AC/DC Marriage

Alongside ruder ones, there is a polite word for those who prefer their mates to be made of plastic and wires: technosexuals. (Calvin Klein already has trademarked “technosexual” for some unspecified future product.)

It’s not a new idea. Arguably, the Pygmalion and Galatea myth contains the seeds of it. The plot of Fritz Lang’s 1927 scifi movie classic Metropolis hinges on a sexy robot. My Living Doll was an early ‘60s sitcom. The cult 1987 film Cherry 2000 takes it further. Making Mr. Right, also from 1987, gender-reverses the same idea. Full size dolls costing thousands of dollars (see http://www.realdoll.com/) are a present-day marketing success. Efforts to make true robots both sexually attractive and lifelike continue. Kokoro manufactures and markets some of the most successful (and disturbing) animatronic “actroids.” (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3iYEc6Dht4)

According to Scientific American, artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy asked a crowd at the Museum of Sex in New York City “Why not marry a robot?” One of the visitors countered by asking if anyone who wanted to marry a robot was deluded. Levy’s response was, “If the alternative is that you are lonely and sad and miserable, is it not better to find a robot that claims to love you and acts like it loves you?”

I suppose I’ve heard less sound arguments for marriage. In both of the 1987 movies mentioned above, the protagonists have to decide between a biological partner and a mechanical one. The two films end opposite ways. In case you haven’t seen them, I’ll let you guess which is which.

There is little doubt that human/robot relationships (if that is the right word) will be part of the future. Whether it ever will cease to be awkward for a technosexual to announce his or her predilections to mom and dad is another question.

Caveowners

People are notoriously hopeless at judging risks and benefits, a fact which provides profits to insurers and windfalls to casinos. We fret over very small risks while blithely accepting big ones. More people are afraid of snakes than of cars, for instance, though only 10 Americans per year, on average, die of snake bites while 40,000 die in their cars. What about the safety of our kids? There never (as in “not ever”) has been a single death reported from marijuana overdose, while a dozen teenagers die on football fields in a typical year. What activity have we made illegal?

The “savanna principle” is probably at the bottom of this. Human brains are not hard-wired to understand anything that didn’t exist in the ancestral environment where they evolved. Cars didn’t exist 10,000 years ago, so, while we can grasp the dangers intellectually, we don’t feel them viscerally – not in the way we feel the dangers of poisonous snakes, which were plentiful. Viscerally is the way we make most of our decisions, despite the self-flattering “Sapiens” in Homo Sapiens.

Our poor risk assessments often counteract efforts to keep us safe. Again, cars offer a good example. When drivers know they have four-wheel drive or better brakes, they drive faster and less carefully even in bad weather conditions. Insurers in the UK once offered discounts to drivers of cars with safer brakes. ‘They don't anymore,’ says John Adams, a risk analyst and emeritus professor of geography at University College. There was no reduction is accidents.

There probably is no getting around our emotional responses to different types of risks and opportunities. However, our cortex is good for something, and it behooves us to double check those responses occasionally to see if they make any sense. It might save us some grief.

Where We’re All Better-Looking at Closing Time

For any number of reasons, Australia is one of the world’s most enjoyable countries to visit. In addition to the more commonly noted attractions, there is a special appeal for single men, at least for those who rely heavily on impaired judgment in their prospective dates:

“SYDNEY (Reuters) - Two out of three Australian women binge drink, with some knocking back more than 11 alcoholic beverages in a single sitting, according to a survey.”

With that blood serum level, perhaps even Franky’s monster could find a bride at closing time without troubling Vic to sew more bodies together.

According to the UN World Drug Report, Aussies also smoke slightly more marijuana per capita than Americans. Unless the amorous traveler carries around a pocketful of snacks, though, this may not help much. Do Americans score high on any impairment chart? Regrettably, yes. More Americans than Australians use hard drugs, but no closing time is late enough to make that attractive.

Went Thataway

A recent TCM showing of Since You Went Away (1944) starring Claudette Colbert and Joseph Cotton, caught and held my attention. The movie assuredly is wartime propaganda, but this is not a fault. Displaying a very 1940s mix of sophistication and innocence, the film centers on Anne Hilton (Colbert) and her two daughters getting on with life on the home front while Anne's husband is in the service. The strains intensify when he is reported MIA. This is a family as we would like it to be, made up of flawed but fundamentally decent individuals who are as we ourselves would like to be. It all seems so very much worth fighting for. The movie is another example of that special 40s knack for portraying common nobility without coming off as Pollyanna or preachy.

There is a long standing argument over whether drama should reflect an audience or elevate it. Very long standing. Aristotle complained about Euripides, saying, “Sophocles presents men as they ought to be, while Euripides portrays them as they are.” In truth, there was room for both dramatists in the Theater of Dionysus, and there is room in the multiplex for both sorts of movies today. There is even a place for other types of movies altogether, such as those that portray us as we're glad we're not (Hannibal Lector) or as we fantasize being (Spiderman).

Any type of portrayal, of course, is incidental to the real purpose of movie-making: selling tickets, DVDs, and downloads. Sam Goldwyn's dictum is still largely heeded in Hollywood: "If you want to send a message, use Western Union." Since You Went Away sold tickets in 1944 because virtually every household had someone who went away. Our soldiers still go away, though not in such overwhelming numbers, so would a modern remake find a commercial audience? I don't know, but I suspect not. Audiences have changed a lot since 1944. To ensure ticket sales, the homebodies might need to be sexy martial artists with secret identities.

Cat and Mouse

"I've been in love 10,000 times
All I have to do is remember my lines"
-- ZZ Top

The orders of magnitude in that lyric may be hyperbolic, but most single adults know the feeling.

The advantages to being single are innumerable. There are no negotiations about the ordinary business of life. Our idiosyncrasies have free rein. There is no need to explain why exactly we are getting up at 3:30 in the morning to watch a DVD of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. There is no argument over whether to remodel the kitchen and, if so, how much to spend on it. The only obnoxious friends and relatives in the house are one's own. There is no discussion over what munchables to toss in the microwave (or whether to remove them from the box first). There is no struggle for a piece of the blanket at night. There is no question about the current checking account balance. There is simplicity and peace of mind. Add to this Mark Twain's grumble that love affairs end either of two ways, badly or tragically.

And yet… and yet… even the most curmudgeonly of us for some reason is sometimes tempted to complicate life, despite having been there and done that repeatedly. Some of this is hard-wiring, much the way a sated cat is hard-wired nevertheless to chase a mouse, without thought of what to do with it if caught. In the case of humans, what we catch almost invariably comes with baggage that no sane person actually wants. It may be worse if we are the mice.

Humans, unlike cats, have the option to ignore their hard-wiring – not easily, but we can do it. Then something eye-catching scurries by...

highPod

According to a study funded in part by the NIH and published in Addiction, ninth graders who listen to songs that mention marijuana are significantly more likely to use marijuana.

Well OK, but just a thought regarding chickens and eggs: might not stoners be more inclined to choose songs about pot than non-stoners? Just askin’.

Martian Media

This final weekend of January 2010, we have enjoyed a so-called Wolf Moon. This occurs when the moon is at perigee – its closest approach to earth in its elliptical orbit – and is full at the same time. It usually happens once a year. Sometimes it happens twice. This weekend, Mars also is easier than usual to spot, since it shines brightly and ruddily just to the left of the moon.

Looking at the objects Friday reminded me of the Phoenix Lander, which NASA has been trying to wake up for a couple weeks. Phoenix sits near the north pole of Mars where it has conducted geologic (areologic?) studies for the past two earth years. With the arrival of the Martian winter 5 months ago, the lander’s operations were shut down. Phoenix wasn’t expected to survive the winter, and apparently it hasn’t. NASA will continue to send instructions for a while.

The craft did the field work for which it was designed. What is more, it took the opportunity to say “Hi” to the Martians. Yes really. On the photo of the lander, what is the object to the left of the little flag that looks like a DVD? It is a DVD. It contains science fiction stories and artwork with Martian themes, as well as the names of a quarter million humans (without their cell phone numbers, which seems to me an oversight.)

One only can guess what the Martians will make of their depiction in the Terran media. Let’s hope they’re more amused than insulted. Perhaps the next DVD we send (high def, of course) should be more about earth. I wouldn't advise including any cheesecake photos though. I saw Mars Needs Women (1967) and know what can happen.