The Stolen Fire

Electra & AML: The News We Dreaded

2012-02-02T21:54:00.000Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

I am afraid I must be the bearer of bad news in this post. Although the risks and potential outcomes of this disease have always been scary, and the recent prognosis has been especially dire, we always held out hope that we could beat the odds. Sadly, this is no longer the case.

Electra had a bone marrow biopsy this past Monday. This was to check on progress and while this would have occurred anyway in the course of treatment, it was especially important in this instance because Electra wasn't seeing the recovery speed that would be hoped for. At three weeks post-chemo, one would hope to see her immune system coming back in force, an end to the daily nausea and fatigue and her blood levels returning to normal. While the growth hormone (GCSF) had boosted her levels, they had fallen again. So the biopsy was ordered and was performed on Monday.

In a bone marrow biopsy, there are two types of samples: the aspirate and the trephine samples. The aspirate is the liquid goop inside the pelvic bone; the trephine is an actual cross-section of bone. Getting enough aspirate for a definitive sample is often difficult for patients who recently undertook chemotherapy, which is why the trephine is taken as well; however, the trephine sample takes a week to analyse, compared to a day or so for the aspirate. In Electra's case, they were able to get enough aspirate and a long section extracted from the bone which was smeared on a slide for further analysis. Between this smear and the aspirate, a definitive diagnosis was reached in a day, so we knew by Tuesday afternoon.

The diagnosis wasn't good. The sample was full of leukaemia cells; the cancer was very much still present. The FLAG chemo and DLI, for all its intensity, had failed to eradicate the disease. Although we haven't gotten the cytogenetics back, this indicates that the bone marrow tissue is Electra's, and that it would ultimately dominate the cellular growth. The chemo hadn't worked.

Those who have been reading my blog over the past weeks and months know what this truly means. This was our last chance. This was the only remaining option; our hail mary pass to try and beat this thing for once and for all. So now, there's nothing left to try. All the options are exhausted, all the hope dissolved. All that is left to Electra now is palliative care. This is the medical term for "waiting to die". We don't know how long this will be: it could be a few weeks or a few months, but the outcome is no longer uncertain.

At least, though, Electra has been able to leave the hospital. Although she is still neutrapenic and thus at risk of infection, there is no longer really much to be gained by maintaining a hospital residence. She has little enough time left that anything they could do would make only a small difference and would guarantee she didn't enjoy the time. Instead, we will try to live as much as we can for however long we have left. We will eat, live, love and try to enjoy everything we can until the inevitable end arrives (not only Electra and I, but her parents as well, both of whom are here in Birmingham). The other small victory is that the end will arrive largely pain-free and in relative comfort and what pain there is can be treated with pain killers. Electra will simply become more and more sleepy until one day she will painlessly slip into a coma. From there, we will have only a couple of days to say our last goodbyes and make our last peace.

I have to be honest: I don't know what to write here. I've been asked countless times over the course of this ordeal how I felt, and this hasn't exactly abated with the realisation that Electra, the girl I love so deeply, the most important part of my life for over three years, is going to die. And if I am at all honest in response, I have to admit that I don't know how I feel. How can I? I mean, I can spin it out for people, talk about how unfair it all is, how gutted and shocked I am, etc. But the reality? There is so much bouncing around in my head right now that I can't really nail down my feelings, and if I could, I don't know that I could put it into words.

To start with, this isn't really unexpected, but neither was it predicted. Leukaemia isn't as unbeatable as it was a few years ago, but neither is it a walk in the park; moreover, we've known since December that her odds this time around were highly unfavourable. So we've had time to prepare, both practically and emotionally. But whenever there is any hope, any chance that a cure might be attained, you hold onto that hope, at least to some extent. You have to, because to give up is suicide. But now that ever-faint glimmer has finally flickered to gloom. So I do feel defeated.

But of course, there's more than that. Some of it obvious. I regret where I didn't treat Electra as well as I should have. I regret the time we spent apart and that we never managed to live together. I regret that we never travelled to the places we dreamed of, that we never got to adopt our puppies (Gaius and Caprica) nor our kittens (Shockley and Bardeen). I regret that I never saw her parents' summer home that provided so many great memories for Electra and that she never got to introduce me to her favourite Montreal haunts and restaurants.

And I guess that's what strikes me the most of this. The empty spot in my future, the blind patch in my dreams. I lament what we never did, more than what we did wrong, for it is missed and unfulfilled potential.

But beyond that, I don't know how to feel. It may be that I'm avoiding my emotions or that I lack the facilities to really grasp them. It may be that this is just too big to take in all at once. I bury myself in the facts and numbers, in the prognostications and planning. And I've realised that this is my way of avoidance. Paradoxically, by focusing on the reality of the situation and accepting what is to come, it may be that I'm avoiding actually internalising it. All I know is that a huge part of my life is about to go missing and I can't honestly say how I will feel when that happens. And that's a little scary.

Electra & AML: A Bad Week

2012-01-28T21:04:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

NOTE: This blog post was written over the course of several days in which I've been both lazy and unfocused, so some things have changed slightly over the course of that time. I'll try to be coherent but make no guarantees.

I will endeavour to post more in (and more regularly) in the coming weeks, but I'm finding it hard to concentrate on much these days. Focus, often elusive for me seems to have left me entirely. I have several more thoughts that build off this post, though, so I will try.

I've spent most of last week and the start of this one in Birmingham, and while I'm glad to have been there to lend some comfort, it was not an easy week. To be blunt, things are not going very well. Electra had a few good days while I was there but many more very bad ones.

At this stage of treatment (and for the near future), the biggest risk to Electra is an infection. Though there are other things to worry about (recurrence of the cancer and GVHD), infection is the primary concern right now. With her immune system depleted by the chemo, her body lacks the ability to fight off disease, so even a simple cough or cold can be deadly. This is why she is in a solo/isolation room and why certain precautions are observed, specifically relating to food, visitors, etc. However, the possibility of infection can never be entirely eliminated, and that reality was one that has reared its ugly head.

Starting about ten days ago, Electra started spiking a fever. The normal temperature for a human being is 36.6˚C. The hospital considers it to be a fever worth worrying about at 38˚. Electra peaked at slightly over 40˚. She then had a fever every day until yesterday. On top of this, she was in constant discomfort, generally in and out of sleep (but mostly asleep, albeit fitfully), was nauseous and vomiting, weak and tired and not infrequently in pain. In short, she was unwell in almost every way possible.

There are several implications of this, none of them good. At this stage in recovery, an infection is the most dangerous thing (as I said above). So there is a very real risk that something small and benign (to an average, healthy person) can be hugely damaging or even fatal. But more than this, it indicates that her immune system isn't rebounding; this is backed up by her continuing low white cell count. To try and ameliorate the situation, she was put back on GCSF, the growth hormone which can spur the development of more white cells. This, however, will only work if there are a few already beginning to develop (i.e. her bone marrow is at least beginning to return). In the absence of any early white cells, the GCSF will do exactly nothing at all.

The good news is that this appears to be working. Over the last few days, her white count has started to slowly tick upwards and her overall sense of healthiness has very slightly improved. She is still miles from healthy, but at least she is apparently edging in the right direction, albeit hesitantly. On Monday, she will go in for another bone marrow biopsy, which will determine whether there's been any regrowth, and if so whether it is her DNA or her brother's and whether it is free of leukaemia. Unfortunately, the odds of purely healthy regrowth is slim, but we will hope for the best and I will post about that another day. One fight at a time.

The most poignant part of this for all me was that watching this unfold, sitting by her bed for hours at a time while she slept or struggled to rouse herself and keep even the smallest amount of food and water down, is the sense of reality it drives home. I'm a numbers guy; I know what the odds are here (not good) and I know what the probable outcome is. I understand what we do to try and improve those numbers. But numbers are dispassionate and clinical. This isn't. This is real.

Electra has obviously been visible in dire straights before, and I've written about that. But this is different. Because the outcome is so daunting now, the pain of seeing her in such a state is compounded by the terror that this is the first step on a dark and empty path. Put simply, this is the first time it seemed like she really might die. It's the first time that I've been this scared.

On Electra's side, this has also made it the worst hospital stay thus far, from an emotional viewpoint. By dint of her earlier remission, there was a real sense that she was somewhat in the clear (as much so as is ever possible with cancer). There were very real concerns of course-how to reintegrate with work, how to get her strength back, how to find meaning in a normal life after months of focusing only on recovery. But these were all overshadowed by having wrested her life back from the pincers of cancer. To then be trust back into the thick of it, and to undergo such horrible health is a soul-destroying and emotionally crippling slap in the face. More than this, however, is the intent of pursuing this tougher treatment. When Electra elected to go through the tougher FLAG chemo, it was with the intent of trying to achieve a cure, and failing that, be in passable-enough health to be able to travel and relax while recuperating. Now it felt like that was being taken away and she might be destined to finish her days in discomfort and pain, confined to a hospital bed in Birmingham, 6000km from "home". I don't imagine I need to explain that this is the type of thing that can break someone, and while Electra has remained stronger than I would have, it has taken its toll.

Still, with her white cell count slowly ticking upwards, it is possible that we may have the faintest of glimmers at the end of this obsidian tunnel. We're not popping the champagne corks just yet, but it's fair to say that the appropriate fingers have been crossed. Now for the biopsy and its eventual results…

Electra & AML: The Hard Truth

2012-01-17T23:50:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

I'm currently up in Birmingham again, having spent the last ten days or so down in London (facilitated by the arrival of Electra's mother, who has been able to keep her company in my absence). I'm going up in a rather anxious state, as yesterday and today have been somewhat tumultuous days in Electra's progress. Hit by an infection, Electra spent most of the day with a fever of 39 degrees and up, periodic low blood pressure and erratic pulse rates. Basically all the signs of a nasty infection; the exact type of thing you fear in an immune-depleted patient recovering from chemotherapy. The hard truth of the current situation is that, even when things seem good and stable, danger and fear are constant companions. And I think that I have perhaps skirted the hardest realities of the situation for too long.

WARNING: In this post, I am going to try and give the unvarnished truth. While things are by no means hopeless, some of the things I will discuss are pretty grim. This may be hard to read; it's certainly been hard to experience.

The biggest and harshest reality is the overall prognosis. I've said in past posts that leukaemia has been one of the big research wins in medical science over the past decades, and this is certainly true; the mortality rate is nowhere near as high as it used to be. However, Electra's case is now one of fairly early relapse. That changes things quite a bit. The relapse itself indicates that the cancer is quite tenacious and pernicious; while it was all but destroyed, it has come roaring back, obviously indicating a very tough instance of the cancer. This is further seen in her biopsy results, which showed a drop in the amount of donor DNA in her bone marrow: from a peak of 98% donor DNA, she dropped to about 58% by the middle of December when she was diagnosed. Her own bone marrow cells are fighting back and multiplying quickly, but multiplying the cancerous cells. In addition, the trisomy-8 genetic anomaly that was previously wiped out has returned, and has come with two new genetic anomalies involving transposed genes. The details of what this implies are beyond me, but the takeaway is this: her disease has mutated. If these conditions had existed initially, she would have been in a higher risk group. So the cancer is mutating into an even tougher form than it was initially.

The prognosis, therefore, is much, much less certain. The consultant with whom we spoke pegged it at a 5-10% chance of a cure, as I've discussed previously. What I'd not realised at the time (or perhaps blocked out) was that this is the last chance. If the cancer comes back again, there is nothing that can be done-no more chemo, no more transplants, nothing. 5-10% is her overall odds, and the time frames, though much less certain, aren't great either (12-24 months if we're being optimistic, which is tough to do given the recurrence happened after 6.5 months of remission last time). So, miracles can happen and 5-10% isn't nothing, but it's not exactly encouraging. Further, I've noticed that there's been a marked change in the way the doctors discuss longer outcomes. The focus is, in medical parlance, "extending life". We are trying to stay hopeful, but the deck is much more heavily stacked against Electra this time around.

On top of this, this stint in the hospital has proven much tougher for Electra, both emotionally and physically. Emotionally, I think it's made harder by the feeling that she was done with this. She was in remission, she was out of the hospital save for routine blood work as a day patient, etc. To be pulled back in is heart-rending, and not improved by the grim prognosis. So spirits have waned rather dramatically, escape attempts pondered, tears shed and depression has made a few appearances. Physically, the single biggest recurring phenomenon here has been one of utter discomfort. Electra simply cannot find any position-lying or sitting-that is comfortable. This obviously impedes sleep, makes it even more depressing, and just generally makes the experience more horrible that it would otherwise be. On top of this, she has struggled with a day of unexplained lower-back agony, sudden and severe nausea and vomiting, a loss of appetite and more. Plus, a nearly constant fever often lasting for days.

Today was especially bad. As I said earlier, Electra seems to have acquired a rather nasty infection and spent most of the day spiking a temperature in the low 40s. With antibiotics and paracetamol, they were able to bring it down to 39˚, and even as low as 38.2˚, but never out of the range they worry about. She's been put on the critical care nursing list, so has greater supervision and checks, but this is obviously yet another worrying development. And, of course, fevers of that range are often accompanied by delirium (not the good kind), fatigue, more nausea/vomiting and further discomfort. Between infections and the side effects of the chemo, she is being battered from every direction with massive intensity.

I don't want this post to scare people too much. Some of what Electra has been going through is expected, and some of it doesn't even indicate a particular problem per se. But the topic of mortality, especially of someone I love so deeply, is a difficult subject for me to broach, yet one I need to force myself to do, as it is a likely outcome based on what they know. And because it is hard for me to discuss, or even to think about, I fear I often soften or skirt around such issues, both internally and in this forum. And anyone reading this deserves the truth of the situation, no matter how scary it is.

We are not giving up hope, nor are we foregoing planning and dreaming for the future. It is important we do neither of these things. But it is equally important that we also accept, understand and prepare for the reality of the situation. And right now, that reality is full of ominous portent and very reasonable fear.

UPDATE: I wrote-but didn't post this-yesterday. I've just got back from the hospital now and although Electra is still struggling with periodic fevers and nausea, when I left her, her temperature seemed good, blood pressure was OK and her colour had come back (she was very pale and almost jaundiced looking when I arrived). We still don't know what infection she's got, but it's either healing, or least in a temporary respite.

Electra & AML: Last Chemo Ever, For Better or Worse

2012-01-05T02:40:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So today was a rather significant milestone in this particular journey (well technically yesterday since I seem pathologically unable to get to bed at a decent hour ever). Today was Electra's last day of anti-AML chemotherapy. Ever.

The FLAG protocol that Electra is (was) on is a five-day course, and today was the fifth day. She is, of course, still in the hospital undergoing treatment, but that's more focused on the growth hormone to boost her red cell count, as well as the various prophylactic measures (antibiotics and anti-virals). The active application of chemotherapy is done. Further, this will be her last cycle in treatment of this disease. She will never have to undergo chemo again, barring (heaven forbid) the emergence of a different cancer later in life. Other than that, no more chemo. Buh-bye, thanks for the cancer-killing, no thanks for the immune system killing, the nausea, the hair loss and energy deprivation and the complete immunosuppression.

Of course, such a milestone as this is both relieving in one way, and foreboding in another. Allow me to explain. As this course of chemo comes to an end, the future forks into two distinct paths: curative or not. If she beats the odds and this course of treatment cures her, obviously she will no longer need the chemo. However, the ominous portend is that should this treatment fail, and the cancer relapse again, there are no real options. The chemo would never be successful again, no other realistic chemo options exist and her body would be hard-pressed to stand the strain. So the milestone is one we celebrate and observe, but with some trepidation.

The past year has been one of pain and suffering, fear and isolation, but love and hope as well; to preserve the latter, we are aiming for and hoping for a cure. But a frequent theme has been chemotherapy, and it is an amazing realisation to come to: she will not have to go through this again. Chemotherapy is very effective in many cancers, including blood and bone cancers. But it's a treatment so harsh and hard to deal with that it can often feel worse than the disease itself. So seeing it out the door is a cause for celebration, and is a victory in its own right.

I've said before (or meant to and forgot, possibly) that when dealing with a long trudge of a disease and treatment like this, that every victory, no matter how minor, matters. And this victory, though by no means the end of the struggle, is a key one. We needed the chemo, and it has kept her alive this long, but we never liked it. Chemotherapy is like cutting off your nose to spite your face; you poison yourself to get well.

So today, I saw, goodbye chemo. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. I appreciate everything you've done but hope I never see you again. And I'm reassured to know that, come what may, Electra certainly won't have to.

Electra & AML: Our New Years Eve Tradition

2012-01-02T01:23:00.000Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So, remember my last post? Where I discussed why it was so important to us to celebrate New Years Eve in style and the plans we had to do so? Well, turns out that was optimistic thinking and our continuing streak of bad luck had other plans in mind. For the second year in a row, Electra started chemotherapy on New Years Eve. Evidently this is now our traditional celebration.

Basically, we'd been given the conditional all-clear to celebrate NYE as we'd planned, as Electra's counts were high enough. The condition, however, was the she come in for one final blood test on Wednesday, December 28th and that this test would be the final decision-maker as to whether she was healthy enough to stay out of the hospital until the new year. And sadly, she was not; specifically, her white cell count had dropped further, which put her at an increased risk of infection. If she were to contract an infection, the course of chemo she'd selected would be impossible: since the chemo would decimate her immune system, any contracted infection would potentially be fatal, and would definitely be a horrible experience. So they would be unable to start the chemo if she were to pick up so much as a nasty cold, and the risk of doing so was too high. So New Years Eve as planned was off, and it was into the hospital the next day.

Of course, that didn't happen either. The hospital was short on beds, so her admission date got bumped back to the 30th (despite the fact that I'd treated us to a nice "last night out" dinner on the 28th, harrumph). On the 30th, she was admitted back into the haematology ward, and the treatment began. First step was the insert a new Hickman (aka central) line, as hers had been removed when she'd been in remission. Then came the application of GCSF, a growth hormone which in patients such as herself spurs the production of more white cells, better enabling the body to handle the coming onslaught of the chemotherapy. This had the added benefit of taking her out of a neutrapenic state, meaning she felt healthier (for awhile) and the precautions for visiting are lessened.

On the 31st, the chemotherapy began. The course she's now on is called FLAG and has two chemotherapy drug: fludarabine and cytarabine. The latter is given over four hours, the longest single-drug duration she's had to deal with.

The upshot of all this, of course, was another New Years Eve in the hospital. As you can imagine, we were gutted to hear the news, as we'd really been looking forward to a nice, fun, relaxing cottage weekend with close friends, games, drink and sleep. Instead it was sterile environments, crappy hospital food, pain and intense medication.

Still, these sorts of things are, to a certain degree, what you make of them. So we did our best. I brought in a bottle of sparkling wine and a black forest cake and we rang in the new year (two hours early due to fatigue) with bubbly, cake, music and even a little in-room dancing. It might not be what we'd planned, but it was the best we were able to make of it.

And here's to 2012 being a better year, with a proper end-of-year celebration!

Electra & AML: Christmas update

2011-12-25T00:40:00.002Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

A minor, but very vital part of Electra's recent re-diagnosis was the question of New Years Eve. Specifically, the timing of the recommencement of the treatment. As her relapse only occurred (or at least was identified) in the middle of December, the doctor informed us that she would need to start treatment either early in the new year, or in-between Christmas and New Year. We dearly hoped for the first option, an early January start. This, however, would depend on her blood levels; if her white cell count stayed high, she could start in the new year. Were it to drop, she would have to check into the hospital shortly after Christmas and begin treatment. At the risk of giving away spoilers, we were thrilled to be told that we should be able to make it to New Years Eve (pending a final check this coming Wednesday to ensure all was OK).

To some, this may seem strange. Indeed, when describing it to one of my closest friends, he quite reasonably asked why we wouldn't start immediately, regardless of the results of the blood work. You see, the efficacy of the treatment is increased when it is administered earlier. As chemotherapy is targeted to attack cancerous cells (with the healthy ones taking a hit as collateral damage), the greater the concentration of "bad" cells, the greater the force standing in opposition to the treatment, and the less effective it is liable to be. As is the case with most cancers, early detection and treatment can often have a profound effect. So why not start the minute the diagnosis is reached?

The reason is life. Not surviving, not just getting through, but life. We want as much life as we can possibly ring out of whatever time is left. Although we are obviously trying to maximise the quantity of available time, more importantly perhaps is trying to maximise the quality. When things are at their very darkest and it becomes increasingly harder to see in front of you, even the dimmest, most flickering light becomes a beacon, something to strive for and dream of. A flame in the dark is the very essence of guidance and hope. So each victory, each bit of enjoyment, each "win"… they matter. More than they ever have before.

The terrifying, horrible reality is that there is now a very real chance we may not get to spend next Christmas and New Years together. Though we were together last New Years Eve, Electra was diagnosed at 2:00 PM and connected to chemotherapy at 7:00. We did not truly have a New Years Eve. So, dammit, we will do so this year.

Fighting cancer is a siege, not a lightning war. The process is long, draining, and demoralising and is won not through pitched battles and intense triumphs, but through inches. When full victories are won, they come on the back of a hard-fought slog, digging through the deepest trenches of human physiology to stand upon the pinnacle of health and well-being, glorious victories celebrated all the more for the exhaustive battle of wills required to achieve them.

And in a years-long battle of inches, every win matters. We celebrate when the blood counts go up, we celebrate when the need for antibiotics goes down. A bit more energy or a bit less of a cough. A reduced temperature or an increased stamina. Every victory counts. And every victory, no matter how small, is treasured. And that treasure keeps you going.

New Years Eve is often overblown in importance. Ultimately, it marks the passing of a single day as much as it does a full year. But our traditions and customs define-to a very large extent-our priorities and our core values. And New Years Eve is therefore more portentous than other days. It is a chance to reflect on the past year and prepare for the next, to right the wrongs and further improve the rights. So we celebrate. We celebrate with friends; we celebrate with family; we celebrate with loved ones, and with love itself. So New Years Eve matters.

December 31st, 2011 will very hopefully see Electra and I celebrating the coming of 2012 with a group of close friends in a small cottage in the south of England. We will drink, we will eat, we will sing and talk and hug and love and be merry. The new year will bring tougher battles and more brutal fights, but those are for another day. For one night, for one glorious, celebratory, joyous evening, we will be as we were before cancer and before chemotherapy: hopeful, uncomplicated and revelling in all that this wonderful, flawed, beautiful world has to offer. That matters, because that is living. And we will live.

Electra & AML: The Reality of What's To Come

2011-12-17T00:57:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

Today was the meeting. The meeting I alluded to in my last post, where we'd meet with the consulting haematologist for an idea of what our options were and what the prognosis and next steps were to be. It was a meeting we approached with some trepidation, as our last meeting had left us rather bereft of optimism or straws at which to grasp. Electra's parents have flown over to attend this meeting with us, support which is both direly needed and greatly appreciated. It also gave us a chance to try and assemble as comprehensive a list of questions as we could come up with, a task we did Thursday night.

The meeting and discussion went as well as could be expected. Unfortunately in this instance, that implies that the results were dire, though not wholly hopeless. I will go into greater detail as desired in future posts, but in essence, there are four treatment options presented:

Do nothing
Palliative care
Azacitidine with DLI (donor leukocyte infusion)
FLAG treatment with DLI.

The latter two options are two very different courses of chemotherapy, and the only options really worth considering. Do nothing, the full-surrender approach would give a life expectancy measured in weeks; that time period would be largely defined by discomfort and possibly outright agony. Palliative care wouldn't be much better; though the suffering would be eased through routine blood transfusions and pain killers, the prognosis would be clear: a short period of unpleasantness followed by an untimely end.

So, that leaves the two types of chemotherapy. Azacitidine is a much more mild form of chemo than Electra has experienced thus far. It requires daily chemo injections for seven days followed by three weeks of rest, all of which can be done on an out-patient basis (i.e. she wouldn't have to stay in the hospital except for the first cycle as a precaution). This pattern is repeated six times over half a year. It is, however, the "stall" to which I alluded yesterday. There is no chance that it would cure the cancer; all we would hope for would be extending her life and in the best case, temporary remission. If luck were with us (a condition that has not historically been the case), the leukaemia would be in remission long enough for more drastic treatment-another bone marrow transplant or a more intense form of chemo. In either event, though the chemo itself would be mild (no hair loss, minimal nausea and pain, etc), successful results of any kind are far from guaranteed.

The fourth option is the so-called "FLAG" course of chemotherapy (I will leave the details of the medications involved to the reader). This form of chemo lies in-between the azacitidine and a bone marrow transplant in terms of intensity. It will potentially cause hair loss, nausea, weakness, and all the other nastiness that went with Electra's earlier rounds of chemo. It's a one-week course followed by three weeks of recovery (all as an in-patient, i.e. requiring a full-time stay in the hospital). Only a single cycle is prescribed. On completion-and return to home-Electra would be routinely monitored, but should ideally be able to recover in decent time and hopefully achieve remission. Again, this would then involve a reassessment to determine the future course of action. This treatment carries with it a slim (5-10%) change of a "cure", the possibility that the cancer might not return.

None of these options are good ones. Do-nothing and palliative care are outright death sentences. As initially described to us, AML is "universally fatal" without treatment. The two courses of chemo improve the odds, but are far from certain: either course could fail to push the leukaemia into remission and each introduces risks of opportunistic infections or overtaxing her system. But there's that chance that they might buy some time, or–in the case of FLAG + DLI–maybe even cure her condition.

Electra had made her decision by the time the conversation with the doctor was concluded. It was to be the FLAG treatment. She cannot face daily injections for a week, repeated six times over the course of a half-year. And the azacitidine is guaranteed to never cure her condition. FLAG is the only bet for a cure, and will hopefully give her a leg up on the disease long enough to seek a more comprehensive cure if it does not achieve that miracle itself. Depending on her blood levels next Friday, this treatment may have to begin between Christmas and New Years, or may be able to wait until the very start of 2012. We are dearly hoping for the latter; having missed last New Year's Eve, it would be truly rewarding to enjoy this year's.

Those are the facts. And that's where my comfort ends. I can understand facts. I can evaluate and compare and rationalise facts. What I cannot do, what I am struggling with now and simply cannot truly wrap my mind around, is the emotional implications. None of these choices are good ones and the doctor was kind enough to not engender false hope. So I know that the risks are everywhere and the chance of success far from a sure thing. I get that. But I can't get used to that. I have spoken previously about the very real possibility that this might be fatal. But that possibility is more real than it's ever been, and I don't know how to face that.

Throughout this whole process, and especially over the last few months of remission, it's been easy to internalise the idea of mortality because it's felt like an abstract idea. It's like accepting that I might die riding my bike through London (or riding in a car or flying on a plane). The possibility is always there (and having recently been hit a second time on my bike is often a clear and present threat). But it's not at the forefront of my consciousness, nor is it an omnipresent worry. It's just a distant possibility that with diligence and prudence can be minimised. That is no longer the case; near-future mortality is now a plausible and even likely outcome, and I don't know how to handle it. Maybe I never will and never can.

Right now, I'm more confused and more messed up than I can remember being. I'm neither autistic nor sociopathic, but I don't always deal with emotion well, or clearly. I know I'm angry, I know I'm sad and I know I'm confused and upset at the unfairness of the world. Beyond that, I just feel adrift and isolated, confused and powerless. Our relationship has never been 100% perfect (whose is?) but it's been the defining feature of the last three years of my life and the most important relationship I've ever had. I've had many ideas of what I wanted for the future; whatever comes over the next year was not amongst those ideas. And that is scary, sad and terrifying, all at the same time.

Electra & AML: Once more into the breach, my friends

2011-12-16T00:45:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

It's been a hugely long time since I last posted, and for that I am sorry. I'm not sure if anyone is still checking this or will ever see this post, but if so please accept my apologies for being so lax over the last six months or so. You see, we'd rather settled into a bit of a lull. A good lull, it must be said.

Recovery from something like AML is not unlike a baseball game, a sport much maligned as boring, plodding and devoid of any real activity. But as a former baseball fan, I can tell you that's not entirely true. Instead, it is a sport which features long stretches of relative inactivity punctuated by intense bursts of motion, excitement and play.

Along these lines, Electra's recovery (and I assume the recovery of others going through similar circumstances) can be seen as brief periods of dramatic and intensive attention spread out across longer periods of rest, recovery and recuperation. For every week-long period of chemo, radiation or transplant, there was as much as a month of bed-rest, slow progress towards vitality and recovery and the daily routine of sleep, medication and healing. The past six months have been particularly illustrative of this pattern: after the most intense treatment thus far-chemo, followed by radiation treatment, followed by the bone marrow transplant-Electra has been trying to rest up, eat right, avoid infection and just let her body do its thing to try and get back to normal operation.

That's not to say there haven't been major events. In September, Electra moved into her new flat, the first she's ever owned. At the start of November, she returned to work; twelve hours per week, with the goal of slowly increasing that number until a full-time schedule was achieved early in 2012. She's seen her appetite and energy start to return, and has grappled with the all-too-common issue of trying to acclimatise to a normal existence in a world that ultimately is unchanged for all her personal journey. I will touch on some of these points (the flat, the work and the return to normalcy) in posts soon, because this entry has a specific purpose: to discuss the latest change.

You see, when a lull such as this occurs, it's easy to start relaxing. Things are still perilous, of course, and energy levels are not what they were before the cancer. But at this stage, the progress is gradual, predictable; almost mundane. Blood tests are routine, but with decreasing frequency. Fatigue is ever-present, but expected. The focus becomes "what now?" as it pertains to one's life. Overall the sense of battle and peril and fear begins to wane. Which makes it all the worse when things take a turn back towards the perilous and terrifying. And just such a turn is the latest development.

Two weeks ago (on a Friday), Electra's routine bloodwork showed an unusually low neutraphil (white cell) count. Her red cells and platelets were fine, but the neurtraphils were low. The doctors weren't terribly worried, as this could be the result of a viral infection, or just a blip on the radar of an otherwise exemplary recovery. So she was scheduled for a follow-up blood test a week later. When this test showed a neutraphil count that had dropped even further, the worry went up and a bone marrow biopsy was scheduled for the following Monday, three days later, the results of which came back a week after that and which we discussed with the doctors this past Tuesday.

The results weren't good. The cancer was back.

This is really the worst thing we could have discovered. It means that the treatment, which is generally a slam-dunk cure, has failed. It means she is once more at risk. And worst of all, the options are very limited. It's too soon to even contemplate another bone marrow transplant, given how recently she had her last one. Depending on the parameters of the transplant, it would either kill her outright or simply not work. There is a different type of chemo we can try, but it will not cure her; all it would ever be is a stall; a hope (and not even a good one) that we might be able to keep the cancer at bay for another six months and then maybe, if conditions are just right, try a more aggressive chemo, or another transplant. Success is far from guaranteed. The other option the doctor presented: palliative care (medical speak for "make you comfortable for your last few months").

Right now, our world is a mess. We will be meeting with the doctor tomorrow (Friday) after he's had a chance to discuss and evaluate the case with all the other doctors on the ward. At this time, they should have more details and might have other options. We are keeping our fingers crossed, and Electra's parents have come over again to be with us for that meeting.

I'm not sure I've ever felt less at ease with any discussion, event or evaluation. I wish I could find a way to be reassuring here. There is a chance that the team will have come up with something new, there is a chance that the chemo treatment will give her good odds. I'm doing my best to look at the positive and to keep hope burning. But like a damp chill, the spectre of what may be to come lingers over everything else and haunts my thoughts. As an engineer, I've been taught to plan for the worst, even if I hope for and expect the best. But I don't know if I have it in me to plan for this worst case. I don't know if anyone can. I only know I'm scared, I'm worried and there are some things I can never truly be ready for.

I honestly thought we were clear. That we were safe, at least for now, out of the woods and on the path to happiness and recovery. As we approach this breach once more, my friends, I cannot help but feel unprepared, unarmed and overwhelmed.

Electra & AML: Absence

2011-06-13T21:09:00.000+01:00

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

I am writing this post from my friend's apartment in Toronto. You see, for some time, I've had a trip to Canada planned. This is specifically for my friend Howard's wedding (for which I'm best man) but more generally, I've orchestrated a vacation and series of visits around that one event. As a result, I've been back in Canada for nearly a week now, with another week and a half to go.

This is my first time being truly away from Electra since her diagnosis. I've been in London much of the time, of course, but not truly away to the degree I am now. Though we're in frequent contact by Skype, it is the longest we will have gone without in-person time (from the last time I was in Birmingham to the earliest time I'll be even able to get back will be roughly a month) and also by far the greatest distance between us. This is simultaneously very difficult and somewhat relieving.

It is difficult, because I know that a Skype call isn't the same as a visit or even a phone call, and it's difficult not to feel like I'm failing to provide adequate support during her recovery. One of my philosophies in life has been that you can't do everything, but you should that which you can. In this instance, I cannot do anything medically, but the support and comfort I can give allows me to contribute, and so I do what I can and provide that where possible. At the moment, I cannot do that. I still call daily, and try to call right before her bedtime, but the latter isn't always possible, and I cannot guarantee the former will be at all times. So it can feel like I'm unable to provide the one type of assistance I've been able to give thus far. It's also difficult to hear about progress, both good and bad, and not be acutely aware of the fact that I'm not there to witness it.

