360 x 6 = XBOX 2160, 2+1+6+0 = 9 (German techno beats began thumping with a robot voice repeating ‘nein, nein, nein, nein, nein.’) Spotlight hits a sweaty shirtless David Hasslehoff and Bill Gates doing the robot to the rhythm of the techno beat. They continue the robot as avant-garde images of exotic animals floating in space wearing Master Chief helmets are projected on the screen; all the while the beat continues thumping, ‘nein, nein, nein, nein, nein.’ Bold lettering fills the screen with the phrase, “All your XBOT are belong to us”. The vivid images and mesmerizing trance become too much for the crowd to handle. David Hasslehoff and Bill Gates begin rolling in a pile of money while laughing uncontrollably as the audience’s eyes began to melt inside their skulls like the finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I actually want this to be a commercial for the system. FOR REALZ.

let’s meet
at the confluence
where you flow into me
and one breath
swirls between our lungs

for one instant
to dwell in the presence of the galaxies
for one instant
to live in the truth of the heart
the poet says this entire traveling cosmos is
“the secret One slowly growing a body”

two eagles are mating—
clasping each other’s claws
and turning cartwheels in the sky
grasses are blooming
grandfathers dying
consciousness blinking on and off
all of this is happening at once
all of this, vibrating into existence
out of nothingness

every particle
foaming into existence
transcribing the ineffable

arising and passing away
arising and passing away
23 trillion times per second—
when Buddha saw that,
he smiled

16 million tons of rain are falling every second
on the planet
an ocean
perpetually falling
and every drop
is your body
every motion, every feather, every thought
is your body
time
is your body,
and the infinite
curled inside like
invisible rainbows folded into light

every word of every tongue is love
telling a story to her own ears

let our lives be incense
burning
like a hymn to the sacred
body of the universe
my religion is rain
my religion is stone
my religion reveals itself to me in
sweaty epiphanies

every leaf, every river,
every animal,
your body
every creature trapped in the gears
of corporate nightmares
every species made extinct
was once
your body

10 million people are dreaming
that they’re flying
junipers and violets are blossoming
stars exploding and being born
god
is having
déjà vu
I am one
elaborate
crush
we cry petals
as the void
is singing

you are the dark
that holds the stars
in intimate
distance

that spun the whirling,
whirling,
world
into existence

let’s meet
at the confluence
where you flow into me
and one breath
swirls between our lungs

Graphene is the recent Nobel darling of the world of physics, and it has popped up in yet another experiment. Folks at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Rice University used the ultra- thin nanomaterial in an experiment that looked at the wetting of solids.

Yes, you heard me. And for once, I’m not just making up words. “Wetting” is a thing.

But, more on that in a second. First, what exactly is graphene? Graphene consists of honeycombed carbon atoms arranged in a sheet resembling atomic chicken wire. It is the thinnest material known to scientists. Graphene has a lot of potential uses, particularly in electronics (it’s currently being looked at as the base for flexible electronic devices and screens, as well as exploiting some of its other properties for use in electronic cooling systems). Because it will almost certainly come in contact with water in any of these cases, it is important that we understand exactly how it interacts with water. Hence the study.

The researchers coated substances like gold and silicon with a single layer of graphene, then placed a water drop on the surface. What they found was that the water droplet seemingly ignored the graphene and acted almost exactly like it normally would on the particular surface.

Which may seem a bit confusing (it did to me at first glance). What’s so special about this? Before I give you the specifics of what makes this so interesting, we’re going to have to discuss wetting.

All wetting is is how water spreads on a solid surface. Water does not interact with all materials in the same manner, and wetting is the measurement of these differing interactions. Wettability (I swear, I’m not making that up) is calculated by placing a drop of water on a surface and measuring the angle at which the droplet meets the surface. On a hyrdophobic surface, the water balls up, leaving a steep angle. But if the surface loves water, the water spreads out and the angle shrinks.

