RIP Russian Rambo

This is interesting, because I've seen headlines about this story a few times in the past week, but the events described actually happened almost a year ago. They happend in Russia, from whence news takes a while to migrate to the States, but a year still seems awfully long.

No matter, though, the point is: this is one of the coolest stories I have ever seen in my life. Why did we not hear about this sooner and see it plastered on as many papers and tabloids and websites as the Rihanna beatdown? As awful as Rihanna's ordeal is (I'm not trying to downplay it - that guy should be locked up with a very large 'top,' if you get my meaning), this Russian Rambo guy went down in, quite literally, a blaze of glory that's worthy of movie deals in as many languages as command a large audience.

Check it out! This guy had been living in a shack in the woods in Russia for 20 years, hunting and trapping and using home-made pistols and myriad other weapons. He was 6'7" and had a giant bushy beard, was batshit insane, and had actually managed to keep all attempts at law enforcement at bay by being, for lack of a better term, absolutely fucking terrifying. He had captured and held hostage several local officials who had wandered into his "territory" in the woods, releasing them with threats after holding them at gunpoint for hours and effectively scaring the shit out of all their buddies, then backed up those threats not to invade his space by torching 30 homes in the area. He'd become such a legend in the area that locals say they wouldn't let their children out of the house without dogs to accompany them - even though many of their dogs had been killed by his traps.

And, when federal officials finally decided to crack down on this "Rambo" figure by sending out six specialists to get him, he wounded two with some of his arsenal before setting a swath of the forest aflame and somehow circling around behind the officers, and preparing to fight them to a man. As one of the officers put it, "It was pure chance the sniper suddenly saw his figure in the trees and pulled the trigger. He shot him right in the head and he died in a flash."

This dude is impressive. I am in awe. I think it's a damn shame they killed him, because I'd love to have heard his stories from in prison, or better yet, to have heard of his legend haunting the Russian forests for years to come.

Not exactly on topic, but impressive as all get-out, and I wanted to share.

The scientific mind.

I will freely admit that my brain is not one that likes numbers and facts. It tends toward fanciful, curlique-d, sparkly fantasies because it finds them more appealing. It doesn't like the concept that according to mathematics, everything has one correct answer, or that according to science, everything can be explained in concrete terms. My brain enjoys mystery and imagination and seeing the magic in everyday occurrences. It is not analytical, reasonable, rational, or in any way modern, and that probably accounts for my innate fear of mathematical and scientific principals being applied to the natural world. To my way of thinking, Nature is not beyond math or science - it embodies them and is made of their principles - but it goes beyond their rules and straight lines and angles and numbers into something so vast and divine that it transcends what we can understand logically. And so when I see things like - ahem - robots, or for that matter genetically engineered food or animals, being made by us in a lab and then put out into the world that, despite our best efforts, is still controlled mostly by the large, unpredictable, uncontrollable whims of Nature, I shudder to think of what could happen. We are striving, in these instances, to control Life itself, which is not only beyond our grasp but beyond our ability to understand.

We cannot predict the future, even if we populate it with artificial things that we have engineered to behave predictably. Because those things, once they leave us and enter into the Natural world, are no longer under our control, whether they are pre-programmed to be or not. Nature is bigger than us and it takes over for us where we leave off. We are not smaller versions of some omnipotent personification of God simply because we understand a few theories about space and time and engineering, and even if we were, who can honestly say that that version of God the Creator we're trying to become didn't monumentally screw up when he made us? We've run absolutely amok. Our robots and genetically altered foods and creatures might do the same to us, and likely will if we don't rein ourselves in, and I don't care who laughs at me for thinking it.

Look at it this way. What's the point of robot technology, at its base? To make human life easier (so we can accomplish more 'worthwhile' things like watching TV and eating our Cheeto's without having to crumple up the bag and throw it away ourselves, presumably). Let's say that, a few years in the future, somebody develops a robot sophisticated eough that its primary goal in existing is to make human life easier. Not sure how you'd go about programming such an abstract idea, but let's go with the robot's reason for being as reducing human irritation, frustration, pain, and suffering. Let's say this sophisticated robot spent some time observing human life and realized at some point that human beings are almost always irritated, frustrated, pained, and undergoing suffering - as long as they are alive. Might not the logic that we have come up with and tried to bestow upon our lab experiment be put to use to conclude that life is suffering, and that therefore humans should be killed, so they will no longer suffer?

