Damn you have a sexy genome!

Ok so there's 4 things i'm going to go over in this post.

1) Genetic attraction.

So this is something I've actually thought about for many years now. There might be scientific merit, there may be studies on it (i honestly haven't read it there are) but i'm going to state my opinion, and then flow into my next topic.

So why do I find blonde girls hotter than brown but my friend doesn't. Tall girls or short girls? Skinny or chubby? Freckles, pale, lips, eyes etc etc etc. If you actually ask a person why they like blondes over brunettes, they probably can't even tell you themselves why.
So what if it's caused by your genetics? So instinctually my body determines that a blonde girl has a certain gene that would would increase the chances of strengthening my offspring over someone who has brown hair, for example.

In this theory, genetic diversity plays a factor in this as well. Now this isn't meant to be bad or anything, so if I use any politically incorrect terminology it's not intended. I'm probably one of the least racist people you'll ever meet so I dont even know the correct things to say some time (or what's sometimes incorrect to say).

Usually I notice that women that have that incredibly attractive "exotic" look come from a mixing of cultures, known by some people as "half breeds". Now I dont have any good examples off the top of my head, but this usually falls into the realm of black/white, asian/white, black/asian, etc. Also keep in mind this isn't a stead fast rule, just an observation i've noticed (and had people agree with). The reason I think this is is because our instincts recognize this as a wide genetic variance, something that can help with strong genetic offspring.

Essentially... it's all about making babies.
*disclaimer* this isn't always going to be the case, but it's an interesting theory i think?

2) Genetic manipulation

Ma n Pa are about to have a brand new baby boy. But they wanted a girl. And *gasp* it's going to be a red head!! That's unacceptable (ps. i like red heads, hehehe). So they go to the doctor, and after a couple treatements while in the womb, their potential red-headed boy, is now going to be a much taller brown haired girl (with green eyes).

Now... just to get this out right now, I honestly dont know what to think of this. I'd like to say I dont think it's an issue, but at the same time, I dont know if it is. Like for stuff like you wanted your child to have a different hair color, mehh, whatever. But making your child a different sex, or more intelligent, or more outgoing... these are personallity traits that shouldn't be controlled by science (unless you're correcting for a genetic abnormality).
Now i'm not saying we should stop genetic manipulation of fetal development either. Advancement in this field is still an amazing idea. Imagine getting pregnant after trying to so long, being so happy about it, and then find out your child has Down Syndrome. Very sad day. Now imagine the same situation, and by simply giving you a retro-virus injection, they can correct the issue. Sad day turns back into happy day.

There are always "good and bad" about scientific advancements. The Nuclear bomb brought us nuclear power (good). Coal power brought us global warming (bad). Hair spray makes girls look pretty but causes holes in the ozone layer. Genetic manipulation is no different.


3) Stem cell research

Why... in the world... is this bad?
So there's an argument about this stating that stem cell research is morally wrong because it requires the destruction of a "living" fetus. And since that's the main issue, a lot of people just DONT WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT ANYMORE.

Now, something that really has always bothered me about people and their argument of ethics is that they make their primary argument, and that's that, they dont want to hear anymore about it.

In the United states, there are clinics that specialize in Invitro Fertalization. This means you take a bunch of sperm, a bunches of eggs, mix them, watch them, and then you implant the ones that start successfully fertilize to the Uteral walls, and wait for babies. If I remember my numbers correctly, these clinics throw out as many as 300 eggs a day that are successfully fertilized. Of these 300 per day, at the stage they dispose of them in, they're almost entirely stem cells. So instead of using them for life saving research, they are throwing them away because it's illegal due to moral reasons... I'm sorry, but I dont see the issue here.

The main group of people opposed to stem cell research? Religious groups... Thanks Religion!!! You complain about the implications of stem cell research for life saving procedures while at the same time completely ignoring your constantly riddled past of mass murder and large scale population control, not to mention all the wars religion has started, and all the people that have been murdered in "His" name. (Budhists, you're exempt in this).

4) Genetic manipulation against Gods will.

So again i'm just going to start this one by mentioning something of myself so you understand my mindset. I'm not the most religious person in the world. I think i'm agnostic? Essentially I believe that there is, or may be, something that's all powerful. But I dont claim to be smart enough to know what it is, where it is, how it works, etc.

"If man were meant to fly he would have been born with wings"
Milton Wright.
So what did the Wright brothers do? Gave their dad the finger and proved him wrong. Now people the world over fly. Why do we fly? Because it's sooooooooooooo easy to do.

