american’s dna no longer belongs to corporations

Yesterday, the US supreme court ruled that companies cannot take out patents on segments of human DNA that have been identified.  Up until now, companies have held patents on gene segments that exist inside human beings.  My question is: how is this even up for debate?  I know our society has a  finders-keepers mentality, but does it really extend as far as things inside your body?  Did the man who discovered the spleen have intellectual property rights on your spleen?

Lets not get confused about what DNA is.  It’s a complex molecule inside each of your cells.  Some people like to say that DNA contains information, that DNA is a language.  In a sense that’s true, but only since we discovered it.  DNA is split, duplicated, and processed by tiny things inside your cells called organelles.  They respond to certain chemical stimuli.  They are not reading a code. They do not have brains or eyes.  Don’t get me wrong, the production and reproduction of DNA is an amazing process, one of the most astonishing things in nature, but it is not a language in the sense that written english or german are languages because it is not a symbolic representation.  Rather it is a purely chemical process.  DNA only contains information once there is a brain able to process that information.  Until then it contains as much information as any other molecule.

So basically, to patent a section of DNA is patenting something that is inside every human, occurred naturally, and has been there for many thousands of years: just like my spleen.  The supreme court definitely made the right call on this one.  The line has to be drawn somewhere and “things inside my body” seems to be a good place to stop ownership.

What do you think?  Should companies be allowed to own the rights gene segments stored inside your cells?

the competency dilemma or how you might be too thick to know you’re awful

It’s been said that the true test of insanity is whether or not a person thinks they’re crazy.  If you think you’re crazy, you can’t be because crazy people don’t think they’re crazy.  If however you don’t think you’re crazy… I’ll let you work it out from here.  Well there is a similar dilemma when it comes to competency and intelligence.

There is a psychological phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger Effect which states that there is “a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average.  In other words, people who are bad at things can’t tell how bad they because they’re not smart enough to identify what being bad is.  Of course if they knew what it was that made them so bad they would stop doing it.  Furthermore, the theory states that “Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.”

And the concept applies to competency in anything: fishing, baseball, painting, writing, even thinking itself.  You may think you understand how logic and reason works but if you don’t you can’t know because if you didn’t you wouldn’t have the capacity to logically decide how well you understand logic.  You see the problem?

People who dress boldly but badly, people who think they’re sports prodigies but have no success, everyone who sings karaoke, and exactly half of all people who ever did a debate and went home feeling like they won: these people believe that they are good at what they do because they aren’t competent enough to know what bad is.

Everybody thinks they’re logical, everybody thinks what they think makes sense, everybody thinks they’re good at something, and most of those people are wrong.  Just think: half of the human race has a below-average IQ.  Do you think half of people think they are below average?

So how do you escape this trap?  How do you figure out how bad you are at what you do?  Well most of you won’t think too hard about it.  But for those who care, research is the answer.  If you want to know if you’re dumb, take an IQ test.  It’s not a perfect indicator by any means but it is the best and most convenient indicator we have.  If you want to know if you are logical, study formal logic.  The more time you spend studying any field, the more likely you are to know something about it.  If you want to know if you’re good at sports, trust the statistics.  The things you think have to be confirmed by others, and your mom doesn’t count: she’ll always think you’re great.  Many of those people will lie to you and tell you, “You were great when you sang karaoke up there!” but if they are bad too then how would they know?

I think there is a threshold beyond which people stop thinking they know stuff and start researching to learn stuff.  The more people cross that threshold the better off this world will be.

beautiful song; horrible message

Picture this.  You’ve reached a rough spot in your life.  Things aren’t going the way you’d like them too.  Maybe there’s been a crisis.  Maybe someone close to you is in trouble.  In this time of need, you confide in a friend.  This friend listens to your problems and gives you a piece of advice: don’t do anything.  When life gives you lemons, leave those lemons alone.  The best way to solve a problem is to ignore it!  Now consider:

When I find myself in times of trouble

Mother Mary comes to me

Speaking words of wisdom:

“Let it be.”

What kind of wisdom is that?  Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  but Paul McCartney says “Nooooo.  The world is a tough place but just let it be.”  If you try to separate the idea from the pretty song and the soothing diction it’s pretty awful advice.  It’s the opposite of the Trooper’s didactic masterpiece Raise a Little Hell which teaches “If your don’t like what you’ve got why don’t you change it?  If your world is all screwed up rearrange it!”  Paul McCartney would say “If you don’t like what you’ve got let it be.  If your world is all screwed up let it be.”  You see Mother Mary’s wisdom starts to lose its value when you apply it to problems.

Be weary of music.  Pop music is complicated.  It’s a multimedia art combining sounds and poetry.  Just because the sounds are nice doesn’t mean the poetry is any good, and just because the poetry sounds pleasant doesn’t mean the message is good or true.

a chance to look down on toronto

I usually see Toronto from below, looking up at the silver skyscrapers from the grimy streets below.  Well recently I had a chance to look down on the clamshell and the downtown core from 34 floors up, and I was lucky enough to have a camera in hand.  Here’s a few shots.

the humble dandelion and our war of attrition with the universe

I don’t think I’m the first person to quizzically stroke my chin and ask why a dandelion is a weed an a daisy a flower.  We all know why dandelions are reviled: it’s because they can’t be controlled.  They grow all over your lawn, they grow up through the cracks in your patio, in fact they will take hold nearly anywhere a dandelion seed lands.  But the very qualities that make a dandelion a nuisance are revered in people: strength, persistence, tenacity, virility.  And what about roses, orchids, and the flowers that we love the most?  They are worshipped for the incredibly narrow set of circumstances required for their survival.  Humans above all else value weakness and submission in our plants.  We like plants that do what they’re told.  Even the plants that we desperately want to grow, we hack at their limbs the moment they get too big for their pot.

There is another way to see plants.  You must understand that we, the collective human consciousness, are in a war of attrition with the cosmos.  We like straight lines and golf greens and shining skyscrapers and white paint.  Yet like an anthill on a windy day, we build things up and the universe tears them down.  Plants are the foot soldiers in this battle, making cracks in the pavement, reclaiming the walls of old buildings, and taking hold anywhere there’s an opening.  If you don’t constantly mow your lawn it will take over, trees and bushes untrimmed grow until they are stopped, even your books, the food you left out, and your own feet begin to grow if you don’t take care.   Because life is what you make it, why not take on a more synchronous approach to nature.  Feel the long grass between your toes and contemplate that long after the human species has gone extinct, plants will grow over our graves, consume our monuments, and bury the detritus of our civilization under a squishy layer of peat.  When everything and everyone that you’ve ever thought was important is gone, grass and vines and trees will clean up after our little social experiment.  Like the tortoise and the hare, we think we can win.  We have pruning sheers and lawnmowers and can kill any unwelcome plant that shows its face in our yard, our little corner of the world.  But when you drop dead the plants will eat you and use the nutrients you’ve spent your life collecting to make new leaves and new seeds and new plants.  In our frame reference we might be showing the plants who’s boss, but in the planet’s frame of reference we are a joke, a blip, a minor inconvenience.  So I say let em grow!  Why fight the battles when you already know you’ll lose the war?

toronto is like the cool kid of canada

I lived outside of Toronto for most of my life.  It’s only recently that I moved to the city and not long before that I lived in an even smaller city so I have a pretty fresh perspective on the differences between small, medium and big city life.

Many people outside Toronto talks about it with disdain.  They say that people from Toronto are cold and rude.  They say Toronto is stuck up.  They say Torontonians think they are the center of the universe.

And here’s what the people of Toronto say about the rest of Canada… (cue crickets)

That’s right, the people of Toronto don’t seem to talk about or even really think about anywhere else.  The disdain moves only in one direction.  That’s why I’ve determined that Toronto is like the coolest kid in school.

Everybody knows the cool kid’s name because he’s popular but the cool kid probably can’t remember the names of every uncool kid out there.  There are just too many of them.  Similarly, the other kids sit around talking about what’s wrong with the cool kid: how he dresses, how he’s not that smart, how he didn’t invite them to his cool party.  The cool kid has more money, fancier clothes, and a better car than the other kids.  He throws the best parties, eats the best food, lives in the nicest house.  And all the while, the other kids rightfully insist that none of these things make you a good person.

Most importantly, the other kids think the cool kid is mean because he doesn’t talk to them while he doesn’t think of himself as the coolest kid, he just thinks life is great, the food is tasty, and he’s enjoying it.  Just as cool kids don’t identify themselves as such, Toronto doesn’t identify itself as the center of the universe.

