Where have all the heroes gone?

Perhaps its just my reaction to a difficult period in world history and my personal, emotive response to all the craziness in the world these days, but recently I’ve started wondering - where are all the heroes? Where are all the average people doing feats of great prowess and greater altruism?

Now, I was born in 1970, so I grew up through the cold war nuke fears (which I always believed were a load of garbage) and the energy crisis, and then, what seemed the golden years of the ‘90s and now …for want of better term…the new dark ages.

*[aside] Interesting how dark ages always rear their ugly head when religion makes a comeback*

But, despite the problems of the 80’s, in Canada anyway, there arose two heroes from the ranks of the everyday people. Well, everyday handicapped people, in fact. I remember watching the news stories of Terry Fox in his attempt to run across Canada to raise money and awareness of cancer – on one leg. He gave his life in this pursuit, running his final miles near ThunderBay, Ontario (the nearest city to my home town). Now, in many countries his name is remembered through an annual charity run for cancer. Another great person who arose in Canada in the mid-80s was Rick Hansen. He was a man who suffered a spinal cord injury when he was 15. Twelve years later he decided to ride his wheel chair around the world to raise money and awareness of spinal cord injuries and the plight of disabled people. It took two and a half years until he finally arrived home to Vancouver and a heroes welcome. Of course there were other heroes of the world and not all of them had to do great feats of athletics. One of the few religious figures I truly respected, Mother Teresa, is one, of course. These are people that have given their lives, or large parts of them to make the lives of others better.

So where are the heroes now? It seems something happened in those golden years of the 90’s and now no one is willing to be a hero without getting paid. Okay, that’s not really fair, especially to all the people around the world who really are trying to help; fighting poverty or famine or other worthy causes, despite the apathy of the rich western governments. So, clearly there are a lot of little heroes around the world. Still, these are definitely times when we could use the uplifting feeling a larger-than-life hero gives.

Oh well, they would probably be bought, sold, and disposed of by Big Money before they could get around the block.

Void Surfer

The Orthodox Religious

At the risk of being offensive, I believe that people of orthodox religious views have very little imagination. Why do I think that, you might ask - and rightfully so. No, its not just to be offensive. But consider the following comical definition of a person of orthodox religious views:

They have a deep and unwavering belief that the supreme being, the omnipotent and omniscient creator of the entire universe and everything in it has a very personal interest in their sex lives.

Now this sounds funny when you read it, but when you really think about it, it is true. The orthodox religious truly believe that the creator of everything cares about their sex lives, whether they have sex before marriage, whether they have abortions, whether they use contraception. Come on people! It must strike some of you that this is completely absurd.

So, how do I connect this with a small imagination. Well, it strikes me that such people cannot truly fathom the scope of the universe. It is my opinion that this is a general feature of religion and began …from the beginning. Consider that when the story of genesis was written it was likely believed that the Earth was the center of a very small universe. The heavens, including the stars, existed more or less on the surface of a sphere surrounding the Earth. In effect, sort of a small galactic onion with the Earth at the center. In this case, a God would only have a single planet to think about, a very small ‘universe’ with a very small population.

In fact, this view persisted through until the middle the last millennium and the scientific renaissance began by Copernicus and others. Even now, although we know the universe is infinitely larger, unless one really spends time thinking on it, it is difficult to truly get any feel for what that means. I’m sure that the average, non-science fiction reader/watcher, non-astronomer, really has never thought about it and has very little feel for what an infinite universe means. To consider that our solar system is probably already larger than what the ancients believed the entire universe to be. Then consider that that solar system is completely unnoticeable compared to our galaxy, which is some 80,000 light years in diameter (or more than 469,967,132,160,000,000 miles across – for comparison, the distance from the Earth to the Sun is 93,000,000 miles). Then consider that our galaxy is one of billions of other galaxies of similar size. Then, to make things even larger, consider that the spaces between the galaxies are larger than the galaxies themselves. If you can fit even a fraction of that in your head you quickly realize that any creator of the universe is not going to care about your sex life any more than it cares about the sex life of a creature on some distant planet of the 85,694,234th galaxy. Consider that, if there is only ONE intelligent species per galaxy (a very real possibility at any particular period of time), then there are still BILLIONS of intelligent species in the universe. And this god that many humans worship is supposed to take a deep personal interest in each and every member of each and every species!?!? Well, either the orthodox religious have a much smaller imagination than I do, or they have an infinitely larger one!

Void Surfer

More on the Urban Olympics…

I was thinking more on my last post – about the modified Olympics, which I’ve decided to call The Urban Olympics – and realized that I was still a bit in the old-boy mentality. The world has changed a lot since the Olympics started (even the 2nd incarnation) and in many ways it is much small and more inter-mixed. With this in mind, the thought emerges: Why does there have to be ONE host country?

As it stands now, the Olympics are won by a single host country who then develop several sites around their country for the various venues, each hosting one or more events. However, as the Urban Olympics is more about games and the average person and global community, and not so much about big money, corporate sponsorship, national pride, etc. Why do the venues have to be in a single country?