Solid substances all have specific contact angles when a drop of water is placed upon them. What our researchers found was, even with that graphene sheet sitting snugly on top, the contact angle changed very little.

How can this be? To make it even more puzzling, let’s add this important piece into the mix: Remember how graphene is a carbon lattice? Well, that lattice is actually too fine for water to even get through (in fact, it’s impermeable- even a single proton can’t wiggle through).

That’s right- the water is having zero contact with the substance below the graphene. And yet, it’s acting like it is. For example, the contact angle for gold is 77 degrees. With the graphene applied, it’s 78 degrees. Silicon went from a normal 32 degrees to a graphene-enriched 33 degrees, and copper increased from 85 degrees to 86 degrees.

How can these contact angles be so similar when the water is never touching the gold or the silicon or the copper? Apparently, graphene is invisible to water, and the water is somehow able to sense the underlying material and acts as if the graphene isn’t even there.

…What the hell?

Applying more layers of graphene makes it less transparent, and after six layers the water no longer senses the underlying material and acts as if it’s on graphene. Which it is. And has been the entire time.

The reason the water can sense what lies beneath the graphene is thanks to van der Waals forces. See, water interacts with certain substances via non-bonding van der Waals forces (as opposed to the run-of-the-mill chemical and hydrogen bonds it makes with most substances), like a little form of atomic gravity. These van der Waals forces have a range of several nanometers. Which isn’t much unless we are dealing with something as mind-bogglingly thin as graphene. Because these single-atom-thick sheets of graphene (which are about 0.3 nanometeres thick) are all that stands between the two surfaces, the van der Waals forces are easily able to “see” through the graphene. Shoving more graphene between the surfaces finally puts enough distance between the surfaces that the van der Waals forces start seeing graphene instead of gold or silicon or copper.

Not only is this super cool, it’s also incredibly useful. Graphene can be used as a coating on metal to prevent oxidation without impeding the current interactions between the metal and water, allowing devices and machinery to operate for much, much longer without a complete reworking of their structure.

I have to say this is just about the most amazing little piece of physics I’ve read about in some time.

Never fear- there will still be plenty of time spent on my trusty soapbox.

***

We’ll begin in the same place. I recently broke down and purchased Skyrim. And it’s pretty and entertaining and I haven’t decided if slaying bunnies or dragons is more satisfying (my dead bunny count is higher, but I think there are statistically more bunnies in the province than dragons, so I’m not sure which is the higher overall percentage of slain creatures vs live ones still skittering about, particularly taking into account random generation from coded logarithms…).

But there’s something that irked the pants off me. Rather literally. For as a lowly beginning character, I was of a level something about that of dirt. Or rat droppings. I’m not yet ready to be involved in the big, world-changing, huge baddie-filled quests that net you magical armor made from the hearts of demons. No, I was killing giant spiders and bandits. And bandits never wear the good stuff.

I’m just saying- if you want to succeed as a fantasy bandit, you should really consider outfitting yourself in something other than the weakest armor available in the game. “I’m dressed in an outfit made entirely out of rotten tree bark and deer piss- now give me all your valuables.” How do you expect that to work, guys?

So, I eventually stumble across this camp of… forest people? In the middle of the tundra? They look like rejects from Clan of the Cave Bear:

Whatever. They’re calling themselves the Forsworn, and I don’t give any fucks at all, I’m going to kill them. So I do. Upon which I pick up a set of their Forsworn Armor, seeing as I wear light armor and its rating is higher than my current set. It looks rather innocuous enough:

Looking at it, I’m picturing something that’s certainly going to show some leg and arm, but is going to cover all the vital bits. Yes?

No. This is what happens when you put the armor on:

Uh… okay, I obviously made a mistake. I must have picked up that chunk of deer hide just sitting near the Forsworn corpse. My character is rather stupid and doesn’t have a particularly high smithing skill yet. I’ll forgive her the poorly made armor. Those three little pieces of cloth are obviously the best she can do.

