Nicolas Demers – Page 29 – Web, photos and assorted geekery

“Listening to the heartbeat of a star in its womb”

Last night I attended a meeting of the Center For Inquiry Vancouver, with invited guest Dr. Jaymie Matthews, mission scientist of the MOST project. MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of STars/Microvariabilité et Oscillations STellaires) is Canada’s first space telescope, studying minute variations in stars’ light output to understand their inner structure, as well as detecting any planets that may be orbiting them.

In the over 5 years since its launch, MOST has studied hundreds of star systems, upending a few theories, confirming others, and generally expanding our understanding not only of others stars, but our own as well.

The event was named What if Galileo had a Space Telescope? in reference to Galileo’s groundbreaking observations of celestial bodies, which forever altered our perception of the universe and our place within it. Dr. Matthews argues that we are currently going through a similar revolution, what with new cosmological theories like dark energy (to explain why the expansion of the universe is still accelerating), and our continuing quest for Earth-like exoplanets, further putting our home in its proper perspective.

Unfortunately, MOST’s imaging technology doesn’t lend itself to pretty pictures like, say, the Hubble Telescope. Still, the words, simple graphics and animations are enough to fire the imagination. This is head-spinningly exciting science! I’ve read up on some of it over the years, but I’d never heard of MOST and had no idea so much was being done right here in Canada!

To Flickr or not to Flickr

Way back when, as I started to work on my site’s present design, I made a conscious decision not to use Flickr. The disadvantages, as I saw them, were: (a) I couldn’t style it, (b) current incoming links would be broken, and (c) I wouldn’t have access stats. Turns out (c) is not true, (b) doesn’t really apply since I don’t think I have any incoming links to my photos, and (a) is actually not that big a deal. Hey, I had fun styling my galleries (and fighting with Smarty templates, and learning my way around Gallery’s user interface, which isn’t all that friendly), but I don’t need to do it anymore. Flickr offers much more flexibility in organising my photos, a snazzy interface, rich tagging and metadata, and—more importantly—tons of exposure.

I’m in the process of republishing my galleries on Flickr. All new photos will go directly there.

Oh, and I’ve started another site redesign. It was about time, don’t you think? No details yet, except I am planning to expand the width from 800 to 1000 px. Hah, and what will I do with all that extra space?

Caw!

Hey, remember the last time I blogged about crows? Back then I was just on one of their commuting routes. But my present job happens to be very near their roosting grounds around Still Creek and Willingdon. Until recently it was still dark when I left work, so I had so I walked past, oh, a couple of thousand crows, I’d say, settled in the trees along Gilmore Ave. And that’s just a suburb of Crow Central. There was no way to avoid walking under them, so I used to pull the hood of my jacket up, afraid of getting shat on. Which hasn’t happened so far, but I’m not keen on tempting fate.

But the days are getting longer and a few times this week I’ve been able to get out of work early enough to see all the zillions of crows on the last leg of their commute, resting on trees, roofs, power lines or any convenient spot. And then, without warning, take off again like a swarm of, well, screechy black birds.

“There is grandeur in this view of life…”

In the last chapter of The Origin of Species, Darwin recapped all the evidence he so carefully and meticulously presenting for his theory of common descent. And then took a step back to ponder where it was all going, and what it all meant.

In the last chapter of The Origin of Species, Darwin recapped all the evidence he had so meticulously presented for his theory of common descent. And then took a step back to ponder where it was all going, and what it all meant.

When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!

He predicted that the theory would open up rich new fields of scientific research in biology, geology, paleontology, psychology and anthropology. Armed with the understanding that all individuals of all species are related, however distantly, that species have been shaped by their environments over the eons, scientists would look backwards, and outwards, free of counterproductive labels and dogmas, answering many current questions and discovering even more interesting questions to ask. This prediction would prove to be correct. As Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

And then he went one step further:

When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.

What ennobles them? Simply having such a long and complex history. They—and all their ancestors—were lucky or tough enough to survive everything Nature could throw at them. Every being now living, worm or eagle, peasant or aristocrat, is descended from a long line of survivors. That’s a pedigree anyone should be proud of.

Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species of each genus, and all the species of many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct.