So my idea is to have the Urban Olympics coordinated by internet. A web site is established to give information on the events, venues, competitions and results. If popular enough, the event could even take place each year, however, initially, getting people involved may require the event to occur every 2-4 years. Alternatively, the games could occur over a period of 2-4 years with different events scheduled at different times throughout the “game period”. After all, we’re being non-conformist about location and events, why not about time also?

So, administratively, the games would require interested people in many cities around the world. Keeping some sense of internationality would require: judges of at least three nationalities and, ideally, competitors from at least 5-10 nationalities. Nationalities, in these cases, would be judged by the passport you hold.

However, why be conformist (*again*). After all, the world is a global village, we should be promoting harmony not alienating competition between nations. Therefore, another possibility would be to randomly distribute “game-passports” and have people compete under those nationalities. Or competitors could swap nationalities for the games, or one could compete under your “ethnic passport” (these would prevent the problem of too few competitors for too many countries).

In the beginning, the games would be located, most likely, in highly multicultural, multiethnic cities, simply to get enough interested parties. Good candidates would probably be European capitols or large North American cities and the larger Chinese and Japanese cities, although any city that could get enough interest would obviously not be excluded and I’m sure any high-tech city likely has a significant multiethnic component (Soeul, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv...and many more). Later on I could even foresee interested parties going on vacation to a country and participating in the games while there. However, the idea is not to have dedicated, career athletes who travel from site to site just for competing.

The major focus initially would be to get enough interest and to have fun, interesting games.
So what do you think? Any takers? Watch for further developments...

Void Surfer

Like the Olympics…but what about this?

So I’m enjoying the Olympics, as usual. I really like watching the biathlon, probably because there isn’t really anything else like it. So then I start thinking – why do the Olympics have to be the same each time. Why can’t the host country really mix things up. I mean, as it is now, everyone knows what sports will be in the next games, and most people already know, by the end of this Olympics, who from their country will be competing in the following games (barring unforeseen circumstances). Athletes are already deciding on what steroid program will best fit their training. Everything is so…preordained, so…old boy network.

So here’s what I’m thinking. Why can’t the Olympics be more spontaneous, random (relative to now at least). What I’d love to see are Olympic games where the host team announces the line-up for the games (ie: which events it will host) only after they win the bid. Then, everyone has only four (or maybe eight?) years for all the training. All the high-tech analysis and drug programs would have to be done on the fly, training regimes hurriedly developed and athletes learning new events as quickly as possible. Not to mention scouring the country to find potentials and establishing qualifying marks. No more career athletes, now anyone could enter depending on the games chosen.

To me, this would make the Olympics much more interesting. Of course, the home team would have some extra advantage, although, since the host city is not known until just before the events are announced, so the advantage is not huge. Could you imagine South Korea hosting the games again and having 4x4 warcraft or individual and team Unreal Tournament ? Or you could get games like team biathlon-paintball chase, sort of like the cycling chase events, except the teams are on cross-country skis, armed with paintball guns, and can pick off opposing athletes when they get in range. To make this more interesting the track would not be oval, but rather a switch-back form to ensure occasional proximity of teams. Chess could be introduced by some countries or, even more interesting team (or combat) chess and even “short-track” chess where all games are played on a 5 minute timer. They could also introduce urban golf, or the Xtreme version – contact or obstacle urban golf. Or what about GeoCaching? It could be timed, sort of a combination of Eco Challenge and sight seeing, or it could be made more of an artistic merit event, depending on the host country’s preference. The opportunities are endless, so why do we have to settle for the same old sports that the ‘old boys’ think are ‘real’ sports?

Perhaps we could implement this at the grassroots level, sort of an anything goes Xtreme games. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!

Void Surfer

On the nature of the Universe

As anyone following my blog has undoubtedly heard mentioned, I am a structural biologist focusing on X-ray crystallography. However, I have always had a strong interest in space and the universe, etc. Today I was browsing through some astronomy sites for a pet project (that I may mention in a future blog) and I encountered a site discussing indexing of stellar photographs. The photographs, essentially a lot of spots on a light background, made me think of the diffraction patterns acquired from a crystal. There was no inherent similarity in the photographs, other than the dark spots on white background, but it was once of those things that causes a mental juxtaposition.

What occurred to me, regarding these two ideas, was the thought: what if the universe, or at least a galaxy, is similar to a vast multidimensional diffraction pattern, with us on the inside. In crystallographic terms, it might be like being on the inside of an Ewald’s Sphere (a concept that I, unfortunately, do not have the time or inclination to delve into here).

This is more or less where my imagination has left me, for the time being. What would be analogous to the crystal? Presumably this “crystal” would be near the dense center of the galaxy. The stars would then be the 3D representation of the positively interfering “beams” of the multidimensional diffraction experiment. Of course, all of this would likely be metaphorical for the “real” analogous process. Still it makes one think (and maybe it makes one think that I’ve been in the lab too long!).

Void Surfer