Every so often, I get caught up in one of those point-and-click
Facebook games, like Farmville or Castle Age, and I become totally obsessed
with them. I’m building characters. I’m building farms. I’m building castles. I’m
fighting monsters. I’m raking in the fake currency. I’m completing quests, and
in the best of these, I’m connecting with people on the Internet I will
probably never meet in person. In short, these games allow me the opportunity
to feel successful and enjoy the feeling of actually building toward something.
It’s a feeling that seriously lacks in real life.
No matter how many blog posts I write, how many books I
sell, or how many SEO articles I write, I don’t see the results that show I am
building toward something. Instead, my real life looks like I am spinning my
wheels and staying afloat, with the weather and waves threatening to change all
that.
These games have a time element and a rewards system. Just
wait five minutes, and you get another point, or energy bolt, or gold piece to
spend. Of course, you always have the option of throwing the developers some
real money to get more of whatever makes the game go. The more you play, the
more new lands you find the more powers you develop and the more secrets you
discover.
Discovery also lacks in life, even as I seek out new
experiences and new information. It seems like I am surrounded by old
information that is told in different ways over and over. It’s like looking up
30 articles on heart attacks to see that chest pain is the most common symptom
for men. It’s something we all know. Isn’t there anything new out there?
Recently, I got caught up in “Magic the Gathering: Arena.”
It’s a great game. You collect cards and decks. You build decks, and then you
battle against other people that you can’t really communicate with. It has all
the elements I love: Discovery, strategy and card collecting. (I had so many Magic
cards when I was in my teens and twenties.) And then there’s the winning – who doesn’t
love winning? I just can’t continue on with it knowing the responsibilities I
have.
These games are time- and attention-stealers. They don’t do anything to advance you forward, and if you’re like me, they suck you in and reduce your effectiveness in other areas of your life. If you’re thinking about the next reward you can get in your match three gems game or Candy Crush, you’re not thinking about how to solve other problems you’re facing or how to help other people get through life better. Yes, they are fun, and if you can play them in moderation, more power to you. I, however, cannot. Now, if there were a point-and-click game that translated into helping people. That might be a game worth getting lost in.
“Trust is the most valuable commodity in the world” –
paraphrased from the Russian Defense Minister Toporov on “Salvation.”
In fewer than six months, the world will end. All it would
take to save the world is to launch a gravity tractor equipped with the newly
developed EM drive into space. It seems like it should be a relatively simple
thing to accomplish. The biggest issue is that no one trusts each other enough
to let anyone else do his or her thing, and it starts at the top with the
governments of Russia and the U.S.
REM: It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
Russia cuts off all diplomatic ties to the U.S. and threatens war. They know the asteroid is coming, and they don’t have the ability to build an EM drive, in spite of having kidnapped one of the scientists responsible for its invention. Russia threatens to shoot down anything shot into space and has already destroyed any satellite capable of crashing into the asteroid (which they should do, because if the asteroid is blown to pieces, it will result in a lot of meteors raining down on Russia and other countries in the Eastern Hemisphere rather than an extinction level event.) Russia threatens these things because they found that the U.S. has already dropped one asteroid on them (using the real-life Chelyabinsk meteor as part of its story).
Kaa the Python: Trust in Me
The U.S. president refuses to acknowledge the action, and
the only way to move forward with a launch is for billionaire Darius Tanz to
take PR official Grace Barrows to Moscow. Barrows is friends with the former ambassador,
who may be able to arrange a meeting with the Minister of Defense. Pointless
shenanigans (meaning the death of Barrows’ friend and the frame-up of Tanz and
Barrows for her murder by polonium) ensue and the two meet with Toporov, who
demands a test of their trust. Barrows and Tanz drink the tea laced with
SP-117, which is not sodium pentothal, and tell the truth about what they want
and how they propose to get it.
Russia still doesn’t trust the U.S., but it trusts Tanz and
Barrows. The launch is a go. Yay! We’re going to save the world with a joint
operation between the U.S. and Russia… Scrap that. The world learns about the
asteroid, and Russia withdraws its people again. The Secretary of Defense sends
up the rocket with the only EM drive, as far as he knows, and it gets shot
down. The world will be destroyed because government officials couldn’t do the
right thing. The only plan anyone has left is to shoot nuclear missiles at the
asteroid as it gets closer, and every scientist has already said that plan won’t
work. (Tanz has a secret plan, but the Secretary of Defense doesn’t know this
at the time he makes his stupid decision.)
