Articles in Unfounded Speculation
Articles on wide-ranging topics, all of a speculative nature.
The Limits of Climate Disaster
Posted on February 27th, 2012 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Science,
Energy,
Climate Change
The record will show that I am certainly not a climate change denier. However, I think that many scenarios of global warming make unwarranted assumptions about the rate of increase of green house gas levels in the atmosphere and hence don't paint a realistic picture of the future. A prime example of this genre, but by no means exceptional, is Under a Green Sky by Peter D.Ward, which I've just finished reading for the second time. I don't have any problem with the greenhouse extinction theory he describes, which is brilliant and convincing, but I have a problem with the way he extrapolates it into the future.
Natural Is Not Good
Posted on October 31st, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Gay Stuff,
Science,
Politics
There is a series of articles I want to write on a variety of topics, if I ever get around to it, and they all sort of need this article as a basic underpinning. Rather than make the argument over and over, I would like to make it in one place and refer back to it. This point has been made by many other people many times before, but it seems to run very much counter to many popular ideologies, so it bears repeating: just because something is natural, doesn't make it good. A lot of natural things are bad, even evil. And a lot of unnatural things are good. Goodness itself is somewhat unnatural. Basing your ideology on arguments about what is natural and what isn't with the underlying subtext that natural is good is only setting yourself up for a fall as our knowledge about nature evolves.
Cultural Change Is Slowing Down
Posted on July 30th, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Science Fiction
Earlier, I blogged on my predictions for technological progress, with an angle on the implications for science fiction writing. My basic thesis is that writers in most times are guilty of extrapolating the notion of progress from their own time. Pre-nineteenth-century authors would generally extrapolate technological progress flatly, or shallowly, if it occurred to them to anticipate it at all. Nineteenth and early twentieth century authors perceived the rapid rate of progress in their time but extrapolated it linearly, tending to undershoot many aspects of the actual progress which occurred. And mid-twentieth-century to twenty-first century authors have tended to extrapolate the apparently exponential progress of our own time and overshoot our actual progress (i.e., "Where is my flying car?"). I was lately struck by the impression that the same thing seems to have happened with the way cultural change is depicted and anticipated.
Synthetic Fuels
Posted on May 8th, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Energy
Human survival at our present population level absolutely requires vast reserves of energy, to produce and transport food for our immense population if for no other reason. Particularly if we want to maintain anything like a comfortable and pleasant lifestyle for significant numbers of people, affordable and plentiful energy is a must. While there is a lunatic fringe in geology which proposes that oil is being continuously generated in the earth by microorganisms and essentially limitless, and others who favour an abiogenic origin of petroleum and much higher reserves available than conventional geology predicts, the safe money is on the hypothesis that fossil fuels are a finite resource, and that further, in the case of conventional oil, we are actually at or near a peak in production. Hence, curiosity about what, if anything, humanity will do when fossil fuels become scarce enough that running our civilization on them is prohibitively expensive leads one to the consideration of synthetic fuels.
Middle East Prediction
Posted on February 19th, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball
I'll put in my bet for what will become of the series of revolutions in the Middle East, which have so far resulted in the overthrow of the Arab governments of Tunisia and Egypt, and which have so far threatened Libya, Jordan, Bahrain and Yemen, with maybe more to come. As well, the unrest in non-Arab Iran has been re-ignited. A lot of questions have been raised. How many regimes will fall before the unrest settles down? And what does the future hold for those nations which experience successful revolution - does this mean that the Islamists will take over, is this the birth of liberal democracy in the Arab world, will the dictatorships simply be replaced by new dictatorships, or something else entirely?
Globalization Protests
Posted on June 27th, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
The G20 meeting in Toronto is wrapping up with the usual protests and usual violence and destruction having entailed. It leaves me with the question, why does the Left so reliably show up to protest all forms of multilateral discussion and international cooperation? You would think that the xenophobic and isolationist Right would take that role and that the Left would be the cheerleaders of multilateralism. And yet, the opposite is usually the case. Instead, the Left engages in pointless protests which always draw violent factions, which necessitate severe security measures at these types of events. Certainly this contributes to the alienation of the Left from most of the population and their continuing slide into political irrelevance.
I Think Jason Kenney is Gay
Posted on March 7th, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Gay Stuff,
Politics
.jpg "Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration ...")
Recently, CBC news ran a story about how Jason Kenney, the Conservative federal government's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, had the short discussion about gay rights in Canada removed from the new edition of the handbook that immigrants seeking citizenship must study. Kenney's office received the draft handbook, with the references to gay rights in Canada, and the minister's office issued a memo ordering it be deleted. The authors of the handbook asked the minister to reconsider and were refused. I wrote a comment on the CBC article, which was not approved by the moderators, where I stated that I have always thought that Jason Kenney was gay, and that this is a classic self-hating closet-case move.
The Avatar Phenomenon
Posted on March 2nd, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Reviews,
Movies
I meant to blog about this back a month or so ago when I first saw the movie Avatar (Wikipedia entry), but never got around to it. Then today, one of my co-workers told me about this clip on Youtube. Do yourself a favour and watch it - you need to see this. These people seem to be completely serious, including the dude having sex with a flower through his braid at the end of the clip. It is truly special. Yes, the special effects were amazing, and the 3D was remarkable. But I think that while most people I've talked to tend to claim they aren't as much into the story as they are into the effects, I think the popularity of the movie was actually rooted in the story and even more in the implicit ideology. Those willing to admit it, and those who go farther into the realm of farce like the LARP people are only the tip of the iceberg - something in this movie speaks to something fundamental in the collective psyche of our culture.
Interstellar Archaeology?
Posted on February 5th, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Science Fiction
Randy McDonald posted a link to an interesting discussion about the idea of interstellar archaeology on his blog.
Does More Social Acceptance Eventually Mean Fewer Gays?
Posted on February 3rd, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Crystal Ball,
Gay Stuff
"Randy McDonald wonders, like Sam, whether if homosexuality is genetic, there will be fewer gays born as fewer masquerade as (breeding) straight people and pass on their genes, himself suspecting that since it seems to by a byproduct of female sibling's reproductive strategies--at least among queer men--that it won't matter that much" (quoting Randy). I respond: