How Precious Is Life?

How precious is life? Look about you; it's everywhere. Even among the rubble and the ruin, there is life.

What's that you say? You meant human life? No, Gentle Reader, think again. We are but one life form among many, albeit an especially destructive one. Our upright posture and opposable thumbs have allowed us to claim supremacy over the flowers of the field and the beasts of the forest, but only because we can annihilate them at will. No, we are not special at all; ours is but a tiny niche over which we have a temporary reign. We asceded to the throne we claim only by the slimmest of chances; were it not for the comet that ended the Jurassic, that shrewish little creature would not have crawled out from under the rock that afforded him protection from the kings of the day, to found the line that eventually led to us.

If ours is a kingdom at all, it is a tiny one. The universe we know has a radius of some twelve to fifteen billion (that's 10⁹, to remove all question) light years, and within that radius, physics and chemistry are universal -- they must be, if we are to have any hope at all of understanding them in this little corner of it. That being the case, this tiny grain of some 4000 miles' radius cannot be the only harbor of life within the vastness that is the universe. Within that vast realm, is life precious? Perhaps it is; conditions favorable to the life we know occupy the narrowest of bands within the possibilities between the infernal cores of stars and the frigid depths of interstellar space. Perhaps it is not; by the current model, if conditions are favorable to life, life will appear, for such is the chemistry of the second period elements. Consider, too, that the 9.3 billion mile radius of the Solar System is but sixteen parts in ten thousand of a single light year, and up to fifteen billion of those light years constitute the radius of the known universe. The volume of the Solar System is, then, one part in 8.26x10³⁷ of the volume of the known universe. If you want it in other terms, that's

0.000000000000000000000000000000000001.21%

With odds like that, it's not very likely that there isn't some other place in the universe with conditions favorable to life.

No, we are nothing special; we are not the epitome of <insert deity/deities of choice here>'s work. If this is so, though, what is our purpose? To what should we aspire? How about let's just be nice to each other? If we are going to play games, why not pinochle and Parchesi? If we don't cause anyone else (human and non-human) any undue stress in our tours of duty on this rock, it may not be considered significant, but polite counts for something, too.

20 May 1969

The grandstand is empty now; the VIPs are being Very Important at whatever other places they are Very Important, the reporters are covering robberies, murders, and even a few non-political stories on their respective home turfs. Cocoa Beach is quiet; the throngs have gone home or continued their vacations. Two days before, they had watched and cheered as a great ship left the Earth amid flame and thunder. Now, their lives went on. But another journey begins today.

The massive steel doors had been rolled aside, the louvers had been retracted to the ceiling, and from a 445' by 170' hole in the side of the Vehicle Assembly Building, there comes a sound. It is a strange sound, indeed; it is a quiet whirring. The spectators of May 18th would not believe it, but this gentle sound, easily permitting conversations, is made by a twelve million pound structure. This structure crawls -- for that is its motive power, the Crawler-Transporter -- into the noonday sunlight of Merritt Island at a pace of barely a mile per hour, a pace that belies the power of its payload. It is watched intently by hundreds of eyes, but these are not the eyes of spectators; these are the eyes of the structure's caretakers. They walk alongside, watching first one tread, then another come to rest on the gravel of the crawlerway, where the weight of the structure crushes the gravel to powder. They ride on the deck, forty feet up, where they survey the structure's payload and ensure that its trip is as gentle and uneventful as possible. They ride on the hammerhead crane, 398' above the ground, measuring the direction and speed of the breezes, occasionally allowing themselves the luxury of a grand view of the surroundings. They take great care with this structure, as they had five times before, because its payload is one of no small importance. This structure's payload is a vehicle.

It is a vehicle much like the five which came before it, tall and slender, gleaming white in the sun. It is AS-506. John Smith from Anytown USA might not know how this vehicle is different from its predessors, but those who travel with it today know. Each time one of these vehicles made the journey for which it was designed, they watched its performance. Their coleagues in the Firing room watched, as did more in Houston TX. They looked for problems on the journey, and worked out ways to fix those problems for the next flight. They had flown two by remote control; then, the time came for the crews to fly. They were crews of three, who checked and tested the vehicles which, themselves, were the payloads of these great birds. Everything had to be right; everything had to be as close to perfect as humans could make it. There were people involved; and important in its own right was the fact that these people had jobs to do, and they had to do those jobs well. The jobs of those who had flown before was to pave the way for the three who would fly this time, and the job of these three is to pave the way for those who would fly later, while at the same time writing a new chapter in the history books.

For the sixth time, those who make today's journey with this structure, this Mobile Launcher, and with its payload, AS-506, ensure that the massive vehicle and the tower which was, for now, its life support remain perfectly vertical as the transporter climbs the concrete ramp at the end of the crawlerway. Then, at the top, they guide the launcher to its position over a trench in the concrete rampart that is Pad 39A. They place and secure the hundred nuts that will hold the launcher in place for the next 57 days. Five times before had they done this, but this time is special. While the Congress debates how to divide up the $3 per person that their near-fatal budget cuts will represent, these people keep their minds on the significance of the upcoming mission.

There will be only a few who will remember the designations of this vehicle and the spacecraft that are its payload; AS-506, CSM-107, and LM-5 would be an alphanumeric soup to most. Even as much as the general public will have its hands out, grabbing for that $3 per person, history will record the name of this vehicle's mission, the name by which it, itself, will come to be known. History will also record the call-signs of the two craft which are the payload of this launch vehicle, for they are Columbia and Eagle, and this is Apollo 11.

No, This Is Not Al Jazeera

It's the Huffington Post, reporting on an address Sarah Palin delivered at the Wasilla Assembly of God, where she once attended.

she told her audience. Well, not exactly. That's what she would have said were she fluent in Arabic. What the audience heard was

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God.