However, I do feel that it's providing me some much-needed respite for myself. Over the past few weeks I've started to see myself getting more and more tired, more and more stressed. This too makes me a poor carer, and is why everyone (including Electra) is careful to remind me to take care of myself. So getting away from the situation and responsibilities, if only for awhile (and while still being in contact) allows me to recharge my batteries a little bit. I've greatly enjoyed catching up with friends here, sleeping and eating and just generally being able to relax and reflect a little bit. With cancer, there is a tendency for it to dominate your thoughts to such an extent that it's difficult to avoid it weighing heavily on your mind. So to be able to have some time away is important to one's sanity and a welcome change.

But I think, despite these potentially conflicting emotions, that I can maximise this opportunity. I'm here for a total of two and a half weeks. In the grad scheme of things, not that long. But enough to reinvigorate myself rather dramatically and get some much-needed R&R. I am still in touch daily as I've said, so I don't feel negligent or too far removed. And I know that in the end, this will give me the strength to return twice as strong to the UK, and that I will be much better equipped to provide the necessary support if I let myself relax a little and truly enjoy my time here. And that's what I've been doing so far.

Status Update: Electra is currently out of hospital, and recuperating at home in the rental flat in Birmingham. She was released from the hospital far earlier than expected, and has been able to arrange a less-frequent visit schedule, due to her rapid recovery. She'd been expected to have to go to the hospital thrice weekly for six weeks, but that wasn't much more than a week and a half, and she's now down to weekly visits. This is due to the doctor's confidence in her recovery. So all signs are pointing up.

However, the process itself is still quite unpleasant. This time around, the biggest problem has been a general sense of discomfort and being ill-at-ease. Electra cannot seem to find any position, sitting or laying, in which she is comfortable. As you can imagine, this makes sleeping difficult. She's also started to get hit by the acute boredom of one trapped at home for extended periods of time. However, her fatigue and trouble focusing (which we call "chemo brain") has made it such that any activity that would alleviate such boredom, including TV, reading or even listing to the radio, is taxing. So it's a bit of a paradox: bored by the lack of anything to do, but unable to do anything to alleviate the boredom.

Also, within the last few days, we've seen the first signs of what is potentially Graft Versus Host Disease, or GVHD. Acute GVHD is the big worry at this stage, as it is the body turning against the new bone marrow, with catastrophic results. However, the doctors have said that a small degree of GVHD is actually good, as it essentially kicks the new immune system into gear. She's had it looked at and the docs were confident enough that she wasn't required to stay in hospital. So while it's unfortunate that's she's experienced this (in the form of a rash on her arm), it appears that it's not too alarming, so I'm confident in her progress.

At this point, though the process is unpleasant and the days difficult, all the key metrics seem to point towards as speedy a recovery as possible, given the treatment she's undergone. Fingers crossed!

Electra & AML: My Work

2011-05-25T00:49:00.002+01:00

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

There's been one aspect of this whole affair which has really made things a lot easier, and it's something to which I feel I should give proper credit: my work. I'm not sure what company policy is in discussing the company by name in a public forum, so I'll leave it out for now; suffice to say that if you know me in person, you either know for whom I work or can ask me.

Overall, my job is pretty good. The people I work with are great and the environment is very welcoming. Although it's not what I would do with my free time were I a billionaire, as jobs go it's pretty decent, albeit underpaying. However, in response to this particular crisis, my workplace, and my line manager in particular, have really gone beyond what one could reasonably expect.

I called my line manager on January 1st, the day after Electra was diagnosed, and he was kind enough to answer; had I been in his place I probably would've ignored a work call on New Years Day, so he's already earning some brownie points. In my discussion with him, I explained the situation and prognosis, and my hope to be able to spend more time than usual with Electra while she underwent treatment, especially during the gaps between her parents' visits. His response, in so many words was "Don't worry about it. Focus on getting her well and let us know how we can support you and we will do so".

And this has been the case in practice. I spent the first week working remotely from Worcester, and met with my manager when I got back to Guildford (the city in which my office is located). I sat down with him to discuss a plan and he was again very supportive, indicating that I could take time off with shorter notice than normal, work remotely when necessary, etc.

The plan I've come up with is to spend roughly every other week in Birmingham (previously in Worcester), and to work remotely from Electra's flat. I'm fortunate in that much of the job that I do can be accomplished remotely, and others in my organisation work remotely with varying degrees of regularity, so the action isn't unprecedented. I've brought up a monitor and keyboard, bought a desk and chair, and have thus setup a little office in Electra's place. I work during the day (connected to the company's VPN), and visit Electra at night. During the other weeks, I work from the office in Guildford.

Being able to do this has truly been a boon to my sanity and Electra's comfort. Dealing with this situation is never fun, but would be so much worse, were I required to see her only on weekends and evenings; the latter is especially inconvenient and was untenable while she was in Worcester. I've observed this with one of my closest friends, whose boyfriend at the time had to undergo cancer treatment. She was told by her firm that she was to be at her desk during standard business hours and could visit only on her off time. Needless to say, this made things much more difficult.

During an ongoing treatment like this one, it is often the little victories that matter, and carry the most weight. This particular victory isn't really little, but obviously pales in comparison to any pending wins on the health front. But because my employer has been so understanding and so flexible, it has permitted me to spend more time with Electra when she needs it most, and that's a win for both of us, and I respect and commend them for that. They have earned quite a bit of loyalty from me for their actions.

Electra & AML: Spring update-residence

2011-05-14T01:56:00.001+01:00

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

As Kevin Smith would say, I'm not going to bury the lead here: Electra was kicked out of her house for having cancer. I'll just pause a second and let that sink in.

There is some more to the story of course, though not as much as one might hope to have it make any kind of sense. For the last year and a half or so, Electra has been living in Stourport, in the west Midlands. She was in a three-person house, renting a single room. Since her AML came to light, her parents have been renting one of the other rooms. This was a convenient arrangement, as it allowed her family to stay close to her; at any given point, there would usually be someone (Electra's mother, father or brother, generally) in their room, and I would be in Electra's (as would she when she was out of the hospital).

Then, in early April, Electra's landlord Keith sent her an email saying that he would "have to give notice" on Electra's room. He claimed to be very sorry, but his mortgage terms were changing, and he needed to rent the entire house out (i.e. all three rooms) starting in May in order to make payments. He further asserted that he was having trouble renting the third room (the master bedroom) because of Electra's "condition"; people would hear about the situation, and then back out.

Now, I understand that the house is a business, and Keith needs to protect his investment. That's fair enough. I can also understand why a potential tenant might be a little uneasy about moving into a house with one tenant who's rarely there, whose boyfriend is around half the time (and working from home all day during that time) and whose parents were sporadically there. But, there are a couple problems with this. First, Electra never told Keith she was OK with his divulging of her very personal medical info. Secondly, considered objectively, there were two rooms that were rented and for the majority of the time, two people there; sometimes myself and her mother, sometimes Electra and her father, etc. But both rooms were paid for fully and both were occupied.

In any event, what's strange is that Keith's claim that he'd ben unable to rent the third room out rather falls apart when it's revealed that the other tenant was informed that someone would move into that selfsame room on May 1st. The tenant was informed of this BEFORE Electra was asked to vacate. So it seems it wasn't that hard after all!

Finally, while I understand that such a decision has to be looked at from a business standpoint, asking someone to move out during the brief window between rounds of chemotherapy is-at best-cold or-at worst-downright heartless. Had Keith come to explain the situation and seek a resolution towards it, no harm would've been done. Instead, he simply stated that he'd have to give notice, but was really sorry. I'm not sure why he was so keen to empty the house by the end of April (the other housemate was also asked to vacate, though that had been planned for sometime and it was merely the date that was set as such). It really seems suspicious to me that he was pushing everyone out all at once.

I feel it necessary to point out, as well, that Electra paid her rent every month, promptly. She kept the house clean, didn't smoke (the only housemate who actually adhered to that rule!) and was basically an ideal tenant in every way. So there's no history of problems to justify such a drastic action. I should also point out that it's definitely illegal to kick someone out for having cancer, and certainly to do so without sufficient notice (though no move-out date was dictated, and end-of-the-month timeframe was certainly alluded to). I haven't decided exactly how i'm planning to respond yet, but I have a range of ideas from "ignore it" to "polite but diffident" to "ruinous". I'll update once we decide.

The upshot of this is that Electra has now moved to Birmingham. She's looked at a place fairly close to the city centre and had planned to buy it anyway, for a number of reasons. But now, instead of having a place in Stourport where she could stay until move-in date (her flat is still under construction), she was forced to move in the midst of her treatment. Luckily, her parents were able to rent a flat in the same development as her new place, but asking someone to do this during the most stressful time of their life is just wrong.

So, yeah. We're in Birmingham now. It's better in many ways-a more interesting city, close to the city centre, more accessible to the hospital, easier for me to come visit, easier for her family to fly into, etc. Birmingham is-in basically every way-a better choice. I just wish that it had been a choice, rather than being foisted upon us by someone else without the decency and compassion to allow a basic amount of leeway for extenuating circumstances.

Electra & AML: Spring update-medical

2011-05-03T00:56:00.001+01:00

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So, I've committed the archetypal blogging faux-pas: not blogging. It's been well over a month since my last post, despite my plans to post more frequently. Those plans still exist, and I do intend to develop a better rhythm and post more frequently, I've just drifted a little so far. Again.

Part of the reason for this is that Electra has been out of the hospital for most of the last month, so it's been a comparatively quiet time. However, that is a clearly relative term and there has been loads that's gone on, so let me first bring everyone up to speed. This post will mostly be an update, and I'll try to get (back) into a habit of posting more often and thus give some commentary, philosophising, etc. Because there is so much, I'm going to split it into a few different posts. This one is about the medical side of things.

Electra has now been out of the hospital for nearly two months, far-and-away the longest period of time since this whole thing began. On the surface this seems like a good thing, but the underlying reasons are unfortunately somewhat less rosy.

After each cycle of chemo, Electra's bone marrow is tested via biopsy (a very unpleasant procedure for her). This checks to see whether the cancer cells have gone into remission, and check other genetic markers to measure the progress of the treatment. After phase 1 of chemo, these tests came back positive, indicating that the cancer was in remission, which would portend a successful treatment. However, this turned out to be an incomplete picture. While the initial (and quicker) tests showed good progress, there is a subset of tests involving genetic analysis which take longer to come back. When these tests came back (shortly after cycle two) they showed a persistent genetic anomaly on chromosome eight known as trisomy-8.

The genetic abnormality is itself worrying and was identified earlier on in the treatment. The concern is that it might make her less treatable using chemotherapy alone. That it persisted through the first cycle of chemo was proof that this concern had come to pass. The chemo should still eradicate the leukaemia, but the trisomy-8 would still be there, meaning that the cancer would come back in time. Since chemo is traumatic on the body and each time builds up some resistance, it should never be repeated if it's possible to avoid doing so. So that means looking at a more severe course of treatment: full-body radiotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant, coupled with a more-intense dose of chemo (as if the previous rounds weren't bad enough!)

In essence, this is all about the bone-marrow transplant (BMT). The chemo and the radiotherapy are, at least in the case where a BMT is being performed, supporting steps. The bone marrow is the centre of the immune system. Stem cells, T-cells and blood cells are all produced here, and it's for this reason the leukaemia is dangerous: when the body's defence factory is compromised, every other system can fall prey to problems. In a BMT, one's bone marrow is killed off entirely and replaced with a new system. The radiotherapy and chemo destroy every trace of the patient's existing system and stem cell harvested from the donor are injected into the body where they are absorbed by the bone marrow and generate a new system. In some cases, an actual extraction of marrow from the donor may still be necessary, but in many instances, stem cells, filtered from a blood extraction are enough to generate new bone marrow in the recipient. It is this procedure that Electra is now set to go through.

Schedule of Events
The hospital where Electra was being treated (Worcester Royal) does not have the facilities to perform and monitor BMTs, so she has been transferred to Birmingham, who have been monitoring the case since the beginning. She will go into Birmingham Heartlands Hospital on May 6th (Friday). She will then undergo two days of intense chemotherapy and then be transferred to Coventry University Hospital for four days of full-body radiation therapy (in essence, one is put in front of an X-ray which is left on for 30 minutes; this is done twice a day for four days). Then it's back to Birmingham where she will receive the injection of stem cells. The stem cells will have been extracted from her brother (who is an excellent match, thankfully!) over the previous two days, using a special machine which filters blood so that the stem cells are removed and the remaining blood re-inserted into the donor's system.

So, basically, 7th/8th: chemo; 9th-12th: radiation therapy; 13th: BMT.

I'll do a post on the implications of a bone-marrow transplant soon. In short, it's not good. It's necessary, and far preferable to chemo only given her test results, but it will mean a longer and more intensive recovery period, greater restrictions on future activities for a longer period of time, and a raft of risks and side-effects. I don't want to scare anyone who reads this: it is still very much the right choice, and the overall prognosis is pretty good, but the road to recovery is much harder with a BMT than without.

I will post more in the coming days to discuss Electra's living situation (complicated), the implication of a bone-marrow transplant (complicated also) and more. But in the interests of keeping this from becoming a novel, let me just say that the outlook is good but scary. Please keep Electra in your thoughts as much as possible, the next bit may be very scary.

Electra & AML: The Big D

2011-03-20T22:10:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So, there's a certain topic I have thus far avoided delving into: death. You'll have to excuse me if this post is a little less structured than some of the others, but that is a reflection of my thoughts, which are themselves a little unclear.

The fact of the matter is that this affliction is very serious. I know that's obvious, but I try to focus on the positives as much as possible: the advances in treatment, the high rate of success, the progress that Electra has made so far. But left untreated, AML has a mortality rate of 100%, often within months. The treatments have come a long way (a colleague of mine told me of her aunt who was treated several decades ago at a time when all they could do was a full blood transfusion every week or so). But they are not perfect, and as we've seen with recent revelations, things do not always go as smoothly as one would hope.

At the end of the day, the odds are good in this case, but nothing is guaranteed. Electra and I had "the death talk" the last time I was up, and she has been pushing me to make sure that I truly accept the possibility; that I genuinely take to heart that the worst possible outcome is possible, no matter how unlikely. She asked me whether I truly accepted that, and to be honest… I just don't know.

In a philosophical sense of the word, of course, we're all dying. Death really is the only thing we can be sure of in life, trite though that might be. And I engage in activities on a regular basis that dramatically increase my chances of dying (I'm thinking specifically of cycling in London, though I have no doubt there are others). So to be in denial about mortality seems foolish. But there's acknowledging that in a logical, academic way, and then there's really taking it to heart. And I don't know if I've done the latter.

I know I don't like to think about it, and definitely don't like to talk about it. Writing this blog post is a way of forcing myself to discuss the topic, and perhaps that's what it'll take to make me really internalise the concept. I guess I'm somewhat in a form of intentional denial; like the proverbial ostrich, perhaps if I refuse to acknowledge the possibility, that chance will disappear. Or perhaps it's simpler than that: I know what's possible, and know how easy it can be to get hung up on that idea and the accompanying fear, and am trying to avoid that. Because I am scared; whether I truly accept it or not, I do know the possible outcomes and there are some I don't want to consider. It may not be the healthiest way of dealing with it, though.

I'm generally a pretty good guy to have around in a crisis. When things go very wrong, I keep my cool, I assess the situation and I tackle things rationally and calmly. I freak out and get stressed by small to medium issues, but when the shit really hits the fan, I tend to become very focused. The upshot of this is that I tend to tackle logistics: what needs to be done, by when, what is the best way to achieve it, etc. My concern, I suppose, is that this coping mechanism may allow me to gloss over the bigger issues, the greater fears and perpetuate my denial, intentional or otherwise. And I'm clever enough to know that's not the healthiest approach in the long run. So I will try to accept it, whatever that means.

I am confident that Electra will pull through this ordeal with flying colours. Two years from now, I expect we will be stronger, healthier and happier than before, and will deal with the long-term ramifications of her treatment as they come (regular checkups, possible long-term medication requirements, etc.) I really do feel this is the case. But the shadow of that grim spectre does loom, quietly and forebodingly in the corner of my awareness, and it's time for me to accept his presence. I am confident that we will stave off his advances, but I should not (nay, cannot) ignore his existence.

Electra & AML: The Other Shoe

2011-03-07T22:34:00.000Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

This past week has not been easy. Throughout the course of Electra's treatment, there have been many hard times; when she's felt so sick she can't move, so tired she can barely speak or has been in such pain that she can do neither. But throughout all of this, we've had the positive outlook provided by the knowledge that all the key signs were pointing in the right direction. Electra had gone into remission after the first cycle, she was reacting well to the chemo and recovering quickly and generally her system was behaving the way one would hope. This made the tough times easier to deal with: you expect there to be some setbacks along the way (infections, fatigue, pain). But we were comforted to know that the key metrics, those that give the best indication of how she will react to the treatment, all showed positive. This past week, that all changed. I should note here that I haven't done much research into this yet, so it's quite possible I'll misunderstand some of this and so much of what I say here might be inaccurate, but I'll do my best from what I do understand.

Last Wednesday, Electra got test results back from her last bone marrow biopsy, which were taken after she completed her first round of chemo, several weeks ago. These results take longer to process because they involve genetic analysis. And the results showed the presence of a chromosome abnormality called Trisomy 8, meaning an extra set of genes on chromosome 8. This was detected initially, but the expectation was that the chemotherapy would eradicate this abnormality. It has failed to do so.

The upshot of this is that the chemo is likely to wipe out Electra's cancer, but it will return; maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years, but it will come back. Since chemo is by no means a silver bullet, and in fact should be avoided as much as possible, one cannot simply sit back and wait for a recurrence and hit it again with chemo (and why would you want to given the effects of the treatment?) So they are going to need to go with a more extreme type of treatment. Specifically, it looks like Electra will now almost certainly need a bone marrow transplant and possibly full-body radiotherapy.

The good news is that her brother Phillip is an excellent match for bone marrow donation (and apparently he doesn't even have to get a giant needle in the back to do it, they can now extract stem cells from his blood and grow the marrow, which is quite frankly awesome). And further, this treatment should have a positive outcome in the end, as the success rate is very high.

The downside is that the treatment is even harder to deal with than chemo alone. I don't want to overstate it, so I will write another post once I've done my research, but from what I know so far, it means that the recovery time is much longer, being measured in years not months. It means strict limits on interactions with children (obviously very limiting for Electra's career as a paediatric speech and language therapist), and strict limits on travel, especially foreign travel. It means she will be unable to make it to the wedding in June for which I'm best man, it means our travel plans to Rome, Munich and more are gone; it changes quite a lot. It also means that she will have to leave the Royal Worcester Hospital behind as they are simply not equipped to treat someone with this particular aberration. She will likely be moved to Birmingham, though we need to meet with a specialist to discuss where she would receive the best care and environment, and where she would be the happiest. But it makes everything much more complicated with visiting, and housing and all the rest.

On top of all that, Electra's neutrapenic phase has hit her like a ton of bricks. Apparently, my assessment of it as not-quite-as-bad-as-last-time was premature. It's now gotten much, much worse. She's picked up an infection again, so is running periodic fevers. She's tired a lot. But more than anything else, she's in pain. Almost constantly now. It seems she has picked up a potential fistula or fissure and will likely require surgery to correct it. That, however, has to wait until her immune system is back and her infection cleared. So in the meantime, she must endure agony and an increased risk of infection from that very fistula. It's a delicate balancing act between the risks of the surgery and the risks of infection that the surgery would help reduce. The end result is days or weeks of pain.

Electra has dealt with this well overall, though it's been the first real blow to her confidence and stoicism. Having to shift from "hard to deal with but ultimately good progress" to "actually much worse than we'd thought" has been tough. I admire her ability to stick with it, even if it takes some prodding from yours truly to get her there. But this whole discovery has been truly off-putting and has really hit her quite hard. Physically, it's been difficult and the painkillers (now at a much high dose) only just barely take the edge of some of the time. But emotionally, I think it has taken some of the wind from her sails. That being said, Electra will always regroup and come back even stronger and more determined, and I know that she will tackle this head-on and with tenacity.

As for myself, I don't know how well I'm handling it. I know it'll be OK in the end, but it's hit me pretty hard as well. I guess I hadn't realised exactly how much emphasis I'd put on the so-far positive results we'd seen from the tests. I'm still getting through the day, but have found myself angrier, run-down and less focused than before. I've had a few drinks, perhaps more than I should've, though I've pushed myself now to hold back on that, for fear that I could self-medicate too much. And of course, I stress eat, as I always do. Between that and my lack of gym motivation, the trousers and shirts are starting to feel a wee bit more snug than before. But I guess that's my normal arc: depression, followed by anger and frustration, followed by nose-to-the-grindstone and determination. And I think I'm moving into that phase now, so I will get back on that horse. But I'm not exactly cheered up by it all.

All is of course not lost. As I said, the long-term outcome of this treatment is good, and all our travel plans and the rest are not cancelled; merely delayed. But I would say that this has probably been the worst, most demoralising week we've had thus far.

Electra & AML: Healthy Person's Guilt

2011-02-27T18:28:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

You'll have to pardon a bit of self-indulgence at this point, as this is a bit of a philosophical wander. If you wish to skip this borderline narcissistic self-analysis, please feel free to jump to the update, below.

There is a concept in trauma psychology called survivor's guilt. In short (largely because I don't 100% know what I'm talking about and have no psych qualifications whatsoever), survivor's guilt is guilt experienced by those who survive (counter-intuitive, I know!). In the event of a major tragedy, let's say a plane crash, those who survive are often wracked with guilt, doubly so if loved ones perished in the tragedy. Typical thoughts are along the lines of "Why did they die and I survived?". Even though that person had no control over their fate, nor the fate of others, they feel guilty at the thought that their loved ones did nothing wrong, and often nothing different, yet perished in the incident.

Sometimes, I think the same thing applies in a case like this one. Electra is a very healthy person. She eats better than I do, exercises more than I do, avoids alcohol more fastidiously than I do and just generally maintains a better lifestyle in many ways than I. In other areas, we're on par: we don't smoke, do drugs, work with hazardous chemicals, etc. So by any measure, she should be healthier than I. Yet I sit in her hospital room alert, fairly well-rested and healthy, while she struggles with fatigue, nausea and other ailments, all down to her cancer, or the treatment thereof. For no rhyme or reason, she is sick and I am not.

I know life isn't fair, and I certainly don't expect that it should be so. I don't believe in fate, or god. I don't think there is a grand plan for the universe, and so the concept of a cosmic balance is anathema to my view of life. Yet as much as I may know this to be the case, I can find it hard to believe, to really internalise. And so I do feel guilty sometimes, and I suspect many others who love her feel likewise. The main way in which this guilt manifests itself is the feeling that I'm not doing enough. I call this "healthy person's guilt".

Now, before I go further, let me be crystal clear: this is absolutely not a fishing-for-compliments attempt. I know logically that I am helping and am not looking for reassurances of that fact. Further, for reasons I'm not entirely clear on, I don't take compliments terribly well, so I sincerely am not looking for any kind of ego boost from this, so please do not construe it as such.

Instead, the point I'm trying to make is that this feeling is endemic to these types of situations. Part of it is my own tendency to set lofty goals and then follow-through poorly. When Electra's condition came to light, I had visions of doing reams of research into the condition, the treatment, case studies and support groups, and intended to work towards becoming an AML expert, insofar as is possible for someone untrained in human biology and medical science. Instead, I've done none of this. I still provide care and support, the research side has gone nowhere.

Secondly, it can be tough for me when I'm down south. Now, I hesitate to write this, because I will be reading it to Electra shortly and I don't want her to think for a minute that she's imposing on me in any way or that I'm resentful of the time I spend here. I'm not at all, but Electra isn't exactly immune to needless feelings of guilt. Instead, my point is that while I know (again, in the logical part of my brain) that I need to spend time away for my own well-being and mental health, it can be hard to internalise and I do sometimes feel guilty when I am absent. This visit was preceded by a two-and-a-half-week block in the south, due to work commitments and a doctor's appointment of my own which I couldn't easily reschedule. But 18 days is too long and I won't be away for such an extended period again. I have also been late in arriving the past two days, and have forgotten to bring certain items (books etc.) with me, something else for which I feel guilty.

In the end, this is something I need to work through, and I am. It is hard for me to be away, but it's also re-energising. And I do know that I'm helping, even if that is just to be here, cut her hair, hold her hand and sneak her some chips. A patient's mental well-being is vital to recovery and I know that I am aiding in this way, to some degree. So the important thing to scope out is where I am right and can/should be doing more (i.e. arriving on time for my visits) and where I'm being irrational and self-immolating. In the latter instance, I need to let my logical brain rule more and make peace with the fact that while I cannot wave a magic wand and cure Electra, that I am doing that which is in my power to do in order to help. I just wish I felt like I was doing enough.

UPDATE
So, a general update on progress. Electra is now well and truly in the neutrapenic phase of her second cycle. She finished the chemo a week ago (Saturday the 19th to be specific), and her neutrophils dropped to zero mid-week. She was allowed a brief respite out of the hospital from Monday through Thursday, and has been back in since Thursday morning.

This cycle has been a bit of a mixed bag. The treatment itself was more traumatic (in cycle one, she felt relatively few ill-effects during the first week of the actual application of the chemo, this time around she was weak and nauseous frequently). However, the neutrapenic recovery period has been more varied. In the first cycle, she was walloped pretty hard. I wasn't present but was in frequent touch and I know how tough it truly was for her. Fatigue was constant, nausea frequent and infections common. This time around has been much better. Her energy levels are often OK and her appetite has been pretty good overall. She's been able to be more alert and enthusiastic, both in person and on the phone. However, there are still some serious down points. She is frequented by bouts of discomfort and a general unwell feeling. Eating can often be draining, and she's still not sleeping perfectly. Though she's avoided major infections, she's spiked fevers from time-to-time and has been sweaty or clammy on occasion. But overall, it does give confidence that she can react well to the treatment. Whereas the last neutrapenic phase was an all-out thrashing, this one has played out more like an even-handed battle.

She should be coming out of the neautrapenic phase in a week or so and will hopefully get the following week out of the hospital. I'll be returning to London on Tuesday with the intent of coming up as soon as she's out so we can spend some time together in an environment that's more hospitable (and less hospital heh heh heh).

And I really will try to post more, I promise.

Electra & AML: Once More Into The Breach Dear Friends

2011-02-13T22:21:00.002Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So, I haven't really kept up my plan of "post more often, if shorter posts". So let me start with a bit of an update:

Electra is currently back in hospital for round two of treatment. It was a little bit of a rocky road getting in there. The original plan was to have her get her bone marrow treatment on Tuesday the 1st and go back in for round two on Thursday (the 3rd). However, as I mentioned previously, she pushed it back to Thursday. Ultimately, the choice between painful procedure versus less painful procedure and additional weekend of freedom with myself was an easy choice. So in the end, she was scheduled to go back in on Monday (the 7th).

However, best laid plans being as they are, even this was ultimately altered. The ward she's in had no available beds, so she was asked to try again on Tuesday. Evidently, even though the first cycle must be administered with the utmost urgency, once wiped out the malformed "blast" cells take some time to come back, so the push to recommence is lessened. So she came back on Tuesday, when a bed freed up. However, still things were not as required. In the intervening time, Electra managed to pick up a nasty infection (probably another iteration of her recurring throat infection). Since chemo decimates one's immune system, they are loathe to start it while the patient is already ill. So, intravenous and oral antibiotics were the course of choice. The idea was to tackle the infection first and foremost, then commence chemo.

And yesterday (Saturday the 12th) was the kickoff. The infection had raged a bit, and Electra had been kept in the hospital the entire time for the sake of monitoring and administration of the antiobiotics. But by Friday, things were calming down and she was pushing to get chemo started on Saturday (as weird as it is to request the injection of poison into your veins, an early start does of course correspond to an early cessation). And she was successful! So she is currently (as I write this) completing her second day of round two.

This time around, though, it's been harder. We knew it would be, of course, so were somewhat prepared. But because her system was already at less than 100% when the treatment started, all the effects have been worse than the first time around. Cycle one didn't start to get bad until at least half-way through; cycle two started to get bad about a half-hour into the treatment. The symptoms were as before: nausea, fatigue, chills, etc. But this time they seemed much worse. Fortunately, Electra is getting better at asking for help in these instances (though it still takes some prodding from yours truly), and the anti-nausea meds have done a reasonable job.

On my end, the push back on the start date of chemo affected my plans. I'd intended to go up today, but Electra and I decided that it was best to have me present for the week after the actual chemo application (which is generally the hardest week and the one where she really needs support). So I've bumped it back until Wednesday the 23rd (due to a doctor's appointment of my own and a work commitment, I can't leave until that Wednesday). This will be the longest stretch we've had apart since this whole shebang started, and it will be very tough for both of us I think. I miss Electra quite a lot and though I know it's dumb, can't help but feel that I'm not doing my duty and really should be up there. Electra for her part, misses the comfort and support that I can provide, though she's been very clear that it's good for me to spend time in the South and not be a martyr in this. Plus, this longer period of time allows me to get some things done that I've been putting off too long. When I'm only home for a week at a time, I tend to triage much more than during longer breaks: I only deal with the most pressing "to do" items, so the myriad of little things I want to work on tend to slip. This longer break will give me a chance to correct that. But that doesn't mean it's not hard.

So, the treatment continues. This cycle promises to be harder than the first, a daunting prospect no doubt. But as usual, I am cautiously optimistic. Electra's progress during the first cycle was incredibly promising, and although there were bumps in the road in terms of infections and side-effects, these are to be expected and the key signs (response to the chemo and bounce-back time of her immune system) all point to a course of treatment bound for success. Doesn't mean I'm not keeping my fingers crossed while knocking on wood and rubbing a rabbit's foot wrapped around a four-leaf clover, but hope is present.

Electra & AML: The Eye of the Storm

2011-02-03T20:04:00.000Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

This week has been one of respite, a nice change from the tedium, monotony and frustration of the hospital life: since last Friday (January 28th), Electra has been home from the hospital. Her neutrophils are up (as I mentioned earlier, these are the most common type of white blood cell and the chief weapon in the body's immune system). The measured level was sufficiently high that the hospital decided they'd had enough of her and kicked her out for some much-needed R&R (I may be paraphrasing the reasoning a little).

Unfortunately, due to a series of prior commitments I'd made when we'd assumed she'd be in the hospital much longer, I was confined to London for the weekend and Monday (I had an immovable presentation on Monday morning). So to my chagrin, I would miss the first weekend that Electra was to spend in comparative freedom, a rare gift in these times. We had various things to look forward to in home time-pancakes, sleeping in and movie nights principle amongst them. But alas, it was not to be. The schedule, as dictated by the hospital, was a blood test Monday, followed by a bone marrow test Tuesday and readmission to the hospital Thursday.

Monday went comparatively as planned, save for a return of the sore throat which originally triggered the tests leading to Electra's diagnosis. However, an examination showed this as nothing to be terribly worried about, and indeed it has faded since then. The car ride to and from the hospital drained Electra a lot, and she cancelled her planned evening with friends on Monday. That same day, I left directly from work and drove back up to Worcestershire, not the safest drive I've ever made as a result of my fatigue (another rant for another day), but I made it.

On Tuesday, Electra's imagination got the better of her. See, the first bone marrow test was intensely unpleasant for her, hardly surprising since it involves a large-gauge needle poking a hole in the back of one's hip bones. The problem is that while the test really is unpleasant, the thought of that unpleasantness can be daunting, and Electra found it difficult to go through a second time and asked the doctor if it were possible to be sedated. It was, but it meant she'd have to come back Thursday. This in turn meant she wouldn't be readmitted until Monday. When faced with the choice of pain and fear or free sedatives and another weekend at home (with me this time!), the choice was pretty straightforward. Even when I'm being hardest on myself, I still generally believe I'm preferable to a giant hip needle.

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a lovely evening out with four of Electra's friends. I haven't asked them for permission to use their names so they'll stay anonymous for not, but it was two couples, Electra's father and Electra & I. We went to a lovely little pub up the road from Electra's place, and had a very nice evening. It was also Electra's first time wearing the wig she got on the NHS scheme. It's very similar to her natural colour, though perhaps a touch more red in the highlights. It's semi-wavy and just to the shoulder. She looks good in it, and you wouldn't know it was a wig except that she hasn't figured out how to scratch her head without shifting around dramatically.

Today, then, was the revised date for the bone marrow biopsy. It all went well except that the sedatives didn't really kick in until about half an hour after the procedure. So Electra was lucid and somewhat pained by the procedure then loopy and happy and fun after the fact. Electra after sedation is similar to Electra after a few G&T's: friendly, loving, excited to see everyone, waving to passersby, and with a tendency to ramble on a bit, specifically about people and things she loves. Very endearing across the board.

Weeks like this are vital to the healing process, in my feeling. When dealing with something like cancer, there is a tendency for it to overwhelm every aspect of one's life. As a carer, I find this tough to escape: I take time for myself and spend some time just living and not thinking about cancer to whatever extent I can. But my thoughts wander as thoughts so often do. And they often drift back. In some ways, it's like when I was working on my Ph.D.; even when I took a night off, the shadow of my thesis loomed large, forever in the periphery of whatever I did. Some of this comes from wanting to keep people updated, and people checking in. And I really love that people care enough to want updates and don't ever want anyone to stop asking, but of course it makes forgetting about cancer-even for a day-difficult. Again, this is like the inevitable question I got during my postgrad ("How's the research/thesis going?" followed by the more-inevitable answer: "Rubbish. More beer please!").

