monday

If you haven't already, I highly recommend taking a look at NASA's Constellation program website to see what's in store for the only space program that matters right now. The Ares launch vehicles are of particular interest, especially the "heavy lifter", the Ares V. As technically impressive as the Shuttle can be, I'm glad to see a return to simplified, practical rockets for the foreseeable future. Getting to the Moon is also going to require a lot more power than the Shuttle can offer, which the Ares V seems to deliver. While it doesn't appear as though we'll be launching people with it, the machine has what it takes to get large payloads into orbit, or to the Moon. It will be able to lift 286,000 pounds into low Earth orbit, which is almost 30,000 pounds more than the Apollo program's Saturn V. The Ares V will be only three feet shorter than a Saturn V was, will have the familiar five liquid fueled engine configuration, in addition to two Shuttle-style solid rocket boosters.

People who saw Saturn V launches have always said the Shuttle pales in comparison, in terms of size, and most importantly, in terms of noise. I'm sure the Ares V launches will be huge draws once they start. Even though astronauts won't be riding them, people won't care, it's just going to be too damn cool. Besides, the Ares I seems like it will be a hell of a lot more reliable, and a hell of a lot safer, than the Shuttle ever was. For human spaceflight, that's concern number one these days.

Selling Space

2007.05.26 - Saturday

President Bush's "vision" for human spaceflight has set the bar pretty high for NASA. While an ultimate trip to Mars is a technical and logistical mountain, a simple return to the Moon shouldn't be. Unfortunately, our ability to send humans beyond low-Earth orbit isn't what it was nearly forty years ago. We're in the process of designing and building new spacecraft and planning new missions, all while desperately trying to push the remaining Shuttles well past their prime in order to complete the International Space Station.

Assuming the space station is completed on time, and the Shuttles are retired in or around 2010, the United States will still be looking at nearly a five year span of time during which they will be unable to put any people, or cargo of significant size, into orbit without paying their way on Russian or French rockets. While I'm sure the eventual return to flight with the Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles will be well covered by the media, I wonder if anyone is really going to care by then.

Media coverage of human space flight missions, seemingly the only ones that are covered by the mainstream media these days, is usually relegated to a thirty second blurb somewhere in the last quarter of a thirty minute evening news broadcast. If it's a really big deal, they might even bump the story up ahead of the sports scores. Even then, they're always going to mention the "aging" Shuttle fleet and how the ISS is "tens of billions of dollars over budget", which always helps to temper any good news. Do large swaths of young people even know what NASA does, or why we have people in space? I doubt it. We're dangerously close to approaching a time when only people's grandparents will be able to remember any significant achievements in human spaceflight. The Moon landing? Large amounts of people already think it was faked, and those who remember watching it and the sense of national accomplishment that came with that will dwindle soon enough. Very little has happened in the realm of human spaceflight since then, no matter what NASA scientists will tell you about their experiments on the effects of microgravity on the human nervous system.

While NASA has done an arguably fantastic job maintaining flight status, launching robotic missions, and funding advanced research with its meager budget, the one thing it has consistently failed at since the Apollo days is marketing itself. The organization has become too scientific, too burocratic, doesn't realize where its money comes from, and doesn't understand why its funds have been slashed for decades. They've lost the interest of the public. They don't perform interesting missions, they don't explain why they're performing them, and they certainly don't educate people on why having a human spaceflight program is good for the country. Even when things are explained, it's as if they're explaining it to other scientists or to the already converted space buffs who watch NASA TV. They trot out the most boring, monotone mission directors and the most unattractive, geeky sounding astronauts they can find. People get turned off by the complex vocabulary and "high school nerd" vibe that positively pours out of these people. I mean, they're launching human beings into orbit on the most complicated machine ever constructed by Mankind, riders on an eleven million pounds of thrust fireball, pushing three and four Gs of pure acceleration, and quite frankly, they make it sound boring and tedious. I know they're trying, but it's just not what they do.