Oh no, wait, that’s the actual armor. What. The. Fuck. A draping piece to hide the nipples, a triangle over the twat, and a low slung bit in the back that actually manages to expose the northernmost shadow of the cleftal horizon:

Christ, my character is now a savage tart.

This wanton be-skanking of my dear daughter of Skyrim upset me. But why? Why would I suddenly be up-in-arms over some skimpy lady armor in video games? After all, this title is only the latest in a long, long line of offenders. For the record, this isn’t the first time I’ve been frustrated by the chainmail bikini dilemma. And I’m certainly not alone among gamers, male and female alike, in expressing a dislike for the trope.

There are a few key points to be made here, both about the absurdity of skimpy lady armor and about the evolution of the gaming community. We’ll take it in stages.

Level 1

The prevalence of next-to-nothing lady garb in video games (particularly, but certainly not limited to, high fantasy games) is high, but it’s much more difficult to find games that feature oversexualized male garb. The gents are nearly always more modestly dressed. Since we started with the Forsworn armor for the ladies, it’s only fair that we see the same armor on a male character:

While still exhibiting the pieced-together hide look of the female armor, you’ll notice that significantly more of the male body is covered. Instead of a dinner napkin balanced on the tits, the male gets the majority of his torso covered. And the thigh baring, ass-revealing, crotch drape is replaced with a much longer, more modest kilt. How the same armor type yields these two completely different outfits is beyond me.

Sometimes, developers make an attempt to show a little male skin. For fairness’s sake? But it’s never to the extremes they take the ladies. Here’s another example, from WoW:

Sure, the male night elf is wearing some kind of short vest up top. There’s some skin showing along the edges of it. That’s totally on par with Miss Polly Pauldron-Panties there. I’ll grant you that, in-game, WoW actually lets you skank up both genders. Men can get tight pants and codpieces and such. That doesn’t stop the advertising from being disturbingly one-sided on the armor coverage ratios, though.

If you play as a female in a fantasy game, there’s a 99.9% chance you’re going to either be tarted up or at least have the option. Apart from running around in just your skivvies, it’s probably more like a 50% chance the men are even going to have the option of titanium hotpants or tiger skin loincloths.

And here’s the point where internet forum-hounds start throwing out the examples of games where the skimp is non-existent or where both genders can sex up their garb. Which proves no point at all, because I never once said that this is true of all games. But the mere fact that it is a recognized trope means it’s present in a significant amount. So, go ahead. Toss me the name of a game where the skank factor is dialed down. And I can toss you more where it’s ratcheted up to ridiculous proportions (just… for the love of God, look at Ivy from Soul Caliber or any character in Tera Online). The fact of the matter is, it’s a goddamn disease in nerd-dom (don’t even get me started on comic characters).

Which leads us to…

Level 2

Sexy armor is just fan service, right? Because 99% of gamers are virginal boys with sad, lonely hard-ons, masturbating furiously to their avatar as she bounces and jiggles her way through a den of thieves. This is so obviously true that I cannot possibly denounce it.

Oh, wait. I can.

Statistically, males are still the dominant force in the gaming world. I do not deny this. But if you think it’s any kind of landslide majority, you are dead wrong. According to the Entertainment Software Association, as of 2008 (that’s about four years ago now, mind you), the male/female gamer ratio was 60/40. Oh my stars, I do declare that number to be much closer to an even split than anyone realizes.

But it’s not just about the fact that lady gamers not only exist and are nearly as common as male gamers. It’s also about the idea that all male gamers want to see copious amounts of bouncing underboob and ass cleavage. That they care more about the (I fucking hate myself for using this next word, because I really detest it) fap factor of the females than the game itself. That they care more about meticulously dressing their womens in next-to-nothing for a jerk-off fantasy instead of slashing a troll to pieces.

Fuck. That.