Is it all doom and gloom, though? Not at all.

As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.

I don’t know about that “perfection,” but hey, that’s Victorians for you.

It’s interesting to note how Darwin’s attitude contrasts with that of creationists, then or now. To them, the idea of being related to apes is just as abhorrent as the idea the Bible isn’t literally true. Animals aren’t ennobled by their connection with us; it’s we who are demeaned by our connection with them. The only way Humankind can be seen as special is through our creation, not our history or achievements. And they certainly don’t look forward to a far distant future where our descendants—however different they’ll be from us—will continue to thrive.

The book concludes with a final appeal, not to the truth, but the beauty of his theory.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Darwin’s no poet, I grant you, but this passage works. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the theory of evolution—with its notions of deep time and the fundamental interconnectedness of all living beings—tells a far more satisfying story than any creation myth our various cultures have cooked up. Our long journey from the trees—and before that, from the swamps and the seas—has made us what we are, flaws and all. We dishonour our ancestors by ignoring their struggles, their achievements, and yes, their failures. We honour them by remembering their lives, and continuing the journey they made possible for us.

Happy 200^th, Mr. Darwin.

I got my picture taken with James Randi!

The Amazing Randi was invited to UBC to give the keynote address for Science Week 2009. I decided to attend even though it was a weeknight, and really out of my way. And the map I printed out from Google Maps still didn’t keep me from getting lost. Health Sciences Mall is a street, my ass.

Check it, kids!

But it was totally worth it. Randi is well in his seventies now, I think, but still going strong, and as a great showman as always. He demonstrated a few tricks (both sleight-of-hand and mentalist) to educate and entertain, and of course went over the old standbys: Peter Popoff and Uri Geller and Sylvia Browne. I’d read about all that, of course, both on his site and others, but it was a different experience to hear about it from The Man himself, in an auditorium full of other skeptics.

Nice job as always, Mr. Randi. Here’s to many more years or debunking frauds.

Foggy

I took the day off sick. No, I really wasn’t feeling well, this wasn’t so I could watch the US Inauguration live—though that was a nice bonus. And I’d like to say that, as Barack Hussein Obama took his oath of office, that the damn fog that’s been hanging around downtown Vancouver for the last, oh, ten days at least, miraculously parted, letting the daystar shine down on my light-hungry eyes.

Not so much, though. But I did go out for a bit this afternoon and shot some pictures around Sunset Beach, something I’d been meaning to do for a while but there just wasn’t enough light before or after work.

Back to the Inauguration, I loved Obama’s speech, stressing the familiar themes of unity, service and hope. And how, with impeccable class and without naming names, he repudiated everything the Bush/Cheney administration did and stood for.

But I have to give a shoutout to Reverend Joseph Lowery, who gave the ending benediction. Yes, I know, I’m not happy with invoking gods in what should be a secular ceremony, but… seriously, this guy’s awesome! Humility, humour, great timing and delivery, true dedication to his brothers and sisters. Washed the bitter taste of that blowhard bigot Rick Warren’s prayer right out of my mouth.

And, as long as I’m posting videos, here’s the great Maya Angelou reading a poem at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration.

Book Review: Mortal Engines, Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices

One of my new year’s resolutions is to read more literature, and then to blog about it. This post is more of a prologue to that, because the books it reviews don’t really count as literature.

So a month or two ago I was browsing TVTropes, and came upon this entry right here. A post-apocalyptic future with mobile cities that eat each other? This was way too intriguing to pass up. I decided to only order the first three books since the last, A Darkling Plain, is only out in hardback.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to read more literature, and then to blog about it. This post is more of a prologue to that, because the books it reviews don’t really count as literature.

All in all, the series was pretty good. Not great, mind you, and I don’t think I would have given it all those awards, but a pleasant little adventure story. There are a lot of clever bits, including the basic premise of Traction Cities, and various shout outs. The plot and characters, though… they were less impressive. The author’s presence was too visible, I think, moving the players around on his board, and I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief. Likewise, Hester Shaw’s evolution from Action Girl to full-on murderous sociopath felt arbitrary and forced.