So when does the general public really pay attention to Shuttle missions? Well, whenever it's the first one after an accident, for one. You can't exactly take advantage of that all the time. What else? There was John Glenn's mission a few years ago which was a pretty good draw. How about Challenger? The only reason millions of people and children in every classroom across the nation were watching that disastrous launch was because school teacher Christa McAuliffe was on board. Are we seeing a pattern yet? If it weren't for Lisa Nowak's complete mental disintegration recently, I, a NASA fan and casual "space buff", wouldn't be able to name a single active duty astronaut or recall even one future mission plan. The astronauts aren't on TV, they aren't on the internet, they're no where visible. Quite frankly, we need more civilians in space.

Now I'm going to throw an idea out there that the NASA scientists would positively hate. They'd be up in arms, and the managers and politicians with them, and that's exactly why I believe it would work. On the last Shuttle mission three or four years from now, get either a big time celebrity or a nobody, chosen by lottery, on that crew. Personally, I've always thought that cutting Bill Nye "The Science Guy" from astronaut training was a huge mistake. He was about as famous a legitimate "scientist" as you could have gotten, the right age, reasonably fit. Someone you could depend on to do the TV talk show circuit and plug the space program, someone who people would have cared to see go into space, and most importantly, someone who people will listen to when they talk about it afterwards. I guess his selection would have cut into NASA's precious time doing piddling experiments in orbit, run by some no-name scientist or doctor that no one cares about, and who will never get on "The Tonight Show" or receive a guest spot on "Saturday Night Live".

Back when N'Sync band member Lance Bass was investigating getting a trip into orbit through NASA or on a Russian flight, they should have jumped at the chance to fly a bonafide teen music sensation and celebrity. That never went anywhere of course. So, NASA, you want your funding? Explain why you should get it, explain what you do, what you've done, and how it benefits our lives and pushes us forward. Explain why NASA is important, but don't do it to congressional committees in oversight hearings, do it to the people who are paying the bills. Get a civilian, a TV star, a film star, anyone who we'll actually care about and watch, and sign them up. Partner with a major network and produce a TV series that follows their astronaut training, and educates people on the dangers and rewards of human space flight. Just don't produce it yourselves. Leave it to the TV people, so we don't end up with something narrated by William Shatner that airs on PBS. Allow people to discover, through our astronaut candidate, all about the plans for the future of the American space program. Build it all up to a live, nationwide telecast of the final space Shuttle launch. Follow the mission in detail with live TV updates from orbit, including interviews, questions from live audiences, even a daily or hourly blog. After the mission is completed, wind it all down with another tour of the TV show circuit for our famous celebrity civilian astronaut. Give people something to look forward to five years on when the Constellation program starts flying.

Of course, none of it will happen. I'm sure it would all take away from precious station construction time, or handicap some grad student's experiment on honey bees and ants in space, or some such thing. Perhaps, for once, while you're canceling all of the pure research programs and squeezing blood from local rocks to fund our future in space, you might stop to think about why you're not getting the money you need. Something to do with committees and congressmen and attitudes, I'm sure. Funny how I don't see you doing anything to change that.

Bobbie Loonie

2007.05.20 - Sunday

A few weeks ago, I think it was a Friday night, I was driving home from my martial arts class, around 10:00pm or so. I was coming up to the stop light at Oak and 49th, and up ahead a car caught my eye. It looked like a Ford Taurus, one of the completely uninteresting ones from the 90s, in a forest green colour. Now normally I wouldn't look twice at a Taurus, but this one had a big sign on the back, big enough that if you were directly behind the car it might obscure most of the rear window. All around the edge of the sign were lights which blinked to make it look as though they were moving around the edge. The sign was painted yellow, with big black text in that standard "Comic Sans" font which read: "Bobbie Loonie, Magician".