So that makes this limited calm-in-between-storms all the more important. Because the shadow looms as dark and large as ever, but for awhile, we get to turn on an extra light or two and banish the dusk to the very corners of our lives. We get to watch mediocre TV, eat real meals, fall asleep and wake up together. And that break, that evanescent suspension of disbelief that life is as it was two months ago, helps provide the fortitude to persevere through the bad times. It is the security blanket of hope and reassurance that this, too, will end and normalcy and health will be restored. I only wish we had longer before the next onslaught.

On a more "meta" note, I'm hoping to slightly shift the way I make these posts. The dilemma of the lengthier posts such as this one is that writing them takes sufficiently long that I tend to put it off. Which of course gives me more to report one. So my new plan is to post more frequently, but shorter. So please stay tuned, and I'll try to fulfil that promise.

Electra & AML: The road to recovery

2011-01-23T23:46:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So, a little update and some general housekeeping/response to a few bits of criticism.

First, the update, and the update is predominantly good news. In short, today was a day that brought some very welcome positive news. As I described in my first posting on the subject, in each cycle of chemotherapy, one's immune system is decimated along with the the cancerous cell (in this case in Electra's bone marrow). The hope, of course, is that the immune system starts to rebound more quickly than the cancer, and the body heals itself and also wipes out the cancer. Electra will go through four of these cycles.

Well, today marked a milestone in that Electra's platelet count has stabilised. The platelets, which are responsible for blood clotting, fixing bruises and so forth in the body, are one of the three types of blood cells which Electra was low on (the others being white and red blood cells). She's been receiving platelet transfusions during her treatment to keep these levels up-transfusions to which she's had several significant adverse reactions. However, over the past two days, her platelet levels have remained essentially stable (dropping from 47 on Friday, to 45 yesterday and 44 today). This is a clear and unambiguous sign that her body has started to recover, as normally they would've dropped to the mid-20s in this time period. So, her body has clearly begun to manufacture its own platelets, a very important step indicative of a recovering system.

The next key marker is to see her neutrophils recover. Neutrophils are the most abundant type of white blood cell and the body's primary defense mechanism against disease and infection-basically the Royal Marines of the body. It is the lack of these cells that puts her at the most risk of infection while at the hospital, requiring greater isolation, careful attention to diet and related precautions. If these start to rebound in significant numbers (likely to happen within the next week or so), so should be able to get out of the hospital for awhile and do some recovery at home. This will be an obvious boon for her spirits. Of course, it's also the harbinger of the second cycle of chemo; it's important to attack the cancer before it has a chance to regroup, so it's done while the body is at its healthiest and the cancer only starting to rebound. So the double-edged sword is that when you feel at your best, you get hit with round two of chemo. But that's for another week; for now, she has a home visit to look forward to.

On a potentially more pragmatic note, Electra's mother (who'd been visiting for two weeks) and brother (who'd been visiting for the last week or so) both left today, and she was sad to see them go, as were they at having to leave. Sadly, the is is the reality of Electra's situation; her geographic separation from her family makes visits hard and though the time is precious, real life insists they must eventually come to an end. I am here for her now and can hopefully pick up some of that slack, but when you're sick, I'm not sure that anyone or anything can replace your parents and siblings.

So, now onto some constructive criticism I've received about these posts. Electra feels that I've been sugarcoating the news for all of you, trying to soften blows and edit reality. And I suppose that's true to an extent; I don't relish the thought of being the bringer of doom and/or gloom, so perhaps I do try to put a positive spin on things; alternately maybe I'm just a glass-half-full type of guy (I'm not; I personally feel that in that allegory the glass is merely twice as large as is required). So, let me be blunt: things are looking up, but they were very hard for a time. Electra lost most of her appetite, she was nauseous and in pain for much of the day, her hair has started to fall out and she repeatedly spiked a fever. The doctors assured us that everything she experienced was to be expected and that we needn't fret, but it's hard not to. Every single day was a struggle for her for more than a week, specifically the week after chemo ended. Her body had been hit by ten days of intense and horrific treatment and responded by essentially shutting down. Fatigue was constant, dizziness frequent and she ached and felt like she'd been run over by a train.

This was hard for me to hear, and I know it was hard for her mother to witness. I don't know whether to feel relieved to have missed it, or guilty to have done so, but I expect to be here for much of the week after her 2nd cycle of chemo, which we're told will be even worse, so perhaps that will be my penitence for missing the first one. All I know is that while I am confident things will turn out well, and the doctors felt she was reacting as well as can be expected, that the end-of-tunnel light was tough to spot at times. It should be noted in my defense that I wasn't wholly coddling you all; Electra was in fact coddling me and not filling me in on all these details. Further, I don't want to alarm you, so perhaps I was softening a little-this aspect of the treatment is expected, she is very well monitored by very competent people. Were there anything to be alarmed about, we would be informed. But I don't want to seem like I'm sugar-coating: she will emerge victorious, but only after four very intense battles. This is Iwo Jima in 1945: an all-out battle with great cost and sacrifice but one I know we can win.

Electra & AML: To Be Or Not To Be (A Raging Hypochondriac)

2011-01-17T22:42:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

I have a well-established policy when it comes to health issues: ignore them long enough and they'll generally go away on their own. By and large, this has served me well: I'm almost always fairly healthy and bumps in the road tend to just be that. That's (a small) part of why this experience with Electra has been particularly scary.

We saw symptoms of leukaemia in Electra for months. But the terrifying and frustrating thing is that-as simple as it is to look back now and connect the dots-there was nothing to really cause any alarm. She'd been pretty fatigued and low energy for months. OK, well it's autumn in England, which will depress anyone (I've been lead to believe the sun does in fact still exist, but I'm not buying that story!). And beyond that, her work is intense. That, combined with a fairly repetitive daily routine and a feeling of inertia in terms of living arrangements and such made it easy to explain away as just a case of the "blahs", perhaps with a vitamin or mineral deficiency thrown in for good measure.

She'd had a sore throat, very painful and accompanied by a dry cough, that kept coming back. Well, OK, she works with kids; I'm by no means a germophobe, but the only reason that kids weren't the root cause of the plague was because we had the good sense to keep them locked away from the general public back then. You just kind of expect to get sick if you work with kids, especially in your first year or two. So the handful of other sicknesses she seemed to pick up (congestion, flulike symptoms, nausea etc) were easily chalked up to the same thing, with a run of bad luck assumed as the primary cause. She also bruised easily and once or twice had odd red dots appear on her skin, but the former could simply be a case of "just because" and the latter perhaps some slight allergic reaction.

And that's what's really scary. You can look back and attribute every aspect of what I've just described to the AML. Lowered white blood cell counts result in an immune system susceptible to everything. Low platelets lead to easy bruising and the red dots. And low red blood cell counts sap your energy. In retrospect it's obvious; at the time, of course not. The irony is that we'd wondered why she was seeming to have such a run of bad health luck and even postulated something serious, but never believed it to be the case.

Under these circumstances, it's thus hard to maintain my ~~hyperchondriac~~ ~~mega-chondriac~~ reckless anti-hypochondriac tendencies. I'm not now running to the doctor for every sniffle, but in the back of my mind is a little more fear than once resided there. This is of course compounded by the realities of the modern age: as useful a tool as WebMD's symptom checker can be, self-diagnosis is never a good idea, even if I were a real doctor, much less as a borderline-competent Ph.D. engineer. Pretty much any symptom plugged into a symptom checker can be a symptom of some type of cancer (or AIDS, or Ebola or Kuru or god knows what).

I will, of course, return to a wanton disregard for my own health, but I suspect I may have a lasting worry about others beyond what I've got now. I've always excelled at giving others advice that I myself refuse to follow and "go to the doctor" has always been high up that list anyway. I just hope I can refrain from call an ambulance every time Electra sneezes from now on.

STATUS UPDATE:

So, just to provide a long-overdue and much-needed update: the last week has been really really difficult for Electra. Where she was doing well with a few rough spots, she is now almost constantly tired and uncomfortable. She continues to spike fevers from time to time (rarely about 38.5C or so, but still a cause for concern), so she's on 4 or 5 antibiotics as well as an anti-fungal for good measure. These have to be administered at specific times which means she's often up until 12:30AM and then awoken once more at 6:00AM for the next round. So a good night's sleep is as yet elusive.

This is compounded by her central line (aka Hickman line), which was put in on Thursday. The backstory is that she initially had a PICC line put in until she could have the Hickman installed, which is only done on Thursdays. Both lines have the same purpose: a permanent in/out catheter to allow for injection of chemotherapy and other IV medications, and taking blood for sampling. In long-term patients this is done to avoid having to stick them with needles five times a day for six months. The PICC line goes into the crook of the elbow, up past the shoulder and stops above the atria of the heart; it is shorter-term than the Hickman, which is inserted into the right breast area and goes directly into the jugular. In any event, on Tuesday, the nurses and doctors became concerned that the PICC line might have gotten infected, so it had to be removed and a temporary line was put into her hand, which hurt like hell. On Thursday, that came out and the Hickman went in. While this will be much better in the long run, it is a minor surgery and has resulted in bruising (which of course takes longer to heal with no platelets). So she's quite sore and tender much of the time, which further decreases sleep.

So physically, things aren't great. Fatigue, discomfort, pain and chills (from the fever) don't make for a happy camper. But I think what's worse is the frustration. At more than two weeks in the hospital now, Electra is starting to feel the profound sense of impotence that comes with an extended illness (I swear, I'm not making a dick joke here, I do mean impotence in the more traditional sense i.e. powerlessness). As a patient, you have no real control over... anything. You eat when they bring you food, you are confined to your room, you lack the energy to do much of anything you'd do in your normal life. You have people who love you that are watching out for you and taking care of the minutae of life-paying car tax, working out details with the landlord, etc. But it's easy to feel helpless and patronised under these circumstances. It's the way it has to be, but that doesn't mean it's appealing. And I think Electra is starting to feel that way much more, which is frustrating.

I want to be clear: it's not a horrible, grey, dire situation. She's responding to the treatment about as well as you could expect and in a week or so should start to get her immune system back, which will help with the sleeping and the energy and all the rest, and should bring some relief. But the past week has been the most challenging so far.

Electra & AML: End of Chemo Cycle 1

2011-01-10T23:53:00.001Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So today marks a fairly key milestone in this chapter of our lives: Electra's last day of chemotherapy in her first cycle. As I mentioned in the first post, she will be going through four cycles in total; each one is ten days of chemo followed by 4-6 weeks of recovery, depending on how her body reacts.

So, how's it been since I last posted? Well, frankly, not quite so great. Although the chills that she felt previously which worried me so much seem to have passed, she's been getting more and more tired. Some of this is due to disrupted schedules (on Friday, her second round of chemo didn't finish until 3AM and with a 6AM wakeup call for blood pressure checks, fatigue is inevitable). But much of it is due to the chemo itself. As I said before, chemotherapy is poison deliberately injected into your veins. Do that for ten days, and the energy levels will tend to drop. So Saturday was really the lowest point: she slept much of the day, and had no energy to speak of while awake.

This is where being a carer is a bit strange. Because the best thing I can do is... be there. It can be tough to feel that sitting in a chair playing Civilization IV for 6 hours is helping someone beat cancer (though if that's all it took, I could be a real doctor!). But that's what she needs. Someone to help her know she's not fighting alone, that's she's loved and watched over, but who will let her get the rest she needs.

One of the hardest impulses to overcome when caring for someone with a disease like this is the impulse to constantly be "doing" something. There's a profound sense of powerlessness that accompanies cancer, especially for those on the sidelines watching a loved one go through it. There's a feeling that should be more active, able to help in a more tangible, profound way. But you can't; the chemotherapy does all the heavy lifting (or radiation treatment, bone marrow or organ donations, etc. depending on the cancer). And in many cases, you can make things worse by trying to meddle or micromanage. Pushing too hard adds stress and fatigue, fiddling with minutae can wear the patient out, and trying to push someone beyond their limits can set someone back, medically. So as hard as it can be to accept (especially for someone like myself, who is a "fixer" by nature), the reality is that sometimes the best thing you can do is provide love and care quietly while the patient sleeps and heals.

A corollary to this is the need to take care of myself. Because of the desire to be doing something at all times and to try and fix things, it's easy to disappear into the world of the carer, to give up your life for it. And that's dangerous because this is not a three-week sprint; it's a six-month marathon. As much as I'd feel better about how much I was helping if I were to be in there every day, that simply isn't tenable for half a year. So to that end, I'm currently back in London for a week or two, sorting out work and having a bit of a life. I don't know what our eventual schedule will be in terms of hospital vs. home, Worcester vs. London. But I know it can't be 100% hospital, as guilty as that sometimes makes me feel (I know it shouldn't but it does at times). Electra's mother is visiting for two weeks and her brother will be here for the second of those; he father is planning to come shortly after that. So she's got carers still, and I will be up at some point during that time; until then I need to try and enjoy myself a little so I can recharge and better help out when I do go back. I just need to learn to fight the urge to be constantly fixing.

Electra & AML: The fear factor

2011-01-06T23:19:00.002Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So, one of the biggest things with cancer of any kind is the fear. And I've been thinking about this a lot since we got the diagnosis. Am I scared? Should I be scared? What about Electra? Should she be? And in the end, I don't know. As weird as it sounds, I can't tell if I'm scared or not.

On the one hand, I'm a numbers guy, bound by logic and science. And the numbers, so far as I can gather, are promising. Electra has a lot in her favour: she's young and generally healthy. She's got good support (including yours truly) and the hospital seems really on top of their game. Her parents have sought some outside advice from a friend-of-a-cousin who happens to be a bone marrow specialist at the Mayo clinic who says the treatment she's on is good and generally pretty effective. So overall, I am confident that she'll get through this.

But there are times when it can be hard to see. Electra seems to react quite poorly to one of the chemotherapy drugs, called atopside. This is administered once per day for the first five days of her treatment, and every time she's gotten it (she's just completed day six now), she gets dizzy and nauseous, sometimes even weak and cold (like yesterday). When this happens, it can be scary. Because it's one thing to know that the numbers are on your side, it's quite another to see the one you love shaking from the cold in a very warm room as the walls spin around her.

It's like any other semi-irrational fear. For example, there are a great many people living in Canada or the UK who are afraid of snakes. Now, there are no poisonous snakes in either country, but that fear is imprinted on our brains and it can take hold, logic be damned. But the thing to do is accept that your body feels the fear but you control your reactions. I saw a World War Two show on TV once where a soldier who'd fought in D-Day said that courage isn't not being afraid, it's being afraid but doing what you have to do anyway.

So am I scared? Maybe a little. But the doctors aren't and that gives me hope. The trends back up my confidence-AML is beatable and she has a lot working for her. So when the bad times hit and she seems frail and weakened… well, that's just when it's time to steel my nerves and remember the reality: things are OK. There will be good days and bad, high energy and low. This is part of the process and she will get through it. We will get through it. Scared or not, we will push once more into that breech dear friends.

Electra & AML: Diagnosis and the start of treatment

2011-01-06T01:37:00.003Z

(See all posts related to Electra's ongoing treatment)

So, since most people likely to be reading this know me in the real world, most of you probably know my girlfriend Electra as well. We've been together for about two and a quarter years thus far and though we've had our fair share of bumps and issues, things are good. However, the end of last year saw a significant piece of bad news come our way. On December 31, 2010, Electra was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML), a rare and aggressive-though generally treatable-form of bone marrow cancer. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy treatment at an oncology and haematology ward near where she lives.

This posting is the first in what will undoubtedly become a series of posts as treatment progress. I'm doing this for a few reasons. One is to document the process as it happens. I have faith that we will emerge happy and healthy at the other end of treatment (I'll explain why in a minute), and I'd like to have a record of the ups and downs as this obviously represents a significant and life-changing event for her, and to a lesser extent myself. Secondly, I'd like to be able to keep everyone who loves and cares for Electra informed of her status and progress. I will be in touch with many of you over emails, phone calls, facebook and the like, but this is an easy way to broadcast to everyone who wants to stay informed, without inundating everyone with countless emails and calls. Finally, I feel there are things I need to get down. call it self-indulgence, catharsis or venting, I just feel I have things I need to get off my chest.

This entry will be a little haphazard, but I'll try to keep things organised as best as possible. You'll have to excuse me if I ramble a bit, my thoughts are somewhat discombobulated at the moment.

Timeline: diagnosis and treatment
Once the process of diagnosis started, things moved quickly. Very quickly. But in reality, this has probably been building for quite some time. Electra has, for several months, felt a general sense of ill-health. Sometimes, this was a non-specific sentiment of "I just feel off", but there were some specifics. She had a throat infection which was wiped out by antibiotics, but kept coming back. She'd have long periods of low energy and lethargy. She bruised easily and they took quite some time to heal. Symptoms like this are frustrating, because the picture is so clear in hindsight, but impossible to pin down at the time. We just assumed she was having a run of bad luck and catching every bud that went around; the fact that she worked with children (a demographic not know for its strict adherence to WHO/CDC biohazard regulations) merely served to reinforce the idea that she was merely unfortunate enough to catch every little germ that floated by. We figured she'd get past each infection and slowly build up an immunity to working with kids (something I might point out never has to be done when one works with computers!)

But it all came to a head this December. We'd travelled to Vietnam and Malaysia at the end of November, returning early in December. Right before the trip, Electra had come down with a sore throat, which her doctor believed to be tonsillitis. It had lingered but eventually she seemed to get past it on her own. But while in Vietnam, it came back with a vengeance. We were able to take advantage of a glaring public policy oversight in Vietnam which allows for the purchase of antibiotics without a prescription. While a terrible idea from a public health standpoint, it was convenient for us, and the antibiotics wiped out the tonsillitis again. However, on returning to the UK, the sore throat came back a third time. This time her doc took some blood to check for Mono (aka Glandular Fever). And that's when it started to get real.

The initial scan showed some odd results and a diminished blood cell count. Enough so to warrant another test; this latter test was performed on Dec. 24th-blood taken in the morning and tests done by the afternoon. This speed worried us as such expedited service can often indicate a high level of concern. Unfortunately, Electra had left her phone in the car, not understanding that mobile phones are actually mobile and should be all but surgically implanted into oneself at all times. Her GP told her there were some anomalous results and to schedule an appointment for Wednesday the 29th, the first day the practice would be open after Christmas. We went in first thing on the 29th and were informed that there were some strange results including "blast cells", malformed blood cells that can indicate leukaemia, though they can also be indicative of many other less-scary conditions. But this was our first indication that something serious might be amiss.

The GP referred us to a haematologist (blood specialist) for the morning of the 30th. He told us that for someone of Electra's age, leukaemia was the most likely concern, and scheduled a bone marrow biopsy for that afternoon. A strange and unpleasant procedure, this was completed as scheduled and we went home to worry. Results were to be ready by the next morning (New Years Eve). At 10AM on the 31st, our fears were confirmed. Electra was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML), an aggressive form of bone marrow cancer. She was to start treatment that night, an equally aggressive schedule of chemotherapy.

Say what you will about the NHS. But in two days we went from an unusual blood test to a diagnosis and commencement of treatment. When there's something big, the system works. But it doesn't give one much time to contemplate.

What is AML?
Acute Myeloid Leukaemia is one of four major types of leukaemia (which can be any combination of acute or chronic and myeloid or lymphoblastic). It is relatively rare, especially in people under the age of 60 or so, but isn't entirely unheard-of. It is fast-acting and without treatment "universally fatal" (in the words of the consulting haematologist/oncologist).

Instead of the creation of normal blood cells (red and white blood cells and platelets), bone marrow in an AML patient produces malformed cells called blast cells. These are harmful to the body because they can reside in the bone marrow and inhibit cell production, as well as circulating through the body. Mostly though, the damage comes because normal cells are not produced in sufficient quantities.

The positive side is that AML is-from what I understand-fairly treatable. My father, a GP in Canada described leukaemia as one of the "big wins" in the cancer research community. 10-15 years ago success stories were few, but now, with the right chemotherapy, barring any complications, remission is often achieved and

What is chemotherapy? What specific therapy is Electra undergoing?
Chemotherapy is basically like poisoning yourself to save your life. It looks harmless, just like any other bag of clear fluid, but in essence, chemotherapy is some of the most advanced poisons we've ever devised. I should be clear that what I'm going to describe is based on my understanding from the haematologist; I am by no means an expert in the field.

In essence, chemotherapy destroys the cancer cells throughout the body but with major collateral damage: it also wipes out the body's immune system. Neither is 100% wiped out by the treatment, there are always some residual cells. The hope is that the immune system bounces back faster, and can go to work on the remaining cancerous cells.

With each successive course of chemotherapy, more cancer cells are destroyed, but there will always be some remaining cancer in the body. The goal of the therapy is to decimate the cancer population enough that the body can naturally eliminate all the remaining malformed cells through its natural processes. In fact, we all have malformed cells in our body; but for those of us without cancer, there are few enough that our body's defences eliminate them.

To use an analogy, a normally-functioning body is like a society: there are a few bad seeds, but a well-trained police force can ferret them out and keep their influence from spreading too far. On the other hand, in a cancer sufferer, it's more like Detroit, or Moss Side (in Manchester): the malcontents have taken over and the only remaining solution is to nuke the entire area from space and hope that the good seeds repopulate more quickly and establish order.

Electra's treatment involves four cycles of high-dose chemotherapy. Each is 10 days long, and involves three standard drugs and one highly-targeted experimental drug as part of a clinical trial. After the administration of the chemotherapy she has a 4-6 week recovery period. The start of this period (and the latter half or so of the chemotherapy application) is the dangerous time. This is what's known as the nutrapenic phase, during which her immune system will be largely suppressed. She is therefore susceptible to all sorts of nasties including bacteria, viruses and fungi. Therefore, antibiotics, antivirals and antifungals agents (plus antihistamines and god knows what else) will be applied as needed, her vitals monitored very closely and her food and surroundings carefully controlled. As her immune system starts to rebuild, some of these precautions may be relaxed, and she may even be allowed to leave the hospital for a few days (fingers crossed!).

How's she doing?
Overall, pretty well. Chemotherapy is obviously very taxing on the body and we are as yet in early days, so things can change. Electra is a stronger than she's normally able to admit to herself and I know she'll fight this, but it's not going to be an easy struggle. At the moment, she's very tired, not only from the medication, but also from adjusting to life in a hospital-it's hard to get a good night's sleep with an IV in your arm and a whirring machine 30 centimetres from your head. Not to mention the pokes, prods and checks from the nurses. But she's adjusting.

Otherwise, there are some time when things seem more dire. She'll get cold, nauseous, dizzy or all of the above. These times are scary, but the nurses and doctors are well-prepared for this and their confidence is reassuring. The arsenal of medications at their disposal have so far been successful in getting her back to feeling alright and I think they will continue to do so.

The biggest challenge is to overcome her natural sense of "I don't want to cause any trouble". This means that I have to browbeat her into reporting everything to the nurses-every bout of nausea, chill and shiver, every pain or dizzy spell. It means that she has to be open with visitors when she gets tired. Although visiting is great and cheers her immensely, it can also be quite tiring and there may well be a point where she needs to rest but is too polite to say so. Fortunately, her adaptability shines through here and she's become good and doing both of these things. It's hard to get someone so giving to think of themselves, but she's learning.

How am I doing?
Also pretty well. My work has been excellent; I've spoken with my line manager about this and he's been amazingly supported, something for which I'm very indebted to him. I'm currently working remotely from Electra's house and visiting her in the evenings; when her mother comes next week I'll return to the office and devise a strategy for this. I know that I have to balance my caring for Electra and supporting her with my work and my life. Six months is a long time and I cannot spend every single day there. Fortunately, with her parents, her friends and her colleagues, she will be well tended.

I characterise my outlook as cautiously optimistic. I'm not naïve enough to think that we're out of the woods (hell, we're just on the inbound edge at this point). Infection is a real risk and complications do arise. But Electra is young, healthy (you know, aside from the whole cancer thing) and has a good support system. We also seem to have caught this early. So with all that being as it is and the progress being made on the research front, I am very confident she will beat this and I will help her in any way I can.

What I need to do, though, is the same thing I've asked of her: to take some care of myself. So far, I'm not sleeping a lot. And it's really starting to catch up with me. I cannot give her the care she deserves under those circumstances, so I need to stay on the right track (and maybe not write blog posts until 1:30AM for that matter). I also put myself at risk of infection which would mean I couldn't see her at all, which helps nobody.

But again, I'm optimistic. I'm ultimately a creature of pattern and adaptation and I simply need to find the right balance. Also get back into the gym and get rid of this Christmas spare tire, but that's neither here nor there.

What's the plan?
So what do we expect going forward? What's the plan, what's the hope, what's the fear? Well, as I say, I am confident that we can beat this, but make no mistake: it will be a slog. This is our Stalingrad: a slow battle of attrition, won by inches and at great cost. It will be hard for Electra and hard for her friends, family and other loved ones. But we will break the back of this cancer and come out all the better for it.

This blog will be a good forum for tracking progress; I intend to update it as often as I can as more information arises. Use the keyword "Electra+AML" to locate all related posts, or subscribe to the RSS feed. These posts should also be imported automatically into facebook.

But I will also be trying to live a somewhat normal life much of the time: back at work in Guildford and at play in London. I may be leaning on some or all of you for my own support and will also likely try to organise some visits and support for Electra. In the meantime, if you wish to send something, please email/call/text/facebook message me and I'll give you the appropriate address. Cards, balloons, chocolates, etc. are all good; flowers are not due to infection risks. There is of course no obligation whatsoever. She has phone signal in her room and will shortly have internet access we think, so love and thoughts are always appreciated. But please remember the fatigue: calls are more draining than texts, for example. Visits are welcome, but there will be good and bad times depending on her energy, fatigue and immunosuppression levels. Please feel free to contact me at any time and I'll advise.

Thanks to everyone who's read this far; this is a long crappy road but the destination is worth it and I know you will all help us get there.

Electra & AML: Index

2011-01-01T23:56:00.016Z

This is an index of all the posts related to Electra's AML treatment. Each post has to be manually linked in, so I can't guarantee I won't miss one at some point, but I'll do my best to put them all here in chronological order:

Diagnosis and the Start of Treatment (05/01/2011)
The Fear Factor (06/01/2011)
End of Chemo Cycle 1 (10/01/2011)
To Be or Not To Be (A Raging Hypochondriac) (17/10/2011)
The Road To Recovery (23/01/2011)
The Eye Of The Storm (03/02/2011)
Once More Into Breach Dear Friends (13/02/2011)
Healthy Person's Guilt (27/02/2011)
The Other Shoe (07/03/2011)
The Big D (20/03/2011)
Spring update; Medical (03/05/2011)
Spring update: Residence (13/05/2011)
My Work (25/05/2011)
Absence (13/06/2011)
Once More Into That Breach, My Friends (15/12/2011)
The Reality of What's To Come (16/12/2011)
Christmas Update (24/12/2011)
Our New Eve Years Tradition (01/01/2012)
Last Chemo Ever, For Better or Worse (05/01/2012)
The Hard Truth (16/01/2012)
A Bad Week (28/01/2012)
The Result We Dreaded (02/02/2012)

Also, for specific topics, see the following keywords:

Electra + AML (all posts about the treatment are tagged with this one)
Electra
AML
Cancer
Leukaemia
Chemotherapy
Bone Marrow
Radiotherapy

My letter to Capital One

2010-03-12T12:07:00.003Z

As many of you who know me in person are probably aware, Capital One recently decided to screw me by upping my Visa's interest rate to a whopping 39.9% While I generally don't carry a balance (so this shouldn't affect me), I cannot stand for that level of greed. What they didn't know was that I'd recently started working, which made me a much more desirable credit holder. So it was very easy for me to get a different card, but I dragged me feet about quitting Capital One. No longer. This is the letter I have written to them. Please let anyone you know to never, ever go with Capital One for anything, they will rip you off at the first chance they get.

From: Dan James, Visa Card Account (REDACTED)
(My address REDACTED)

To: Capital One
350 Euston Road
London, NW1 3JJ

March 12, 2010

Dear Capital One:

I am writing to you today regarding a letter I received in the autumn of last year. This letter relates to an increase to my interest rate from the already-high 31.9% to the truly astronomical 39.9%. I am writing today to ask that you cancel my account effective immediately (I will also be calling your customer service department to do the same). I apologise for not calling the opt-out line in time, or writing earlier, but I got really busy at work and it completely slipped my mind.

Oh yes, work. You see, that’s the irony of this whole situation. When I signed up for your extremely-high-rate credit card, I was a student, so I could understand why my credit rating would be minimal and I would only qualify for such an exorbitant rate. But the irony is that-having started working on the 15th of September-I had planned to call you literally that exact same day to inform you of my employment.

You see, I believe in brand loyalty and will quite happily stick with a company that treats me well. So I thought it was fair to give you a chance to decrease my APR to something more reasonable given my amended circumstances before I cancelled my card and went with one of your competitors. And I do believe that I warrant a decrease in my APR (MBNA agree, incidentally, given that they immediately furnished me with a 12% APR card). You see, having moved from my Ph.D. studies into the working world, I am now a solutions implementation manager for a major blue-chip technology firm. This is a position with an excellent degree of upward mobility and salary progression, which is likely to keep me a happily-spending consumer for a very long time. Given that I paid my full balance on essentially every statement, it is safe to say I would be a fairly valuable credit asset going forward and a very low credit risk.

But sadly for you, I will not be your credit asset. Not now, nor ever again. You cited the current economic woes as your reason for this rate hike against me, a low-risk dependable customer. I find it ironic, however, that an economic crisis which has made it cheaper for companies such as yourself to borrow and lend money than ever before in the history of money would somehow make it more expensive for you to do just that. I believe, therefore, that this is merely yet another thinly-veiled cash grab by a greedy, short-sighted, manipulative corporation, too long fed on complacent consumers and lax national lending institutions. So you can consider me an ex-customer.

Congratulations Capital One: instead of ensuring that I was a happy and content customer for life, you have guaranteed an angry and embittered consumer in one of your prime demographics (the 18-34 urban professional with disposable income). You have ensured that I will forever spread word of your ill deeds to all of my peers, colleagues and friends, all of whom are in the same demographic. I will do everything I can, in short, to reduce the number of credit card holders you have for as long as I am able to do so (or until my bile and malice towards you runs out, whichever comes first). I hope that when you evaluate the efficacy of increasing your interest rates, you will factor me in as a loss, even though timing forbade me from calling the special opt-out line you’d set up.

All things considered, Capital One, I’m not sure this was your best decision. Now, I’m not a fool. I know that this letter is unlikely to ever percolate to the appropriate echelons of your obsidian and monolithic corporate empire such that it could truly have any impact. Further, I have no doubt that your deceitful and conniving ways will forever ensnare new financial victims to your predatory practices. You will survive and likely even thrive despite my departure. But so will I, free from the Venus fly trap of your ravenous greed and avarice. I wish you nothing short of complete bankruptcy and truly hope that others will have seen the light as I have and flee your grasp. When a five-minute trip to MoneySupermarket.com or any number of other comparison sites reveals dozens of cards with less than one-third of your interest rate, I can only hope that my fellow consumers have the foresight to act as I have.

In summary, Capital One, I hope you can take this to heart somehow. I know that we live in a world of endless consumerism and that the spectrum of consumer runs from those deserving of the trust implicit in a low credit rating to those on the edge of ruination. I believe that capitalism gives you the right to profit shamelessly from those who lack the insight or financial fortitude to constrain their spending; though I disagree with your supposed supposition that you have the imperative to capitalise on their misery. Short of sending you the ghosts of credit lending past, present and future, I feel I cannot be clearer. You have turned me from a customer-for-life into someone who will always sing your evils and dream of your damnation and insolvency. I am voting with my wallet and that is a vote you will never again get.

Sincerely

Dan James

To-do for Thesis

2010-01-14T21:28:00.007Z

OK, I realise I haven't posted anything on my blog or facebook Notes page for a long time, but I'm hoping some people will actually see this (and I'm going to tag you to make sure!). The reason for doing so is that I want you all to help me out with something.

As many or all of you know, I am in the final stages of the Ph.D. from hell. I'm currently writing up my thesis, and have two experimental chapters to go, plus the summary, before I can submit. My hard, very final deadline is April 30th for the submission of the thesis but I'd prefer to be done a little before then so I can have a shot of getting my viva and corrections done in time to maybe make the July graduation period (the deadline to be done is generally in early or mid June for this, and I have to allow a month for my examiners to read my thesis, plus a week or so to do corrections, etc.)

To that end, I have posted below a very very ambitious schedule for what I still have to do, and when I hope to have it done by. Most of it should be very self-explanatory, I believe.

I want you guys to be my conscience. I don't necessarily need constant checks, as that would presumably eat up a chunk of time in and of itself. However the odd poke and prod would be helpful, or a periodic "how are things going". I'll probably also post either in here or on my facebook status as I pass each task listed below. So what I want is to make sure that everyone knows what my intent is. That way, I can't back down. By making it public, I make it much more cast in stone and FORCE myself to get this shit done. So apply guilt, guile, cajoling and so forth as you see fit, but more than anything else, please be aware of this schedule. Knowing that my friends know of what I have yet to do and how much I'm staying on track will hopefully be the incentive to develop the work ethic so long lacking in my doctorate.