Incidentally, though the series does pretty consistently depict a savagely town-eat-town world, it falls prey to the Apocalypse Not trope. In Mortal Engines the Hunting Ground was in bad shape and getting worse, with slim pickings for London. Yet in Infernal Devices, we see many cities of varied sizes coexisting, with something of a common culture. Not to mention the lands of the Anti-Traction League.

Writing-wise, the first book needed some polish. The plot seemed even more forced (honestly, it was pretty clear this was Philip Reeve’s first stab at novel writing), and there were a couple of odd bits—like passages switching to the present tense for no clear reason—that should have been caught by an editor.

Still, I was entertained, and that’s what counts, right? I’ll be sure to pick up A Darkling Plain when it comes out in paperback.

Next up: Karen X. Tulchinksy’s The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky

2008: The Year In Review

This has been a pretty interesting year, with lots for me to be proud of. Let’s run down some of my achievements, in no particular order:

Moving downtown. I’d been meaning to do this for a few years but never got off my ass until this spring. Living in the boonies was nice enough, my place was relatively cheap, but PoCo was very isolating and inconvenient in so many ways. You may recall I whined about it a couple of times. I had to get out of the ‘burbs for the sake of my sanity.
Landing a job at WebTech Wireless. In the two years since being laid off by Cayenta, the jobs I took either weren’t that exciting, didn’t pay too well, or didn’t offer any long-term advancement opportunities. But this one has real potential, both in the short term and for my career. It’s challenging, exhausting, often intimidating, and that’s exactly what I need.
Redesigning the VGVA Web site. Oh yeah, I was insecure about my abilities, but it turned out smashing (if I do say so myself). Not just that, but it was the first step to getting reconnected with the queer community, using skills I’ve developed over the years.
And while we’re at it, helping two other friends set up their sites. And volunteering to maintain the Team Vancouver site. Are we seeing a pattern yet? One day I may even get paid for it.
My brush with the Grim Reaper. Okay, not technically an achievement, but it was still a memorable event. Healing nicely, though my wrist gets a bit sore in the morning and I still need to tape it up for volleyball.
Finishing Les Misérables, over the holidays. And it only took, what, eight or nine months, give or take?
Updating my blog to WordPress and my photo galleries to Gallery, in January. Has it really only been a year?

Here’s to 2009!

Graphic Novel Review: Fun Home

I love Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For, and have from the day I came out and picked up my first GO-Info (strip # 140, “The Last Tango”, where Mo and Harriet have sex one last time before breaking up for good). Until it ended earlier this year, it was the first thing I read when picking up Xtra! West, and I could always count on it to make me laugh make me think, or both. I own all the collected books, including The Indelible Alison Bechdel.

Fun Home Cover
Well you should see my story-reading baby
You should hear the things that she says
She says “Hon, drop dead, I’d rather go to bed
With Gabriel García Márquez
Cuddle up with William S. Burroughs
Leave on the light for bell hooks
I’ve been flirtin’ with Pierre Burton
‘Cause he’s so smart in his books”

—Moxy Früvous, “My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors”

I love Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For, and have from the day I came out and picked up my first GO-Info (strip # 140, “The Last Tango”, where Mo and Harriet have sex one last time before breaking up for good). Until it ended earlier this year, it was the first thing I read when picking up Xtra! West, and I could always count on it to make me laugh, make me think, or both. I own all the collected books, including The Indelible Alison Bechdel.

But, there was one book of hers missing from my collection: a non-DTWOF book I didn’t even know existed until this summer, when I saw it as part of an exhibition on animation and comics at the Art Gallery. I read it all the way through in one sitting, absolutely captivated. It’s poignant, disturbing in parts, brutally honest, yet at the same time masterfully intellectual and literate. A couple of weeks ago I bought it as a Christmas present to myself, and I’ve been compulsively rereading it over and over again. I guess this post is a way to get it out of my head.

In brief, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is the story of Bechdel’s growing up, and her complicated relationship with her father. A few weeks after coming out to her parents at age 19, she learned he was gay. A few months later he was dead, possibly having committed suicide. Fun Home is Bechdel’s attempt to work out the threads of his life, her own life, and how the two intersected.