Directly underneath this sign was the car's lit up vanity license plate: "HAHAHA". My eyes began to move towards the front of the car. I was coming up along side at the stop light, and noticed a fair bit of stenciled text on the rear and passenger windows. "Google Me!" announced the first line, then "award winning magic for Birthday Parties, Company Picnics, Shopping Centres, Fairs & Festivals" followed by a large 604 phone number. As I slowed even more to stop at the light, I realized I would be stopping right next to this green Ford Taurus, and I had to see who Bobbie Loonie was. I came to a stop, looked over, and my heart sank.

Sitting behind the wheel was a middle aged man, maybe mid-forties. He seemed pudgy, with the beginnings of a double chin and ballooning cheeks, and he was definitely on the tall side. He had the look of someone who's car is too small for them, but he seemed to slump down in his seat a bit, forcing his head to bend forward so he could properly see out the front window. He was wearing what looked like one of those tweed business jackets, gray or slightly brown in colour. His clean-shaven face held very little expression, with a mouth turned slightly down at the corners, and eyes that were focused forward, unmoving, and maybe a quarter to a third of the way closed. He had longer, dark hair, coming down just past his ears. Most of it was combed back but a few thick strands dangled across his face beside his eyes. He didn't move at all while the light was red, just staring forward with that blank expression.

Almost immediately my mind raced into creating an entire life for this character. I imagined him taking any and every job he could get, driving for long periods across the entire lower mainland. His 1990s era Taurus must be pushing 150,000 kilometres or more, but he keeps it going because he can't afford a replacement. I pictured the retail openings he would be hired to cover, as someone to keep the customers' kids occupied while they shopped. A new Walmart or Home Depot would be just the place, or a new strip mall or shopping centre out towards the valley. I could picture the birthday parties for rich people's kids and all their little friends, maybe around Shaunessey, or Kerisdale, or Arbutus. I could see the summers, hoping to be hired by as many children's festivals and fairs as possible, and the winters, slow and stressful. I could see him sitting at a small kitchen table in an apartment at night, a frequent habit, as he works out another budget to make sure he can pay rent next month.

Now I could have it all wrong. Maybe Bobbie Loonie does this as a side job, or maybe he's really good, gets enough work, and does okay. I just didn't get that feeling however, looking at him, or at the car. To me, the flashing signs on the car, the licence plate, the window text, it practically screamed desperation. Everything about his body language and expression, even in that tiny moment, conveyed nothing but defeat. I tried to think about his younger days. What happened? Surely he didn't plan to have this kind of life. To find himself at middle age, barely scraping by with an unreliable job and few other skills. He must have planned for more; wanted more. Maybe he was hoping to hit it big with a stage show, or a television special, or a comedy gig? Of course, it didn't happen. Those things either never materialized or weren't taken advantage of. So he plugs on, trying his hardest to make it work, but he's been beaten; defeated by life.

True or not, Bobbie Loonie provided me with a powerful image of what life can do to you if you aren't careful. It's easy to know that you'll never become a drug addict, or a drunk, or a criminal. It's harder to know that you won't end up alone in a dead end job with nothing to your name. After all, you only get one chance at life. Better to make the most of it.

Damn Impulse Buying!

2007.05.13 - Sunday

I always hate shopping on Amazon for a single item. You almost always end up three or four dollars short of getting their free shipping option, and so you keep browsing for something else to buy. Not something too expensive, maybe an older CD you've always wanted, around the five to ten dollar range. For future reference, always try and be at home when you're doing this, so you don't end up ordering something that's already in your damn collection!

Yeah, so if anyone's interested in a free disc of the "Once Upon A Time In The West" soundtrack, let me know. I seem to have two of them at the moment. Bah!