Cheers,

Dan

The Schedule (with deadlines):

18/01/2010: Download Raw Data from lab PCs

19/01/2010: Graph existing pertinent data using OriginPro

19/01/2010: Sift out useful data from newly-downloaded raw data

20/01/2010: Graph new data using OriginPro

20/01/2010: Create rough outline for chapter 4 (electrical characterization)

22/01/2010: Have bulk of literature done for chapter 4

25/01/2010: Write first draft of chapter 4, including literature and experimental results

29/01/2010: Prepare graphs for chapter 5 (metastable memory effect) in OriginPro

01/02/2010: Download bulk of literature for chapter 5

02/02/2010: Create outline for chapter 5

06/02/2010: Write first draft of chapter 5

22/02/2010: Fill out chapters 4 and 5 with additional literature if need be

24/02/2010: Write summary

28/02/2010: Complete first edit of work

05/03/2010: Incorporate edits from external people (i.e. any other students, PostDocs, or other friends etc. that are helping me edit)

12/03/2010: Final polishing and checking done

15/03/2010: Submit

What's with the British... screenless windows

2009-08-05T10:40:00.001+01:00

Well another day I should be writing my thesis, another bit of waffle about the perplexing nature of the UK. This is one which I've actually noticed extends beyond the UK. I've actually observed this phenomenon in every country I've visited outside of North America: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Turkey, France, Germany, Portugal, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Tunisia, Italy and Switzerland:

Windows without screens.

Now this just baffles me. Sure, the countries I just listed don't have the same problems with biting insects that we do in North America (though I'd wager that Turkey and Tunisia have some issues in the heat of summer). But none of them are devoid of insects. This very summer, I've had to kill about a dozen flies in my kitchen because I like to have the windows open. And because I have a hard time cooking without filling the kitchen full of smoke, but that's another issue and beside the point.

In North America, no problem. The screen keeps them out. That little $5 piece of plastic mesh allows me to see out, allows the breeze to come in, but keeps out 6-legged flying friends out. It's simple and effective. Sure you have to wash it every now and again, but so what?

This one, I really don't understand. We're not talking about high technology or fantastic costs. It doesn't dramatically alter your view or add any real inconvenience. So why not have a screen? Are we pro-malaria now?

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... the case of the missing top sheet!

2009-07-28T10:15:00.000+01:00

This particular "What's with the British" segment isn't a rant; it's not something that bothers me, just something I find puzzling, even though it's almost completely inconsequential. The British don't seem to believe in top sheets.

Let me explain. I'm used to what I now assume is the North American way of making a bed. You have a bottom sheet, with fitted corners. This is followed by a flat top sheet, then the blanket. This has several advantages, but the main two are that if it's hot, you can take the blanket off, but still have something over you in which to wrap yourself; additionally, the blanket stays cleaner and thus requires less washing, as it never really comes into contact with those who are sleeping in the bed. I realise you then need to wash the top sheet more, but it's a lot easier than wrestling with a duvet cover.

So why do the British omit this sheet, putting the blanket right on top of the bottom sheet? I have no idea. Maybe it's a cost saving thing, maybe it's because it rarely gets hot enough to only have a sheet rather than a blanket. I dunno. It's a puzzlement.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... street signs

2009-07-24T14:20:00.001+01:00

Navigating around anywhere with which you're unfamiliar is always tricky. You don't know the main streets, much less the smaller cross streets, you don't know where one-way streets are and are not, etc. Thus, the road system should be setup to make this as painless as possible. One of the ways you can do this is through street signs. If someone tells you "turn right on Oxford road, then left on Smith avenue", it obviously makes it a load easier if those streets are labelled. Cities are therefore kind in labelling these streets well. Or so I thought. Let's compare a hypothetical corner in Canada to one in the UK, shall we. Here's a random street corner from a fairly small street in Toronto. It happens to be near where I used to live and is a very reasonable facsimile for countless intersection across Canada. I have labelled the potential locations for the street sign with red dots.

The potential locations are:

About a meter in from one of the corners, on an 2.5-metre pole.

That's it. That is the only place it will ever be. The signs look like this:

This will be the case for every single intersection. If you are going along a street and pass five cross streets, you will see each cross street labelled, and will see the name of the street you're on five times (helping confirm the street name hasn't changed, etc.). The only exception to this is for major streets where in addition to these signs, there will be a gigantic sign hanging above the street itself, to make it easier for motorists to see. That will look something like this:

That's it. Consistent. Predictable. Visible. Obvious. Easy to find, easy to read. It doesn't matter if you don't know the city well, you will damn well know what street you're on at all times. It doesn't matter at which point you get on the street, because every intersection is clearly labelled in the same manner.

Then we come to Britain. Oh Britain. My only thought is that the Ministry of Transport is secretly running psychological experiments disguised as a guessing game. Because they don't locate the signs in any way that makes any damn sense. Let's look at a fairly typical intersection in Manchester:

The street sign(s) (there may be zero, one or two), may be in any of the following locations:

One the corner on a pole (very, very rare, I think I've seen this about twice in four years).
On the main street (on any of the four corners, but only one at most).
On the side street. Again, only in one location. Note that this means if you are driving along the main street in the right direction, you will see no labelling for the side street at all.
About a foot off the ground on a fence surrounding the house. This may be as far down the side street as 20 metres or so.
Behind a bush in front of someone's house. Again, might be as far as 20 metres down.
On the side of one of the houses, about 3 metres off the ground.
Nowhere at all (happy guessing time!)

Note that not only are the signs in any number of different, unpredictable locations, not only are they often obscured by trees, bushes, fences, roof overhangs, etc., not only do they only ever face one direction at most (so if you're going the other way, you're basically screwed). But on top of all of that, they often just don't have a sign at all. This is especially common for a main street with several sides streets intersecting it-only about one side street in ten will have a labelling for the main street as well.

Let me tell you where this is annoying. I was going to a friend's poker night, as part of his bachelor party. I had printed out a map of his neighbourhood. I came to an intersection where I had to turn right or left, but didn't know which. In Canada, no problem. Pick one way at random and see what the first side street is. If it matches the map for the direction you're supposed to be going, great. If not, turn around. Max time wasted: about 2 minutes. I walked for twenty-five minutes without a single cross street being labelled (or the main street) and without seeing a single house number either (so I couldn't even tell if the numbers were approaching my friend's number or getting further away). I lucked out and had turned the right way, but there was a 50-50 chance of that.

I dunno, maybe some people find this fun. I like surprises as much as the next person, but I don't think that figuring out where I am in an unfamiliar city is the best time and place for a guessing game. It's no wonder everyone here has satellite navigation in their car: if not, you're liable to end up in France by accident. And nobody wants that.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... baked beans

2009-07-14T14:54:00.000+01:00

OK, this is a small one, so let me be brief: baked beans. They're nasty. Gritty, tasteless, horrible things, far-too-often covered in a nasty, overly-sweetened artificial-tasting tomato sauce. Not good at all. And back in the day, when the mines were your main source off employment, I can see using them.

But now? No, put them away. Don't put them on toast. Don't put them on potatoes, don't put them on sandwiches or anything. They are just nasty. And the worst part is, the British zeal for soaking any food in sight with baked beans ruins some otherwise great food, notably the breakfasts. I love almost everything in a traditional English breakfast. Bacon? Awesome. Sausages? Awesome. Fried potatoes, toast, fried mushrooms? Awesome. Even the tomato is decent. So you're off to a great start. And then, BAM! Out of nowhere comes the baked beans, generally slopped on with a huge ladel, just ruining all they touch.

Britain, hear me well: put the baked beans down, and walk away slowly and nobody gets hurt.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... traffic lights

2009-07-09T14:45:00.002+01:00

In my years on this planet, I have travelled to many different countries (19 at this point), and have keenly enjoyed the differences between one culture and the next. While I do believe-clichéd though it may be-that there is more that makes us alike than different, more that unites us than divides us, I also feel that the nuances between two cultures are always fascinating and add spice to one's life and one's travels. So I love to see the differences, and compare my experience to the cultures I see around me.

In many cases, these differences are neither good nor bad, just different and interesting. However, that's not to say there are some differences worth pitting two countries against one another for. And thus we come to today's "What's with the British..." post. I have come to the conclusion that out of everywhere I've lived, Britain alone must gain the title for World's Worst Drivers.

Now, I know this is contentious, and perhaps "worst" isn't exactly accurate. Let me clarify: Britain has the world's most inconsiderate drivers. I've ce

rtainly seen scarier drivers. The French for example, seem to have a distorted view of the size of their car, and merrily jostle into a space far too small for them (as evinced by the myriad bumps and scrapes on French cars). Americans practically invented road rage, and with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 250 million guns in the country, have reasons to fear that rage. The Cubans drive at breakneck speed, on whichever side of the road happens to be paved better, all while dodging oxen, chickens, and giant pickup t

rucks with 50 people in the back. And never before or since have I feared for my life like I did the day I took a taxi in Istanbul to Koç University evidently piloted by the illegitimate child of Mario Andretti and Lizzie Borden.

But I think the British are woefully inconsiderate for one primary reason (and many smaller ones I won't elucidate here): they have redefined the traffic light. This little fella right here:

Now to the rest of the world, this is a very standard symbol. Green means go, amber means slow down and red means stop. The British, however, have reinterpreted this. Green still means go, sure. But amber now means "fucking floor it!" and red means "don't worry, you've still got time to get through". I saw an American standup comedian once who described the people squeaking through at a red light by saying the first guy was legitimately unable to stop, the next guy excuses himself by saying he was just following the previous guy and a third person sneaks through admitting "sorry, I'm just an asshole". In Britain, four more cars follow that guy!

Most of these "What's up?" posts haven't been to rant-ish so far, but this one is: Britain, please stop when the light is red. I know you could lose up to 20 precious seconds, but I'm sick and tired of almost being run over for crossing-legally-on my bike or as a pedestrian!

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... deodorant

2009-06-11T12:05:00.001+01:00

Continuing in my gripe of insignificant, yet strange and often irritating gripes about the UK: deodorant. Dear Britain, let me show you what deodorant should look like:

That's right, a stick of solid deodorant/anti-perspirant that you rub under your arms. These exist in the UK (only Lynx seems to make them, and they can be hard to find sometimes), but they do exist. And nobody uses them. Instead, they have this strange obsession with spray-on deodorant.

Now, it's not that spray-on deodorant is bad. It's that it doesn't work as well, people use so much of it that they end up filling the locker room with a noxious cloud of horrid-smelling cheap musk, they cost more, deplete faster and leave you reeking of cheap nastiness. So, actually, I guess it is that they're worse. There are times at my gym when I can't breathe without coughing and gagging in the locker room because some perspire-a-phobe has emptied nearly half a can on his underarms, chest, back, ass, legs, arms and face. I've literally smelt this putrescence outside two sets of doors from where it was applied.

Oh yeah, and you can't bring them onto airplanes. Use a stick of deodorant like normal people. Yeesh.

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... taps

2009-05-05T12:32:00.004+01:00

OK, this is a consistent, albeit minor annoyance I've noticed since moving here. For some unfathomable reason, the British seem to insist on having separate hot and cold taps, rather than a single, adjustable one. Now, on the face of this, who cares? They're taps, it's not the end of the world. While this is true, it leads to the totally flummoxing situation where I have two choices when washing my hands; nearly-glacial cold water, or water so hot I cannot hold my hands under it (seriously, without hyperbole, the taps in the men's room in my office building dispense water so hot it steams). How is this useful? Who uses the hot one and where did they get the sub-dermal asbestos? But more importantly, is it really that tricky to get a tap which has an adjustable temperature?

See the rest of my "What's with the British..." series.

What's with the British... an intro

2009-05-05T12:29:00.011+01:00

So, I've periodically ranted about some weird eccentricity or idiosyncrasy about British culture, mores or norms. However, I've never really done so in a cohesive manner. That's about to change. Whenever I notice something that annoys, befuddles or perplexes me, I'll post it here, and tag it with "What's with the British". This page will serve as both an intro to this series, and an index. I expected that each post will be pretty short, as it's essentially just my ramblings about something confusing I've noticed since moving here.

Caving to the latest facebook meme

2009-02-10T10:18:00.004Z

So, I was just going to ignore this latest facebook trend of "Post 25 random and largely irrelevant facts about yourself. But I've now been tagged in four such notes and read one from my friend Su who inexplicably didn't tag me (no love? Already thinks she knows everything about me? Who knows?). So here it is, 25 random facts about Dan:

I have two middle names; Wendell and Izatt. Izatt is my mom's maiden name; I'm not sure where Wendell comes from exactly.
I hate my birthday and since moving overseas and meeting new people have strictly limited the number of people who know when it is (mostly to girls I've dated). I don't like getting older, and I don't like a fuss and hate that everyone feels the need to argue this.
I'm in my fourth year of a three-year Ph.D. and haven't enjoyed a single day in the office in about two years.
One of my life goals is to watch all 250 movies in the IMDB top 250. I have yet to decide if I want to fix the list as it stands now, and watch those 250, or amend the list as new films get added.
For the first few days of my life, I was unnamed. My parents had thought of calling me "Jesse" but decided Jesse James sounded like a tribute to a bank robber. They thought of naming me Matthew but the nurse talked them out of it, saying that half the male babies born that year had been named Matthew. So until I became "Daniel", I was referred to simply as "Wrinkles".
I used to play Dungeons and Dragons frequently. My favourite character was a nearly-omnipotent level 25 fighter-mage who eventually became a demi-god and ruled over a large swath of land from on high. After that, the game kind of lost its challenge.
I periodically contemplate buying a motorcycle, but have so far refrained because my mother would fly to England and knee-cap me. Plus, I am concerned that I would look like a douchebag poseur. A seriously dorky one.
Due to hitting the gym and losing weight, I now own a suit jacket that is large enough to fit myself and my girlfriend in it simultaneously. I think it may be time to donate this to Oxfam.
I hoard many things, but amongst them are: padded envelopes, boxes of any kind and plastic shopping bags. I blame my parents and grandparents for this as my family owns such things as Christmas wrapping paper older than me, and three complete dining room tables.
I grew up in the same house for the first twenty years of my life, and have lived in 13 places since then. I went two years moving every 4 months, and this is the first time since 2000 that I have lived in the same location for more than 1 year at a time.
My first computer was a Macintosh 128K I inherited from my father. My current one is a MacBook Pro 2.33GHz 3GB Ram/320GB Hard drive. In the intervening time, I have had a Mac Plus, a Mac LC 475, a Powerbook 180, Powerbook Duo 280 and 2300c, a Powerbook 3400, A PowerMac G4, and a PowerMac G5.
When I moved to the UK in 2005, I brought two bags weighing 30kg each and a bicycle with me. I also shipped my 25kg computer (the G5 from above) and monitor over, and a box weighing about 15kg. I do not travel light, it turns out.
Despite being an electrical engineer, I am both somewhat frightened of electricity (having nearly electrocuted myself once or twice) and fairly incompetent. In undergrad labs, I blew up a CPU, two banks of NOT gates, three LEDs, two servo motors, an op-amp or two and probably a few other things I'm forgetting. The lab tech would become visibly worried whenever I would approach his office and once asked me "what did you break now?"
When my appendix was removed, in 1993, in Cuba, it was three times too long and in the wrong place, which made diagnosis difficult initially. As a result, it was only discovered by exploratory surgery lsating three hours and giving me a 6-inch, 22-stitch scar. A litre of pus was sucked out of my abdominal cavity, and the estimate of the surgeon was that my appendix had ruptured almost three days prior and had I waited as few as three more hours, I would've been septic, likely fatally. Coming on the first days of my holiday, the surgery and hospital stay ruined the entirety of my vacation. On the other hand, unlike when my friend Adam got sick on a camping trip with me, no helicopter-based evacuation was necessary.
Despite having debated at a university level for nine years, and achieving a modicum of success, I have never been to a Worlds competition. I have also never read the entirety of a single Economist, though I poked through a few articles in one issue around Christmas 2006.
No matter how drunk I am, I can almost always find my way home and take my contacts out. Even in a new city, I have never failed to make it home, and have only woken up with contacts in about twice.
I hate lab demonstrating (TAing), but have done so for two years running, and have grudgingly agreed to do it again this term, because I'm broke. However, I am refusing to mark anything this time (an activity I hate more than being completely broke). In the past, your mark would directly depend on how high you were in my pile. Near the top, I was less annoyed and frustrated, and thus more lenient.
I have one tattoo, on the back of my shoulder (a red maple leaf). I am contemplating getting a second, on my left upper arm, if I ever finish my degree. It will be (seriously) the schematic diagram of an N-channel enhancement-mode MOSFET transistor, surrounded by the words "Deus Ex Machina" (Latin for "A God From The Machine"). I think chicks will dig it.
I recently passed two workout goals: being able to bench more than my body weight (I can now do about 100kg) and do partial squats of more than double my body weight (I can now do about 200kg).
One of the most profound things anyone has ever said to me came from my brother, a guy not known for such profundity. He told me I'd waited too long in my life to start having fun. This is very true.
Although I want to travel around basically everywhere in the world, I get hesitant of places with an excess of poisonous snakes, bugs or jellyfish (which terrify me if I see them). That being said, I still want to go to Australia, which seems to have the highest concentration of all three. Oh yeah, machete-wielding rebels or machine-gun wielding drug lords also give me pause.
I am an unrepentant Triscuit addict. Anyone I know who goes back to North America does so with explicit instructions to bring me back some of these salty, wonderful crackers, as they aren't sold in the UK. The Black Pepper and Olive Oil ones are the best.
I do a mean version of Eminem's Without Me on karaoke. I will need to be moderately intoxicated to be convinced to do it, but not so much that I forget the words.
I'm convinced that everyone, even fairly "normal" people, have what I call "pockets of OCD"-little areas of life that must be certain ways, etc. I know I do: maps and menus must be folded correctly, socks must match completely, and so forth. Oh, and when I'm swimming, I'll often count the laps I've swum by finding significance in the number (i.e. 14 is the product of two primes, 15 is the house number I used to live in before my current place, etc.)
I have owned a total of six iPods, plus two replacement hard drives, two replacement batteries, a replacement motherboard and daughtercard and a second casing, including the buttons and electronic interface (that came with one of the second-hand, earlier iPods). Two are currently active (an iPod Touch and an iPod Shuffle), one was killed by getting rained on, one was run over by a bus, one was retired for a newer model, which was in turn left on a train when I was very, very tired.

My Internet Quiz Mosaic

2009-01-13T15:08:00.008Z

On one of my scheduled breaks from reading boring papers (I find the only way I can focus at all on this boring-ass work is to allow myself scheduled breaks throughout the day), I came across another one of those random internet quiz things that so often gets passed around like a 2-litre bottle of cheap cider in a flophouse. This one, however, intrigued me, because it isn't just a simple question-and-answer affair. The instructions, instead, are as follows:
* Type your answers to each of the following questions below into Flickr Search
* Using only the first page, pick an image
* Copy and paste each of the URLs into the mosaic maker

What is your first name?
What is your favorite food?
What high school did you go to?
What is your favorite colour?
Who is your celebrity crush?
Dream vacation?
Favourite drink?
Favourite dessert?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
What do you love most in life?
One word to describe you.
Your Flickr name.

Yeah, it's cheesy and silly, but there are some truly impressive shots on Flickr, and I have always been somewhat fascinated by photography, so I gave it a whirl. This is my result (click for full size):

Here are my answers (can you guess each one?):

Dan
Steak
Parkside
Blue
Claire Danes
Road Trip Across Asia
Single-Malt Scotch
Chocolate Fudge Cake
Successful
Sex
Kickass
Prometheus-Titan

Some thoughts on it:

Who has a favourite colour once they pass the age of 8? I went with blue just to be totally unoriginal, but I honestly couldn't tell you what my favourite colour is.
It's interesting to me to see how little correlation there is between my search term and some of the returned results. Specifically: steak giving my someone's leg, the road trip one giving me a snake, sex showing me a bridge in New York and "successful" giving me a shot of a locomotive. I didn't really explore why, but I am somewhat curious where these came from. Flickr tags? Titles? Comments?
Some of the photos are absolutely brilliant. I've recently stumbled upon the idea of HDR photography. The locomotive is definitely HDR and I suspect the leg, New York (edit: yes it is, just checked the photo name) and city-at-night shots are as well.
I think this really shows some of the promise of the massively over-hyped Web 2.0, the interactive, user-generated content iteration of the web. There's an amazing breadth and depth of photography on Flickr, all there for the searching and enjoyment of the users, all free. And with that comes the chance to create derivative works-to remix and redisplay the content in other ways that are artistic, or meaningful or whatever. I'm over-analysing it obviously, but I do think this is a microcosm for this trend of the participatory internet.

Anyway, here's the credits for the artists whose photos appeared in my mosaic. I'd love to see what any of you who read this might come up with.

1. Dan, 2. 365.114 I don't give a damn about my reputation., 3. Parkside, 4. When Waves Collide, 5. Claire Danes, 6. Rear.. Fanged ......!!!, 7. Day 126 | 365 : Success!!, 8. Chocolate is a Girl's Best Friend!, 9. Covered Wagon Train, 10. Brooklyn Bridge I | HDR, 11. Vegas Slow Hand, 12. Prometheus Titan Guide

Democracy=capitalism=evolution part 3: The Bad

2008-11-06T13:02:00.000Z

"We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both. "

-Louis Brandeis

This is part three of a series of posts on capitalism, democracy and evolution. Please make sure you have read parts 1 and 2 first.

Addmittedly, this post has gotten much easier recently. Ever since the worldwide financial markets melted down, massive goverment bailouts were floated and financial institutions collapsed under the crushing weight of their own poor choices, it has become much easier to note and explain the flaws in capitalism. But I want to conclude this blog post series by looking at the issue from the same specific vantage point as the others in this series: a comparison between the forces that drive democracy, evolution and capitalism, and the parallels between them. Because there are perils inherent in these forces, and we would do well to heed and mitigate those perils, as much as we can.

Perhaps the single greatest mover in evolution is species extinction. Species extinction is required for the continual pace of evolution. We exist on this planet and thrive largely because of the billions of species who have been wiped off. Whether they were exterminated by a meteor impact, as were all species of dinosaur, or by being out-competed (as were the Neanderthals who once co-existed with our ancient acenstors), countless species no longer inhabit the earth. Extinction is required for new species to thrive because of the limited nature of resources. If a given species no longer competes for food, habitable land or other commodities, it opens up a niche in which a new species can emerge. So extinction is often the instigator of evolution. Further, it can also be the product of evolution. A new species better able to compete for a limited resource will often push another to extinction simply because they are better evolved to harness that resource. Nature is a harsh mistress, and we would all do well to remember that we exist merely as a result of the billions of species who died out to make way for us.

The problem is, when we extend this concept to capitalism, we can see it destroy people's lives. The clearest example of this is the current trend of outsourcing manufacturing to China. This has resulted not only in a raised standard of living for China, but for ourselves, as well (from a consumer products point of view). The massive drop in the prices of consumer goods has allowed us to explore new products to an extent we never would have otherwise. This isn't just pointless consumerist crap theory either. Everything from clothing to housing materials, from computers to telecommunications has been affected by this; it has allowed new ways of doing business and has drastically affected our ways of lives. But at what cost?

Because you see, nothing is really produced in the West any more. GM and Ford are struggling and relying on government handouts to stay afloat. Technology and textile companies have either closed up shop or moved overseas (even Levis, long a bastion of American production, no longer make any jeans in the United States). The American, Canadian and British manufacturing sectors are dying. And this trend will only continue: consumers pick less-expensive products, so nearly any company that chooses to produce locally will be out-competed by those who take advantage of the cheaper labour overseas; companies that produce in America will be rewarded with their own extinction. Many people feel that we are shopping ourselves into unemployment.

Of course, the market will correct for this. We will develop new avenues of revenue, new ways of doing business, and new areas of specialisation. If the global free market is about only one thing, that's it: specialisation. China has been able to leverage its huge population and lack of employment and safety standards to create a cheap, disposable workforce capable of churning out discount shoes by the cargo shipload. We blithely look the other way on human rights issues and the health and safety concerns, because who wants to pay double prices for their Nikes? Our specialisation has gone the other way: we focus on innovation and finance, service and ideas. These are the specialisations where our comparatively-highly-educated workforce can thrive. And in time, it will all balance out. As more and more of china's labour market is put to work, internal competition for jobs will increase and prices will rise. Eventually, the massive advantage they enjoy will dissipate. Simply put, the rising standard of living in China is a double-edged sword for them: soon there will be so much internal wage competition that it will be too expensive to hire them. This has already started to happen in India, where rising salaries have made offshoring less desireable than it used to be.

But the catch to these forces is time. Are we willing to watch the American economy spiral into depression in order to wait for Chinese labour to get more expensive? What if it takes 25 years? Evolution is amoral-it's a natural process and bears no thought to what we think of as right and wrong; if a species is ill-adapted, it will die, and that's just the way it is. But we as a people do care about right and wrong. Are the cheap televisions and shoes worth seeing average working people in our nations suffer for decades? Is it worth losing (possibly forever) control over our own production? There's a balance to be struck, when weighing up such options, and far too little thought has yet been paid to that.

The second danger that emerges from the evolution-capitalism parallel is that of short-sightedness, and it is this danger which has so recently and dramatically reared its ugly head. Because both forces (and political evolution too) are short-term reactionary processes. Species don't evolve according to what the conditions will be like, they evolve to what the conditions are now. People vote based on the current issues and political climes, not what they predict the world will need in some years' time. And stockholders make decisions for the direction of their companies based on short-term projections and market conditions. Often to their detriment.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the current "credit crunch", which was sparked by the failure in the US sub-prime lending market. A lack of regulation allowed (and almost required in many cases) banks to lend money to people who realistically were never going to be able to pay back the loans. And the thing was, from a typical capitalist point of view, this totally made sense. There was intense competition for new loan customers, and the US and UK were in the middle of a huge housing boom. Surely the money wold come back somehow. And further more, all those competitive forces, so shrewdly modelled after evolution? They would have crushed banks that didn't do it. The shareholders would have seen a dwindling of market share and revolted, and any potential customers would see that bank as small and less-capable. Further, the short-term loss of revenue would have made the banks less competitive. So from a pure market standpoint, in the short-term, the banks had to give these stupid loans. Because the market tends to ignore the long-term in favour of the short.

Similarly, many companies, when faced with slowing profits or a soured economy, will dump employees left and right, trying to cut costs. However, this is often a terrible strategy in the long-term. Apple is as successful as it is today largely because it bit the bullet and kept on its employees in the early 2000s, after the dot-com bubble burst and the tech industry took a pounding. They poured money into research and development, and were able to innovate their way to success. IBM did a similar thing, with equally successful results. On the other hand, Gateway divested itself of thousands of employees, and eventually tanked, selling off parts of itself to a variety of different countries; Motorola similarly laid off a staggering 50,000 employees, and is now struggling to find its place in the market. In both cases, short-term decisions were made that hurt the companies in the long haul.

Finally, the weakness in the market is where the evolutionary comparison falls down. That is the issue of collusion. Because we don't work solely on our instincts or what is best individually. Cartels such as DeBeers will actively work to counter market forces, one of the few times that the long-term is actually examined thoroughly. Companies will create artificial product differentiation, mislead consumers or spread FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about a competitor to try and trick people into buying a specific product. All of these work against the idea of a natural selection.

That fault, however, can actually be our salvation. Because humankind is unique on this planet in our ability harness foresight. We are not slaves to our instincts, nor are we incapable of thoughtful reactions. We can plan, scheme and werigh up different alternatives. And to my mind, this can be our greatest strength. Clearly the market forces are powerful. Also, as I stated in earlier posts, there are significant benefits to the market; I would never espouse a fully socialist/communist agenda, as such a concept has been shown time and again to be inefficient and a poor methodology for giving people what they want and need. However, equally crazy is an unfettered, unregulated free market. As the former employees of the Lehman Brothers about the perils of letting the market rule your every whim.

Only the craziest of free marketeers would ever espouse a total lack of regulation. Without regulation, companies would pollute the land, slaughter innocents and consume every resource they could lay hands on, all if it would attract a single new customer. They would lie, cheat and steal their way to profit, the only motivator that would matter. So clearly we need regulation to some degree. This article from Yahoo shows how thoughtful, well-planned regulation can be used; the Canadian banks have remained largely strong during this economic storm, due largely to legislation that prevented them from wantonly giving loans to everyone with a pulse.

Government has a role to play in all of this. I am not a bleeding-heart socialist, but neither am I a total libertarian. Government can use a light touch to mitigate the failings of the free market system in a ways that the businesses themselves never will. Whether that's limiting trade with China, or applying conditions that make them adhere to basic working standards, or whether it's preventing greedy, short-sighted financial institutions from running amok with the public's money, governmental regulation has a role to play in the market. But it's difficult for them to do, because they are open to extinction as well, from a short-sighted public; a group of people who want prosperity and splendour, but lack the motivation and training to truly evaluate long-term consequences (good and bad) of policy. So sometimes the government has to make choices that are unpopular. It might mean you can't afford to buy a house right now, but if you couldn't truly make the payments anyway, that's a sacrifice that might have to be made to prevent another depression.

Our role in this is as the evolutionary force behind the political wing. We can push our politicians to do better. Reward those who make the difficult but correct decisions. It might mean your next TV costs more, it might mean that your line of work is made obsolete and you need to re-train. But try to evaluate the politics and the economy for what it is: a fragile balance between the immediate future and the generations to come. We are more than merely a collection of instincts honed by millennia of evolution: we can plan for the future in a way nothing else we've known can. Let's flex those muscles and demand a better world.

Sidebar: VHS vs. Beta This is a small note to respond to a comment that came in the facebook note of my first posting in this series. The assertion that was made in that comment was that the VHS vs. Beta format war of the 1980s was an example of collusion-that JVC and co. basically paid the movie industry to side with them, and Beta-a better technology-was killed off. THis has repeated itself to a degree with BluRay vs HD-DVD.

What I would say to this is yes, collusion between companies to subvert market forces played a significant role. However, the "Beta is better" claim is one of the assertions I hear all the time, and I wanted to clear one thing up: Beta was not better in every way. Picture quality was better, and the tapes lasted longer. True. However, at the time VHS was released, Beta could only hold one hour of video. This made it unsuitable for taping movies off the TV, as well as for containing an entire feature-length film from the studio. This, it turns out, was a major failing for the format. Sony had gambled that picture quality was more important to the public, and they were wrong. YouTube shows that people prize convenience over image quality in many cases.

So I think that Beta died quite rightly. By the time Sony released a version with an extended playback time, it was too late. VHS had become the format of choice (it was also much cheaper, incidentally) and Beta eventually faded to obsolescence, witht he exception of its professional counterpart, BetaCam, which was a different format and was used for decades in professional recording. In this case, though collusion was present and counter-acted the market forces, it was the market that decided: Sony had created a format well-adapted to some things, but not those things which the market prized. They were poorly adapted for feature-film recordings, and were thus made extinct by the comet of VHS.

"Having created the conditions that make markets possible, democracy must do all the things that markets undo or cannot do."

-Benjamin Barber

Democracy=capitalism=evolution part 2: The Good

2008-09-24T11:02:00.001+01:00

This is part 2 of this series of articles. Part 1 can be found here.

Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
-Winston Churchill

OK, so assuming you've read part one of this article, you will hopefully be more or less on my side as to the whole idea that democracy, political thought and capitalism work in fundamentally the same manner. That is, they change and adapt over time, not necessarily getting better, just more complex and better-suited to the current environment. There are some flaws in this, specifically in terms of collusion between political parties or companies, and I will address those, but that's more in the third part of this article. This article instead focuses on why I think this is a good thing, and we why "like" the ideas of democracy and the free market as much as we do.

The fundamental way in which I feel all three systems are similar (for those too lazy to read the first article), is that small changes, taken in aggregate, can affect the course of progress. Buyers, voters and external influences each only affect the entire ecosystem in minute ways, the overall effect is major, and can sculpt the future of a species, a company or a political party.

This, then, represents the first way that all three systems are a good thing. Each voice matters. Every vote, every sale (or lack thereof) every life, death and procreation, matters. In a situation where we feel irrelevant or meaningless, or that we have no sway over anything, we do. We are the drivers of change. And this is huge. Compare it to a command economy where the decisions are made wholly by the party in charge of the country, and you can see the appeal of a democratic system. Even though the people might make terrible choices and vote in a terrible leader (and his even-worse son), at least it was their choice. It give the average person ownership in a way that no other system does as well. We get the leaders we want, and the leaders we deserve.

SImilarly, in a commercial setting, people often misunderstand the concept of value. They'll look at a product and say "that product totally isn't worth it", and they might be right... for them. But if a company does overprice a product, the consumers will "vote" with their wallets, not buy it and the company will either lower the prices or pull the product. One of the most fundamental misunderstandings about the market is that the price of a product bears any relation to the cost of producing it. Other than giving a minimum cost that the company will charge for that product, it's simply wrong to think of the retail price of something as a cost price plus markup. The retail price is set by what the company think customers are willing to pay. We get the prices we deserve.