My point is this: The speaker makes all the difference. To Palin, what Palin said was fine because she said it. Had she heard the same sentence from 9000 miles to the southeast, her opinion of it would surely have been quite different.

Let's step back, people, and do some serious thinking about what the people who are nominally our leaders, and those who strive to become same, are saying. The conclusions that one may be forced to draw may not be altogether pleasant, but if they are, indeed, the conclusions that follow from the statements, the next task one faces is to decide what to do in the face of them.

2008-09-05
Translation by Google Translate

Tits For The Twit

I usually don't install my fake tits unless I'm hitting the street -- and sometimes not even then, if I'm just getting a quart of milk and a loaf of bread -- but, lately, I've been stuffing my bra even around the house. Yes, I know what's going on, and it is just a bit unsettling.

To call it a "desire" or a "need" or a "craving" just doesn't do it justice. I am a woman. There, I've said it. I may have a penis, I may like that penis, I may like to have sex using it (at least I think I do; it's sometimes hard to remember with months or years of involuntary inactivity), but I am a woman, nonetheless. And women, stereotypically, have globular breasts. Those globular breasts are, in fact, symbolic of femininity; just talk to the natal woman who has had a double mastectomy -- especially recently -- if you don't believe me. Tits are one of the highly visible aspects that declare to the world "She's a lady!" Moreover, I believe that there is a feedback loop that reinforces the concept of femininity in one's own self. As I sit here, typing, I see, in my peripheral vision, a characteristic curve, even through my sweatshirt (it's chilly in here because it's well below freezing outside), that issues a confirmation of "Yes, that looks right." I'm not consciously checking for this curve; it's just there, right at the bottom of my field of view, and I know the difference between what I'm feeling now and what I feel when my chest is flat.

What I find most significant, though, is what the feelings are like. The "Yes, that looks right" feeling I mentioned is not so much a feeling as the absence of a feeling; the feeling comes when it's time to take off the bra, and the breast forms fall away with it. Please believe me when I say that it feels like I am tearing body parts away from my frame; I will more than occasionally begin to cry, and I truly believe that, at least once, I have felt physical pain. Compare this to the fetishist who might feel arousal or elation when his bra is stuffed to JJ-cup proportions and, perhaps, when he removes his accouterments, anticipation of the next time, and you might begin to see a fundamental difference between these two people, who perform more or less the same procedure for quite different reasons.

Consider, also, that in at least my case, there seem to be "levels" of reaction to various gender-related qualities. My voice doesn't bother me, even though, without conscious modification on my part, I sound more like John Facenda than Jayne Mansfield. My facial features are not a source of discontent, possibly because a suitable choice of hairstyle will ameliorate most deliterious visual effects of my facial structure. I sometimes wonder what sex with a vagina would be like, but I'm not about to run out and buy aftermarket genitalia. What seem to disturb me most are my slim hips (somewhat), facial and body hair (assuredly), and flat chest (extremely). My discontent is such that I am led to hypothesize that there is hardwiring going on; but other people's mileage varies, so if there is hardwiring, it must not be to one standard plan or a strictly limited set of plans.

So, where am I going with this? The transgendered community need not fear that I am passing any sort of judgment; As I allude above, I am simply trying to look at myself and integrate what I hear other people say, in an effort to understand how gender works, and what bases might be involved in different people performing the same actions (e.g. crossdressing or body modification) for different reasons. I am not at all altruistic about this, either; I want to know how I work, and how I am similar or different to the person at the other end of the gay bar on "Trans Night".

Besides, I really wish that I could afford a boob job.

22 Nov 2008

Mom, I'm A... What Am I, Anyway?

I was just perusing my LiveJournal friends list, and I saw that one of my friends had posted his results of taking the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid test. I had the idea to take it, myself, then stopped because I did not know what, from my perspective, constitutes "same sex" or "opposite sex", especially in terms of my past.

I am a woman. There are, however, aspects of my being which are stereotypically masculine, and yes, I embrace those aspects. Biologically, I am male; with my hardware as supplied, I made small gametes (sperm) until the production facility shut down as a consequence of my having a vasectomy in 1984¹. As to my past, I knew that I was not the BOY that the world saw, that my parents expected, even if I did call upon my acting skills to play the rôle in order to minimize the Hell I'd otherwise get.

But the character does feed back upon the actor², and tests written to a specific class don't work well for individuals outside that class. Back in the day, there was the occasional boy that I found cute³, but did that constitute a homosexual or heterosexual tendency, given the nonstandard state of my gender? And today, I call myself lesbian because I largely like girls, but is that accurate given the fact that I like girls at least as much as a boy does, as does another girl?

Dr. Joan Roughgarden asserts that gender -- and even sex⁴ -- is a many-splendor'd thing. But every class has its exceptions, and how convoluted do gender and sex get when the hermaphroditic fish, when functioning as a female, likes another female fish? What horrors do I, the "male-to-female transgendered person", present to the gender biologist, with my proclivities that don't seem to fit any cast-in-concrete category?

Mom surely won't answer my question; for reasons of personal comfort, I won't even ask it of her. My hope, though, is that people at large might begin to rationally consider the gender question. If Pluto isn't a planet any more, maybe gender isn't so cut-and-dried, either.

2008-11-24

¹There seems to be a feedback: Sperm production ceases if the sperm already produced are not transported away.

²The best actors become the character while on the stage.

³I'll refrain from citing names to avoid publicly embarrassing any who might be reading this.

⁴Consider a group of fish species, the hamlets, individuals of which switch between production of eggs or sperm, depending upon population dynamics.