Religion, many of them, if not all, are against mans attempted to manipulate our own genetics. "Who are we to play god" and so on. The primary argument for this is that man shouldn't play God.
To all the religious people who believe this. I have a single question for you.

If God never intended us to manipulate our own genes, then why did he make it so incredibly easy to do so?

Like... it's not only easy, he practically gave us a map. He created the Universe in a way that he felt was the best, he created man in his image, so why didn't he make genetic manipulation impossible if we were never intended to play with it? How do you infact know that he didn't make it this simple intentionally, so that we can better ourselves.

Now I know a lot of religiuos people dont believe in evolution (seriously, how can you NOT believe in evolution? Pick up a book, research some evidence... wow...) but for all we know, maybe Gods intent is for us to use this to allow us to evolve to the next level.


After all, how esle are you going to figure out how to grow an army of genetically engineering super soldiers to held us fight of the upcoming alien invasion? Duhhh!

RIAA - Music Fines and taking over the world

So as everyone knows the RIAA are a bunch of drunk lawyers that like to mash random numbers into a keyboard to come up with how to fine someone for copywrite infingement. There is no sensibility, no justification other than the fabricated reality that these incompitent morons seem to live in.

To show what I'm taking about, I have a special guest today to help me work this out, his name is Basic Math. (this entire concept went through my head while i was taking a pee break... i know i didn't have to tell you this, but i wanted to).

A fellow coworker I know was bragging to me some time ago how he has a 500GB hard drive, completely full of ripped music. And, as ridiculous as this sounds, yes he actually did manage to fill a 500GB drive, and had another external drive that was nearing capacity.

So i'm going to use an average of 4minutes per song to derive my numbers here to show you what i'm talking about.

Your typical MP3 runs at about 1MB/minute
A 4 minute song with be 4MB
There are (approx) 500,000MB on this hard drive
This brings us to approximately 125,000 songs on this drive
Fine this person $150,000 for each infringement

Total damage done to the music industry by ONE PERSON!

$18 750 000 000
or
18.75 trillion dollars

How much is that exactly?
well...

The music industry, globally, is worth approx $130 billion.

So the RIAA is trying to tell the public, that this one person, did damages that total over 144 times the total worth of the entire music industry? And this is supposed to be realistic?

How are they even allowed to make these ridiculous claims to anyone is beyond me.

That's really all I wanted to get out on this one. Anyone have any thoughts they'd like to add?

Diseases. Good or Bad? Well....

Lets start off with an important fact that really is the basis for this entire posting.

There is no such thing as "Dying of old age". If anyone tell you otherwise, slap them in the mouth and say "That's from Kris".

"But Kris, if you can't die from old age, what do you do die from?"

Well there's lots of ways. You can get in a car accident, slip on some ice, get shot or stabbed, drink yourself too death, infections, viruses, drown, fire, become exploded (yes i know that's not gramatically correct, it just sounds funner that way) you get the point though. Then there's the way you usually die when you get old: The Dreaded Disease.

So what kinds of Diseases are there? That's a loaded question. There are many forms and types of diseases. There are Infectious Diseases (black plague). Genetic Diseases (some types of Heart Disease), Circulatory disease (Raynauds Disease, I have this). Mainly we're looking though at some of the big ones, starting with the ticker.

So they say Heart Disease kills 1 in 4 people. This means according to this statistic that 25% of the populations deaths can be accounted for by a failing heart. This doesn't specify what type of hearth disease as there are many types, but there we have it.

I'm *pretty sure* this is the big one. Kidney disease is pretty high up there from what I understand. Lung disease such as pheumonia is common is older people.

So lets break this down. Pretty much every method of dying has a cause to prevent or stop it. If you can die from it, there's a group that wants to protect you from it. Which is great. Scientific advancements lead to longer lives, higher quality of life, etc. But how far does it go?

Eventually it breaks down to you simply can't cure all diseases. You can't stop every way that we die. If you do, people start becoming immortal.

Now this is probably a point where a lot of people go "what's so bad about that, dont you want to live forever Kris?" SURE I DO!! I'd love to live until the first FTL drives becomes active. Watch Mars get colonized. Hopefully Alien encouters. See what technology does in the future. But that's not what life does. The day that we create a system that allows for immortality is the day that we halt mandkinds evolution in this universe. A living being can not evolve. Evolution takes place over millions of years because death is allowed to occur, because Evolution takes place by people growing up, having children, having your children become slightly better than you, and then your genetic code dying off, allowing for the species to advance.

That's the problem with diseases. We cant "cure" all diseaeses. We can't stop death. It's required unfortunately.

Now, DONT take this as me saying that we should stop all research. I might be saying death is needed, but seeing a 7yr old girl dying of Kidney failure if there's a way to prevent that is not needed. A 40yr old dying of a heart attack should be something preventable. And Diseases like MS and Alzheimers are just dumb.

In the end, you're going to Die. No matter how rich or poor, famous or unknown, awesome or not. What's important isn't that we find ways to fight disease to cure them all, but at the least to give people the lives they deserve to live.

Gay Marriage, California, and everywhere

Gay Marriage.
Another way to describe this is "Two people who love each other promising to devote themselves to each other for the rest of their lives" (or until divorce).

As you can probably guess i'm for Gay marriage. Even that's too restrictive though. I'm really just for two people who love each other wanting to express it in this way.
Now, everyone's heard the arguments. Marriage is man and woman. Marriage is blah blah bible. And my favoriate... you shouldn't sully the sanctity of marriage by allowing same sex couples bond in this way (yet it's ok for America to vote on who gets married on reality TV?????).

So in California, we have a very specific situation. The courts decided, much to the approval of many people, that same sex marriages should be legalized. Fantastic right? 6 months later we have a vote that goes through that shows that the majority of people who live in the state of California dont want same sex marriage to be legalized.
So last week i'm watching some TV show, honestly can't remember which one it was, but there was an advocate for same sex marriage speaking about that very situation. In it she mentions the typical arguments. We've all heard them. And then the one that really irritated me was this: (obviosuly this isn't going to be an exact quote, but the point is the same).
"...very upset about this decision. California shouldn't be bullied and pushed into 'Mob Rule' just because the majority of people want something"

shocking...

So i'm going to take this on a bit of a related tangent before continuing. Ethics and morality are not defined. They are not specific. Infact, with a good enough argument, you may even be able to say they aren't even real. The morality of a populace is determined, in large part, by the thoughts of the majority living in a specified area. Lets list some examples:

In China, people eat dogs... it's like their chicken (except, chicken is actually their chicken). People in North America probably find this immoral.
In tribes that practice cannibalism, to them, it's not immoral to do so. It's accepted in their populace.
Are these examples too harsh?
What about child sex laws? A few hundred years ago it was totally acceptable to be a 14yr old mother (or younger). In certain countries it's immoral, based on reasons such as religion, to expose your face in public. Kissing someone on the lips in public is considered immoral in some countries. Striking your wife is considered morally acceptable in places.
It comes down to the fact that no single thing is actually moral or immoral as these are concepts that are constantly changing, based on flawed human perception, based on culture, upbringing, religion, etc.

Back to gay marriage. The politicians have a job. When a given politician is given power, it's because the majority of people like his beliefs, and want him to be the person to make the tough decisions, for your community, town, city, or country. If the majority of people say "make something illegal", a politicians job is to do that. They held a vote, the majority of people were against it, so that's where it went. How would you feel if the majority of people here in canada wanted drunk driving to be illegal, but the government went "you know what... too bad!". And yes I know this is a ridiculous example but it's set to make a point.

Should Gay marriage be legal? Of course. Marriage doesn't do anything other than provide a ceremony for two people to express their love for one another. No one gets hurts, no one benefits more than they should otherwise (gay couple can still be considered common-law) and two loving people walk away with the same wedding day memories that everyone should be allowed to share.

But if the majority of people in an area say no... i'm sorry, but that's how democratic areas work. It's upsetting to see so many people against something so pure, and I hope that it does some day change and that people stop merely "accepting it" and start realizing that that's just the way things should be.

Love is Love. You dont choose it, you dont force it, it just happens.
But the sad truth is... Majority Rules.



This Post dedicated to Jo, who waited for it with "bated breath".

Starting things heavy - The Burka

Now before I go further, hence forth it's referred to Burqa. Why? Because if you look it up, that's actually what it is. It just doesn't seem the news agencies know how to spell that. (I hope I didn't just put my foot in my mouth, but that's what I read up during my research).

In France, there was a news article about 2 men robbing a bank wearing Burqa's. It doesn't actually state what nationality the two men were, but it doesn't sounds like they were Muslim.
So currently France is talking about banning the Burqa for public wear. They're doing this because, with the face covered, they can't see who the person actually is. Why is this a big deal? Well, really yeah. There have been instances in the past where Muslim men have worn Burqa's for terrorist strikes. I believe I read a story that stated the US believes this is how Osama Bin Laden evaded capture more than once. It's a good way to keep yourself hidden.
On the otherside, the Burqa is a very important part of these people culture and religion. Just because you're a Muslim family living in another country, means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about the kind of person you are. We have "at home terrorists" such as the Unabomber and the Oklahoma City Bomber, and then we have people living here from other countries that love it more than these people ever will, and they're outcast as terrorists because of their beliefs.