An interesting off-shot to this is corporate governance. Another misunderstanding in the marketplace is that companies are required to do everything they can to make profit for their shareholders. They're not; they're required to do exactly what their shareholders really want. If every Microsoft shareholder turned up tomorrow and voted for Microsoft to become a non-profit company that donated its time and resources to making open-source software given away free to the third-world, that's exactly what Microsoft would have to do. Shareholders are voters, too, and in a very direct way. The only problem with that is that if you want enough votes to make even the slightest blip on the company's radar, you need to be insanely wealthy. It's a voting system with a very high barrier to entry.

The second reason that these systems can be a good thing is the idea of proportional representation. Now, obviously, most major systems of government don't use proportional representation, but the theory is sound, and is often even reflected in the systems of government we do use. The idea is that if a certain value is held by a certain percentage of the populace, that value will be represented by the government to the same level. For example, if 30% of the population wants looser gun control, in theory 30% of the elected officials should support that position. As I've said, this isn't true in practice; however, in many cases, it can be reflected, especially in multi-party systems. Even within the American two-party system, different senators or congresspeople within one party can have differing views, and these often end up presenting a good cross-section of the public opinion.

In evolution, this is represented by how useful a trait is, and the level at which is becomes mutually advantageous. There are some traits that would not be useful for every member of a species to have. For example, Robin Baker's book Sperm Wars discusses the comparative evolutionary advantages and disadvantages to bisexuality. Because it gives one a more-varied sexual experience, it can make a bisexual individual more competent sexually, and thus more attractive. However, it can also increase the risk of STDs, and if everyone were to be bisexual the increased experience advantage would dissipate. As such, there is a natural balance where some members of the species are bisexual, giving them an advantage, but the remainder gleam different advantages by being heterosexual (in a glaring omission, the book doesn't discuss homosexuality). There are other traits that follow this pattern well. In commerce, of course, the link is even more obvious: the more accurately a product represents the public's desire, the more it will be bought. If 20% of people absolutely want an FM radio on their MP3 player, those 20% will never be iPod owners.

The final benefit to these systems is closely related to the last point: the niche market. The Galapagos Islands is the ultimate niche markets, those tiny, far-of islands that so enthralled Darwin. In that remote location, a plethora of species existed which lived nowhere else in the world. Each had been tuned by evolution specifically to that environment, and likely would perish if it had to compete with species in the rest of the planet, just as external species would quite possibly have been out-competed in the Galapagos. Those species had found their niches and dominated therein. Again, this has parallels elsewhere. Single-issue political parties can garner enough support to influence the debate, or a small group of concerned citizens or special interest groups can make their voices heard on the national level or a local one, filling their niche with the political recognition it might never get elsewhere. Products of course, often have niche appeal. Apple's sales pale in comparison to those of Dell or HP, much less the entirety of the Windows PC ecosystem; but they have aggressively targeted specific niches like the home, student and creative markets and have done very well (for example, they dominate the graphic and video design industries). As a result, their success in these niches have allowed them to prosper, albeit in a more-limited way than Microsoft.

The other "good" thing about all these systems is their seemingly intrinsic appeal to us. Don't get me wrong, getting to democracy and a free market has not been an easy path. At times, it's been a veritable slog. But I think we find the concept of democracy to be intrinsically appealing. I think that's why it's taken such a firm hold over our consciousness, and why we hope to see it spread. Usually, in cases where democracy has failed to take root, it's the actions of a few individuals with a lot of power that has prevented it, not the will of the citizenry. The question is, why do we feel that appeal? Well, all the reasons I listed above demonstrate the advantages of democracy, but I think there's another aspect to it. You see, we often evolve to like things that are good for us. We find the taste of most harmful or poisonous foods to be disgusting, because those of us who like the taste of poisonous mushrooms tend to die off before we can pass on our genes. The reason we like the taste of fatty and sugary foods (much ot the chagrin of our waistlines) is because our cavemen ancestors needed those ingredients to survive treks across the ice-age planet which could often last for weeks before the next food source could be found. So we intrinsically "like" things that are overall "good" for us.

Thus, I think the appeal of democracy, and of the free market, stems from its similarity to evolution. I think that we feel an affinity for those processes because they so closely mimic the natural course of our own evolution. One of the big boons of evolutionary theory is that it's very easy to understand (residents of Kansas aside). You don't need fancy computers, you don't need complex equations. The basic principle of evolution just makes sense: advantageous traits get passed on, disadvantageous ones cause the individuals with those traits to die early and are thus not passed on. So I think we recognise, on a subconscious level, that the other systems bear striking similarity to evolution, and it is that which gives them their greatest appeal, even though we might not identify it as the reason. Nature has voted us into prominence, and we have modeled our most successful financial and political systems after its own mechanisms. Kind of a poetic tip of the hat, if you will.

Ironic sidebar:
A funny thing occurred to me while I was writing this. I paralleled democracy and a free market system to evolution, because the naturally advantageous traits tend to bubble to the top through a series of seemingly meaningless individual "votes". But look at the archetypal rival to a free market democracy: a communist/socialist command economy. In this situation, an elite group of party members runs the whole thing from on high. They decide who gets what, how much, and the denizens of that society are expected to follow an implicit moral code that they will work for the betterment of society, regardless of the lack of personal remunerative benefits (i.e. if they work harder, they still get paid the same). You know what that sounds like to me? Religion. God imparting his views and controlling the world from on high, with an implicit code of behaviours, monitored and enforced by the threat of damnation if the code is broken. How ironic that the system of governance that has most fervently sought to ban religion is the one it most closely resembles?

"Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people."

-Proudhon

Democracy=capitalism=evolution

2008-08-31T23:37:00.001+01:00

"It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe."
-Richard Dawkins

This is part 1 of a series, which will probably go to three parts. Part 2 can be found here, part 3 will be linked when written.

A thought occurred to me the other week, and I thought to myself "where better to articulate this idea than my blog that nobody reads and I haven't updated in ages?" So, here I am. The thought that occurred to me is this: democracy, free-market capitalism and evolution are the same. Obviously, they apply to different areas of the world, but the main principles that underlie their operation are the same. This lends itself to a shared appeal and shared risks, and I think that if we observe the way things work in one area, we can often draw useful parallels to the others.

To keep this organised, because I think it might go a little long for a single post, I'm going to break this up into three areas. The first (this one) is going to be an outline of my hypothesis, and an explanation on why I feel this is the case. My intent is that by the end of this post, you will agree with my overall idea. The second post will discuss the benefits that this can bring, and also why this symmetry is inherently appealing to us. Finally, in the third post I will discuss the often-overlooked dangers and risks that arise as a result of this, especially in economics; I will also posit some potential solutions, if I'm feeling bold enough.

Evolution, capitalism and democracy are ultimately three forms of natural selection, each applies to different areas of life, obviously, but to address their similarities, there are are a few areas that stand out. If we examine the progress of the entire ecosystem, we see trends emerge in the complexity of individual species, species differentiation and species selection (the manner in which species thrive in certain environments or falter and die out). It is these areas that parallel one another in the three areas of life.

Species Selection: In every case, a variety of new "species" enter into the field of interest over time. In the case of evolution, these are different plant, animal and microbe species, introduced by random genetic variations on existing species; in capitalism, they are new business ideas and products, introduced by individuals out to make a profit; in democracy they are both new political ideas and entirely new political parties. In each case the new species is often a minor twist on an existing one, but is sometimes a radically different entity. In each case, myriad species throughout the biosphere/marketplace/political landscape compete, and over time each species will succeed or fail to differing degrees. The process by which this happens is through competition, and through a large number of small, externally influenced choices. A new biological species will compete for limited resources such as food and water with the existing species. Whatever trait makes them different from their predecessors will allow them to either out-compete the other species, or they will suffer as a result of it. Humankind's opposable thumbs allowed us to use tools in a way that gave us an advantage over those species lacking such a trait-this gave us greater access to food. In the marketplace, a product will either appeal to a wide range of people (the iPod, for example) or will sink miserably (the Ford Edsel). Individual transactions are each very small-one iPod purchase doesn't markedly change Apple's fortunes. But it is the aggregate advantages or disadvantages that allow them to compete. Similarly, in politics, a party's popularity depends on how it differentiates itself from its competitors; if you come out strongly against taxes, and that is an issue of great importance to people, your party will thrive through the aggregate of millions of individual votes.

In each case, it is the sum of a vast number of minute actions that allows a change to propagate throughout the landscape. If many individuals buy a product based on a specific feature, that feature will often spread to other products; at the same time, the progenitor of that feature will prosper. A party's politics garner it more or fewer votes, and this,taken at large, is the instrument of their success. As a new biological feature provides a benefit to a specific arena, it will become more common, or even omnipresent within that locale. However, in each case, what works in one place often doesn't translate elsewhere. Camels are biologically well-suited to desserts and have thrived there; however the trade-offs made to survive there make them poorly suited to colder climes. The politics of one country would be perpetually ill-suited to the different culture of another, and those same ideas will forever fail to take root. And products on the marketplace are often popular in only one region, as adhering to the tastes and preferences of that culture. Thriving in one area often requires trade-offs that make a species ill-suited to another climate.

Furthermore, the process of evolution involves the flaring up and dying out of different species. Many lines of animals and plants have gone completely extinct (dinosaurs, etc.). In this case, an external event changed the environment such that the unique attributes of that species made them ill-suited to their habitat. In the political world, ideologies come and go depending on the changing needs of its people. Communism and fascism, though both still in existence, lack the sway they once had. Feudalism is almost completely extinct in much of the world. These ideas-once more-are not inherently terrible; it's just that the environment changed such that they were no longer good fits. The marketplace is littered with dead products-when was the last time you bought a manual loom, a suit of plate mail armour or an eight-track player? As new products have arisen and been better suited to the then-current zeitgeist, entire lineages of products have fallen by the wayside.

An offshoot to this is the niche species. In each venue, niche species can exist. There exist certain animals that thrive in a very specific part of the world, or under very specific conditions. In that domain, they are king; outside of that domain, they rarely exist; the aforementioned camels are a perfect example of this. In products, companies will often target specific niches: Apple has gone after the home and consumer market with its computers, largely ignoring the enterprise/large business market. Again, they have been successful by doing this one thing well, which contrasts to Microsoft's strategy which is to spread Windows far and wide: business, home, Xbox, phone, cars, battleships, televisions, and more. The fact that Microsoft has obtained success in these myriad arenas shouldn't detract from Apple's success: though their overall size and finances are dwarfed by Microsoft, they make billions of dollars every year by targeting their niche, and doing it well. In the political arena, fringe political parties and ideas, and single-issue candidates can often achieve a measure of success by focusing, with pinpoint accuracy on a specific niche.

Species Complexity: It is a common misconception that in evolution, later ideas are somehow intrinsically "better". This implies a value judgment that's simply impossible to make in each case, as there is no universal indicator of "good" vs. "bad". Furthermore it implies a morality that doesn't make sense on a biological scale. However, there is an overall trend that can be observed throughout the history of biological evolution: increasing complexity. From basic protein chains and amino acids to single-celled creatures such as paramecia and bacteria, on up through multi-cellular microbes, to invertebrates, then vertebrates, through to today's multi-system, intelligent, blog-writing organisms. There are exceptions of course, and simple unicellular organisms obviously still exist, but the overall trend has been towards an increase in complexity.

The same is true of politics and commercial products. Three hundred years ago, there was no electricity, no computers; everything could be made by a small team of people or even individual blacksmiths, etc. Modern products are much more complex on average-they require teams with scores of people to design and build them; factories that cost billions of dollars. More and more products are unrepairable due to their complexity. This doesn't necessarily mean that the products are better than the old ones, but nobody can contest that an iPod is more complex than a gramophone. Simple products still exist-a fork today isn't terribly different than a fork 100 years ago, but the overall trend is clearly one of increasing complexity. Politics were a little faster, but the further back you go, the more simplistic the political platforms: taxes have always been an issue, but recent events such as internationalisation, terrorism, and the issues of race, religion and more have lent an importance and complexity to political platforms that simply didn't exist hundreds of years ago. It's not enough to have a view on local issues, taxes and whether slavery is a good thing or not (hint: no, it isn't); you now need to be well-versed in global issues, the effects of free trade and economic deregulation, international conflicts between nations big and small. Again, there are single-issues political parties that still exist (e.g. the Marijuana Party of Canada), but the overall trend has been towards increasingly-complex political platforms.

In every case, successive generations are modified versions of their predecessors. As a result, new features and designs have been incorporated into the existing motif. As a result, the trend is to increasingly complex and feature-rich products, political theories and species. Each betrays the history of its lineage: our history is written into our DNA, showing the fingerprints of our ancestors; modern products' complexity is due to their past advancements and the platform of a modern political party is a testament to those who came before.

Species Differentiation: In all three arenas, differentiation between species can happen in a myriad of ways. The first creatures to leave the oceans prospered because of their ability to breathe oxygen and survive outside water. Some species develop traits that allow then to eat foods others cannot access (e.g. giraffes) while others develop more predatory or defensive mechanisms (lions and armadillos, respectively). In politics, parties will choose single issues in which to plant their flag, or will target specific audiences that others ignore. Differentiation is even more pronounced in the marketplace. Apple, for example, has placed its bets on style and panache: the iPod lacks features such as an FM tuner, Windows Media support and built-in voice recording that other products have; yet Apple's style, fashionability and slick marketing have differentiated them in a way that other music players have been unable to match, to great success.

This links back to the first point, in that species selection happens based on the overall picture of a given species. However, it's important to note that whether the change happens from a product planning meeting, a genetic mutation or a new political strategy, that each species can differentiate itself in myriad ways. Some will be advantageous to the current climate, and the species will prosper, maintaining that trait. In other cases, they will have picked a trait that hurts them or gives no advantage, and the change will not take root.

End Result: At the end of the day, the goal of any species is survival-to expand, to prosper and to pass its genes on. A company wants to increase its profits. A political party wants to get more votses, and thus obtain more power. Richard Dawkins speaks of the "Selfish Gene", the idea that we are but vessels for our genes. Any trait that can be passed on will propagate if it is beneficial for the current situation and will fade away if not. This same idea exists in other forms in the other two arenas. Adam smith spoke of the "unseen hand" of the market place: that economic forces would naturally push the better-adapted ideas to the top and subvert those poorly adapted to the current consumer climate. Politically, this is the entire concept of democracy: that votes represent individual endorsements, and that the ideas with the most pertinence to the wider society will prosper.

And this, then, is the crux of my argument. A vote is like a purchase which is like the survival of an individual member of a species. Each contributes only a little to the grander picture. Nobody can look at a single vote, or a single product sold, or an individual animal or plant that survives and see what will come in the future. But the sum total of the individuals that survive, over time, will dictate the nature of any and all future species; products that sell well give indications of the public's wants and needs and companies will respond in kind, creating more products with those features, ensuring that the successful and well-adapted features spread across the market; political forces respond not to single votes, but to the overall feeling of the nation. If an idea is insanely popular with 20% of the public, the party that espouses that idea should get 20% of the votes. The result is a government comprised in equal parts of the wishes and desires of the public (in theory-obviously other factors can and do influence this). Similarly the public receives exactly the products they most desire because any company releasing a product ill-suited to common desires will be ignominiously shunted from the marketplace. It's a vicious world in many ways, but one in which each individual matters. Though our contributions may be small, we vote-whether at the ballot box or the cash register. And just as a species' future is dictated by how well it responds to nature's votes (the lives or deaths of individuals of that species) so too do our products and our political representation evolve, adapt and grow ever more complex to meet the demands of the public. The selfish gene, the invisible hand and the "one man, one vote" policy all give a system where small, seemingly insignificant pushes and prods add up to powerful forces, capable of swaying the fates of entire species.

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
-Winston Churchill

Nitpicking Star Trek First Contact

2008-05-08T11:32:00.003+01:00

"Resistance is futile"
-Every Borg ever in every Star Trek series that featured them

So, I know it's by no means a new movie, but I just finished re-watching First Contact (the second Star Trek: The Next Generation movie). I still think it's awesome, clearly the best of the TNG movies, and in contention (with Star Trek 4, naturally) for the best Star Trek movie ever made. However, some niggling things did bother me:

The Borg go back in time to assimilate Earth. They choose the time when mankind is about to launch its first warp-capable ship. Now, their goal of assimilation is to "add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own". So, if they want the technological distinctiveness, don't destroy the warp ship! Let them advance a bit, but then attack them while they're still weak. And if you just want the biological distinctiveness? Go back even further, why cut it so close? This bugged me about Terminator 1 & 2 as well. Fuck killing John Connor or his mother. Go back to colonial times and kill his great-great-great-grandmother or something. No giant steel factories back them to get knocked into, no pneumatic presses to be crushed by. Now, as for First Contact, if your goal is to incorporate biological diversity in the hopes of creating a perfect species, and you have access to fucking time travel, just go back in time until every species was in its caveman days and incorporate all the biodiversity you want with no resistance whatsoever. You may not get the tech, but who cares? You'll have nobody to fight and thus won't need the high tech anyway.
Deanna Troi finds Zephram Cochrane and gets pissed with him on Tequila. Used to synthehol, this intoxication is understandable. She passes out on the table stone cold wasted. But then half an hour later she's up and about and sober, talking about the future? What the hell?
Here's another thing that bugs me about Sci-Fi, as much as I love it. If human beings aren't alone in the galaxy, we're probably not really that unique. So it's just hubris to think that we are. Every species the Borg encounters, they assimilate en masse. But they meet humans, and what do they do? They turn Picard into Locutus of Borg, make him an equal to the Borg Queen/Hive Mind. What the hell makes us so special, and so much better than the Romulans, Klingons etc. that we're seemingly the only species where one of our cohort gets to retain individuality-gets a name, a special positions etc.-in a society that embodies hive mind conformity. That's just hubris on the part of the writers.
The Borg take over the majority of the Enterprise. To kill them, Data ruptures the primary warp core plasma conduit, destroying the organic part of the Borg Queen. Yet, within half a day, they manage to hide the entire 24th-century Federation flagship from the Vulcan vessel that notices a tiny warp signature from Cochrane's rocket, and then facilitate all the repairs necessary to get the hell out of there (including reproducing the Borg's time travel to get them back to the 24th century), within a few hours? I don't buy it! The Borg had totally interfaced with the Enterprise's circuitry and taken over all of engineering and over half of the rest of the ship, the deflector dish had been shot into space, and the warp core's plasma conduits had been cracked open by Data's mighty fists of fury. And all that only takes a day to undo, despite like 75% of the crew having been killed/assimilated by the Borg?
Hey guys, here's an idea: let's not waste some of the coolest high tech we've ever seen! Picard, I'm sure it was very cathartic to break the Borg Queen's metallic spine. But you know what would've been more cathartic? Studying it, so when you encounter the Borg again, you know how they operate. And you obviously figured out a way to travel through time, in order to get home; do you not think that might be knowledge people would want in the future? In Star Trek 4, they could only travel through time by getting a tiny Klingon Bird of Prey and whipping around a star's gravitational field (or something like that). You just found a way to move a 700m-long ship through time to a precise temporal destination. That seems like knowledge you might want to share, yet never again do we see time travel in any future movies.

Anyway, I know this was a nerdy and silly rant, full of pedantry, but still, these things irked me. I am happy to give lots of suspension of disbelief to futuristic sci-fi, but this was just silly and seems like sloppy/lazy script writing. The movie was still great, but why make such minor elements so improbable?

"Brave words. I've heard them before, from thousands of species across thousands of worlds, since long before you were created. But, now they are all Borg."
-The Borg Queen

Marseilles. First impressions: somewhat unimpressed

2008-05-01T14:33:00.005+01:00

"The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living."
- Gertrude Stein

So, as most of you are probably aware, I am currently in France. I'm here to do a series of experiments that I either cannot do in Manchester, or cannot otherwise outsource. In many cases, we would send off my samples to the lab in which I'm now working, they would do the processing and return them; however, they are seriously short-staffed and unable to process them independently, hence my presence here.

To that end, I recently flew to Marseilles to work in the IM2NP (The Institut Matériaux Microélectronique Nanosciences de Provence) at the Université de Paul Cézanne, faculty of St. Jérôme. I won't bore you with the details of what I'm doing here (until I get into my "What Do I Do" series of posts about my work, but the short version is that I'm layering very thin layers of germanium on the samples I created in Manchester.

Anyway, that's not really what this post is about. What I want to talk about is my initial impressions of Marseilles. Basically, it's a pretty mixed bag. So let's go with the tried-and-true (and somewhat trite) formula of the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good: Well, to start with, it's been mostly beautiful since I arrived. In stark contrast to Manchester's cold, grey, drizzly springs, Marseilles, situated in the lovely south of France, is pretty sweet at this time of year. Though I had some showers initially, and some chilly air to boot, for the most part, it's been just right: high teens or low-twenties, sunny, and just generally very pleasant.

Second, the people I work with seem very nice, genuine and intelligent. I've met the majority of the people with whom I'll be working, and they all seem to be upstanding guys and girls. So, working should be pretty decent. Also, Isabelle, the woman in charge of the lab here, is a bit more proactive about pushing me to work, which I really do need; a more laissez-faire attitude results in me slacking off. A lot. As in, what I've done for the last 30 months or so. So, with any luck, that'll spur me into doing some solid work, which I sorely need to do. Similarly, I have a few friends here (Véronique, Sandrine and her husband Damien). So, it's been great to see all of them again, and all have been very accommodating to me.

Finally, the food. Though I haven't really sampled too much French cuisine yet, I had some lovely dishes at the conference Isabelle held last week. Furthermore, the French have refined cheese and bread-making to an art, something I have enjoyed already, and intend to continue doing so.

The Bad: In short: the residence. I'm staying in student halls while here, kindly set up by my host. However, the French halls have clearly earned their reputations for being god-awful. Firstly, the fall prey to the typical shortcomings of student residences; they're small, loud (at all hours), ugly and dirty. Fair enough. My room is equipped with a single bed-this is something I swore I'd never sleep in again, but fair enough, it's par for the course for student halls. The kitchen is awful-three small electric hot plates (two of which have no knobs and the feet are broken off so you have to prop up the front to keep your pan from sliding off and only one of which has an exhaust hood over it), no stove, no garbage can (seriously), etc. The coin laundromat in the residence is expensive and doesn't provide any change. But the biggest affront, for me is that there's no internet access in the rooms. The only internet you can get in the hall is through the mini internet cafe thing in the front. It consists of five computers (only four work at all), all running a stripped-down version of Internet Explorer that reboots itself every half hour or so, discarding anything you've written. Also, it's so limited that I can't even delete messages in my webmail-I just get a "not authorised" message; and don't even think about doing anything that requires Flash, Java or sound or any kind-that's just crazy talk. They're slow, connected to ancient 15" CRT monitors and generally in poor repair. I know this may seem like a minor, whiney gripe, but it's a really big thing for me-the internet is how I keep in touch with friends and family, it's my primary source of entertainment when on my own, I use it to research, relax and play, and it's a big blow for me to not have it. At least the office has a (really fast) broadband connection, and I now have 24/7 access.

In addition to the internet thing, the hall is also located in a really dodgy area of town. I have been repeatedly warned not to walk alone at night, especially from the metro station (which would be about a 40-minute walk). As I understand it, the odds are pretty good I'd be mugged/stabbed/whatever. So, I'm heeding that advice. This wouldn't be a huge problem except that the bus from the metro station to my hall stops at 8:30 every night, a ridiculously-early hour for such a big city. There are night buses from downtown, but they are slow, infrequent, potentially dangerous and stop running at about 12:30AM, which makes going out for an evening on the town difficult. Especially because there is no nightlife whatsoever in the area of my hall. None. There's an internet cafe, a corner shop, two restaurants, two laundromats, a pharmacy and a bakery within a twenty-minute walk. That's it.

Basically, the area feels somewhat like a ghetto in a country much more financially destitute than France. I realise that Marseilles is a fairly poor city, but really-this is France! Not Rwanda, not Afghanistan, France. They should be able to do better than this. As for the hall, it just reeks of "bare minimum effort". There are walls and a ceiling and we should be happy for that, dammit. Any other amenities, anything to make one's personal life "enjoyable" is just lunacy. There's a comprehensive lack of attention to detail that's pervasive in the design and implementation of these mediocre living spaces. I don't expect the Taj Mahal, but for a prosperous first-world nation to not provide at least basic internet access to its student, in 2008, is ridiculous.

The Ugly: The city in general is not so much with the pretty ugly. There are exceptions, and areas of the city that predate WWII are generally quaint and pretty. There are a fair arrangement of churches, the harbour is lovely, and the surrounding scenery exquisite. However, most of the buildings can be generously described as "utilitarian". They are boxy, plain, poured-concrete structures; they are drab and at times dilapidated. The university buildings are equally boxy and uninteresting. It's not a big deal by any stretch, but don't come to Marseilles if you expect picturesque French villas nestled around the Mediterranean.

I'll be in Marseilles for a total of about two months. Having been here for two weeks, I already am a bit homesick, and am pretty frustrated with some of the shortcomings I've seen. I expected better, especially given this is the second-largest city in a country known for its history, prosperity and modernity. France should be a beacon of good social order, with well-equipped public transportation and a modern infrastructure, both physical and digital. I hope my opinion will improve, but right now-though the people seem lovely, and it's great to see my friends here again-I have been largely unimpressed with the city itself. Maybe time will change that opinion.

"I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French."
-Charles de Gaulle

Not all atheists are snobs

2008-04-11T12:55:00.006+01:00

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
-Richard Dawkins

There's a blog I read with great regularity (whenever a new article pops up on my RSS feed), called Violent Acres; I like it so much, it's one of the few links in my sidebar. Generally, V (as the author is known) is astute and clever; often controversial, but generally she at least makes good points. But I feel that her recent post, Atheists are Snobs, misses the mark in a way very few of her others ever had. It's not because I'm an atheist myself (I am); it's because I think she falls prey to the exact same generalisations she preaches against.

Take this quotation, for example:

Atheists think they’re being clever with their spaghetti monster analogies and fairy tale rhetoric, but at the end of the day, they come off sound like condescending pricks.

This is where I think the first flaw comes in. She paints all atheists with the same brush. This includes zealots (and there are atheistic zealots) and moderates, intellectuals and dumbasses. She paints Richard Dawkins-a well-spoken, erudite opponent of organised religion-with the same brush as the mouth-breathers who decide that a facebook forum about Apple computers is the right place to rehash the same old creationism-vs-evolution argument again and again in stilted English and poorly-constructed critiques.

The problem is, there are many of us, and we're just as diverse as any other group. I'm an atheist, but I've been to Baptist, Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and Protestant churches. I've been in love twice-once with a Mennonite and once with a Catholic, and have dated girls who were Christian, Hindu and atheist. I discuss religion frequently with my friends, religious and atheist alike. I think religion does some wonderful things in the world (charity, preaching morals, anti-drug programs and so forth), and does some terrible things (inspiring divisiveness, crusading against science, blocking the distribution of condoms to Africa and so forth). I have no problem with someone being religious, and am actually intrigued as to what compels them to their faith. Not so I can dissuade them from it, but because I think it speaks to a core need in ourselves, something V addresses when she says:

I, myself, have not been able to claim belief in a higher power for many, many years. However, I can still see the value in Religion. Perhaps growing up without a strong parental figure in my life made me recognize the possible value of a loving Father figure up in the sky watching out for me. And hey, I try my best not forget that sometimes we all need something to believe in.

So, I get it-I accept that faith in a higher power is an almost intrinsic characteristic of humanity. Hell, I often wish I could feel what religious people feel. That confidence, that peace which must accompany an unwavering belief in something bigger than us, with a plan for all of us, a glorified father figure who wants us all to be happy (despite plagues, famine war, and so on). I really do wish I could believe that. But too many things don't add up and I can't bring myself to believe (I won't go into the details here, you probably know them all by now).

Later on, V gets somewhat personal in her attacks, and pushes her stereotype further:

Most Atheists have the tendency to thumb their noses at Jesus, and then log onto World of Warcraft so they can pretend to be an orc for a couple of hours. They sneer at the Bible, but have no problem playing endless hours of vampire role playing games. The message is clear. Fantasies are OK as long as they include gratuitous violence and some sort of porn.

She has now labelled the majority of atheists as basement-dwelling anti-social troglodytes (not to mention implying that being a World of Warcraft fan makes one guilty of being just that). I don't play WoW, I don't even play much in the way of computer games. I'm a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, a nerdy profession indeed, but I nonetheless have a significant social life and the social skills to match. But again, that's not the point. The point is those last two sentences.

"The message is clear. Fantasies are OK as long as they include gratuitous violence and some sort of porn," she says smugly and-dare I say it-rather snobbishly. Putting aside the inherent superiority she touts over the 8.5 million people with the audacity to enjoy an online game, it is here that she shows her lack of comprehension. Because the message is clear, she just didn't read it right; the message is this: "Fantasies are OK, as long as everyone knows they're fantasies, and nobody tried to work them into broader life and legislation and as long as they do no harm". Nobody credible, or with any authority, believes that World of Warcraft is factual, and nobody proposes laws requiring that children be equipped with a helmet of +5 protection when leaving the house.

See, this is the main bone of contention amongst the atheists, to the extent that we can all agree on something: religion isn't science. Creationism has become one of the core battlegrounds in the brewing religious furor between the believers and we godless heathens. I have no real problem with people choosing to believe that the earth was created in seven days by an omnipotent deity. I think it's a little crazy, but I believe in their right to believe in crazy things. What bothers me is when school boards in Kansas vote to teach Intelligent Design (a thinly-veiled code-word for Creationism) in schools. What bothers me is when I get told I'm inferior and damned to an eternity of hellfire and torture because I don't believe. What bothers me is when religion gets in the way of common sense, ultimately causing harm. In short, what bothers me is the zealots, the religious extremists.

But you know what? I don't think all Christians are like this. In fact, I don't think the overwhelming majority of Christians are like this. While we're at it, I don't think the majority of Muslims are suicide bombers in waiting. I think, regardless of the religion, that the majority of the people who practise said religion are decent, moderate, often intelligent people who happen to believe something I don't. And you know what? It would be categorically wrong of me to classify all Christians as bible-thumping, evolution-denying wacknuts. But those are the ones that get the media attention; it is those squeaky wheels that get the grease and therefore many people castigate all Christians for the outlandish actions of a vocal few. And people who do paint with this broad are brush are shortsighted and quick to judgement. So why is it OK to paint all atheists with the same broad brush?

Most atheists are decent, moderate, often intelligent people. We are well-intentioned and tolerant, we work we play and we socialise. We just happen to not believe in something that religious people do. But you know what-the wacknuts, the extremists, the ones who are not just non-religious, but who are actively against religion in all its forms, and are on some misguided quest to annihilate it? They're the ones who get the attention; they're the ones you remember. But someone as smart as V should know better, should look beyond that and realise they are the vocal minority. They are the atheistic equivalent to the Creation-preaching Kansas extremist Christians, they are the atheistic equivalent to Al-Qaeda (only less well-armed and well-funded). Their reaction is natural-when confronted with a strong, vocal minority, it makes some sense to react with equal fervour, but they do the rest of us a disservice because otherwise-right-thinking people like V are misled by that very fervour into believing we're all extremist atheists. And we're just not.

V, if you somehow read this, I hope you will realise that your post describes a mere minority of atheists, albeit those you're most likely to notice and remember. Just don't make the same foibles they do, by blaming the many for the extreme actions of the few. That's ill-informed, myopic and-to be brutally honest-a little bit snobby.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
-Albert Einstein.

Dear God, please save my son from TB

2008-04-02T12:09:00.006+01:00

"If you can discover a better way of life than office-holding for your future rulers, a well-governed city becomes a possibility. For only in such a state will those rule who are truly rich, not in gold, but in the wealth that makes happiness-a good and wise life."
-Plato

OK, I just made a really long post at a message board I frequent, and thought I'd share it here as well so that a few more people might read it. The background is this: A Wisconsin couple is under investigation after their child died as a result of a preventable illness. The reason the child died? Instead of her parents taking her to a doctor, who could have easily saved her, they prayed for her to get better. In lieu of medicine, they chose prayer. I asked on this message board what people thought about this, and about other crazy cures (witch doctors, crystal healing, homeopathy, etc.). Eventually, the debate became about whether the state has a right to tell use how to raise our kids, given that religious freedom is a protected right. Essentially, can the state intervene if people's religious beliefs are causing danger to their children? And if so, will this lead to a slippery slope where kids aren't allowed to play sports because it's dangerous, and all kids are forced to wear helmets when they cycle, etc.

Here are my thoughts. Basically, it's this: the parents were negligent, and should be treated as such. I will address the major themes discussed within this thread, and will apologise (though not profusely) for the very debater-y tone this post is about to take. And its extreme length.

Religion versus science
Nobody reading this is likely to question that medical science is imperfect, but it's miles and miles better than religion and faith healing, so I'm not going to say much on this. The reality is, certain diseases are highly predictable and highly treatable, and this sounds like one of them. No, it's not 100% but it's pretty close.