Liam, the kid scientist responsible for the discovery of the
asteroid and calling its attention to Tanz and then develops the EM drive,
finally gets his ex-girlfriend Jillian back to Tanz Industries to do a job she’s
uniquely qualified for. She may be willing to get back together with Liam;
after all, she had to keep the secret from her family and discovered how difficult
it was. Then, the reporter shows up, attempts to blackmail Liam and reveals to Jillian
that they kissed. Liam is dumbstruck.
First of all, this is not how a good reporter behaves. However,
it’s the second time that this particular reporter attempted to blackmail
someone. She has also made friends with people who could provide her with
information for her story. She’s going to get the story regardless of the
morality involved in the methods to get it. Her story is the reason the
Russians pull out of the launch deal. She is also the reason why Liam and
Jillian have more trust issues than before.
Billy Joel: A Matter of Trust
While in Russia, Barrows and Tanz engage in a tete-a-tete,
which results in an SP-117 kiss. Barrows is dating Harris Edwards, her boss at
the Department of Defense. This action would likely undermine their relationship
by destroying the trust they have in one another, but back in the states, it’s
clear that Edwards doesn’t trust her. Professionally, he revokes her security clearance;
personally, he goes to a bar and has sex in the bathroom with the bartender.
When Barrows gets back to the U.S., he arrests her and then accuses her of
sleeping with Tanz. Dude, that ship sailed when you went to the bathroom with
the bartender. What gives him that right? Oh, and he’s being set up by someone
to make it look like he ordered Barrows to be assassinated.
Fleetwood Mac: Little Lies
Barrows daughter doesn’t trust her and ends up in Re/Syst. Tanz makes a deal with RE/SYST, who tack on a malware program to monitor Tanz’ work from here on out. With all of the lies and deception, it’s hard to see how anyone will gain another person’s trust.
Instead of people trusting in each other, we’re stuck with a
bunch of egos, lies, and the inability to let it go for the sake of saving the
human race. Everyone is involved in making shady deals and shadier decisions
that work to undermine what little trust they’ve built up. Worse, everyone is
ready to believe the worst of someone else; they turn on a dime regardless of
their confessed feelings. If this show is any indication of the truth about
people and trust, there is little difficulty in believing that a few people at
the top will wind up destroying the Earth for petty reasons and because they
lack the humanity, intelligence, and moral compass required to do the right
thing for everyone rather than the right thing for themselves. If people facing
the end of the world can’t trust each other, how can normal people in everyday
life expect to do so?
Trust isn’t an easy thing to rebuild. Once it’s broken,
there are few people who are big enough to build it back up, and few people who
change for the better in order to justify rebuilding the relationship. Human beings
are creatures of habit. If a person engages in behavior that destroys trust he
or she will probably engage in the same behavior again no matter the good
intentions the person may have. The point is: Trust is the most important
commodity in the world. The world is ending for someone every day; inspire
trust and help make it easier to face.
“I get to decide how I spend my last days.” Jillian storms
off after her boyfriend, Liam, reveals the details of the work that he is doing
at Tanz Industries to save the world. These are details that only 41 Americans
at the Pentagon know and just a few outside of the Pentagon. She’s angry
because Liam has revealed this information after about a month of knowing which
coincides with a month into their relationship, and he made the decision for
her.
“I get to decide how I spend my last days.” What Jillian doesn’t get, and she’s not the only one, is that these are our last days. We don’t have any more than we have. Whether it’s one because someone decides to shoot us or 146 because of an impending asteroid strike or 186 when the asteroid was just discovered or it’s a year or five years or 20 years, these are all our last days.
We don’t know how many days we have here; even if we did, it
shouldn’t change anything. We should be living our lives like today is one of
our last days. It’s certainly the last Jan. 31, 2019, I’ll ever see. If you
look at your calendar, it’s the last date with that number designation that you’ll
ever see. No one wants to face their mortality. We have to plan for our future
even if there’s the possibility that it never happens, but these are our last
days.