I believe in giving credit where it’s due.  There are annoyances that come with living in any large city.  People tend to be pushier and less friendly, the air is foul, and the streetcar rattles my single-pane window all night.  But Toronto, like the cool kid, just has more than smaller cities: more architecture, more restaurants, more theatres, more festivals, more cultures.  It’s a product of population density that city-dwellers take advantage of.  We in Toronto aren’t self-centered, we just know that Toronto’s filled with culture and art and hedonistic pleasures.

So to the people of Canada: Torontonians don’t think their city is the center of the universe, they were just too busy enjoying Toronto to think about your specific region and what it has to offer.

And to the people of Toronto: the streets are not so crowded that you can’t smile or say hello to people who pass by.  Try to be a little nicer.

sandwich murder and why life is what you make it

I recently ordered a sandwich from subway.  The service was terrible, the employees miserable and imprecise, and the resulting sandwich was a disaster.  It was so bad it made me want to write a review on yelp.  So, being a writer and all, I spent the next hour thinking of creative ways to describe the cruelty that had been inflicted on my sub.

My meatball sub looked like a foal being born.

Mothers covered their childrens’ eyes as they walked by.

It made my shirt look like the end of The Departed and the table look like the end of Reservoir Dogs.

The police report’s marinara spatter analysis will be the pivotal piece of evidence in the trial that puts the Sandwitch Artist in jail for sandwich murder.

I didn’t end up writing that review.  I thought the late-middle-aged immigrant woman working at subway didn’t need any more trouble.

But it occurred to me: I’ve derived far more joy from my articulate outrage than I ever could have from a well assembled sandwich!  And that’s why life is what you make it.  All the small things that are wrong with your life disappear when you change your attitude, when you learn to quit moping and have fun.

why you should read the bible. . . no seriously hear me out

A woman today told me that if I live my life by the ten commandments I’ll be just fine.  I thought very little of it.  After all, the ten commandments are the first thing people mention when they don’t know very much about the bible and I’m quite used to downtown preachers.  But it got me thinking about it, and when I really pressed myself I could only remember eight of the ten.  It really seems like the sort of thing one ought to remember.  So I opened up a digital bible and searched for the term “ten commandments”.  This is what I found. (Exodus 34.11-26 paraphrased).

1. Don’t make deals with the people of judea: destroy their alters, images, and crops.

2. Worship no other gods because I am jealous.

3. Don’t make deals with the people of judea because when they sacrifice to their gods they’ll offer you some and if you eat it and take a wife from among them and their children will sacrifice to their gods.

4. Don’t make cast idols.

5. Keep the seven day festival of unleavened bread in commemoration of your exodus from Egypt.

6. All the firstborn male livestock belong to me.

7. Work six days rest one.  All men have to come before me three times a year and I will expand your borders.

8. Don’t serve sacrificial blood with leaven and don’t leave the ceremony until morning.

9. Bring the best of your fruit to the house of the Lord.

10. Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

Exodus 34.27-28 “The Lord said to moses: write these words down; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.  I was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water.  And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten-commandments.”

That is the only time the term “ten commandments” appears in the bible.  Of course that’s not what people mean when they say the ten commandments.  The usual ten commandments are as follows (again paraphrased for brevity)

1. Don’t worship the other gods.

2. Don’t make engraved images of anything in heaven, or below the sea.  Don’t worship images.  If you do I’ll punish your offspring for three or four generations.  If you follow my laws I’ll bless you for a thousand generations.

3. Don’t use the Lord’s name wrongly.

4. Keep saturday holy.

5. Honour your father and mother.

6. Don’t murder.

7. Don’t commit adultery.

8. Don’t steal.

9. Don’t bare false witness against neighbors.

10. Don’t covet your neighbor’s house, wife, slave, ox, ass, or anything else he owns.

Now that’s more like it.  But where does this confusion come from?  Well, moses got the tablets from god, smashed them, and went back to get them again.  The second set of ten laws given to Moses, and the first set written above, is what the bible calls the ten commandments but the first, written below, is what we call the ten commandments.  Even the most apparently simple and widely cited part of the bible is pretty complicated and the subject of intense debate.