That's probably been a movie or sci-fi book plot somewhere along the line, so I don't claim it to be some groundbreaking idea, but you see what I mean, right?

Now let's imagine that rather than just having babies in our chaotic, natural, unscientific (or at least the vast majority being unscientific) way and making a few robots (which I think is a bad idea but it's already being done) and messing around with existing life forms to make them "better" (like we did with Africanizing honey bees, remember how that went? KILLER BEES?) and domesticating other life forms that don't want to be domesticated (the killer chimp? anyone?), we decide to start BRINGING EXTINCT LIFE FORMS BACK BECAUSE IT WOULD BE COOL? Does this seem like a good idea? It does, apparently, to a researcher at Harvard, George Church, who has declared that now that we have mapped the entire Neanderthal genome, we could bring a Neanderthal to life for around $30 million. John Tierny, that genius at the New York Times, apparently thinks that's a really nifty idea. "So why not do it? Why not give Harvard’s George Church the money he says could be used to resurrect a Neanderthal from DNA?" he asks.

...has anybody read about the crazed chimp who tore off his master's friend's face? Or read about the horrible things they do to monkeys in lab experiments and felt bad? Or watched JURASSIC PARK, for God's sake??? (I know, I know, that was science fiction, Lynsey, not reality. Well I have a whole buttload of opinions about why science fiction should be taken seriously, but not enough time or room here to list them.) Neanderthals, for all that we know about them - which is in fact quite a lot, given that we've mapped their genome and studied them ad nauseum anthropologically and paleontologically - were very much, VERY much, like modern Homo sapiens. Modern Homo sapiens being ourselves, being the least predictable or controllable animal on earth (if you put aside what advertising campaigns and brainwashing can do), being the ones who thought it'd be a good idea to stockpile nuclear weapons that could destroy the planet. Who can make robots to do their work but can't figure out how to coexist without shooting each other over whose version of the God we want to be is the best.

And these guys... want to... bring back a near-identical species, the capabilities of which we have no inkling and the reason for whose extinction was probably, like most other of Nature's reasons for extinction except for the ones WE'VE inflicted on other species, very good.

If a chimpanzee (chimps are our second closest living relatives, next to bonobos, and are much, much stronger than humans) who'd been living a pampered life in a woman's home, dressing and feeding himself and using a computer, for years, could rip her friend's face off in a moment of frenzy, what do we think a NEANDERTHAL being raised in a lab, most likely, and poked and prodded and examined and tested to no end by scientists who think it's just fascinating, possessed of an intelligence and self-awareness at least close to that of our own, will do?

I know these sentences are long and confusing, but I find the logic here absolutely mystifying myself. This is madness.

I'm going home, locking myself in my room with my Cheeto's, and not coming out till tomorrow. Forget this. My brain might not be great at calculus, but I'll take my common sense and my imagination and my curliques over this nonsense, thankyouverymuch.

Ok, sorry to disappoint....

But I am TOO excited to write about my paranoia today.

Because...

I just found out I'm getting published!

Aaaaaaaah!

A story I wrote while I was living in Chicago, called "The Hair Cut" (which, to be honest, I don't even particularly like), has been selected for publication in a forthcoming book from Pergola Publishing called "Memoirs of Meanness." The book is a compilation of true and fictional stories, and according to the publisher is being picked up by book groups, and high schools as an anti-bullying aid. Apparently due to financial problems (who doesn't have them?), Pergola underwent a change in management over the past year, but has gotten back on track with its publication schedule. So the story, which I submitted last April, is going in. They say they'd like to print next month!

My story is kind of a two-sides-of-one-brain theme, where I have a narrator telling a story that she keeps messing up, and eventually another part of her brain comes in to help her finish it, and, well, that side is mean. Hence the story fitting into the book.