“I get to decide how I spend my last days.” Yes, you, too,
get to decide how you spend your last days. Today is your last day. Tomorrow is
your last day. Three days from now is your last day. Maybe you have more or
fewer, you don’t know. The only thing that you do know is that these are your
last days and you choose how you’re going to spend them. Spend them with
friends, spend them with family. Spend them making life better for the rest of
the world. Then when someone or something tells you your time is up, you won’t
have to worry about getting mad at someone you love because they withheld a
truth from you, especially if that truth is about the number of days left for
the rest of the planet.
Now at over 7.5 billion people the world’s population is
staggering large. It’s an incomprehensible number; as people, we aren’t
equipped to understand what that number means. Now, imagine having to whittle
that number down to 160 people who would carry on the human race on Mars or
elsewhere in space. That is one of the premises of the series “Salvation.” According
to the show, 160 people is the minimum viable population to ensure that the
species can continue.
In order for this small number to work, the chosen travelers
would need to be genetically diverse, fertile, and heterosexual. The population
would need to include 80 men and 80 women. There’s a good chance that marriages
would need to be arranged and monitored as time went on in order to prevent
in-breeding.
Engineers skilled in spaceship repairs, survivalists with
skills in establishing camps and places to live, and doctors skilled in combat
medicine would be some of the people the program could consider. Creative types
may be desirable for their ability to solve problems in unique ways, but they
would need to have more than just their artistic skills.
With this set of criteria, old people and children wouldn’t
make the cut. Poorly educated people wouldn’t get on the ship. People who claim
a sexual identity, other than hetero, would be left behind. Those with genetic
diseases or genetic disease history in their families wouldn’t be able to take
the trip. If it would be a true choosing of the best of the best, every person
would face a battery of tests that would eliminate him or her or allow that
person to move on to the next level.
The question that this type of plan demands is how would the
influential people who don’t meet the criteria be kept off the ship. Would the
inventor be allowed to travel, regardless of any other quality? Would the
president of the U.S. or the ruler of the country be allowed to go? If this ark
were a last-ditch effort to save the human race and Earth was facing destruction,
would the billion-dollar investor have a spot on the ark with no further
testing? Would a country like the U.S. reach out to other countries to find the
best people to put on the ark, or would it only save Americans?
Another thing to consider is that genetic diversity would
entail finding people that don’t resemble each other. This would make everyone
uncomfortable since human beings like to hang with people who resemble
themselves. It would also make it possible for people on the ark to form groups
of like with like, which could sabotage the genetic diversity of the group. “Salvation”
has a group of number crunchers on a committee with an unknown science fiction
writer to provide the heart; It’ll be interesting to see how they decide who
lives and who dies.
So, how would you go about selecting 160 people to board a
space ark? If you were able to save 1600 people in ten arks, how would you
divvy them up? Assuming there were a clear 160 best and 160 second best would
you mix them or would you keep the best with the best and the second best with
the second best and so on?
Three episodes into “Salvation” and I can’t believe how stupid the characters are. The premise of the show is there is a planet killing asteroid on a collision course with the Earth. It has a 97 percent chance of colliding with our planet creating and extinction level event. The U.S. government has known about it for three months, and ordered a rocket from the Tanz company to send up a gravity tractor. The rocket has to retrofitted to work for what the government wants, and in testing, the retrofits don’t work right and the rocket blows up. The gravity tractor is out as far as the government is concerned.
In the meantime, a college student’s algorithm found the
asteroid. The student informs his professor, who disappears. The student gets
close to Darius Tanz, head of the Tanz company, and tells him what’s going on.
Tanz contacts the Department of Defense. Both the student and Tanz get added to
the secret group that is trying to find ways to deal with the asteroid. With
the gravity tractor out, one of the men has proposed running the IO satellite
into the asteroid to knock it off course.
The student and Tanz point out that doing so won’t move the
asteroid. It would instead create a lot of meteorites that would rain down on
Earth with no telling where they would land. The man, who proposed the idea,
concedes the point and asks if Tanz has a better idea. Tanz proposes the
invention of an electromagnetic engine which doesn’t exist. They agree on that
solution for the moment.