I have a hell of a lot more respect for men than to believe they are all some ridiculous caricature, that all male gamers are pale, virginal nerds in their mom’s basement, covered in acne and developing bizarre sexual fantasies about some big-titted elf chick giggling and falling out of her mage robes. Sure, there are some male gamers like that. And some that are 35-year-old business men with a wife and children. And some that are the high school quarterback. Some of them are gay. Some of them are only in it for the blood and violence. Some really love the story. Some are role-playing. Some love meeting people in the online communities. Some love pwning n00bs and being douchebags on Xbox Live. And some are very witty and make you laugh even as they stab you in the face. There are all kinds of men out there, and the same diversity of people you see around you every day are also the population of male gamers. Female gamers get tired of being stereotyped, but we’re just as rough on the men.

And because not all male gamers are the same, isn’t it incredibly unfair to say that the industry panders to this stereotype? Sex may sell, but we’re saturated with oversexualized advertisements all day, every day. Tell me… does sex really sell that much? At this point, I think it’s just become the middle ground we fall to because we’re lazy. It sells enough. But that’s not why developers spend years working on games. And it’s certainly not why the vast majority of gamers play them.

Perhaps this was true once, that the bulk of gamers were these lonely, pasty losers, but the world has changed. And our games have to change to reflect the evolving gaming community.

But more on that later.

What’s important here is that fan service is just not a legit excuse for this. Amount of cleavage does not a game make, and most gamers both understand and acknowledge this. We are the fans, and we’re telling you- you’re not doing us any special service by making female characters into strippers.

Level 3

We’re now in the murky land of my very favorite facet of this debate. It’s argued that we should have the option of slutting around our video games because we have that option in real life.

I’m not even lying, dear galleons. You won’t believe the number of threads I browsed through where this very topic came up. The argument mostly attacks any females who have an issue with lady game garb, calling them hypocrites for demanding armor with more coverage and then turning around and dressing provocatively when going out on the town.

We’ll ignore the fact that, once again, we’re generalizing pretty hard about a gender (after all, not every woman feels the need to liberally apply the tart sauce before going out for the night). Here’s why this argument is ridiculous:

See, in these fantasy video games, we’re in a completely different world. A world with a different history, different people, different customs, and different rules. This is not “medieval Earth + magic.” What is acceptable here might not be there. It’s an RPG- a role playing game. And that’s what you’re doing with these fantasy games. Your avatar is your gateway to this world, and through them you are someone else, somewhere else, for a little while.

Not only that, but what is the purpose of modern ladies going out all glittery and exposed? It’s certainly not to save an empire or slay a dragon or capture the essence of an ice wraith. No, their goal is much simpler. They want to snag a man. The whole purpose of the sexy garb is to attract a mate (no matter what they say). In video games, that is hardly the primary purpose for doing anything. You aren’t entering that forbidden, spider-filled forest to show off your svelte figure to some bloke. No, you are going there to kill some shit. The costumes have to change to reflect the differing goals.

Hell, most of the games don’t even let you have sex.

Most important of all… your excuse can never be “I should be able to do it in-game because I can IRL.” You want to know why? Because if you wanted to be able to do everything in-game that you can IRL, you would be playing a game called Reality. It would be pretty fucking boring. You would hate it.

Oh. Wait. You’re already playing that game. Right now.

So, why the hell would you drop $60 on another copy?

I can’t teleport IRL, but I can in video games. And I can’t bounce a signal off a satellite to call another continent in a video game, but I can IRL. It’s a trade-off thing, guys.

Level 4

The biggest issue with all this barely there female armor is the obvious one:

It’s armor. It’s supposed to fucking protect you.

It’s just preposterous that my character is walking around in something that makes a négligée look like Puritan garb, because she’s a goddamn warrior who is constantly in battle. I mean, honestly, what is most of this armor protecting?

The important parts, naturally.

Because, as we all know, females in video games are actually 90% covered in skin that is impenetrable:

“Oh, you don’t need as much protection, because it will decrease your speed.”

Really? I don’t see any male characters running around in a chainmail loincloth to increase their speed. And speed doesn’t stop a hail of arrows from lodging themselves in an uncovered spleen or stomach or heart.  Terrible logic.

“Women are smaller and weaker, so they can’t carry as much weight.”

These women are fucking warriors. They are strong enough to swing a sword. They are strong enough to wear some real armor. Besides, if women are so much weaker than men, shouldn’t they need more protection to survive in battle? Logic fail.

“But… it hides her figure.”

Okay, no matter what some people seem to think, sex appeal isn’t some kind of advantage in battle. You are going up against killers, warriors, mages. They don’t drop their jaws and drool insipidly at the first sight of a little lady flesh. Hell, they’re not even going to pause. They’re going to see all those exposed vital areas and rush toward them, hoping to kill you before you get a chance to hurt them. Falling out of your bramor is not a useful battle strategy. Sorry.

And if your issue is that you can’t see your lady’s figure… is that really the only reason you’re playing a female character? Sure, I’ve cracked the odd joke about gamers picking their characters based on whose ass they want to watch swaying in their screen, but I don’t mean it. That’s not why most people pick a character. You’re playing a warrior. Dress like one. I don’t see anyone complaining that they can’t see their male character’s taut buttocks flexing as they run.

And how can these scant armors have any kind of defensive rating. They couldn’t possibly protect you from anything. Not even a light breeze. What kind of system is their defensive capability derived from? Does the equation look something like:

That’s all there is to it, galleons. This is supposed to be armor. I’m fighting giant spiders and mammoths and wraiths and orcs and trolls. I need to be protected. Three triangles of fabric pinned together by the stinger of a bee and a lot of prayer isn’t going to save me from a horrible, bloody death.

Perfect realism isn’t the goal (otherwise, your character would move so slow in plate and would have no real range of motion or sight), but some realism within the world would be nice. Some armor that can stop a blade or arrow.

I don’t feel like I’m asking for a lot here.

***

People get so angry when this issue comes up. Speaking against the skimpy armor makes you one of those terrible feminists out to destroy the livelihood of the menfolk and exert fanatic, female dominance over all of existence. But it’s not about crushing the hopes and dreams of a few guys who haven’t yet figured out how to find the pr0nz on the interweb. It’s just about being fucking logical.

By the by, one day, we’re going to have to do a post about how the term feminism has become demonized and the impact of that on the movement and its beliefs.

Anyway, I’m going to wrap this up by saying that I’m mostly just disappointed in Skyrim for falling back on this kind of crap. The Elder Scrolls are such popular titles, with the ability to push the standards higher and further for all subsequent titles in the genre… and they still had to squeak this in there. Apparently, most of the other armor is fine. But the fact that there’s still that one is sad. Respect your own creation enough to be logical, to make armor that is armor, to rely on your world and detail and incredible gameplay instead of tossing in these cheap shots.

Go ahead, galleons. Comment your little hearts out. I’ve said my piece.

***

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: DEDICATED Read this entire rambling rant. 20G

***

Sir David Brewster, 1830

click, say the gems in their golden cell

The idea occurred to me of giving light
to objects, the inventor writes, at home:
the birth of his first son

These items
placed loosely in a cell
at the end of an instrument;

sleeve of brass
or glass, polished, rough-ground, varnished-
on the outside- black. A house of stone.

I wanted to give light

so that every simple form could be converted,
beautified by being combined
with an inverted image of itself: so

click, say the gems in their golden cell

I’m out for inversion, invention, re-
construction; myself
disunited yet same enough to point
any hour across the room and still say, Me.

The drug you’ve given me is not working.

Or working in a way it should not be working: blood sizzles
and the brain’s gone champagne;
where the sober headache was, only fizz remains,
resists, the way consciousness resists

this power surge blackening
out my body every
twenty minutes, turning the mind
to a beach in France and the senses
to a lighthouse beam in fog.

What’s the angle, angel?

you ask as my mouth goes (again) slack
and my head lolls against your pillow dusted
with cat hair.

Nausea, is my reply

but the word spins within me, clicks
and rattles up against new syllables:
Sauna, followed by Sane Seas, followed
by the Gaelic, Naes.
Outside, Dublin whirls

in rain-slick streets goosebumped with cobblestone,
the heavy, chocolate scent of hops and filthy quays,
the slaughterhouse behind your flat.
On windy, windowless nights when I press my nose
against your naked neck I can smell the blood
beside the blood- I’ve learned

to love the meat of you.

*

Last week,
they tried to set off a bomb on Grafton. You arrived
outside my dormitory in an Austrian military jacket
stiff with rain and spilled tea, packet of opium stuffed
deep into a bouquet of flowers. I hate
having been born Catholic, you hissed.

And looked at me with such envy then, my blank,
ahistorical gaze overseas-

To be American is to avoid everything, isn’t it? you’d asked.
Your body’s slump
perfectly symmetrical with my broken desk chair.

I suppose
it is an accident anything is beautiful. So

click, say the gems in their golden cell

Brewster, 1830, postulates: Only

the same apparent magnitude
and nearly the same intensity of light
are conditions
necessary enough to the production of symmetrical
thus beautiful forms.

I suppose

it would be better to describe than define him:
hours assembling the lush
egg whites bleeding into pockmarked blues,
red pearls bubbling out of whippet glass,
the millefiori and metallic bead festoons-
feathery gems, ampoules of yellow oils.
His son giggles in the crib. Brewster
plucks then puts cat whiskers in this first object case.

Even the slightest tilt

changes everything but everything
just slightly, he writes.
It is possible this obsession makes him
admirable. It is possible to point
at this person from across history and still say, Me.

What I knew: the pill looked so

anonymous. One fat tablet the color of cicada wings, coffee
crystals, moth antennae. Six hours later
the walls pulse. Reds and pockmarked blues,
ampoules of yellow oils.

Even the most disgusting forms,

notes Brewster in his book, exhibit
chaste combinations of shape and color.

I wanted to reconstruct, re-
member myself out of shards of glass.
I said: I wanted to write a body out of light.

click, say the gems in their golden cell

The body of a man on his green knees
on Grafton, the bodies of police
waving everyone back: back
from the bomb cover like a yellow helmet, the man’s
clever fingers nimbling under it-

The stone exam halls cleared,
students and I stand smoking cigarettes
cheerfully outside the lobbies.

We wait for the explosion

that never comes which is why
we feel safe waiting for it: millefiori of splintered glass,
cement tumbling in dust like a billion moth wings.

This could go on forever, the newspapers said.

During choir practice
I saw you cross the square
humming the requiem you loved, the notes
of the father’s shattered body
commended to God and death.

At least you’re trained to believe
in something, I’d replied (stupidly) to your Austrian sleeve,
misunderstanding the desire to not
believe, to shed

words like figurines; to whirl
a meaning outside of- not myth, not
hope- something more primitive:

form.

(Naes, naes, naes, whispered the trees.)

You, I said. You
be Me. With the large car and secular education.
A sudden rumble, a split
in the air and all of us raised our hands above our faces
and ducked, sure that somewhere
fire was raining upon us.

*

I said: I wanted to push the body into light-

like a rabbit through a felt hat,
a ship through a lighthouse beam-

click, say the gems in their golden cell

I believe in one God, Brewster remembers trying
out, licensed
minister upon his first pulpit, but the forms of words
cheated him in knowing: it was all a swither, a mistake;
a discourse sticked
as soon as it began- the syllables
like fists of lightning

illuminating only the science

under which his tongue and brain might crouch,
muscular Niobes, children under their stone veils,
single arms upraised before their faces-

*

our faces pointed at the sun.
The field’s a lethal green and you are telling me about

that other woman you left me for, then left again
to return to me, about:
Your shampoo smells like ice cream;
do they have to overdo everything in America?