The role of the state, and the social contract
OK, welcome ladies and gentlemen to debater-land. What is the role of the state? Well, when someone chooses to be a citizen of a given society, they enter into an implicit social contract: they agree to certain things or they remove themselves from the state. Essentially, you cede certain rights in exchange for certain benefits. In an anarchistic nation, you could rape, murder, pillage and more at will. In every civil society on earth, we eliminate those rights. On a less-extreme example, you lose to right to retain all your income (i.e. taxes), and you lose the right, in most western states, to live in a mono-religious theocracy, whether you want that or not. In exchange, you get protection via the instruments of the state-police, military, education, health care. You enter into this collective willingly as an adult or under the auspices of your parents as a child, and you have to accept those conditions, or work from within to change them.

This isn't (yet) about the specifics of this case, just establishing the groundwork. We do give up certain things to the state in order to gain the benefits that come from it.

The state's duty of care
The state has a "duty of care" regarding its citizens. This means that, because they have chosen to buy into the state, have fed the state, and have ceded rights to the state, the state has not only the right to, but a responsibility to care for its citizens. This takes different forms in different places. Saudi citizens may want their religion preserved as one of the duties of care; Americans might want freedom to practice any religion protected. But ultimately, the will of the people must be represented, and the members of the state cared for.

Further, the state has an extra duty of care to the weaker, and less able to protect themselves, members of the state. Certain members of the state are better able to protect their own rights without state intervention, but others are more vulnerable. It's why there are laws against con artists, against fraud and discrimination, and why we codify laws protecting the disabled, for example. Children, of course, are the centerpiece of all this: children are the weakest members of society, the least able to protect themselves, and the most open to abuse, especially by their parents and/or guardians. So, the state institutes additional protections for children: abuse laws, statutory rape, etc., because they are not rationally-thinking individuals the way we consider adults to be.

Again, nothing specific to this case, just saying the government needs to protect children. Again, something we can all broadly agree on, I'd wager.

Religious freedom
In the states we're talking about (i.e. Western Liberal Democracies-WLDs for short from now on), religious freedom is protected. Religion is seen as a spiritual, personal choice, largely ungoverned by logic and reasoning, thus incapable of being regulated in the ways other things are. Therefore, WLDs pass laws to protect the right to worship in the way you see fit, and the protection of religious beliefs, even where it might seem to contravene other regulations (for example, it is often a protected right that Sikh men be allowed to wear a turban, even where a hat is part of the uniform for everyone else).

However, these rights are not universal. Where they impinge on the health and well-being of others, we curtail them. We do not allow animal sacrifices or child sex, even if it's a religious belief. That Sikh man I mentioned? If he wants to work at a job requiring a hard hat, that's a safety issue, and it takes precedence over his religious beliefs. There are certain laws which cannot be contravened, even for religious reasons.

Parental Rights
When you become a parent, you have taken on arguably the most important role in society: shepherding the next generation of citizens into adulthood. This comes with a weight of responsibility, and its a mantle that we can ill-afford to let people shrug off. Therefore, the state grants a limited right to parent upon its citizens. Anyone can become a parent, and for the most part the state won't step in. You want to teach your kid that black people are evil? You're a StormFront (a NeoNazi group with whom some members of the message board linked above have tangled from time to time) idiot, but that's allowed. You want to plonk him in front of the TV for 8 hours a day? Goodbye brain, but that's your right. But the awesome responsibility you have cannot be unilaterally discarded; you beat your child, we take him away. Rape her-we take her away. Let your child go without food, adequate clothing and shelter? We take them away. The state's duty of care extends as far as ensuring at least a bare minimum of care upon those unable to provide for themselves; if you have taken on this duty, it is one you cannot fully abdicate. It is a limited right to parent.

Balance of harms and the concept of reasonableness
OK, here's where it gets interesting: where do you draw the line? There is, indeed, a difference between active and passive harms. Beating a child isn't the same as allowing them to be harmed by inattention. However, we do criminalise negligence. If you refuse to feed your child, they will be removed from your care. If you refuse to educate them, they will be removed from your care. If you allow their father to rape them, even though you did not yourself participate, they will be removed from your care. Because you have been negligent to their upbringing.

So how, then, do we decide where this line is drawn? Through the balance of harms and reasonableness. The balance of harms says "if doing an act causes more harms than not doing it, it should be stopped". This is ultimately measured with reasonableness. Lawyers probably know more about reasonableness in a legal sense than I do, but I think it's safe to say that in many cases, it ultimately comes down to a judge or jury deciding what's reasonable to the common man, or something to that effect. That's how we judge the balance of harms. Of course kids should be allowed to play sports-the harm of being banned from that is significant, in terms of health and development, and the risk is comparatively low. The harms of refusing a child necessary medical treatment, however, are a world apart. There is no real benefit to doing so (personally, I'd be in favour of Jehovah's Witnesses-at least JW children-being forced to have blood transfusions, their religion be damned, but that's another debate for another day) and the harm is as severe a harm as can ever be placed on a child-death. Major harm, no tangible benefit: religious freedom can be curtailed.

In this case, though the science may be imperfect, as is all science, it provided a clear and obvious solution, one with a proven track record, and one that was infinitely more effective than prayer or faith healing, or crystals or any other wacky crap the parents might have tried. Science could have saved this child, by any reckoning. The parents should have known this. Do they have the right to their religious beliefs? Of course, but not at the expense of their child's life, when that life could have so easily been spared.

Where would I draw the line in government control over parenting? Reasonable limits. I think bike helmets on kids are great. Their hair might get messy, they might have to deal with some discomfort, but forcing parents to limit the severe head trauma their child might endure is a reasonable risk-it doesn't make cycling any less fun. What about obese children-another known health risk-parents are currently allowed to let their kids get fat? Sometimes I think a government-mandated fat camp would save society a lot of trouble, make for better, healthier children, save the health care system a bundle and generally be positive. So I somewhat support this, though I'm not 100% sure. While I'm at it, yes I think parents should be required to make their kids wear seatbelts in the car; yes I think they should be required to have smoke detectors in the house and yes, I think they should do everything reasonable to ensure their child survives risks to their safety.

When the government does go too far, we vote them out, we push for change in the legislature, we protest, we do whatever we have to. But given a child's inability to stand up for itself, I see nothing wrong with a societal collective, enshrined in law, stating that there are certain minimum standards of care you must provide your child; if you accept this highest of duties, you had damn well better accept the responsibilities or the power of the state will descend upon you with great fury for so highly damaging the most vulnerable citizens we have that you have abdicated your rights as a parent.

"You rock a sobbing child without wondering if today's world is passing you by, because you know you hold tomorrow tightly in your arms."
-Neal A. Maxwell

The iPhone SDK

2008-03-09T20:41:00.002Z

"Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. It's very fortunate if you can work on just one of these in your career. ... Apple's been very fortunate in that it's introduced a few of these."
- Steve Jobs

As a long-time Mac nerd, I've long been eagerly awaiting the software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone and iPod Touch. For those not in the know, this is a piece of software that allows for the development of other software. Currently, the iPhone/iTouch ship with a set of applications (mail, Safari web browser, calendar etc.) and that's all there will ever be. You can use web calendars (like Google Calendar) when you have an internet connection, but you can't install any native applications the way you can on a computer. No games, no fancier word processors, nothing. Well, that's set to change, as the SDK is going to arrive in June. On Thursday, Apple unveiled the details of the SDK (overall analysis here, play-by-play description of the announcement event here), and I'd like to look at what we now know.

Before the event took place (it has been announced for some time that the SDK was coming), I had some questions I wanted answered, regarding the limitations of the SDK, and how applications would be distributed. Most of those questions have now been answered.

VOIP Applications. The iPhone obviously is primarily a voice device-it's a feature-packed phone to be sure, but a phone nonetheless. Further, it's a phone tied to specific network carriers (AT&T in the U.S., O2 in the U.K, Orange in France and T-Mobile in Germany, for example). These carriers have invested billions of dollars into building their infrastructure, and nothing scares them more than VOIP. VOIP stands for Voice Over IP, and is an umbrella term for any technology that allows you to place phone calls over the internet; the most common example is Skype. By treating voice calls as data, these services can realise tremendous savings. For example, while it costs me about 10p-35p/minute to make local calls from my mobile phone, and about £1/minute or more to make international calls, I called some friends in Canada with Skype from my computer and it cost me about 25p for a half hour.

As Wi-Fi internet access proliferates, VOIP becomes even more powerful. Imagine I could use an iPhone, at home, to place Skype calls. If I'm outside the range of my Wi-Fi point, I use the cell network; but if I'm at home, I can call anywhere in the world for a fraction of the cost, and don't have to use any of the minutes I purchase from my mobile carrier. You can understand why they're scared: all of a sudden, I'd be using their expensive network about 10% as much as I do now. So, hearing Apple say they would allow VOIP applications on the iPhone is thrilling.

Verdict: Yay Apple! I know AT&T would probably rather you block VOIP in any way possible, but I look forward to be able to make very cheap calls when in range of a Wi-Fi point.

Software Distribution: Apple has decided that all iPhone apps are to reside on Apple's server, and be downloaded through what they're calling the app store. Free apps will not cost the developer anything for Apple to host (beyond an initial, and quite reasonable $99 for the SDK and developer's club membership) and paid apps will cost the developer 30% of the cost for Apple to host the programs. This differs dramatically from computer software, which can be hosted anywhere, and downloaded at will, and installed manually.

I'm torn on this decision. I was worried they'd require payment for all applications, and am relieved that they will allow free apps. The advantages of this model are that Apple can ensure that no applications contain viruses or any of the other malware that infests computers. Furthermore, they can maintain a certain level of quality control, and if something goes wrong, there is a single source to trace that application back. Finally, it means that there is one location where every piece of iPhone software can be found, making a single, simple solution to software. However, this incurs a fee for any developer wishing to profit from their applications and means there's also a single point of failure if things go wrong. More ominously, perhaps, it means that Apple has final say over what applications are permitted on your iPhone. They've said they'll allow VOIP (as I mentioned before), which indicates they're open to things which their business partners might not be the biggest fans of. However, they've already said, unsurprisingly, that they won't allow SIM-unlocking applications, which would allow iPhones to be used on networks other than AT&T, so clearly they're planning to pick and choose which apps are permitted.

I'm on the fence, because there are clear advantages to this strategy in terms of security, doubly important for this market; I'll accept crashing and freezing on my computer much more readily than on my phone, and a virus that could spread phone-to-phone is a terrifying concept. But Apple has to tread lightly. There are some applications I really want to see on the iPhone, such as a video player that plays all formats, not just H.264, the format Apple uses to sell videos in the iTunes store. This would perhaps hurt iTunes sales, so I wouldn't be shocked if Apple blocked it; but I hope they won't-that would show a penchant for application-filtering I would find disturbing. Similarly, a BitTorrent application, or other peer-to-peer software will provide an acid test; if Apple permits software that not only provides potential alternatives to buying stuff from the iTunes store, but also provides the possibility of being used to pirate movies, I'll know they're open-minded, and will be OK with the iPhone App Store. If they crackdown, I'll know they're intent on auditing my application choices, and will be wary.

Verdict: Wait and see. Will Apple allow applications to exist that could provide revenue-damaging, or potentially illegal activities, or will they enforce a puritanical code of ethics on all iPhones? I hope the former.

SDK Details: The SDK itself looks quite interesting (though keep in mind, I'm not a software developer, so I might be missing something). I think the $99 fee is reasonable-Microsoft's Visual Studio and MSDN access cost scads more, and the fee appears to be a one-time-only affair. I like that the SDK can access the positioning information, allowing the iPhone to tell you where it is geographically, using cellular tower and Wi-Fi HotSpot data. The iPhone simulator seems an excellent way to test one's applications before downloading them onto a real-world iPhone. And ultimately, it seems like Apple has finally embraced the reality that the iPhone isn't just a phone, it's a phone new portable computing platform. I can't wait to see what applications emerge in the coming months. I just might have to make an iPod Touch-sized dent in my bank account one of these days...

"My children - in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod."

-Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft

Turkey

2008-02-26T12:36:00.003Z

"No matter how rich and prosperous, a nation without independence, cannot be subject to any behaviour before the humanity, at a higher level than serving."
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

This past August, I was in Turkey, and I'm long overdue for a report on what went on and my thoughts on the whole shindig. It was an exciting and revelatory experience for me in many ways. Incidentally, sorry for this taking so long-pure laziness has made it so long overdue, the original writing date was last September. Sigh.

I was in Istanbul for the European Universities Debating Championship (EUDC) 2007 (Aug 5-11), hosted by Koç University. But since I'd never been to Turkey, and had heard nothing but positive comments about it, I extended my trip by about a week before and after, to allow for some travel. I was there from July 31-Aug 17.

I arrived in Istanbul with Dan and Hannah; we met Shannon at the airport, and Julia joined us a half-hour later, also at the airport. We cabbed it into our hostel in Sultanahmet, the most tourist-heavy section of Istanbul, and also the section with some of the most beautiful sites-The Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and Grand Bazaar, to name but a few.

We spent the first day hitting the major tourist attractions, i.e. those noted above. I cannot emphasise enough how stunningly gorgeous the Blue Mosque (pictured below at night, from the rooftop bar in our youth hostel) and Hagia Sophia are. The Blue Mosque, especially, revels in its intricacy and beauty. I've long been a fan of the ornate, ancient cathedrals of Europe, and I am no hard-pressed to decide between the two genres of religious buildings. In either case, the tapestries, decorations, altars and mosaics and phenomenal. The Hagia Sophia has a slightly more austere look, possibly due to its age, possibly due to its conversion into a mosque from its original design as a cathedral, followed by its conversion into a museum. However, the dones and courtyards, and the expansive inner atrium all speak to a devotion to the almighty that I find equally understandable and inconceivable.

The Grand Bazaar, on the other hand, impressed me less. Though it certainly bore the thriving, vibrant air of bargaining and hustling I'd been lead to expect, I was disappointed at the repetitiveness and cheapness of the merchandise. This clearly is not where Turks come to shop, but rather where they relieve clueless tourists of their money. Chess sets, carpets and fake clothes/watches/handbags abound, oft-repeated from one stall to the next. Haggling is a must, and as it is a skill I lack, I most certainly was taken for a ride on the few items I did choose to purchase. I think I'll stick to eBay from now on. Inexplicably, I'd end up back at the bazaar at least three more times over the course of my trip. Go figure.

After this, we met up with Rosie and planned the next phase of our trip: Gallipoli. Dan had found out about a tour to Gallipoli, the area of Turkey in which allied forces (Dan's grandfather included) landed during the first world war. The tour we elected to go on was a two-day, all-inclusive affair; they included a bus trip to Channakale, a guided bus tour of the war sites and grave sites, a night in a local youth hostel and (the highlight of the trip), SCUBA diving down to WW1 wrecks.

As with all such war-memorial tours I've taken, this one was quite humbling. The territory was breathtakingly beautiful, from the azure ocean to the vibrant hillsides. To look out over such expanses and think of young men clawing their way up amidst machine-gun fire, to think of people spilling blood to either seize or defend such beautiful territory and the dominion of those who resided on it, is a shocking indictment of humanity.

The SCUBA diving was great, even though I got badly sunburned (due in part to my policy of staying out far too long because of my long-standing and never-successful policy of "if I'm not pink now, I never will be, right?" and due partly to Julia's sabotage of my lower back suntan lotion application.) We were cut somewhat short for time due to a few technical glitches early on, but I still got to go down and see a sunken desalinisation vessel. Apparently, the Turks had retrofitted a whaling boat to desalinate the sea water and provide fresh water for the troops. The thinking was that the allied ships wouldn't sink a civilian boat. This worked for awhile, until one of the allied warships finally asked the question "wait a minute! There aren't whales for thousands of miles, why do you need a whaling boat?", after which it was promptly sunk. This was my first time SCUBA-diving and I therefore had to stick close to the dive master, but it was a great experience. Once you get used to breathing through the regulator, the feeling of weightlessness really is amazing, and it was a great way to experience a small piece of history.

The next week was filled with debating, and I won't bore everyone with the details (all two of you who read this blog, anyway). Suffice it to say, it was filled with fun, merriment, pretension, drinking, socialising, catching up with old friends, meeting new friends, debating, debating and more debating, some more drinking, some wonderful buffets and some great parties. Koç put on an absolutely flawless tournament; from the food to the socials to the debating, everything was done to the highest standards and executed brilliantly. They are bidding for the world championships in 2010, and I hope they get it. Dan and I did alright at the tournament, but were disappointed by our early performance, which relegated us to some less-than-spectacular rooms later on. Highlights of the tournament for me were the night-time boat cruise of the Bosphorus river, the final round being held in a 5th century Byzantine cathedral, and the post-final clubbing in all our over-dressed, sweaty geekiness. You haven't lived until you've seen 200 debaters in a small, hot club in suits and ties, pretending they know how to dance.

After that, my plan had been to go to Safranbolu (a city in the north of Turkey that's generally out of the way and supposedly quite nice, old and quaint) for a day or so, then spend a few days in the Cappadocia region in the south, specifically hoping to solo-hike the length of the Ilhara Valley. However, after a solid week of debating, I was pretty worn out, and decided to spend a day at the beach, and doing some lounging around with various debaters at the university (which had a lovely pool). Both of these were nice and relaxing, and got my batteries well recharged; however, the lost time impinged on my other plans, and I had to scrap Safranbolu completely. In the end, though I greatly enjoyed the pool and beach time I had, I wish I'd been better organised about my travel plans; alas, it just gives me that much more to see on the next visit. And I did still get to see Cappadocia, which had been one of must-sees, and was a sublime experience.

Cappadocia, a region in the south of Turkey, is the centre of Turkey Christianity; for this reason, it is veritably littered with scores of ancient churches, frescoes and temples. What's fascinating about the region, however, is not that it is the epicentre of Christianity for the Turks; rather it is the unique landscapes and geological formations, and the resultant ways of life that took root there, creating environs that exist nowhere else and sit as monuments to austere beauty and workmanship. The central and preeminent feature of Cappadocia is the so-called "fairy chimneys" (pictured above). I won't go into detail about how these were formed, if you are curious, check out this brief Wikipedia article. Basically, ancient Turks can across these fairy chimneys and decided that they'd made great adobes. Therefore, the carved intricate, often multi-storey houses into the chimneys, and into many of the surrounding caves. They had windows, different rooms for different purposes, churches and more. The basically developed an entire society centred around the local geological formations. Interestingly, a few of these fairy chimneys are still inhabited, with some even being for sale.

This gives Cappadocia the feel of two very strong bits of fictional imagery: Bedrock City (from the Flintstones) and Tatooine (from Star Wars). Seeing dozens of caves (and pigeon coops) nestled into the windswept hills evokes both cultural images. I spent my time in Cappadocia both exploring on my own and on an organised tour. The open-air museum in Goreme features some of the most intricate fairy chimney abodes and many churches, and I spent a late morning/early afternoon perusing the museum. I then went off on my own, hiking through the nearby valley of swords, which contained a collection of smaller lumps, many of which were carved out, but the mority of them long since abandoned, and often eroded somewhat. It was tranquil and lovely, and when I crested the hill edging the valley, I could see down below a series of fields and what appeared to be some inhabited fairy chimneys. It was a scene of utter peace and exuded a sense of harmony. To enjoy the settings, I picked a cave carved into one of the lump-shaped abandoned mini-fairy chimneys and just read for several hours (Anil's Ghost for those that are curious, an amazingly descriptive work I'd highly recommend).
I also wrote some postcards, and may have napped for a short while. It was a lovely respite; while I enjoy an always-moving, see-everything-yo-can trip as well, there's something nice about just finding a shady, but still hot area, and relaxing completely.

The guided tour I did was of an underground city and a hike along the Ihhara Valley. The underground city, built millennia ago, and originally designed to house as many as 50,000 inhabitants. It was designed as a security feature, and was generally uninhabited. The idea was, the community would live in the city above, but if they were ever attacked, they could retreat to the underground city for refuge. The main access was through a narrow stairwell opening into a large chamber, thus allowing for an easy defence against any interlopers who might try to take over the city from above.

The Ihlara valley hike was quite possibly one of the most breathtaking walks I've ever taken. Cut through sandstone hills (with caves and churches carved into them at frequent intervals), the Ihlara Valley is a swath of lust foliage and a beautiful river amid the arid environs typical to that part of Anatolia. Pristine and dripping with a sense of history and grandeur, the valley is as yet not completely overrun by tourists, though they are plentiful. The hike takes about four hours, and you can hear the babbling of the river besides you at all times, while gazing up at the cliff face, in which thousands of people once lived, prayed and thrived. It's a truly unique locale, and although I was initially wary of taking a guided tour rather than going on my own, I'm glad that I did-it gave me a chance to see more than I would have otherwise, and the experience was wonderful. That night, I went out with some Canadians from the youth hostel in which I was staying (which, incidentally was built into a cave, very cool indeed) for an organised night of traditional Turkish dancing, food and wine. Very fun.

After that, I took the long bus ride back to Istanbul, where I stayed for a night before flying back to Manchester. The experience, I think it's fair to say, left me in some awe. Turkey is a fascinating country, and one about which I wish I knew more, and one to which I definitely aspire to return some day. Turkey is a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim, yet officially secular. It's a country that is the gateway between Europe and the Middle East, and that encompasses both a diverse and proud history, and a modern bent. All of this is reflect in many aspects of Turkey, but doubly so in Istanbul itself.

In Istanbul, it is a common sight to see a 1500-year-old mosque cloistered next to a modern glass office building. Markets and bazaars coexist with electronics shops and cellular phone providers. The country's religiosity is evident in the existence of the (technically banned) headscarves worn by many women, yet the secularism that is bound in law is obvious, in the bohemian, party atmosphere of the night life and the modernity of dress. There are, of course, factions that think this movement has happened too quickly-the recent election of the AK party, though tempered by the military, has shown that there are many who object to the banning of religious icons in public. Turkey clashes with its ethnic Kurdish people demonstrate the tensions that exist within this frequently conquered state, once subjugated by the Ottoman empire, among others.

Turkey seems to stand at a crossroads, disparate views stretching forth in front of it. The minarets of mosques that are visible throughout show its adherence to its Islamic roots, yet Turkey's on-again-off-again desire to join the European Union has brought about changes to its human rights and social welfare policies that are more in line with liberal democracies. The appeals of each seems to be divergent, yet the Turkish people seem to handle this internal conflict with comparative aplomb, the glittering skylines and traditional architecture a monument to the republic that Ataturk crated, forged in the crucible of the first world war. Whether they embrace the traditional roots, mired in the past, adherent to religious teachings and traditional values, or embrace the modernity offered by the western world, with its potential pitfalls in economics and the often-implied loss of individuality and morality, is still to be decided. Whichever road Turkey takes, a culture so strong, so proud and so deserving on unity and preservation seems unlikely to disappear into the miasma of sameness so prevalent in other parts of the world. As part of the EU, or as an independent nation, Turkey will always be Turkey: hot, beautiful, austere and traditional; giving, exciting, modern and
dynamic. As the office towers continue to sprout, the dily calls to prayer from the Blue Mosque will no doubt echo into the evening's gloom, a haunting testament to the well-deserved pride of Turkish people, and their strength.

Following the military triumph we accomplished by bayonets, weapons and blood, we shall strive to win victories in such fields as culture, scholarship, science and economics.
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

65 Percent Perfect

2008-01-18T16:54:00.000Z

So, according to that greatest bastion of journalist integrity, the Daily Mail, there is a list of 20 attributes that women find ideal in a guy. All told, I think I come out OK. Here's the list:

At least 5'10". Yup, 6'0" to be exact.
Good-looking. A matter of opinion of course, but don't think I can give myself the nod for this one. I'm not bad-looking, but neither am I fending off the "world's most beautiful people" award requests. Average-looking is a more suitable descriptor, I'd say.
12.5 stone. That's about 175lbs or 80kg for those of you living in countries that don't use such outdated units of measurement. Also well below my current weight; I'm about 14.5stone/200lbs/92kg at the moment.
Earns more than £30,000. Um, no, sadly the life of a student doesn't entail 30grand salaries. Soon enough, though, I should easily be in this range.
Blue eyes. Yup
Short, dark-brown hair. Indeed; very short at the moment, actually.
Medium build. I might be a little on the large side of medium, but I think I can still qualify.
BA degree. I'm going to give myself the points for this, even though I have a B.Sc., because the article elucidates it somewhat by saying that it's a university education that's valued, rather than specifically the B.A. and I'm the process of going for my Ph.D., so I have no dearth of university education. Plus, chicks dig engineers right? Right? Anybody?
Never been married. Another point for me.
No children. Nope, no children here.
Three previous serious relationships. Well, only one really. A second that could've been had the situation been different, but I'd really have to push the definition of "serious" to be able to count three.
Clean-shaven. After much persuasion, I bid adieu about a year and a half ago to the goatee I sported in undergrad, so yes, I am back to being smooth and baby-faced.
Drives silver Mercedes. If by "silver Mercedes" you mean "black bicycle", then yes. But realistically, probably not.
Enjoys cinema. Even though I haven't been out as much as I'd like of late, going to the cinema is one of my favourite pastimes.
Likes eating out. Ignoring the obvious double entendre here, I don't like cooking, and do enjoy a wide variety of well-prepared food. Though I don't eat out often, that's a financial decision (see #4), not a prefernce. I love dining out.
Has had few than six sexual partners. Well, this one's a little personal, so let's just skip to the next question.
Owns a £300,000 home. Can we just assume I'm going to lose points on any of the characteristics related to actually having money?
Doesn't smoke. I hate cigarette smoke, and-at 27 years old-have never even smoked a single cigarette.
Dislikes football. True for either American football or actual football (a.k.a. soccer). Sports are just not my cup of tea. The only potential exceptions are quite rare-an odd game of hockey perhaps, a little baseball from time to time and Olympic women's beach volleyball.
Likes pets. I was always a cat person when I was a kid, but am increasingly a dog person. I'd love to have either, but sadly my current living situation (a tiny two-bedroom apartment whose residents aren't home between 9AM and 7PM every day and have no money for vet bills etc) is hardly conducive to a happy puppy. But I get the points for this, because I do love pets.

The article specifies a few other things where I might score some bonus points as well. Specifically, the "wacky" sense of humour. I think I can lay claim to that (sometimes bordering on juvenile and/or offensive, but wacky nonetheless). Also, being a cuddly lover. And finally, apparently some women are looking for men who are starting to bald (although the example given is Bruce Willis, which is a pretty high bar to clear. After all, I've never managed to drive a big-ass truck across a collapsing highway while fleeing an F35 Joint Strike Fighter and shouting epithets and witty one-liners).

So, there you go. From the 20-point list, I score a solid 65%, with a few that are liable to get checked off within the first few years of me finishing my degree and actually locating a salary. Not bad eh? Ladies, you know how to reach me. After posting this, I can only imagine the come-ons will start pouring in!

Dating CV

2007-12-23T23:50:00.000Z

"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."
- Franklin P. Jones

Why do we write a CV (curriculum vitae)? To chronicle our experience, in the hopes of conveying our skills, ability and knowledge to potential future employers. A CV (a.k.a. résumé in North America) is a short description of how we want the working world to view us. We list what we can do, and the experience it took to gain such skills, and provide references on request. This cannot give a perfect picture of us as an employee, but certainly creates an image for the people who need to evaluate our suitability.

I think we need to extend this concept to the realm of dating. After all, dating is one of the areas of our lives that has the greatest bearing on our personal happiness, and yet it's basically a crapshoot. We go on dates to learn about the other person, but from the get-go we know next to nothing about them; we essentially choose randomly for something that is intrinsic to our personal contentment. Maybe it's time to start culling the herd before we leap into the fray of dating.

Just as in the job market, there is no "perfect" CV. Different skills are required for different jobs, and different attributes apply to different people. But we cannot gauge the attributes of a potential suitor until it's too late and we're dating them. What if we could pre-filter "applicants" by looking for those with skills we desire? You want someone who knows how to cook? That had better be on their CV. Prefer to date only short (or tall, thin, fat, whatever) partners? Why not have that listed right up front? It wouldn't guarantee a match, but might boost your odds.

Of course, this removes some of the spontaneity, the joy inherent in discovering the attributes that make up your partner; truly this is one of the best things about the early stages of dating, you feel like an intrepid explorer charting new territory. But this joy is tempered with a major risk of failure-you might find out something that's an absolute deal-breaker in your view, something that with adequate warning could have been noted before any risk of heartbreak. This is already done to a degree by those engaging in online dating sites: when you get a list of a potential date's likes, dislikes and more, you are already filtering people based on your criteria. So why not formalise the concept?

Of course, getting references might be tricky. How can you expect an honest reference from an ex if the relationship ended badly? Though you might have many wonderful qualities, the enmity they feel since your breakup could forever colour their feelings. And of course, like any other CV, people will stretch the truth. "I can make a frozen pizza" suddenly becomes "I have an affinity for and exemplary skill in Italian cuisine".

Who knows? Maybe one day we'll enact this, and we'll soon enough see couples on the dance floors of popular clubs, exchanging two-page CVs detailing the highlights of their dating abilities. Past partners will be called for references, and we will weigh up all those who seek our affection. After a thorough, yet expedient evaluative process, we will contact the successful applicant, and they can begin their training. And what's more romantic than bringing mindless corporate logic and efficiency to the world of dating?

So, please use the comments section below to post what you would put on your dating CV.

NOTE: If you have taken this post with even the slightest wisp of seriousness, please write the word "sarcasm" on a cricket bat and apply it forcibly and repeatedly to your forehead. Consider this holiday goofiness at it's best. I ultimately just want a way to brag about my back massaging skills.

"Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions."
- Woody Allen

Bizarre bike stuff theft

2007-12-06T10:51:00.000Z

"A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who hasn't sufficient capital to form a company."
- Howard Scott

It's almost a rite of passage in Manchester to get your bike stolen, a rite in which I fortunately have yet to participate. My friend and flatmate Dan, combined with his prior flatmate Jono, have had six bikes and one rear wheel stolen in the past two years. My friend Mike has had a shocking eight bikes stolen in the last 15 months. And my friend Liz has had at least two stolen, possibly more. Needless to say, they have contributed well to the scuzzy section of Manchester's society. I have so far been spared, due in no small way to how little I ride my bike around town, and the fact that I have always stored it within my flat.

However, I have had my first brush with bike theft since coming to Manchester, but in a bizarre and baffling way. You see, while my bike was locked up outside of the Stopford building last Tuesday (while I was in for debating and then the post-debate pub), some punk stole some of the stuff from my bike. Specifically, he stole the rear mudguard and light, and my two water bottles. In and of itself, not that strange, but only odd once you consider what was required to do so.

You see, I recently bought a security cable. This 8-foot-long woven steel cable allows me to lock up my front wheel and wrap it around my seat, thus avoiding me needing to remove those two things. In addition, I can now lock my helmet to my bike. The end result is that I spend and extra minute or two locking up my bike, but I no longer have to haul my seat and helmet with me. I used to carry the water bottles as well, but gave up figuring they were too worthless to bother stealing. Silly me.

Anyway, this still doesn't make it weird. What makes it weird is that I can't loop the security cable through my seat, so I wrap it around the post a few times, over and under the mudguard, hopefully making it enough of a pain to get off to not make it worthwhile. The light and the mudguard both attached to the seat post. What this means is that the thieves wiggled the cable loose enough to get the seat out, pulled the seat out of the bike, thus freeing the cable. They then took the mudguard and light (original retail value combined £25 or so) and replaced the seat. The seat isn't worth a lot, but probably more than the rest combined. The light had a half-broken clip, and the mudguard was filthy. The water bottles were old and scratched. So their net benefit from this was maybe £5, if they were lucky. But the seat probably could have sold for £10 or more. So why not take it?

As I see it, there are usually two reasons for theft like this:

Make money. Well, obviously, it's not that. Like I say, the seat was the most expensive thing they removed, and they put it back. They also overlooked the tire pump, though it's black and was obscured somewhat by the security cable, so maybe they just didn't notice that). Even if the seat weren't worth more, it's worth something, so why not take it?
Vandalism. This pisses me off more than theft, but some people will steal or destroy things just because they like to cause harm to others. But again, in this case, why not take the seat? It'll certainly piss me off more to have to ride home without a seat and to have to replace this more-expensive item. Even if you (as the thief) don't keep it, just toss it in the bin; I'll still be equally annoyed.

So, what is the explanation? The only thing I can possibly come up with, is some guy passing by on his bike said to himself "boy, it sure is dark and wet, and I'm really thirsty! I wish I had a light to make me more visible, a mudguard to keep my butt dry and some water bottles to slake my thirst. Hmmmmmmm.... I have an idea!" If not this, I have no idea why someone would pass on the seat. It could be that they just wanted to cram what they could fit into a backpack for easy transport, but the mudguard is far longer than the seat. So who knows? Anyone have any ideas?

I'm baffled. Also a little pissed that I now need to buy a second mudguard in as many weeks. I guess I'll have to find a way to more-securely lock up my seat.

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.
-Mark Twain

When's "Buy more Day"?

2007-11-23T12:04:00.000Z

"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon."
- Winston Churchill

Today is Buy Nothing Day. To celebrate, I'm going to buy some stuff. Because, you see, buy nothing day irritates me. It irritates me for practical reasons, it irritates me for philosophical reasons. To a degree, my concerns are quite rational, but I will admit to some illogic as well, insofar as it is largely the proponents of BND who bother me more than the concept itself. So let me address my concerns under those two headings: practical and principled.

