Illustrated Argumentative Essays: The Giant Box Robot

Of all the imaginative projects that my class put together, I was most impressed by the large three dimensional artwork that loitered inauspiciously next to the door: A man-sized robot made from water bottles and coke can boxes. When I entered our "museum" my eyes where immediately drawn to this particular piece, which towered over the rest by a few feet. But what really got my attention was the simplicity of the design, and of the materials used to create it. The main body of the robot was made of boxes that had been glued together, while the legs were made from empty water bottles that had been taped together. On first glance, the entire construction seemed precarious at best, as if a small gust of wind would break it to pieces. But what I first took to be shoddy workmanship turned out to be an illusion; this "machine" is more sturdy than its individual parts suggests, a strong whole made from weak pieces.

On Low-Tech Cyborgs Review

On Low-Tech Cyborgs, by David J. Hess, is an imaginative non-fiction essay about how the definition of the cyborg has changed throughout the past, the media's interpretation of a cyborg, as well as cultural interpretations of the cyborg phenomenon. The author pays close to attention to the difference between what he calls a "low-tech" cyborg and a "hi-tech" cyborg. An example of a low-tech cyborg given in the book is a South American Indian wearing a lip plug and body paint, while the Terminator is a classic example of a hi-tech cyborg. Hess, who calls himself a "low-tech cyborg anthropologist," also relates his experiences talking to a white shaman, whom he calls another example of a low-tech cyborg.
However, the essay soon takes on the form of a kind of dream, in which the author switches from one real or imaginary experience to another without any obvious connection. The author also starts to compare the media's interpretation of the cyborg to a new-age Tonto, the sidekick of the standard Lone Ranger character type, without giving any reason for this assumption apart from the claim that like Tonto, cyborgs are being depended upon to assist the Lone Ranger, i.e. the majority group of the population.

Socializing the Cyborg Self Review

Socializing the Cyborg Self talks about modern technologies used in the Gulf War, and how they have desensitized the soldiers (and even the civilians) to killing. Because the modern soldier only sees the enemy on a computer screen and can kill them with the push of a button, warfare is becoming more and more impersonal. When in the past you looked your enemy in the eye as you gutted him with your sword or shoot him with your flint-lock rifle from a few meters away, it is now possible to kill someone without them even knowing it until it is too late. This becomes even more apparent when seen through the context of digital entertainment, especially through video and computer games. Not only do today's soldiers deliver death with a joystick at home, they do the same at work, albeit with more permanent results. The similarity between actual warfare and entertainment warfare on the computer becomes especially apparent in the best selling shooter game Modern Warfare, specifically the mission "Death from Above." In this particular assignment, you play the gunner of an AC-130 gunship, a large jet airplane equipped with long range cannons. The player sees the world below through a grainy black and white heat filter, where all targets stand out as white silhouettes from a darker background,visually indistinguishable from an actual airplane targeting screen. Your only objective in this mission is to quite literally deliver "death from above." As you blow up house after house and see the little silhouettes flying through the air, you hear the other occupants of the plane remarking on your shooting with comments along the lines of "Nice shot!", "You got five on one hit," and "Did you see that car get blown up?" When I played this mission, I could almost hear real soldiers flying above a real battlefield say those exact same things as they indiscriminately kill dozens of people by pushing a button thousands of meters away. Killing is no longer a humanizing business. Everyone can do it these days without even knowing the difference between shooting at an AI in a game and shooting a human being in a real conflict.

Ray Bradbury's The Veldt Review

The Veldt is a science fiction short-story about a wealthy futuristic couple, the Hadleys, who have spoiled their two children with all the technological marvels that money can buy. Among these extravagances is "The Nursery," a holographic room which displays whatever the user wants it to, complete with realistic sounds and smells. The children have become addicted to their nursery. According to a psychiatrist friend of the Hadley's, the room and the house itself (which even ties the children's shoes for them) have replaced the Hadleys in their children's lives. However, the couple only finds out how serious this has become when George wants to lock the nursery and take his family for a vacation in the real world; his children become hysterical and end up trapping George and his wife in the nursery, where a pack of holographic African lions kills them.
This is eerily similar to another short story, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon in which a man is in faulty cryogenic stasis and at his ship's computer's mercy. In both stories, the machines have become more than they were designed to be, and have somehow evolved an artificial intelligence that is concerned with self preservation. In The Veldt, the nursery has become able to create things that are real and not just illusions of real things, and uses its new ability to defend itself from its potential destroyers. Even though the children ordered the room to kill their real parents, it should not have been able to comply to this homicidal request. In I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, the ship stopped following its programming, which stated that anyone who is conscious during a cryogenic journey has to be fed sensory information to keep the brain from degrading by feeding sensations from the subject's subconscious memory; instead it started to loop the same fictional scene to the main character over and over again, until he became unable to distinguish between what was real and what was simply a digital illusion.
In both short-stories, something that was supposed to be an illusion became corporeal: Whether it became such a perfect copy that it was impossible to discern any difference or because the machine was able to give life to its output is unimportant, since both have come to replace reality for those involved.

What to do if you suspect that your gerbil may be a Cyrbil (Cybernetic Gerbil)

1. Do NOT panic.
2. Do not tell anyone about your suspicion. Without irrefutable evidence,no one is going to believe you.
3. Remove the suspicious gerbil and put it in quarantine, away from other gerbils. If the subject is in fact a cyrbil, it is imperative that it cannot be allowed to make more of its kind. If this is not done immediately, you may soon have a cyrbil epidemic on your hands.
4. Subject the gerbil to ALL of the following tests. If a majority of the tests yield positive results, your little buddy is a cyrbil.
A: Firmly stroke the gerbil with a powerful magnet. If the gerbil acts strangely, i.e. it is glued to the magnet and unable to move, then it is either a) a cyrbil, or b) has eaten some metal. If this is the case, quickly remove the magnet from the gerbil's vicinity or you risk giving your furry friend a second navel.
B: Place the gerbil in a freezer for twenty-four hours. If the gerbil is still ALIVE: it is either a) a very hardy gerbil, or b) a cyrbil. If the gerbil is GONE: your life is in grave danger. Whether it is a cyrbil or not, it will be very mad and out for revenge. Learn to sleep with one eye open. If the Gerbil is DEAD: it was a perfectly ordinary gerbil, and not a cyrbil. Please disregard the following steps and turn yourself in to the nearest police station on charges of animal cruelty, you sick, inhumane bastard.
C: Put your gerbil in contact with a computer mouse. If it attempts to procreate with it, it is probably a cyrbil.
D: Place the gerbil on your computer's keyboard. If it moves around and looks curious and interested at its new surroundings but otherwise ignores the keyboard, it is probably a regular old gerbil. If it starts to hack into your computer's account and proceeds to download and e-mail pornographic images to random people in your contacts list, it is either a) a cyrbil, or b) a very pissed gerbil. If you have already subjected the suspicious gerbil to all of the previous tests, the latter explanation is probably to correct one.
5. If the previous tests have shown that your gerbil is, in fact, a cyrbil, and not a figment of your paranoid imagination, call the humane society immediately. Tell them that you have a rabid gerbil on the premises, since the truth will probably be too much for them to handle.
6. If the humane society hangs up on you, which they very well might, call the local SWAT team. Tell them that you have a rabid humane society employee on the premises. When the SWAT team arrives, tell them that the humane society employee was bitten by a rabid gerbil and that he has escaped. Once the helpful cops have riddled the cyrbil with a hail of deadly bullets and have thrown its remains into a fire, they will then proceed to hunt down every single member of the humane society, looking for the "rabid" one. This should provide you with some satisfaction, since the bastards hung up on you.