So there's a VERY general outline of the situation. There idiots who robbed the bank did so, probably because they wanted to rob the bank. They either wanted to also give out a message because they believe in the ban, or they just wanted to use it as a method to get in without being seen. More than likely? Banks have cameras... you throw your Burqa off the instant you get in... I cant imagine these people weren't trying to give a message, but who knows?

The face is used as a means to identify someone. And there are some times when I myself find it shocking that the situation even arises. Should Amish people be allowed to get pictureless ID's? Of course not. Burqa's worn in passport photos and drivers licenses. No. This completely defeats the purpose.

I myself find it upsetting that this has been made an issue. The only reason it has is because people have abused it. But this has been a connection that has been made through-out the ages, many many times. Drugs like Herroine which were once legal were made illegal because people abused them. Speed limits are enforced because people abuse speed. And to bring a demographic into the mix, teenagers pay more for insurance because teenagers abuse their rights to drive more so than adults. Is it fair that 20% of Teenagers that are irresponsible jerks rocket the price for the other 80%? Sure isn't.

Now here's where I stir the mix. France is trying to pass this law and, for whatever the reasons, there are some valid points as to why. No it's not fair, no it's not right, but there ARE safety reasons for it. If you cant at least agree with me on that you're just not paying attention to anything. Would the bank still have been robbed? Yes of course, they just would have used a different method... Balaclavas in the winter time maybe?
Issues like this are very specific to the country you're coming from. You don't go from living in Amsterdam, then start growing pot in Mexico and whine when you get arrested. You don't go to a country like Pakistan as a woman and walk around in a Bikini, and then whine that you get in trouble. You don't move to California as a Lesbian couple, and then bitch when you get there because they wont let you get married. (nice segway into my next blog post right? :).

For safety issues, until something else can be designed, I have to admit I do agree with this law. I understand why. I don't agree with it from a religious aspect, moral aspect, etc, but i do from a safety aspect. Once we come to the point like in Minority Report, where every entrance can be fitted with remote eye scanners, then yeah. Or hey, even if something else can be thought up of. Other than safety, I really see no other reason.
And just in case my opinion hasn't been clear in this, this has nothing to do with the Burqa, or the Muslim religion, it's simply a matter of not being able to identify someone by their faces. This is an incredibly easy way to hide yourself, easily improvised, cheap, and effective if this is the kind of person you are.

Unfortunately it all boils down to the life long adage:
A few rotten apples spoil the bunch.

Sad, unfortunate, but true.

The here and why

Ok so the point of this blog is two fold.

1) I want to talk about science, technology, and everything related. I like this stuff, and I think that we need to harness this a little better. Hawkings recently made a statement saying we aren't truly safe until we get off the planet. This is something I've felt for a long time as well, and in order to reach this, we need to research pretty much every technological field that exists. Which ones?
Biology: To more understand what is needed to exist on an extraterrestrial world.
Chemistry: Way too broad. Chemistry will be needed for terraforming efforts, water creation, water filtration, etc etc.
Botany: How do we terraform an entire planet? Moss, fungus, all different kinds of plant life that do different things. From creating oxygen, to filtering out toxic levels of element and noxious gases. Plants are cool!
Physics: If I have to explain this, get out of my blog! :P Propulsion, radiation shielding to get to the planet we get to, exoplanet detection, and even as far out as asteroid detection to protect ourselves until we can get off planet.

2) Logic. From time to time I see stories on the news, internet, etc. I hear about laws countries are passing, policies organizations are creating, all kinds of things that infuriate people for many different reasons. From time to time these stories are pushed out to the people from the press, and they create a flurry of emotions. Sometimes these decisions are based on emotion. Sometimes they're based on the simple fact of "this is the way something is, this is the way it should be to make it safer".
*disclaimer* I already have a couple couple that will be out, later today, tomorrow, very soon. I am an emotional person as well. There will be times when I start a story with "This is what I believe" and then the story takes a drastic turn based on what I feel logic dictates. If you agree, disagree, etc, DONT do it in an angry or confrontational method. That's not the point here. If I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong. But do it in a way that this Blog is meant to be written in. Thought out, logical, and intellectual.