Flash forward to the next meeting because the president is
getting nervous and wants an update. The man, who proposed the ramming of the
asteroid, comes back with the same proposal, but this time, he’s done the
calculations: the created meteors would rain down on Russia, China and Korea
killing an estimated 1.4 billion people. They have two windows. The first is in
seven days, the next is in 60 days. Rather than give Tanz and his team 60 days
to build and perfect their EM engine, they decide to go with the first window
because it gives them two chances to get it right.
What? The false logic here is that they have two chances.
Unless they have two satellites in orbit around IO, they have only one chance.
Waiting for the second window wouldn’t change anything. If they didn’t get it
right the first time, there is no second chance. The IO satellite would be
careening into space, and there’s no backup. You have one satellite and one
chance. Wait for the second window.
However, there’s a larger problem. Russia and China have
active space programs. Chances are they’re going to find out about this asteroid
and what the U.S. did. If they do, there’s a good chance, they’ll see the
destruction of the asteroid as an act of war and decide to use their missiles
to blow the U.S. up. The political wonks and military people should understand
that’s the natural reaction of any person in power and that this secret
asteroid information is going to get out. At the very least, some spy is going
to find out. More likely someone’s going to let something slip.
If colliding with the asteroid is the only choice, this
group needs to make sure it has a plan to evacuate the countries that are going
to be affected before it decides on this plan of action. That means the
information about the asteroid needs to be brought before the United Nations
and nations need to know what’s coming. Even more importantly, the U.S. doesn’t
have a monopoly on “smart” people or space. In fact, with the defunding of
NASA, the U.S. isn’t the leader in space exploration any more. The asteroid could
be used to bring countries together; instead of as a way to fill the American
ego.
One of my favorite renditions of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”is from Haley Reinhart and Casey Abrams. I showed it to my wife, and she said,after seeing a couple of other versions, “That’s a miracle.” I’ve led a singalong with the song at the Speakers’ Club in Blagoveshchensk to help improve English skills in a fun way, and after listening to and singing the song a half dozen times this season, I thought we should delve deeper into its meaning. Words like “scurry” and phrases like “pacing the floor” aren’t everyday English that people here may have encountered.
Frank Loesser wrote the “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in 1944 and performed it with his wife at parties. (That was something famous people did back before television and high fidelity.) The song let the guests know it was time to go home. It was so well received that Loesser and his wife were invited to several high society shindigs, so that they would perform the song. Loesser sold the song to MGM who used it in the film “Neptune’s Daughter.”
The song has a call and reply setup. The first line is labeled as “the mouse” (I really can’t stay) and the second line is the wolf (Baby, it’s cold outside). Most people will say that the male part is the wolf and the female part is the mouse, and because men still predominantly hold the power in society, this isn’t questioned, even though the first mass media showing of the song had both a man (Ricardo Montalban) and a woman (Betty Garrat) in the wolf position (while Esther Williams and Red Skelton sang the mouse parts).
Art is what you bring to it. In the 1940s and ’50s, this song may have been seen as a call to empowerment. The mouse, male or female, is trying to throw off the shackles of society and judgement. If the mouse is vocalizing an internal struggle and the wolf isn’t interrupting but vocalizing his or her feelings about the whole situation, the song could’ve been read this way, especially if the audience was unfamiliar with the labeling.
In the age of #metoo and hyperawareness of consent, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” becomes questionable. Whether the wolf part is sung by a male or female, it’s about one person trying to convince another to stay inside and cuddle, or more, depending on what’s in the drink. Even if it’s just alcohol, consent could become a further problem. Worse, these types of arguments are the same ones that people who commit sexual assault use to get the other person in an uncomfortable situation.
In a fantasy setting or movie, the song is enjoyable, flirtatious and fun. In real life, when “no” means “no”, there’s no place for this type of coercion. If s/he must go, call her/him a cab and facilitate a safe departing. If you have to invoke this song in your decision to do so, remember, it was originally written to signal to guests it was time to leave the party. Share this article if you liked it!