Adventure Report

Two hours into the experiment: The weather was fair at the moment. It had rained earlier today, but the clouds had soon dissipated, leaving the land as unblemished as before the rain. No puddles were to be seen; the ground looked dry, as it always did around these parts. I was glad of the change in weather. Not that the rain bothered me, but it did reduce my visibility, making my task all the more arduous. I was out hunting. A man in the nearby town wanted some crocodile skins, and was willing to pay me for six of them. He needed them for some undoubtedly important purpose, which I hadn't bothered reading about. Not that it mattered in the least, especially since this was the third time I had done this particular assignment. After a few minutes I finally spotted a crocodile. On closer inspection, I noticed that it was the wrong type. For some reason, the guy wanted only the skins of young crocodiles. The next one I saw looked more promising. This particular specimen was a bit more powerful than I was, but I trusted in my skill and the element of surprise. I tried to turn a bit to the left, to make sure it was alone, but I only managed to move a few inches. Annoyed, I looked down at my mouse and turned it over. Sure enough, there was a small hair stuck to the laser light at the bottom. I let out a frustrated sigh; 1600 dpi, and the stupid thing couldn't even shine past a thin hair. That was the problem with laser mice: if something interrupted the beam, the mouse wouldn't register any movement. I took a blunt pencil and carefully removed the hair, inspecting it more closely. It was light brown, almost sandy colored. “If those gerbils don't stop shedding everywhere, I will work them over with a lint brush,” I thought angrily. The rough sounds of combat coming from somewhere in front of me interrupted my thoughts. I looked about for the commotion, and saw that the crocodile I was trying to kill had approached while I wasn't looking and was now busy biting and snapping at me. I freeze it in place with a spell, then moved out of its combat range and bombard it with fireballs and more ice spells until it dies. Rummaging through its remains, I find a broken tooth and a scrap of hide, but no complete skin. “Just one more hour,” I silently repeated to myself like a mantra, over and over again.
Thirty minutes into the experiment: I was bored. I had forgotten how repetitive this game could be: “kill ten of that, bring me eight of this,” again and again. Whether collecting pirate hats or troll skulls didn't really make a difference. Yet for some reason there were thousands of people in this country and tens of thousands world-wide who played this game for hours at a time, some even non-stop. I had heard of people dying of exhaustion and lack of food because they did too many all-nighters without taking any breaks. But what was it about this virtual world that enticed so many to spend more time in it than the real world? What had this man-made universe to offer that people longed for? It was this question that made me decide to spend three hours in Azeroth, the world of the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft. To tell you the truth, I couldn't see what made it so special. The effort it would take me to become fully immersed in it would far outweigh its benefits. It it is fun for a while, but definitely not a substitute for the real thing. Maybe some just hated their life and wanted to escape it? Or had they become so reliant on their technology that they had to immerse themselves as fully as possible in their devices? After three hours of trying, I was not much closer to finding out what made a WoW fanatic tick.

Encounters at the End of the World Review

Encounters at the End of the World is an intriguing documentary by Werner Herzog, famed German film maker and director. As Herzog put it himself, "This is not a typical Antarctica film about fluffy penguins." In fact, it is about an equally interesting race that has decided to call the seventh continent its home: the human race. Even though Antarctica is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth (or maybe because of it) thousands of people work and live there in a number of permanent camps and research stations, each with his or her own story and reason to be there.
Herzog meets many strange and memorable characters on his journey, including a philosopher/construction worker, a welder related to a South American Aztec monarchy, a man who escaped the iron curtain, and a hermit living with and studying penguins, who, among other things, has observed his fair share of penguin love triangles. All of these people have only one thing in common: their love for the harsh but beautiful continent they call home. Werner Herzog himself was drawn to the alien landscape of Antarctica, mainly because a friend of his send him footage of divers swimming under the Antarctic ice shelf, studying the invertebrates that lived there.
I think that Encounters at the End of the World is an interesting portrayal of all the different people whom we are likely to meet at the geographical end of the World, as well as the stunning landscape and climate found there. But the scenery is just an added bonus; what brings people to Antarctica is the fact they can be among others who also love the least inhabited place on Earth, where you can follow and accomplish your dreams.

What does it mean to be Human?

Many thinkers and philosophers, both of the natural and the political kind, have tried to answer this question. In order to clarify what it means to be human, I think it is important to first find out what it means to be a living being in general. Biologists define life as anything that is made up of cells and has the ability to reproduce, either sexually or asexually. However, this definition is not perfect. For instance, viruses such as HIV are not considered living things, since they are not made of cells, being in fact much smaller than body cells. But if viruses are not living beings, then what are they? they are not machines (as far as we know), and they are not naturally occurring abiotic compounds that just happen to act exactly like living parasites. The answer to this question is that viruses are probably living things, only that under the current "standard" definition they are excluded.
The same is true for the general definition of a human being. Not only does this definition change from person to person, and from one group of people to the next, but those included in this definition change as well. For instance, the Neanderthal is considered to be a different species from us, the homo sapiens, yet many say that Neanderthals are humans as well. But what about dogs, cats, or hamsters? what exactly is the difference between a human, a Neanderthal, and a common "lowly" animal? The only thing that all definitions of a human being agree on is that we are somehow different from the rest of the fauna that stalks planet Earth. But what is that difference? Are we more intelligent that other species? How can one compare the intelligence of a gerbil to that of a human? You don't have to be a gerbil expert to know that any individual of that cute species will utterly fail the SAT, ACT, or the common IQ test. It's impossible for us to accurately test the "intelligence level" of another species using our biased human testing methods.
 Then what makes us different? is it because we have souls and animals do not? Are we the chosen species that gets to relax in Heaven while our beloved pets (the soulless beasts) get to burn in hell through no fault of their own? We may never know.

Intro Post

This blog is dedicated to Henry David Thoreau, Transcendentalist and Naturalist extraordinaire:

" I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
- Thoreau