Practical: Guess what guys? If you stick fastidiously to buying nothing over the course of today, it makes no difference. None. Because not only are you in an incredibly slim minority of people who actually adhere to the concept, but ultimately your shopping patterns don't change. You're still going to buy just as much stuff, you'll just buy more tomorrow. You can't go without food, and you won't go without the consumer goods that you want. BND is like those one-day gas boycotts that get suggested every now and again, where people hope to "send a message to the big gas companies" by not filling up their car one day: if a handful of people boycott gas stations for a day, then fill up the next day, the companies won't feel it. Ditto for BND.

Principled: I wholeheartedly agree with some of the points that AdBusters (the progenitors of BND) make. I think we have become an overly-consumeristic, wasteful society. It is sad and shocking that 20% of the world's population consumes 80% of its resources. We are causing massive environmental damage in our insatiable quest for more stuff, and that stuff often gets in the way of family, friends and actually experiencing life. But BND, and its proponents, go further. The undercurrent is that any consumerism is bad. You shouldn't care at all about things, you shouldn't want objects, just peace, happiness and friends. Bullshit. I enjoy the time I spend on the internet, and its ability to keep me connected to those friends, be they across the street or on the other side of the planet. So should I feel guilty about wanting a computer? I enjoy movies and some television shows-should I feel guilty about wanting a TV, a DVD player and a nice sound system? What about my iPod-am I a bad person because I like to listen to music on the go? That's ultimately what is insinuated by BND and its most fervent followers: capitalism=bad, consumerism=bad.

Furthermore, many go further. I've actually heard people, in the pursuit of BND, say that this is a model for how we should always operate. These people (and admittedly my undergrad was full of uber-hippies) actually espoused a return to the barter system. The barter system! You know, that thing we got rid of, because it's seriously flawed? The system that only ever works when there's a mutual and symbiotic needs arrangement between two parties? Yeah, that barter system. Forget international trade, forget a common unit of currency, we'll just trade for everything. The best part is that these selfsame people were the ones most actively pushing for the government to reduce tuition. Now I think education should be free, and I think the government should fully fund it for those qualified to attend. But unlike the BND fanatics, I understand how that can happen. The way you get a government to fund something is to have a good social policy in place, and a robust economy to support its investments. The government gets its money from taxes: income tax, sales tax and business tax. If nobody's buying anything, nobody is getting paid, so say goodbye to income tax. Plus, since there are no money-based sales, au revoir to sales tax. And of course, those businesses are no longer earning money, so farewell my good friend business tax. So, no money for the government; I guess they'll just trade the professors some apples in exchange for their teaching. Idealism is great, but when it's not balanced with a sense of reality, you end up looking like a raving loony.

Capitalism has some serious flaws, and unfettered consumerism is bad. We live in a nation consumed and oft-crippled by credit card debt and we're polluting the planet to fulfill our unquenchable thirst for more. But one of the realities of a free market is that it shows very clearly what people want. Wanting things is part of human nature; we measure standard of living not just by our health and education, but by our creature comforts and amenities. These can never replace human interaction in our lives, but they can augment it, and I'm sick and tired of being made to feel guilty because I want a fast computer and a big-screen TV one day. As soon as Visa ups my credit limit...

"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want."
-Milton Friedman

Not everyone should go to university

2007-11-23T11:52:00.000Z

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything one learned in school.
-Albert Einstein

(This is another opinion piece I've written for Student Direct)

I pay a lot for my tuition. I paid a lot for my undergrad tuition in Canada. University is an expensive proposition in many parts of the world, and it shouldn’t be. University should be free to everyone who is good enough to partake, and can benefit from the experience. The problem is, at some point we assumed that those conditions applied to everyone. And they never have.

The UK government has a stated goal of 50% university enrollment. On the surface this seems like a great suggestion; after all, an educated society is a thriving one. Education really is the silver bullet that can cure a myriad of social ills. The problem is that such a goal is untenable in a world where the cost of university, be it borne by the government or the individual, is as high as it is in this world. Simply put, professors and equipment are expensive, and the more of them you need to hire and buy, respectively, the more that university bill will grow.

Let’s put it simply: imagine you have enough money in the national budget to pay the entirety of 100,000 student’s tuition. You admit 100,000 students and none of them pays a penny for the education itself; maybe you even subsidise housing, though I suppose free beer legislation shall forever remain a fantasy. Now, increase that number-admit 200,000 students. All of a sudden, the budget strains; say goodbye to subsidised housing, and say hello to tuition fees.

The first danger of this is obvious: when there is a financial cost involved with university, some people simply won’t be able to afford it. Even though the commensurate increase in potential earnings will compensate for the costs in the long-run (in most cases), the up-front cost can be crippling. Bursaries, scholarships and student loans can help, but when money is involved, there will inevitably be some people who simply cannot afford to go. Every qualified, capable student who cannot attend university is a lost opportunity and a loss to society.

The knock-on effects of such a policy, however, prove even more deleterious to wider society. 30 years ago, a high school diploma would be sufficient many jobs in the world. Today, even bus drivers and grocery store cashiers will often have university degrees. Which means that lacking such a degree cripples one’s career prospects. There are many jobs for which a university degree is unnecessary and, ultimately, a waste of time and money. Plumbers, mechanics, administrative staff can all do without spending three to four years discussing the ramifications of Sartre. But when presented with two job candidates, only one of whom lacks a degree, the situation is dire for that individual. Congratulations, you’ve made going to university mandatory for anyone with any career aspirations.

Of course, there’s more to university than simply preparing for the working world. There’s the joy of learning, the social atmosphere, and the chance to open your mind to new thoughts and ideas, and to challenge yourself at every turn. And all of these are great, and should be encouraged. But it’s an experience that just isn’t for everyone. And when you exclude capable students who could benefit from all this to make room for those who feel they must attend university, you’ve lost out again.

So what’s the solution? Stringent entrance requirements and a limit on the size of the student body. Those who attend university should do so because of the learning it can bring, and should be driven in that manner. They should be academically and intellectually gifted and open-minded. When push comes to shove, they should have a reason for wanting to be here, rather than simply feeling a coercive force to be.

If you can get into university, and have the drive to do so, you should. No tuition fees should stand in your way (and “top-up fees” are nothing but a poorly-disguised set of tuition fees). But you should want to be here. You should be driven to be here. And you should have a reason to be here. Because if you don’t, if what you want out of life is to be a plumber, then the government’s investment in your tuition is wasted. We need more plumbers. They just don’t necessarily need to hold degrees in art history.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
-Oscar Wilde

The world coming to an end?

2007-10-18T10:02:00.000+01:00

I have had some seriously weird dreams the last two nights. The other night, I dreamt I quit my degree, joined the Marines (the U.S. Marines, specifically, which is odd since I'm neither a U.S. citizen nor do I live there), and shipped myself off to Iraq. This after almost quitting training from it being too hard, but getting all determined and dedicated (see every clichéd army movie in the history of Hollywood). By the end of the movie, there I was, M82A1 sniper rifle in hand, aboard a troop transport to go shoot insurgents. Keep in mind, I'm about as anti-war, anti-military as you can get, and this is just plain odd.

Last night, I dreamt that city after city was being levelled by some mysterious force that nobody could explain. Everything would be fine, then all of a sudden, all the tallest buildings would spontaneously collapse. Earthquake? Terrorism? Nobody knew. Then, sure enough, the city I was in got hit. I could see row after row of building go down, and knew mine was coming (I was in a skyscraper and the collapsing ones were getting closer and closer to mine). I grabbed my brother who was inexplicably there, and we fled to the basement, where there was a series of interconnected tunnels (basically like The Path in Toronto, for anyone familiar with that). We heard buildings all around us collapse, but we made it out alive, and got to the waterfront, met up with a bunch of people fleeing the destruction, and were then attacked by (I shit you not) Optimus Prime and Voltron, who I guess were evil, and possibly the cause of the destruction. Very weird. Also, at some point, a group of us refugees were asked if we were circumcised. Perhaps our rescuers were the Jewish U.N. or something?

Weird weird weird!

"Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real."
-Tupac Shakur

Why I judge you for using bad grammar

2007-09-28T06:05:00.000+01:00

"The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology."

-Bovee

This is an opinion article I wrote for my university newspaper, Student Direct.

The English language is under siege. It is under siege not from a hostile invader or a devious interloper, but rather from sloth and a lack of care. But the result is the same: the detriment and dissolution of a once-proud establishment is evident; the war of attrition is beginning to take its toll.

The first salvo was the spelling checker. A brilliant idea, when used to augment one’s spelling ability, the spell checker has devolved into a crutch. This can be shown in two ways. We all know someone who relies on the spell checker, and its younger sibling, the auto-corrector, because they no longer truly know how to spell. But the effects of this go much deeper. More and more, people fail to understand the difference between “their” and “they’re”, between “your” are “you’re”. Even wholly disconnected words have begun to be interchangeable. On far too many messageboards and facebook walls have I seen people who cannot differentiate the words “lose” and “loose” despite their wildly different meanings.

The strongest weapon in this epic battle, however, came in the form of small messages, both SMS text messages and instant messenger clients such as MSN. A new shorthand arose, especially in the case of SMS, where a 160-character hard limit enforced a decided sense of brevity. “You’re” and “your” became not only interchangeable, but reduced to “ur”, “are” became “r” and so forth.

The real damage did not come, however, until this shorthand extended its tendrils into mainstream society. With a short message, the brevity I described is understandable, and even I cannot decry its use. But when that vile shorthand begins to appear in emails, letters and (as has become increasingly common) submitted essays in school, a serious blow has been dealt to the English language. Combined with a general decay in attention to grammar and spelling, eventual capitulation often seems inevitable.

So, why does this matter? After all, language is fluid and dynamic; the English we speak now varies dramatically from that spoken by Shakespeare and his cohort. Slang and idiomatic expressions have long shaped the face of any language and always will. We incorporate new words both into the common tongue and into our official bastion of the language, The Oxford English Dictionary. Is this not simply another evolution of the same process? I don’t think it is, and I believe this for a number of reasons.

The first is the motivation behind this shift, and the speed at which is has occurred. These changes have been inspired by laziness and imprecision, not by an organic evolutionary process. They have entered the language quickly, leaving older generations often unawares and leaving little time for a truly cohesive set of language to coalesce.

My biggest qualm, however, is that these words are neither new nor more-descriptive. In fact, they achieve quite the contrary: when you confuse “you’re” with “your” by shortening them all into “ur”, you lose (not loose) variety in the language. The context may differentiate the meaning, but the flavour of the language has gone. Language is a tool. Like any craftsman, a writer hones his art through the application of a tool, and imperfections and dullness in that tool results in an inferior end product. One would never expect a carver to work with a dull knife, yet people are increasingly writing with dulled and rusty linguistics.

It’s not a minor point that in Orwell’s 1984, Newspeak, the pride of Oceania, is hailed for its perpetually-shrinking vocabulary. That the language gets smaller every year is seen by the misguided souls who push it as a benefit. In the mock-Communist world of the novel, that lack of flavour is representative of a world under the thumb of tyranny. The meaning is there, but everything that makes a language unique and colourful has been stripped away. In such a world, Shakespeare would not write “that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, he would instead simply state “I don’t care who your family is”. The meaning remains, but the joy and depth of the phrase is forever lost.

This war rages all around us, and will do so for the foreseeable future. It does so on badly-spelt YouTube pages, it does so in hastily-checked emails. The warriors are not active participants, but merely those too lazy to care. And for this, I judge them. Because if you choose to not expend the necessary effort to craft your words with care, you help the denigration of a mellifluous tongue. You don’t need to be a linguistic perfectionist, but if you know not whether you routinely lose your keys or loose them, I will forever feel scorn towards your indifference.

"Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men."

- The Boondock Saints

Feminism and Gender Equality in the 21st Century

2007-07-05T12:00:00.000+01:00

"Does feminist mean 'large unpleasant person who'll shout at you' or 'someone who believes women are human beings'? To me it's the latter, so I sign up."

-Margaret Atwood

I recently read a very well-written and incisive blog posting written by a woman I met through debating. Though I commented on it on her blog, I wanted to expand somewhat on what I'd written, because the post adeptly elucidates much of what I've felt for some time, and does so from a position of someone with a vested interest, lending it even greater credence. The post details the concept of feminism and why the author considers herself not to be a feminist. This is something with which I have to concur. I think the concept of feminism, as commonly held and espoused by the majority who claim to preach its doctrines, is flawed. Now before my friend Liz whacks me with a 2x4, let me explain...

Let me be clear-I am by no stretch anti-female. I don't think women are inferior, I don't think they should be subjugated, oppressed or controlled. Further, I don't write off many of the concepts of feminist theory; I just think that, as a whole, the idea has been skewed by people who have taken it off the rails into ill-defined and often blithely shallow territory. So perhaps it's better to say that I take issue with what feminism has commonly come to be construed as, as well as those who claim to be shining examples of its doctrines.

I agree with the cited blog post insofar as I think that one of the greatest problems is a lack of definitive clarity as to what feminism actually means. And here I think the first kinks begin to show in the armour. Because many people would tell you it relates to equality of opportunity. This means that a man and woman, of equal qualifications and skills, should be paid the same. To me, this isn't feminism, this is humanity and common sense. So, is it an opinion that women are intrinsically superior? There are certainly those who hold that viewpoint, but I think the question is trite, primarily because superiority is itself ill-defined-superior in what sense? So what about the notion that men and women are totally identical in every potential, and it is societal influences that mould us into disparate creatures? I deny this notion-first of all, there are physical differences; men are not (by and large) bigger due to diet and gym regimes. We are bigger because testosterone grows muscle better. Similarly, I firmly believe that men and women have different intellectual and emotional strengths; I don't see anything wrong with this. So, many of the most commonly-held views of what it means to be a feminist are views with which I either disagree or agree insofar as I feel the issue is self-evident and requires no such "-ism" label. I'm not a "masculist" because I think men should have the chance to be paid as well as women; I shouldn't have to be a "feminist" to believe the reverse is true.

My second issue with most people's view on feminism is that it is a zero-sum game. A zero sum game is one in which, for one side to "win", the other must "lose". For example, sports are a zero-sum game: if one team rises in the rankings, another has fallen. Stocks, however, are an example of something that isn't. Just because Apple's stock rises, doesn't means Microsoft's falls. In fact, it's theoretically possible, through the magic of economics, for every stock in existence to rise in a given trading day. In terms of feminism, I feel many people view the issue as a zero-sum game: if you are pro-woman, it must mean you're anti-man. This is just wrong, and it this thinking that leads people to automatically equate "feminist" with "man-hater". It is simple fact that one can support women's rights without impinging on men's. But the inherent assumption behind many feminists is that you must push men down in order to be able to elevate women. All this does is galvanise both sides into a black-and-white idealogical debate that need not take place. It is similar to movements such as the Black Panther movement in the 1960s that preached black supremacy; rather than striving for integration and the elimination of barriers, all this does is energise your opposition.

The biggest issue I take with the allegedly-feminist views I've heard espoused, however, is that there is only one way to be feminist, and only one line of thought leading to that standard; that many groups have wildly disparate views of what that one way is is evidence of the very fallacy of the concept. There are those who will say that a woman should not use her looks to her advantage; there are those who preach conformity to male ideals (as evidenced in the shoulder-pad suits so prominent in the 80s and 90s). There are those who feel that every instance of the word "man" should be replaced with "person" (chairman to chairperson, congressman to congressperson and so forth). There are those who feel that men and women are fundamentally identical and therefore every position should be held by 50% women (I'll get to this ridiculous assertion in a minute, as I feel it's deleterious enough to merit its own paragraph). In a realistic, pragmatic world, there is no singular way to do anything, much less define one's identity. A perfect example of this arises in one of my favourite television shows, The West Wing. At one point Sam, one of the lead male roles, makes the comment "you'd make a good dog break his leash" to Ainsley, a recurring female lead who is both skilled and very physically attractive (and dressed in a very fetching backless ball gown at the time the comment was made). A female coworker takes offense at his "sexist" remark-she feels that Sam is degrading Ainsley by complementing her on her sexuality in lieu of her skills as a lawyer or her intelligence and general aptitudes. I disagree. I don't think that being physically attractive takes away from one's skill or power in other areas, nor do I feel that it automatically makes one an empty shell. This is the consensus that many of the other characters reach in that specific episode, but I feel that many feminists would still take offense. My point here is that neither side is automatically right. There are arguments to be made that emphasising one's sexuality decreases one's power and control or automatically makes it impossible for one to escape being merely "eye candy"; similarly, there are arguments that say one should use any and all tools at one's disposal and that complimenting a woman (or a man for that matter) on their sexuality in no way implies that you value them less as an intelligent human being.

"What's the point in feminism if I can't shave my legs when I damn well want to?"

-S. Camus

Now, the matter of quotas. As I mentioned above, there is often a push amongst feminist groups to eliminate the gender split in the workforce, either in terms of wages, or in terms of the number of people who make up that role (that is to say, every job should employ 50% women, 50% men). The disparity is especially prevalent in certain fields, notably computer science and engineering. In many cases, schools are actively trying to recruit female students into these programs. In some cases (I read an article to this effect ages ago, which sadly I cannot locate), there is a stated goal of having 50% enrollment. I think this misses the point entirely. Assuming that, just because the overall ratio of women-men is 50-50 implies that any given degree or job (much less every degree or job) should match that ratio is foolish, and is a shining example of feminism gone awry. Men and women do think differently, they have different strengths and weaknesses, and different avenues of study and employment appeal to them. A simple example is highly-physical labour (firemen, construction workers etc.). Men are physically larger and stronger than women, and I see no harm in there being more firemen than firewomen. In academics, if a particular field appeals more to one gender, so be it; this happens for both genders-some programs (notably biological sciences, psychology, veterinary science and many of the fine arts) are absolutely dominated by women and yet I feel no urge to cry foul that these degrees are discriminating against men; I realise they are degrees which are simply of a greater magnetism to women, for varied and perhaps unknown reasons. What we must do is ensure there are no artificial barriers to entry to these jobs or degrees. When it comes to women in engineering and computer science, this means making sure there's no harassment of women, either overt or subtle, that there isn't a residual "old boys' club" mentality, and so forth. Unfortunately, if you're a politician it's easier to point to a number and say "50%! Success!" than it is to to a thorough audit of any lingering sexism in a system as broad as a university or workplace. And politicians will take the easy and more-publicly-visible way out whenever they can.

Similarly, an assertion that every woman should make the same as every man is ludicrous. Unluckily for women (or lucky if you think kids aren't a giant pain in the ass), women have been saddled by nature as the ones who bear children. This means that a woman who chooses to raise a family must take time off work. But what people fail to realise is that a year off work actually sets one back by well over a year: the lost training, missing out on technological advances in one's line of work, and simply forgetting some of what you've done mean that a year's diversion mid-career puts one further back in one's career than it would seem. Put another way, someone with five uninterrupted years of experience will be much better-trained and much more capable than someone who has worked every other year for the past decade, taking the alternate years completely off of training and employment. The solution to this, of course, is to enshrine the concept of paternal leave, allowing men to share the burden of child-rearing early-on, and to allow women to continue training where possible while on maternity leave. But to compare a man and a woman in the same position, each with an apparent 10 years of experience, and then point to their disparate salaries as automatically implying sexism is disingenuous. Because if in that time, the woman took a year off for each of two kids, her career has probably been set back by the equivalent of three years. Blind equality is misleading; what's needed is a true evaluation of the equivalency of two employees' potential, and salaries commensurate to that.

This leads me to what I think we need in place of feminism: a total equality of opportunity. In every case, whether it be a job application or a university education, everyone who applies, regardless of gender, race, or any other characteristic, should be presented with the same chances to excel or fail based on their individual merits. Those who are the best candidates should be admitted and prosper; those who are ill-suited should (and will) fall by the wayside. This should be held true in our hearts and enshrined in the annals of law and in academia and corporations the world over. This isn't an easy thing to achieve-distorted views, adversarial sentiments and old-fashioned sexism are often hard to detect, even within oneself. But I think that modern feminism in many ways is counter-productive. By trying to force a supremacy of women, by espousing views that are easily seen by the masses as "man hating", and by trying to pigeonhole women into any one of a number of wildly disparate "right ways to do things", you exacerbate the situation. People put their guards up, and become instantly recalcitrant to engage in the matter to a meaningful degree. You cannot reason with someone whose shackles are nor, nor with someone who feels attacked and denigrated.

So if not feminism, what is this? I think it's simply: humanism. You don't have to feel women are superior in order to feel they should have equality of opportunity. That's just human decency. You don't need to believe men and women are identical in every biological way to believe that the salaries of two people who are truly equivalent should be same, no matter what; you just need common sense. And you don't need an antiquated affirmative-action quota or ratio system to ensure that every role in the world is filled by 50% women; you just have to make sure that it settles at the natural, equilibrium level, that there is nothing preventing hopeful candidates. It's not feminism, it's humanism.

"Women: their rights, and nothing less; Men: their rights, and nothing more."

-Susan B. Anthony

50 Things To Do Before You Leave University

2007-06-26T14:45:00.000+01:00

Following along with the theme of my last post (39 Ways To Live Your Life in An Airy-Fairy World), I'd like to respond to another such article, this one from New Scientist: 50 Things To Do Before You Leave University. This one bugged me less than the rest, so it's more of a personal checklist, along with my own rambling thoughts.

Spend At Least One Week Researching Your Career (kinda done). I've certainly looked into various prospects over the years, though haven't ever given the concerted effort they suggest.
Send Off A Job Application (done). Thanks to co-op, I have done this many, many times.
Work On Your CV (done). Again, have done this a lot, and I actually feel I'm quite adept at it now.
Hand In Assignment A Week Early (done). I've done this, but it didn't feel great; the only reason I handed in an assignment very early was because there were like 10 more waiting to be done.
Visit Every Library On Campus (kinda done). I've been to the three main libraries here at Manchester. I never use hard-copy journal articles though-everything's online now.
Star In A Play (not done). My acting ability falls somewhere in-between "shrub" and "dead shrub". There has never been a play desperate enough to cast me as the lead. Although, when I was 5, I do believe I played some role in the kindergarden production of Little Red Riding Hood, because every kid in class has to do so.
Attend A Career Fair (done). In my experience, these are good for free stuff, bad for actual career-hunting. I was told at a career fair (sponsored in part by the University of Guelph) "we didn't know Guelph hab engineering" and "we only hire engineers from Waterloo".
Attend A History Lecture (done). I'll do you one better, I took a 3rd-year history course (Celtic Ireland and Britain to 1066), loved it and got an 81%. I only wish I'd had more time in undergrad to do things unrelated to my field.
Do Something Stupid For Charity. (done). I know I sat on a giant teeter-totter (made out of a telephone pole) for awhile, and I'm fairly certain I ran across campus in my underwear at least once.
Fall Madly In Love (done). It is both a learning experience and a character-building one. Heartbreak is no fun, but whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right?
Pull Pints (done). Only briefly, this past Christmas, thanks to Jon and his amazingly kind and generous family.
Take A Course Or Alternative Module (done). I took the History course mentioned above, an English course (which sucked) and two economics courses (which were boring, but I got a 90% and 100% so yay for me). I considered minoring in economics, but it was just too boring to dedicate the time to.
Try Out For The University Challenge Team (not done). I had a pretty good knowledge of obscure trivia, but a sadly-lacking knowledge of British-oriented trivia. Cricket? Football? Old prime ministers? BBC sitcoms? No thanks.
Argue With An Arts Student (done A LOT). This is always fun. I debate, so dig arguing. And arts students have some plain old wacky ideas. It's also a challenge to debate with someone lacking basic logic (I kid, I kid).
Join A Society (done). Debating, Jiu-Jitsu, SafeWalk, Fencing, etc.
Consider Never Leaving (done). I've been in some form of school for 22 years, almost uninterrupted.
Vote (done). I think student politics is usually just a big circle-jerk, but I've voted once or twice (generally to vote against candidates, but that's neither here nor there). I've also voted in provincial and federal elections, because they actually matter.
Attend A Protest (not done). Here's the weird thing: the more activist people around me are, the less inclined am I to want to get involved. I actually get pissed off, and they tend to push me the other way. And I've attended two very activist universities, so I've become pretty apathetic.
Hug A Professor (done). Done because they say getting to know one counts. And there have been a few who have really inspired me-notably Jack Wiener and Shawki Areibi.
Discover A Local Band (not done). In fairness, a majority of local bands suck.
Get Some Work Experience (done). Again, thanks to co-op, I've worked a number of contract positions. Not in the area I hoep to go into eventually, but so be it.
Speak At A Debate (done). Let's see... I was secretary then president of the debate society back home, and have been communications officer for two years running here. I've debated for over ten years counting high school debating, and have made it to the quarter-finals of the European Championship. I think I can safely check this one off the list.
Teach Science To Kids (not done). I almost worked for the Guelph engineering school's summer science camp once, but was too late in applying. Besides, kids are scary.
Take Your Parents To The Pub (done). Did this last year when they came to visit.
Write A Blog (done). You're reading it right now. Actually, I suspect nobody is reading it, but if you are seeing these words, I'm wrong.
Try A Job-Shadow (not done). Probably would've been a good idea, though.
Wear You Pyjamas To A Lecture (not done). This was common-place at Guelph (even for people who took the bus into campus), and it always bugged me. I don't think it's asking too much to ask you to put on some freaking pants before you turn up. This isn't black-tie, but throw on a pair of trousers, dammit!
Flip Burgers (done). Dairy Queen, the summer after first year. It sucked.
Buy A Suit (done). A nice charcoal-grey pinstripe number. The jacket shrunk in the rain once, but then I lost weight, so it fits nicely again. Pants had to be altered, though.
Visit The Careers Office (done). In my experience, the careers office is singularly unhelpful. Your mileage may vary, but my guess is that some of the most useless people you'll ever meet work there. Needless to say, one visit was all I did.
Become Excessively Pretentious (done). See #22 (debating) for details.
Organise Something (kinda done). I helped organise World On A Plate for my hall in undergrad, and have helped organise various debates and other events. Never spearheaded anything, though.
Throw A Dinner Party (kinda done). Do barbecues count?
Volunteer (done). Only a little bit, for things like the engineering Speed River Cleanup.
Be A Culture Volunteer (done). I've been to a few museums and art galleries, though I really should see some more.
Join A Sports Team (kinda done). I played one game of volleyball for the Watson Hall team.
Start A Business (not done). Lots of ideas, no real follow-through.
Live Out (done). Halls are great at first, but I am so glad to be in my own place instead.
Make 100 Friends (done). I might have to stretch the definition slightly, but I think I can do it. Certainly my facebook list is well over 100 if that counts.
Buy A Piece Of University Clothing (done). I have a U of Guelph polo shirt and hoodie. Nothing from Manchester, yet, though I do have T-Shirts from Harvard and Oxford (where I have never studied).
Go To The Zoo (not done). Haven't been since I was a kid.
Subscribe To A Magazine (done). Maxim, in my first year. Not exactly erudite social commentary and news, but entertaining. And with a much higher boobs-to-depressing-war-story ratio.
Collect £50 In Loose Change (not done). I hate change. A lot. I try to keep as little of it as possible.
Take A Sandwich Year (kinda done). With co-op, I had work terms in-between study terms. But none of the work terms were a full year long-8 months was the longest.
Go To A Fancy-Dress Ball (kinda done). I've been to a fancy-dress party, but not a ball. Note for non-Brits: fancy-dress=costume party.
Brighten Up Your Department (done). I threw some plastic flowers that were going to be discarded into a wine bottle. I'm counting it.
Find Religion (not done). I have some interesting view on spirituality and divinity, but nothing that could be called a religion.
Find A Job (done). Again, co-op.
Give Up Drinking (not done). Beer: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Open Your Mind (done). I think I'm open to a wide range of ideas and concepts.

So what's my total? Counting "kinda done" as one-half, that puts me at 34.5 out of 50 (or a pathetic 69%). Anyone else want to weigh in with their ranking?

39 ways to live your life in an airy-fairy fantasy world

2007-06-20T16:58:00.000+01:00

I just read an article called "39 Ways to Live, and Not Merely Exist" by someone named Leo Babauta, and while it seems on the surface to be life-affirming and generally good, it bothered me more and more as I read it. Not because some of the suggestions aren't good, but because many of them are airy-fairy, hippie nonsense that is great, unless you live in the real world. Furthermore, they assert a single ideal when it comes to what one "should do"; an ideal I feel is clichéd and lacking in both flexibility and understanding. So, consider this a point-by-point rebuttal and critique.

Love. OK, a good start. Being able to love, and doing so wherever possible, is great. I also agree that this love can be for family or close friends, as well as romantic love.
Get outside. Again, broadly speaking a good idea. Nature is good, and balancing one's indoor time with outdoor time is a good thing, by and large. I'd wait until it's nice, though. Rain, sleet etc. suck and do not engender an appreciation for the outdoors.
Savor food. Food is great, but I've always taken offense to the idea that it must be consumed slowly and with excessive deliberation to be enjoyed. A fine dark chocolate truffle should be, yes. But a plate full of chicken wings deserves to be devoured as the velociraptors of yore devoured their hot-and-spicy chicken wings: quickly and messily. That is a pleasure in and of itself.
Create a morning ritual. Morning sucks. It's tiring and mean. Coffee also sucks, but I understand that's a minority view. Either way, talking to myself and meditating will never make morning suck any less. It's to be gotten over with. Period. (mom, please stop reading this point NOW). Morning sex is good though, and can improve an otherwise-crappy time.
Take chances. Spot on, something I've written about before.
Follow excitement. OK, this is the first one that's nice in principle, but simply not realistic. Eventually, you have to actually get stuff done. Excitement is great but mundane tasks exist for a reason. You can't live your entire life on safari. It just doesn't happen.
Find your passion. Yeah, this one's good too. It's on my to-do list.
Get out of your cubicle. Good God, I hope I don't spend my career in a cubicle. But if I do, so be it. There's more to life than work, and if working in a cubicle gives me access to the things I want in life, that's a reasonable trade-off.
Turn off the TV. There is some good stuff on TV, there really is. There is eye-opening, informative programming, there is uplifting, entertaining programming, and there is quality programming that's great for just turning your brain off for a limited period of time. There is, of course, a giant mountain of crap as well, and too much TV is bad. But to paint all of television with the same brush is simplistic and disingenuous.
Pull away from the internet. First off, this guy really thinks his article is the only good thing on the 'net? Second of all, kiss my ass. There's a lot of good stuff on the net, too, and you only learn to sift the good from the bad through patience and experience.
Travel. Travel is great, and most people love doing it and should do so to the extent they can. But become a freelancer, checking your email weekly? FANTASY LAND! Some jobs require physical presence, and they often pay enough for you to be able to afford to, you know, travel. Airplanes aren't free. Also, if you do travel, I'd highly recommend straying outside the most-touristy areas. The Eiffel Tower is fun and all, but there's more to France than that.
Rediscover what's important. If you can reduce your life to a list of 4 or 5 keys things, you're a cloistered Buddhist monk and aren't reading this blog posting.
Eliminate everything else. See above.
Exercise. Yes, but do it because being a lard-ass is nasty. I was too fat for too much of my life. I've exercised extensively and regularly for two years now and I still hate just about every minute of it. So exercise, but do it to be healthier-up to 95% of American adults are overweight or obese. Be in the good 5%.
Be positive. Yeah, because bottling up your negativity never has consequences! Look, life isn't always great-sometimes a little negativity is warranted. Just don't let it rule you.
Open your heart. Tough thing to do, but worth it.
Kiss in the rain. Passion is good, but anything can become routine. The key is to let the inner romantic have his moment when it's spontaneous and natural, not all the time. Also, don't pick wildflowers, pick a potato!
Face your fears. Yup, good advice, and again, something I've written about before.
When you suffer, suffer. This kind of contradicts his #15, but aligns nicely with my critique thereof.
Slow down. No. The slower you go, the less you can do. And don't give me that "you enjoy it more" or "take time to stop and smell the roses" garbage. There's stuff to be done. Lots of it. The world, it turns out, is quite large. You want to travel? Hang out with friends? Watch the good TV shows? You gotta cram that into the 16 hours a day you're awake. And anyone who walks slowly on a sidewalk, obstructing those of us with better places to be deserves being pushed in front of a bus.
Touch humanity. I don't need to talk to a smelly homeless dude to know his life sucks, I get it. Getting out of your comfort zone is a great experience, but to blithely say that everyone needs to experiences destitution first-hand is trite. Furthermore, you can cram your simplistic Buddhism-101 anti-materialism up your ass; how dare you tell me how to enjoy my life? I should feel guilty because I actually like the idea of watching movies (a pastime I do enjoy) on a 72" screen with 7.2 digital surround sound? Just because you can find enjoyment without material things doesn't mean there's anything intrinsically wrong with enjoying pastimes predicated on material possessions. Everyone likes different things and no one person can be the arbiter of what anyone else should like.
Volunteer. Volunteering is good, but there are many ways to do it. The sick and dying are depressing and often icky. Not my cup of tea.
Play with children. Yeah, just hang outside playgrounds and ask the wee kiddies to come play with you, I don't see how that could go wrong. Also, kids might be entertaining in small doses, but they're frustrating and draining on an ongoing basis.
Talk to old people. Again, a broad statement. Some old people are interesting and have great stories. But many are senile, forgetful and incontinent. Either way, most of the elderly are at least a little bit creepy.
Learn new skills. I agree with this one, but try not to lose the old skills, eh?
Find spirituality. This, to me, is another classic example of assuming everyone is the same. Spirituality can be a great thing for some, but it's not for everyone. Some of us actually prefer proof and demonstrable, tangible credibility in the things in which we choose to believe.
Take mini-retirements. Another fantasy-land invention. Every year you take off of work sets your career back by 18-24 months. Therefore, if you take your "mini-retirements" regularly, you'll just stall your career and once again, be unable to afford travel. And that whole "sell your house, live simply" crap? Yeah, selling a house takes like 2-12 months easily, depending on the market. And having shelter is a good thing. Living in tents 7 days a week gets old after awhile.
Do nothing. Good advice, doing absolutely nothing every once and awhile is great for recharging the batteries. Although, again, he's contradicting his anti-TV statements here, he's agreeing with my opinion, so good for him.
Stop playing video games. Again, the arrogance of telling me what I should and should not enjoy! I personally find moderated video game play to be an intellectual stimulant and a relaxing experience. I guess that makes me a slovenly wastrel. Oh no, wait, it makes him a dick for judging me.
Watch sunsets, daily. First of all, overly-sappy and romantic. Second of all, some of us live in Manchester, where the "sun" is a myth at most. Finally, while I do love a good sunset, daily is a little overkill-it becomes a waste of time, and ruins the romance by converting it into standard routine.
Stop reading magazines. Again, not all magazines are bad. Certainly, very few are as bad as the trashy romance novels he suggests as an alternative. Magazines run the gamut from vacuous celebrity-gossip to insightful political analysis, and to blacklist them as a hole is to cut yourself off from one of the most astute views of the society in which you live.
Break out from ruts. I agree with this one, though he once again contradicts himself (by saying you should change the morning routine he suggested you establish way back in #4).
Stop watching the news. Just because something is depressing, doesn't mean you have the right to be ignorant. The knowledge of the world around you can be vital in defining your place in the world, and knowing the day's events can lend you a depth and breadth of understanding that solely getting tidbits from your mother can never bring.
Laugh until you cry. Laughing is great, and releases endorphins. But rolling on the ground laughing just makes me want to kick you in the ribs to see how funny you find that. I'm guessing, not very.
Lose control. I'd modify this slightly and say exhibit control, but accept the limits. You can never control anyone else completely, and your self-control will forever be tested. Further, I agree that it's good to let go sometimes (beer helps with this).
Cry. In Deep Thoughts By Jack Handey, he says "It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man." I think that speaks for itself.
Make an awesome dessert. Amend that statement to "Make or buy an awesome dessert" and you've got my vote. Personally, I like to go for the most chocolatey substance I can lay hands on, but to each their own.
Try something new, every week. Good advice, albeit a little impractical.
Be in the moment. Don't overplan, but a failure to plan simply results in you getting blindsided by something you should be able to deal with adequately. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. People often make the mistake of assuming that planning for something makes you inflexible; this is wrong-it simply gives you a framework in which to operate. Furthermore, while unanticipated problems will always surface, so will concerns you should be able to anticipate for, and these can (and should) be mitigated.

I don't think the article is bad per se. I just thinks it's naive and simplistic. I don't think it's fair to paint everyone with the same brush, something I feel the author does quite a bit. There are some great bits of advice there, but they must be tempered with a dose of pragmatism. Put another way, idealism is wonderful, but should never compromise realism.

Update: Manchester, Poland and beyond

2007-05-22T15:40:00.000+01:00

When I last brought everyone up to date on my status, I had just spent my first Christmas away from home, and my second New Years Eve. Since then, not a heck of a lot has gone on, but enough to warrant an update. (note: click on any of the pictures in this post to see a larger version)

I spent the first few months of 2007 as I spend most of my months-going to debate tournaments and slacking off from doing any real work. The debate season is much less intense after the Christmas break, so there were only a few IVs (tournaments) to go to, though we did quite well by and large (I generally went with DanB). We went to Glasgow twice, Edinburgh, and London and made it to the final or semi-final in each. Many escapades occurred at some of these, though I won't get into that, even if I could remember all the details.

The most interesting one was Tilbury House. Tilbury House is the debate society for the University of Cologne, Germany, and is legendary amongst Manchester debaters for being the most fun IV of the year. Aside from the fact that the Tilbury guys are some of the coolest, nicest and easiest-going debaters, it's also a chance to see a really nice city in Germany, and they provide all sort of entertainment and spectacle.

As is traditional with foreign IVs, we spent a few days just exploring Cologne itself. The highlights of this are the gorgeous cathedral and the Lindt chocolate musem. The Cathedral is a massive testament to the Catholic church's penchant from dramatic architecture and the spires affords some amazing view of the city (in addition to a cardio workout that is non-pareil, given the number of steps one must climb to get there. Massive, vaulted ceilings, beautiful stained glass and works of art, and a series of enormous bells give testament to what you can achieve with nearly limitless untaxed financial resources, and a dedication to a higher power. Simply put, if you want to inspire a sense of awe in the almighty in people, a building like this is a great way to do it.

Interestingly, though, I found the interior of the cathedral to be somewhat... austere... compared to others I've seen. Notre Dame and Le Sacre Coeur in Paris, for example, absolutely drip with ostentatious opulence and grandeur. The Cologne cathedral, on the other hand-while grand and well-ornamented to be sure-had an interior largely devoid of excessive decoration. The massive walls up to the vaulted ceiling, for example, were largely bare, and presented an almost ascetic view of the church. Don't misunderstand-paintings and stained glass still abound, but they are more confined to specific areas than I've noted in other such grandiose churches.

The Lindt chocolate museum, on the other hand, was sugar-sweet fun. It showed a history of both the origins of the cocoa bean and its cultivation, and the Lindt company itself. A wander-at-your-own-pace experience, I was able to see everything from the earliest tools and canoe used to harvest and transport the pods of cocoa beans, up to currently-operational chocolate-making machinery. Quite an interesting process to get from giant palm-frond-bearing trees with nearly tasteless, bitter beans up to chocolate so yummy it borders on being a controlled substance. Plus, the entire place smells of chocolate, which is always nice. There's also a gift shop, which is just mean, because after spending an hour and a half learning about chocolate, how am I supposed to resist spending way too much on cool varieties of chocolate (including my favourite-dark chocolate with a hint of chili powder).

The tournament itself was fun, though I did disappointingly poorly. In general, I'm not too fussed about doing well or poorly, but in this case, I felt my team (Hannah and I) were clearly robbed in one round, which I do find frustrating. Still, one of the advantages of being thoroughly non-competitive is that you can still enjoy yourself even if you don't win. And we did that in droves. From a "bar crawl" that covered all of two bars (the latter of which I almost immediately fell asleep in despite being only tipsy) to a basement club buffet and party, to Kenny and I fake-smoking rolled-up vanilla wafers (while wearing a ridiculous shamrock Guinness hat I'd brought because it was St. Patrick's Day), it was a good time all around, and I eagerly await going back next year for more. And, in fairness, Manchester was represented in the final, as Tom and Kenny defended the right of people to gauge in incestual relationships (note: the sides of a debate are chosen randomly, and debaters' views do no necessarily represent what they argue in the round).

The next big event was my trip to Krakow, Poland. This was a fairly spur-of-the-moment trip, organised all of ten days before we left. Mo and his MBA compatriots were set to finish their course near the middle of April, and Mo wanted to take some time off to travel before starting work. Therefore, he recruited myself and his friend Sam into a trip to Eastern Europe. We settled on Krakow fairly arbitrarily, insofar as it was cheap, none of us had ever been there, and I'd heard it was great (I have several friends who had spent some time in Krakow, and all raved about the experience). And I have to say, I'm glad we went.

I had misconceptions about Eastern Europe, largely based on the dated stereotypes of a run-down, desolate wasteland, held over from the days of the USSR and its iron curtain (see Eurotrip for the classic view of this stereotype). In fact, it's quite the contrary. Since the collapse of the Berlin wall and Soviet-era communism, and aided by the EU, the former Eastern Bloc countries have pushed for greater integration and prosperity, and it shows. Yes, there are still pre-fab construction apartment blocks, but there's also a wealth of old and exquisite architecture. Honestly, it's one of the favourite trips I've taken, and I cannot wait to go back.

Partly, we got lucky. The entire time we were there, it was 22C and sunny, which makes any trip nicer (just wish I'd brought shorts). But it's more than that. Krakow, especially in April, when we went, isn't too touristy, so you don't get a throng of camera-wielding people wherever you go. Everything is cheap-food, beer, consumer products, all cost about 1/3 of what they do in the UK. The women are beautiful and plentiful, a wonderful-if rare-combination. The nightlife was thriving and featured a lack of cover charges in addition to the aforementioned cheap drinks. And there's tons of history, which I will describe below (since the nightlife stories don't exactly require a lot of explanation). There are three historic sites of note which I visited while there: Kamierz, Auschwitz, Wawel Castle and the Wieliczka salt mine.

Kazimierz is the Jewish district, which at one point was the largest Jewish community in all of Europe. Though many of the Jews fled during the Nazi occupation, the area still maintains its distinctive feel and atmosphere, and provided a nice walk on a sunny day. I also ate, with Sam, one of the best meals I had in Poland at a small restaurant called "Noah's Ark", which featured live traditional Jewish music, played by a three-piece band (bass, clarinet and accordion).

Auschwitz, of course, lies at the other end of the spectrum of Jewish significance. The site of the largest concentration camps of the Nazi regime, Auschwitz and Birkenau, the location is steeped in morbid infamy. I unfortunately arrived late in the day, only about an hour and a half before the close of the camp (now a museum), so I didn't get to explore to the extent that I would have liked.

The front gates of Auschwitz are marked with the infamous slogan Arbeit Macht Frei. This translates to "work will set you free". Which, as it turns out, was a lie. Auschwitz, and more specifically Birkenau (which I ran out of time for, and didn't get to see) were home to the worst parts of the Nazi "Final Solution". This is where people were herded onto cattle cars and gassed by the thousands. Needless to say, it's a sobering experience. However, what I found interesting is that the camp itself didn't seem as ominous as I'd expected; though obviously people were crammed in well beyond any reasonable capacity, the barracks looked like standard barracks, not the bastions of torture they really were. What really drove the point home, though, was the little things. It was seeing a display of the hundreds of thousands of eye glasses, shoes or combs that were unearthed. Even though it doesn't seem like this should carry the same weight as the pictures and descriptions of the place, these displays of so many commonplace objects, combined with the obvious reason behind their being discarded, really drove home the magnitude of the atrocities.

It also created an interesting dilemma for me, as a visitor to the camp. After being chastised many times by my mother for taking pictures of places and things as opposed to myself in those places, I have made sure I get photos of myself whenever I travel. But, it brought up an interesting question: is it right to smile in a photo taken at Auschwitz? It seems very disrespectful to be smiling in photos of a place where one of the worst crimes in human history was perpetrated, where untold millions lost their lives. In the end, I chose to appear in the photos, but to not smile.

Wieliczka, on the other hand, is a much cheerier place. It's a salt mine first opened in the 13th century, though surface salt had been discovered as much as 200 years prior. It's also, by far, the biggest salt mine in the world, extending down over 300m and featuring over 200km of internal tunnels and over 2000 caverns. This alone would make it an interesting site to see. What's truly fascinating, however, is the carvings. You see, as the miners (who were not professional sculptors) dug further into the earth, they created massive carvings along their way, of amazing intricacy. But these carvings and statues were not hewn from stone or wood; instead they were carved directly into the salt walls themselves. The big giant head you see Mo and I standing besides (and old king of Poland), for example, was carved directly from the salt itself as the cavern was excavated. Futhermore, the plaque behind the head, the walls and even the floor and ceiling were similarly carved out of the salt walls. They even carved mosaics, including the last supper and other frescos. The work was amazing intricate and I verified that it was made out of salt (I licked the Copernicus statue). The amount of time and effort required for such a thing is truly mind-boggling.

Perhaps most impressive, though, was the main hall. The picture you see to the left is a view from the balcony (also carved out of salt). What must be noted about this view is that everything is made out of salt. The stairs, the floor "tiles", even the chandeliers! At one point, this entire hall (about 125m underground, by the way) was nothing more than a solid wall of rock salt. It was only as the salt was removed for sale and processing that the hall as you now see it emerged. And once more, you wouldn't know it, unless you you were told (or licked the walls and floor), because the floor looks like marble tiles, as do the stairs and walls; the chandeliers look like any other crystal chandeliers, and the wall carvings look like stone carvings. At the far end of the hall is an entire Catholic altar for church proceedings (most of the miners were very religious). It truly was a marvel to see.

Needless to say, I loved Poland. while there I ran into a random Canadian who was spending a year teaching English. I have to see, it's an idea whose appeal seems instantly obvious to me. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, and cannot wait to go back; the idea of being able to spend a year really getting to know the city is one with great magnetism. No matter what, I know I will return, as soon as I am able.

And that brings us pretty much up to speed. My work is progressing, slowly. I have made up my first batch of samples, and have sent them off to the lab with which collaborate (in Marseilles, France). In the meantime, I'm back to doing more boring journal-reading and online research. Which is why I get bored and write in my blog instead of doing work. That being said, I'm hoping to get some real results soon, which is both encouraging and something I hope will spur further excitement-it's easy to feel the drag of long projects like this one. I hope all is well with any who read this, and look forward to hearing from you soon.

The MacOS as a command economy, the PC as a free market

2007-05-16T10:50:00.000+01:00

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. Working men of all countries, unite!"

- Karl Marx

The title of this post is hyperbolic at best, outright disingenuous at worst. I do not see Steve Jobs as Lenin, nor Bill Gates as Adam Smith. Rather, it reflects a recent revelation that I had: Apple strives for tight-knit control over the whole computing ecosystem for Macs (Steve Jobs famously described Apple's strategy as "Making the whole widget"), and are largely successful at doing so (the most notable example being the vertical integration of the iPod, iTunes and the iTunes Store); the PC world, on the other hand (by which I mean Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Dell, HP, etc.) is much more about having a wide variety of competition for every component (Microsoft's antitrust practices aside). Each side has benefits and problems, and I think the two approaches reflect very aptly the strengths and weaknesses of a command economy contrasted with a free market state.

As a note of disclosure, I have been using Macs exclusively at home, starting 20 years ago with a Mac 512K, up to my current system-a PowerMac G5 tower. I have used a variety of Windows-based systems at school and work, and have dabbled very slightly in Linux/Unix, but cannot claim significant knowledge. In addition, I read Slashdot and similar nerdy sites, thus keeping abreast of tech news to whatever extent I can (often to the detriment of my general world knowledge and my Ph.D.). My undergrad degree was also computer related, specifically it was in Engineering Systems and Computing. So, while I'm by no means a professional tech pundit, neither am I a babe in the woods.

So, let me first be clear about why I feel each approach is representative of the economic/political strategy with which I have associated it. Apple has traditionally tried to maintain much tighter control over its products. Putting aside the poorly-thought-out cloning program in the mid-90s, Apple has been the only company capable (legally and technically) of making computers that run the MacOS. Furthermore, they have stuck to stringent standards with their computers: whereas a company like Dell will buy network cards (for example) from whichever supplier can give them the best price on a given day, Apple tends to stick to one manufacturer-and one particular model of network cards-for long periods of time. Apple tends to include lots of features right on the motherboard that PC manufacturers typically include as PCI cards (high-quality sound cards, gigabit ethernet, firewire, etc.). As a result, there is a comparatively small market of upgrade cards for Macs. Since Apple includes most features on-board that average users would need, many people will never even upgrade. Therefore, Apple can reasonably predict that the overwhelming majority of its products in use conform to a reasonably small, and definitely finite set of specifications. Furthermore, Apple provides, free of charge on new Macs, a fairly robust set of software-notably iLife (photo management, music creation and playing, video and DVD creation), iWork (a word processor and Powerpoint-like presentation application), Safari (Apple's Web Browser) and Mail.

The PC world, on the other hand, is dominated by a plethora of manufacturers. You want to buy a network card? There are 200 brands at your local PC superstore. USB cards and peripherals, video cards, and of course, software, all come in myriad competing packages. Though Windows is dominant on the operating system front, there is a hardcore contingent of Linux and Unix users. Furthermore, because the basic installation of Windows contains fairly rudimentary software packages compared to iLife and iWork, and because there are so many Windows users, there's a much more burgeoning market for 3rd-party software. As a result of all this, there is a nearly-limitless number of potential configurations of PC machines. Any slightly-different combination of modem/network card/video card/USB card/Operating System/Productivity applications/etc. is an entirely novel setup compared to any other. While I'm sure the number of potential setups is theoretically finite, I pity the poor bastard who'd have to even figure out how many potential combinations there are, much less what they all are. Similarly, non-iPod MP3 players can choose from a variety of online music stores (Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music and the like) whereas the iTunes store is the only store that sells DRM-protected music that will play on the iPod. Note that the iPod will also quite happily play any non-protected MP3s, AACs, WAVs and a few other formats; this is true of most other MP3 players as well, though many will also play WMA, which the iPod will not.

So, what can we glean from these approaches? Well, I feel that it provides insight into the pros and cons of trying to control the delivery of a service, versus letting anyone and everyone take a shot at getting their product into play.

Macs have long been known to be more stable. This has changed with recent versions of Windows XP, but certainly there are still some issues. For example, I have crazy USB issues on my work PC, where certain devices will only work when connected to certain ports. The reason for this is drivers-little bits of software that tell an operating system how to communicate with attached devices. Each device requires its own drivers, and sometimes those drivers conflict. On the Mac side, you can test fairly well for this; on the PC side, there are just too many combinations of hardware, and from too many obscure, fly-by-night manufacturers to be able to do so.

Macs, on the other hand, are engineered from the get-go to run largely on hardware and software produced by Apple; while the choices are often more limited, the coherence tends to be much better. I know many people will dispute this, and it's ultimately a matter of taste, but I think that by-and-large the consistency and stability of Macs has long been considered one of its strongest points. And this is a result of Apple's position as an influential player in the computer market as a whole and their exclusive role within the Mac platform. A secondary effect of this is that Apple is able to dictate, essentially by fiat, what will be included on Macs. They therefore have the ability to push new technologies in a way that no individual PC manufacturer (say, Dell or HP) can. Although USB was designed by Intel and supported by Microsoft, the single biggest push to adoption of the technology was when Apple included it as the sole peripheral interface on the wildly-popular first-generation iMac. Because of the popularity of that machine, and because ever single iMac sold had to use USB to connect printers, mice, keyboards, etc. (Apple dropped legacy technologies such as ADB, serial and SCSI ports), it provided an instant market and is widely considered to be the turning point for the adoption of USB. Similar effects can be found with CD-ROM drives in the late 1980s, Wi-Fi networking and more.

This then leads to the parallels one can draw. When the Soviet Union represented the dominant socialist power on Earth, it provided a unique vantage point for comparative economic theory. And what we saw reflects what I've stated above. Putting political oppression aside for the moment, when it came to thing like consumer choice, Americans had a definite advantage. A free market, by its very nature promotes choice and competition; Americans had choices in consumer goods that Soviets could never dream about. Furthermore, the efficiencies in manufacture and delivery of goods drove costs down (Macs, at least to a superficial inspection, still tend to cost more than bog-standard PCs), and increased speed of delivery (when Intel announces a new CPU, Dell and HP tend to announce computers using that CPU on the same day; Apple does so much later). However, the flip side to this is internal conflict. Standardisation can be difficult (see the money wasted on the needless VHS vs. Beta/BluRay vs. HD-DVD/X2 vs K56Flex vs. 42bis format wars for videos, next-gen DVDs and modems, respectively). Furthermore, the companies vie for what is best for their bottom line, not necessarily what is best for the consumer. We end up with cheap, disposable, environmentally unfriendly products far more often than we should.

A single command point is slower to react, but generally leads to-eventually-greater synchronicity. Apple's near-fanatical devotion to easy-to-use interfaces tends to trickle down to 3rd-party Mac software; one of the most common complaints of Mac versions of Windows software is that it doesn't "feel like a Mac application". Apple is in a unique position to do so, because they control so much of the vertical integration, they can set an example that Microsoft, Adobe, etc. simply cannot. Furthermore, individual components not only work better together, but can do so in a more-intuitive way, because one company-with a visionary leader at the helm, no less-directs how things "should" work. The Soviet Union didn't exactly prise aesthetics in design, but they certainly praised consistency and comprehensibility to a degree that the disparate companies of the West never did.

The reality, of course, is that no rational person preaches either a fully-unregulated free market, nor a micromanagement, top-down command economy. As with so many other things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. And of course, with my computing analogy, neither the PC world, nor the Mac world truly represent either extreme: Macs do compete with PCs, as well as Linux distributions that run on Mac hardware; similarly, PCs adhere to standards and practices laid down by the government or standards bodies. When it comes to computing, it ultimately should be a personal choice: which "feels" better to you. For me that's a Mac, for others its Windows or Linux. So be it. Fortunately for us, our system of government allows for enough of a free market to ensure that each one of us can choose the platform we like. However, to assume that there are no downsides is about as foolhardy as blindly choosing Windows just because there are more boxes on the shelf than there are for Macs. Choice is important, but it too comes with a cost.

"Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better."

-Steve

Jobs

What I do: Introduction and index

2007-03-27T12:42:00.000+01:00

OK, I get a lot of questions (from friends and family) about what it is that I do, specifically in terms of my research. So, I'm going to start posting to this blog with some background and updates about said research. This page will serve as the basic introduction, and I will link to any updates here as well. In addition, I will try and make sure I tag any such post with the "What I Do" tag, so you can search for them all.

The basic introduction is this: I'm a Ph.D. student, studying at the University of Manchester. I'm in the Microelectronics and Nanostructures (M&N) group, which is within the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. I started in September 2005 on a 3-4 year course; I'm hoping to finish in early 2009.

The area, and approximate title of my research is Quantum Dots: Electrical Characterisation and Novel Nanofabrication Methods. Isn't that exciting? In the coming weeks and months, I hope to add posts to the list of "What I Do" explanatory posts, so that anyone who cares what I do will be able to at least understand the gist of that title, and the research it represents.

Stay tuned...

Index of "What I Do" posts:

Coming Soon...

Why we take risks

2007-02-15T07:21:00.000Z

"I haven't failed; I've found 10,000 ways that don't work."

-Thomas Edison

Growth. It's a hard thing to pin down, how we change, adapt, and grow. It's a process that happens organically; one over which we have no direct control. We develop in ways we never would have predicted and could never have directed. It is a combination of who we are, and the experiences we encounter that change us; while we cannot change how those experiences will alter who we are, we do have some control over which experiences we encounter.

Every day we are presented with choices; every day we are presented with risks. And with every risk comes a gut reaction. Our instincts leads us in one direction. But just as we no longer rely on a purely "fight or flight" instinct to decide on the best course of action in every scenario, neither can we delegate to our gut reactions every daily decision, every risk-taking.

Just like fear, risk is good, but often scary. A lot of the time, we let our fear make our decisions for us; we avoid risk, because we're too scared of the outcome to take chances. But, as with fear, it would often be to our advantage to take more risks. Because we learn from each experience, whether or not it achieves the goals we'd hoped for. To paraphrase Robert Frost, when we take the road less traveled, we are all the better for it. Because we have a width and depth of experiences unparalleled by those who choose safety by default.

Our experiences are a map from who we were to who we are and will be; we are the people that our experiences have made us into. And with a richer mosaic of experiences, we become more-developed, more-diverse people. We cannot learn about ourselves and our world without experiencing many things; more specifically, we cannot grow without experiencing some failure, some disappointment.

We will often shy away from risk for fear of being hurt. This is doubly true with emotional risk, as it is those cuts which go deepest. But the irony is that it is those experiences that most augment ourselves, making us into better, stronger people. It is all too easy to shut out everything new, everything we "think" we don't like; it's much harder to try something we have convinced ourselves we won't like and see what happens. It seems counterintuitive that getting hurt can make you stronger, that failing can make you more likely to succeed in the future; but this is the very nature of personal growth.

I should clarify by saying that not every risk should be taken. Jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, while undoubtedly an eye-opening experience, is a risk with very significant downsides and little benefit. But when an opportunity presents itself that we find ourselves greeting with apprehension, it is important to consider that this might just be one of those risks that we need to lead us down the path of enlightenment and improvement. And those are the risks we should always take. Because without it, we will never grow, and will forever live in the shadow of what might have been, had we merely had the force of will to try. When we try new things, we never wonder "what if", because we already know the answer.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream."

-Mark Twain

O2 mobile and quantum mechanics

2007-01-23T11:28:00.000Z

If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize.
- Richard Feynman

I like to think that I'm a pretty smart guy. I graduated high school with an 88% average and undergrad with a 79% average. I'm pursuing a Ph.D. in electrical and electronic engineering that requires I bandy about terms like "focused Ion beam nanolithography" and "Laplace Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy" and know what said terms actually mean (and I even do know what they mean, mostly). Yet, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how O2 calculates my pay-as-you-go mobile phone balance.

Here's how it theoretically works: there are two plans you can be one: Talkalot and Talkalotmore. With the Talkalot plan (though it doesn't seem to say this on the page anymore), if I top up £10, I get 100 minutes any time, to either landline phones or other O2 mobiles, or 100 free texts to anyone (or any combination thereof). This gets activated more or less immediately-as soon as I top up, I get the freebie minutes. With the Talkalotmore plan, if I top up £15 per month, I get 150 minutes or texts to any phone, but only on evenings and weekends. This gets activated only if I top up every month-so I get the free minutes only if I top up £15 less than a month after I topped up £15 the last time.

These two plans can overlap. Therefore, if I top up £15 per month, I should get the 100 minutes to O2 mobile and landlines (at anytime) and the 150 minutes to any phone (on evenings and weekends only). Confusing, but at least comprehensible.

Unfortunately, the theory doesn't match the real world. Because, as far as I can tell, O2 is using some voodoo quantum mechanics math to calculate my balance. At some points in the month, I get free everything-calls at anytime, to anyone, and texts. Sometimes, texts are free but calls aren't and sometimes call are free but texts aren't. Sometimes this is true at any time of day, sometimes only on evenings and weekends. And I never understand why! It just starts charging me for certain calls, and I'm baffled as to the reason. I don't call enough to top up £15 every month, so I can understand that I don't always get the Talkalotmore bonus, but it still seems like I should be able to figure out what's going on, at least periodically.

At this point, I've given up trying to understand, and have given up caring about it. I just accept it on faith, top up when I'm low, and hope for the best. O2 sends me a text to remind me when my month is running out (i.e. when I need to top up another £15 if I want the bonus). If I'm getting kind of low (say £8 or less), I'll generally top up-otherwise I'll wait till I'm just about done.

There is a certain similarity to quantum physics with this, perhaps seeming thus to me as I'm currently reading up on the subject. Quantum physics describes, in a way classical physics does not, the workings of the very very very small objects in the universe (electrons, photons and what have you). Though the subject is broad, one of the fundamental precepts is this: there is an uncertainty to everything. Specifically, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that it is impossible (no matter how good your measuring devices) to accurately determine both the momentum of an object and its current position. I feel like my phone parallels this: it seems impossible for me to know both my balance and what a given call will cost me. And like quantum physics, sometimes it's just better the shrug and accept that uncertainty.

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood a single word.
-Neils Bohr

My first Christmas away from home

2007-01-14T18:32:00.000Z

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
- Dave Barry

This year has presented many firsts for me, but one quite recently-my first Christmas away from home. It was an interesting experience, and lead to some realizations about myself, and about tradition, and about home.

As many of you reading this blog might remember, I was home in November for about ten days. In addition, I'm contemplating going home for an entire month in late spring (I have one friend getting married at the end of May and a pair of friends getting married at the end of June). Given both these things, it simply made no sense for me to go home for Christmas-I lacked both the time and the money.

I should stop for a moment here and clarify what Christmas means to me. You see, I grew up in a non-religious household, so Christmas doesn't have that "birth of our Lord" feeling that it does for many. But the lack of religious/spiritual significance is not meant to underscore a lack of importance. For me, Christmas was a time of tradition, a time of family. It was the time when-as clichéd as I know this will sound-the rest of life just slowed down so I could be with those people who matter the most. So, it's quite a strange feeling to miss out on that togetherness.

In the end, I spent the time in-between Christmas and New Years with three of my friends' families. Jon offered to take me in for Christmas itself, something I gratefully accepted. So, I went down to his from the 24th-26th. His parents own a pub, which was open Christmas Eve day and Boxing Day, plus Christmas day until dinner time. I had a lovely Christmas dinner with his family and friends, played some quiz games and got far drunker than I'd intended to on Christmas Day. Partly Jon's fault-drinking games should never be invented and implemented on days when I'd intended to stay sober. Still, it was a great time, and I'm eminently grateful to his family for making me feel so welcome on Christmas. My parents also called me on the day, so I was able to at least speak with them on Christmas, which was nice.

On the 26th, Jon and I drove up to Richard's parents' new place, where we met up with Siv and Christian. This new place is absolutely stunning. Though located in the exact geographic middle of nowhere, it is a truly expansive, opulent estate situated on lovely rolling hills and very picturesque forests. The house itself has wonderful high ceilings, many bed and bathrooms, and is just all-around a wonderful stately home. We five friends, along with Richard's parents, had a lovely dinner and then Christian departed. Siv, Jon, and I spent the night then we, plus Richard played with his dog and ran around the huge yard, generally acting like silly children. It was great.

I was back in Manchester for the evening of the 27th, then off to Jim's on the 28th. I was able to get some long-overdue boxing-week shopping done on the morning of the 28th, which is nice because I now own clothes that fit properly (as a result of losing some weight, many of my clothes were ridiculously large). At Jim's, we basically just chilled. Played some Mario Kart, pool and Darts, he taught me some of the basics of poker, which I then implemented in a mini-tournament with him and some of his friends (coming second out of the six of us and won £10), and we played his Star Trek 3D chess set, which was deliciously nerdy. I lost.

I was back in Manchester on the 30th, and went to Fairfield Hall, where I lived last year, for New Years. They do a free party every year, with an open bar. It was fun and sloppy, but otherwise unremarkable. I'm glad I did that, though-I've never understood the point of clubbing on New Years-you pay 5 times as much as a normal night for a night of clubbing that's largely undifferentiable from any other club night. Why bother? House party with friends, or small party with a free open bar is the way to go.

So now, as is my wont, let me delve briefly into the philosophical. Because, being away from my family this Christmas brought an interesting issue to the surface for me: the idea of "home". Because you see, something strange happened to me while I was in undergrad: I lost the concept of feeling "at home". I'd grown up in the thriving metropolis of Dundas, and archetypal small-town North American suburb if ever there was one, and it always felt like home when I was growing up. I knew people, I knew the area, I felt... comfortable. But after a few years in Guelph for uni, Dundas wasn't really home any more. I'd be there for the odd weekend, but it felt more and more like I was visiting. And while Guelph was where I lived, and felt like it was my place, it never captured that essence of "home" that Dundas had had. This is partly because I moved a lot-in my five years in uni, I lived in no less than nine different houses, and while I was comfortable in many of them, they never captured that quintessential feeling of being home.

George Carlin, the preeminent American comic, draws the distinction between a house and a home when he speaks of the homeless. He says, quite rightly, that the problem such people have isn't their lack of a home; it's the lack of a house. They need a roof over their heads more than anything. But this is the bare minimum. This distinction belies the importance we place on our sense of belonging, and it is this sense that ultimately makes a home. If, as the cliché says, home is where the heart is, it is because our sense of who we are relies partly on our being at peace with ourselves, and with our surroundings. And no set of surroundings is more intimate than that which we call our home. Our home is an extension of who we are-it reflects our values; our strengths and failings; our desires and realities.

Nowhere is the absence of home more self-evident than student halls. I lived in halls again last year, simply because it was much easier to arrange a hall of residence from Canada, than a private house. But I hate living in halls. Aside from the mess, the noise and the condescending housing office, halls scream "temporary". You can never really call a hall a home, because it will always be crystal clear that you're just staying there. It's one rung above a hotel room in its ephemeralness-it will never be "your" place, it's just where you stay for awhile. Where I live now is a great flat (muggings and break-ins aside), but it still doesn't feel like my home. It is on par with anywhere I've lived since I started uni, but no better.

I miss the feeling of being home. Manchester feels to me like "my city" now, in the way that Dundas did, and then Guelph. By this I mean, I feel comfortable in the city, I know my way around the main areas, I know people (and have random bump-ins with people I know). But that ethereal concept of "home" is still missing. I don't know what is missing that would complete the picture and provide that elusive feeling, but I hope I find it.

Don't get me wrong-I love where I live, both the city and my flat itself. I love Manchester, I love my friends, and I'm having a great time. I just look forward, with eager anticipation, to the day that I can truly feel that I'm home again.

Home is not where you live but where they understand you.
- Christian Morgenstern