But Fun Home is more than a memoir. It’s a story about stories: specifically, the books that Alison and her father both loved—and for the last couple of years of his life, the only way they related to each other. Fun Home is peppered with allusions and quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Albert Camus, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Colette and Greek mythology, among many others, but they never (well, hardly ever) feel forced. Without bogging things down in tedious literary analysis, they provide just enough insight to not only enrich the story but get me excited about reading the originals as well.

Alison (I feel a bit awkward referring to her by her first name, but what can you do?) found her taste for The Classics in grade 12, but before that, her relationship with her father was mostly distant, even hostile at times. Bruce Bechdel, it seems, was not an easy man to live with. A remote, authoritarian father and husband, prone to bouts of rage, he spent much of his spare time reading or restoring his family’s 19^th century home. He was obsessed with beauty, but it was a narrow, oppressive kind of beauty, shallow and fragile, with no room for other people’s needs or tastes. The home he recreated was an artfully arranged, jumbo-sized closet, as much a museum as a place to live.

Everything in Bruce Bechdel’s world had to be just so, and that included his only daughter Alison. They were polar opposites in many ways, butch girl and sissy man; him trying to dress her up into a perfect model of femininity, her resisting his efforts as best she could. His intent is ambiguous: it’s not clear if she was just another canvas on which to work his art, or if he was actually trying to quash her budding queerness.

“Is that what you want to look like?” There are so many things wrong with that question. Is looking butch a worse sin than queerness? Would it have been better for her to look pretty, marry and have affairs with high school students on the sly?

Closeted father aside, there’s a lot I can relate to in Alison’s story. Both my parents are teachers as well (retired now) and have never been very demonstrative either. Like Alison, I realised I was gay before I had sex. And again like her, I bought a truckload of books upon coming out—biographies, histories, politics, humour, psychology, anything really, I wasn’t too choosy back then.

And actually, that part was familiar. The Indelible Alison Bechdel reprinted her coming-out story; originally published in 1993, it focused on the immediate circumstances surrounding her revelation, making contact with the local gay community, and ending with her first time with another woman. But in the meantime bookish, intellectual Alison had plowed through many, many books in an attempt to find, and understand, her new community. The masturbation scene above was played for giggles in 1993 but turned into something more serious in 2006, almost transcendent, a necessary step in her journey. Only the “good for a wank” brought it down to earth a bit.

Okay, I promised myself I wouldn’t be doing any high-falutin’ literary analysis (“Marlow’s steamer? penis. The Congo? vagina” Hee) but there are a few details that jumped out at me. Consider the picture on her professor’s office wall. It so happens (thank you Wikipedia!) that “The Descent of Minerva to Ithaca” is one of a series of engravings John Flaxman did to illustrate the Odyssey. Guess which book was studied in this English class? That’s right: Joyce’s Ulysses.

There’s more, though. This meeting took place the exact same day Alison realised she was a lesbian. And in the 1993 version of her coming-out story, she compares her revelation to the birth of Athena. “You know the story. She springs, fully grown and in complete armor, from Zeus’s head.”

Was that picture really there in her professor’s office? I don’t think it matters much. In a few instances, Alison points out a stray detail and insists it was in fact real. This still leaves many unaccounted for, but that’s fine. In a memoir, factual accuracy may sometimes take a back seat. I’ll trust that the story is true enough, and move on.

So there you have it. Honestly, going through Fun Home again and again has left me exhausted, but in a good way. I grieve for a man who died before he ever had the chance to truly live, but celebrate the life of a woman who escaped his labyrinth and created something truly beautiful. And maybe, one of these days, I’ll feel brave enough to tackle Proust.

Let It Snow

The weather here on the West Coast’s been very cold for the last week, with some snowfall and a bit more on the way. It hasn’t been as bad as the last major snowfall two years ago, which suits me just fine. This is just enough snow to make the holiday festive. It looks like we’ll have a white Christmas after all.

The weather here on the West Coast’s been very cold for the last week, with some snowfall and a bit more on the way. It hasn’t been as bad as the last major snowfall two years ago, which suits me fine. This is just enough snow to make the holiday festive. It looks like we’ll have a white Christmas after all.