There's no pay involved, but there's prestige! Fame! Accolades! And I get to do publicity if there are any events.

So, screw paranoia! The Universe LOVES me today!

I don't even have to stretch this one.

Well, I'm back. And frankly, I'm appalled at what I've found happening in my absence. Namely, this article. In a nutshell, if you're not into clicking links, scientists at the University of Sydney are trying to convince us that we should allow them to computerize our traffic patterns based on those used by ANTS: "When opposing streams of leafcutter ants share a narrow path, they instinctively alternate flows in the most efficient way possible. Studying how ants manage this could provide the basis for a system of driverless cars running on ant traffic algorithms."

Let's rehash that, shall we? The idea here is that, because ants are so much better at avoiding traffic jams (which I'm sure cost us X-billion amount of dollars in lost time at work for commuters every year, and blah blah blah and so on and so forth) than we are, we should mimic their instinctual, mindless behavior, and give up our hard-earned free will while driving to the whims and mathematical precision of a giant computer.

Ok. So, beyond how stupidly over-thought this plan is - since a train system run by a few humans carting around a whole lot MORE humans seems like a much easier and more feasible concept, which already has an infrastructure in place - does anyone else resent the idea of being carted around like ANTS? Not to downplay the achievements of the little guys, since ants really are pretty impressive creatures in their own right. They can lift however many zillion times their own body weight, they're super-organized, and some of them (see: Bullet Ants and Army Ants) are terrifying beyond most (or maybe all) mammal species.

But despite their impressiveness and organization and alien scare tactic powers, I think it's safe to say that humans have definitely won out in the evolution game. Yes, pinchers are all well and good, and apparently the mindless drone thing works really well for ants and bees and what not, but I'm gonna have to step back and say that the apposable thumb, bipedalism, higher intelligence, and free will have put us seriously ahead in the race to dominate the planet. We're doing a whole lot of things right by our very nature, which tends toward bull-headedness and rampant individualism. We are not naturally following each other around for the good of the colony. And say what you will for ant colonies, but I'd defend the idea that New York and Dubai and Paris and Tokyo are a little more impressive.

Not to say that ants are ding it all wrong. I certainly don't argue that a bit more of a collective conscientiousness (sp?) would be a good thing for humanity in general. After all, this whole climate change debacle and many of the other problems plaguing us in the modern world (postmodern world? let's not get into that debate now, shall we?) could be well served if we'd all think about the good of everyone and everything, rather than just ourselves on hot summer days and in our purchasing decisions. It's not that an ant-colony mindset would necessarily be bad in every possible way. But if we were to really emulate ants and live in colonies headed by a queen... well, in our case, a queen would be something like a Jabba the Hut figure endowed with all the persuasive powers of, say, Hitler in his prime, and the political power of a complete despot (no names are coming to me). Terrifying, right?

Now imagine that queen/ruler is... get ready... you guessed it! A goddamn robot! One that is wheeling us around at high speeds in little car-pods all hooked up to its collectively alien intelligence. I do hate to hold The Matrix up as some pinnacle of wisdom, but c'mon, people, how much more obvious does it get that robots are somewhere very high up in the scheming of our world these days? If you think this sounds kind of neat-o, kinda nifty, kinda cool... well, chew on this for a second: '"We essentially would have to hand over control of the vehicle to a collectively intelligent system that would move all vehicles from their source to destination," said Marcus Randall, a Bond University software mathematician.'

I don't even have to truss this one up to make it sound frightening - they are literally trying to let us make robots responsible for transporting us around. Mass transit is scary enough with a capable human being who it's safe to assume has our best interests at heart, but mass transit run by an artificial intelligence that HAS no heart? Based on an ANT brain? '"Drivers optimize their own travel time, without taking much care about others. This leads to phantom traffic jams which occur without any obvious reason. Ants, on the other hand, are not egoistic,"' says one scientist in favor of ant-braining our travel systems. But, you know, I'll stick to egoism, thankyouverymuch. It's what we cling to as human beings, and damned if we haven't climbed our way to the top using it as our grappling hook.

F-ing robots.