And this is why you need to read your bible.  Regardless of your faith.  For Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Atheists alike: the bible is one of the most important and influential books ever produced by humanity.  Think it doesn’t matter cause you’re not Christian?  Well a huge part of the world lives their lives according to one book.  To understand the world we live in, you have to understand the bible.  I’ve studied it in school, I’ve studied it for enjoyment and i’ve read it cover to cover several times and I didn’t even notice that the ten commandments are all mixed up.  Bible illiteracy is a real problem.  The woman giving out free instructions on how to live a good life probably doesn’t even know how confused the ten commandments are.  I would be surprised if she could even name the ten that we’re familiar with.  And surely she doesn’t think I ought not engrave pictures.  Bible illiteracy leads people to believe that the gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were written by the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John even though their authorship is explained in the bible.  Besides, if anyone really believe in all ten of the commandments, we would see less of this:Yeah, that’s a graven image of something from beneath the sea.

Read it.  Cover to cover.  Twice.  I might be the most important book ever.  If you don’t know what’s in it, you shouldn’t be telling anyone else whether it’s good or bad.  There are 613 laws in the Old Testament which, according to Matthew, Jesus promised to defend and uphold.  How many do you know?  How many do you endorse?  There are four separate versions of Jesus’ life in the four gospels.  Do you know where they converge, where they differ?  Which history do you take as truth if any?  Do you understand the challenges of translation from the original Greek and Aramaic?  These are real and challenging questions that must be answered.  You cannot escape the challenge by reading your favourite bits out of context and ignoring the rest.  Don’t hide behind the false security of consensus.  Find out for yourself.  Read it.

Just skip the bit with all the begetting.  It’s quite boring.

why laughing at your own jokes is a good thing

We’ve all told a joke to a group and waited those agonizing three to five seconds for them to get it.  After that small interval or if, god forbid, you should have to explain the punch line, the moment has passed, the joke is dead.  Comedy is all about timing after all.  But why is it that we put laughing at your own jokes in the same class as nose-picking or mouth-breathing?  What’s wrong with laughing at your own jokes?

The way I see it, there are two reasons to tell jokes:

#1. You want to make other people happy so that they will like you.  You deliver your jokes like a homeless guy holds the door at a Tim Hortons.  You provide a small service, then hold out your hands and beg for a laugh.

#2.  Life is ironic and hilarious, sometimes dark but often light-hearted, like a satire of itself, and you and your friends share this paradoxical but enthralling view of the human condition.

My bias may shine through my prose a little.  I don’t think I need to tell you which of these outlooks I prefer.  If people are to share in the joy if humour, they have to share in the laughter.  We all need an excuse to laugh more.

Lets do away with the social prohibition on laughing at ones own jokes.  Tell a joke, let out a real belly laugh, slap your knee, and enjoy life.  If your audience isn’t laughing, it just means they aren’t quite as clever as you are.

 

the embarrassing history of homeopathy

Alternative medicine is a popular term for any sort of treatment that you can’t get an actual doctor to prescribe.  One of the most popular fields of alternative medicine, so popular that Britain’s NHS funds it like real medicine, is homeopathy.  But the actual history of homeopathy reveals what a quackery it truly is.

Created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathy is based on the idea that an illness is treated by the substance that causes it.  The cure for arsenic poisoning is more arsenic, if you’re bitten by a spider, you should ingest some venom, and I suppose if you get the flu, the only cure is hanging around the ill.  In the original context, it’s easy to see how stupid the idea is.

But give a stupid idea over two hundred years and memetics takes its tole.  Homeopathy has built up a wall of bizarre conventions and processes that make it seem, to some, a little less than totally bonkers.  For example, poisoning people kills them so homeopaths now treat poison victims with water that used to have poison in it.  They dilute the poison until there’s none left, charge patients for water, and claim that because the water remembers that there was poison in it before it will counteract the poison in your body.  Along the way they’ll repeat words like “vibrations” that have no meaning, and talk to you about crystals or your horoscope.

But none of this medical theatrics can change the fact that like does not cure like: you can’t treat a disease by exposing someone to more of that disease.  You see, medicine is an applied extension of the scientific method.  If a treatment were effective, beyond what the placebo effect accounts for, it would no longer be alternative, it would just be medicine.  Therefore alternative cures are, by definition. cures that have either been shown not to work or have not yet been shown to work.

Homeopathy is a racket and the sooner people realize it, the better chance we have to actually solve medical problems.  If the entire institution of science, biology, and medicine can’t fix you, what makes you think an 18th century quack can do any better?