What Space Looks Like

2007.05.09 - Wednesday

I'm making a promise to myself. From now on, if I ever do any personal CG work involving space, which is a pretty safe bet, I will try to make it look both real and cool. Now, by "real", I don't mean I'm going to flood my models with radiosity passes, crank up the ambient, and run the whole thing through a big noisy grain filter like "Battlestar Galactica". I mean real, as in, what something in space would really look like. Take a look here:

Notice anything missing? Stars perhaps? Obviously the stars are actually there, but a camera, or the human eye, cannot see them because their relatively small light output is dwarfed by that huge, incredibly bright planet that happens to be sharing the frame. You can't expose both at the same time, in the same way that you can't take a picture out a window at night, while standing inside a brightly lit room, and expect to see anything beyond. On the other side of things, if you were to show a ship in deep, interplanetary space, there would be no discernable lighting direction, and you should be able to see nearly every star in the Universe. Now I'll be the first to admit that a pure, 100% accurate CG space shot is likely to be entirely uninteresting. There's so little light even as far out as Pluto, that a realistic depiction of a ship in deep space would most likely involve a dense starfield and a zero black silhouette. Making a ship look cool while it's traveling between stars would have to rely almost exclusively on self-illumination, like seeing a haunting deep sea fish light its own way through the water.

Now I know that this kind of attitude would never get far in a visual effects studio, where tired cliches like "it doesn't have to be right, it just has to look right" dominate the daily life of the VFX artist. Maybe someday, far in the future, when a larger portion of the population gets a chance to travel to space, or at least watch more shot-in-space documentaries, people will start to figure out that things don't look the same in space as they do on Earth. Maybe at that point, you could get a compositor to leave the shadow side of a space ship at zero black, as it should be (unless orbiting a planet), but I'm not convinced they're physically capable of doing that. When Kubrick made "2001: A Space Odyssey", he pulled out every trick in the book to try and shoot his models with strong directional lighting and black-as-can-be shadows. Sound stages were kept pitch black, and powerful strobe lights would flash in unison with the camera's shutter to create that signature, realistic look, one frame at a time. Today, even with computers that can accomplish the same task with extreme ease, we divert huge amounts of processing power and effort to get the lighting on space ships to look like the lighting on airplanes, cars, or large boats on an overcast day, full of ambient fill and soft shadows, and all because it looks "more realistic".

I always admired Joss Whedon's "Firefly" for being the sci-fi show to finally have the balls to get rid of sound in space. Will there be a sci-fi series in the future, one which hopefully enjoys more success than "Firefly" did, that will bring an equally realistic touch to space-based visuals? I certainly hope so. I'm sure a lot of people would accept the change if they understood it, but as evidenced by the continuing survival of the Moon "hoax", it's obvious that most people have no idea how light, or anything else, operates in the vacuum of space. Jesus, the 9/11 "conspiracy" is proof enough that people don't even understand the laws of physics on Earth!

I have to remain optimistic, but it will take a special project to bring people on board. For the immediate future, that doesn't seem likely. Even fan-run projects like "New Voyages", which you would imagine is staffed by a decent number of space enthusiasts, tirelessly cling to matching the "canon" look of Star Trek's original series visual effects. Such a wasted opportunity. I guess, for now, beyond my own projects, I'll just have to wait and see.

The Dream Isn't Alive

2007.05.08 - Tuesday

I watched "The Dream Is Alive" again last night, the second Imax film to focus on the Shuttle program. It's a wonderful piece, and since it was made in 1985, it still has that optimistic attitude that mankind would quickly conquer space just as he quickly conquered most other frontiers. Of course it wouldn't be long before Challenger would shatter that reality. Maybe in the long run, after space has been conquered, history will view it as having happened quickly. Today, however, even getting to that outcome is in doubt.

"In the future, our children will live and work in space, and some of their children might even be born there."

When you hear Walter Cronkite say those words in "The Dream Is Alive", somehow I don't get the impression that what he had in mind for 2007 would be three people on a one hundred billion dollar half-built space station for six months at a time. At this rate, we'll be lucky to have the first human birth in space within two hundred years.

Pathetic.