And this is love,
as we commanded.
Everything the same just slightly different.

Before you, men in pubs used to tell me
they were with the IRA- it means a different thing
in Dublin than it does in the States-

and soured when I wouldn’t take their line. Your line
was the opposite:

they’d shot your brother in the face

while he worked at a Belfast video store-
the only other boy
just your height and hair color, the one
you could always point to and say, Me.

And the seasons deepened into rain, a winter
chill devoid of snow but still aware of it,
as I deepened into layers of sweatshirts
parents sent from the States- so many

a boy in choir stopped singing once to ask me
how it felt, being pregnant. Pregnant?
Naes naes naes. I crouched

beneath the word as if it were a blow: a raining
of arrows upon the face.

(The drug? What is this drug you’ve given me?)

England, 1830. Influenza rages.
The inventor’s toys and pamphlets are locked up
in favor of a different science, equally
untested: drugs.

When his first child dies of fever, Brewster slips a lock
of hair into the object case
to watch the nut gleam of his son turn,
then turn into something else.

Every result is a matter of uncertainty, he writes in an unsent letter.
The art of forming designs a state

of extreme imperfection.

*

Imagine me

on my first vacation without you,
wandering alone through the Uffizi, over and over

finding the same room- the marble hall filled
with the white statues of Niobe and her children, each one
with his arms raised, brothers watching brothers die,
sisters holding sisters
as they fall, pale blanks
for faces as the stone gowns cling-

The eye writes in fiery arrows raining from the sky
as a boy lays dying on a tablet, hole burst
into his chest and the marble flesh puckered
around the wound like a mouth.

A week after I visited, the Uffizi was bombed.

Two of the great halls crushed, paintings
drizzled with melted tar and fire.

click, say the gems in their golden cell

A blackout; power surge: the sea
recedes until only fizz remains:
the snowy cliffsides, the stone stone stone stone.

When you first left me you’d explained, She’s
from the North. Then, returning, You’re
from the States.

The first thing you ever gave me
was a 50P kaleidoscope filled
with plastic; colored shards the size
of rock salts that shifted
and hissed: paper tube a whirl
of flattened foils; red diamonds.

What I liked was the variance
masked as similarity:

your hand wrapped around my hand as the instrument turned,

the instrument turning under your hand over mine.

I wanted to write a body out of light.

click, say the gems in their golden cells

He has now indeed some minor specialties of belief,
records Hogg of Brewster after the funeral.

That soda water is wholesomer
than beer, that a nipper of spirits in the tea
impairs the wholesomeness of body.
Shave every morning and wash your feet
each night: strange, yes, but who would wish to be severe
upon the eccentricities of genius?

He lives alone. He marries.
He lives among his angled sleeves of light.
His children die, one by one.
Then his wife. In the end, he is robbed

even of his kaleidoscope theories.

But the toy, the toy might put what’s lost
back together: fragments clinging right to fragments
until a new shape forms, a household
filled with blood and bone.
A house of stone.

The artist can have no difficulty in constructing

such an apparatus for himself, Brewster writes in private.
By means of it he will be enabled
to obtain results from the kaleidoscope

which he would have sought for in vain by any other method.

(The drug? What is this drug you’ve given me?)

What was your brother like?

Not good-looking, not brave,
you’d corrected, me wanting both though
what of you was either of these? The acne scars

like seeds pitted in your face; the gangled
form of you rising
in the last light, naked, silky, slightly blue.

What you believed:

the manager didn’t pay
either the IRA and Unionists, perhaps
was delayed in payment; they often killed
when the money ran out.

You were surprised

I didn’t want to hear more about it.

For awhile this was enough. Then
it was never enough.

I was afraid to believe

this was the place in you I couldn’t reach,
the endpoint of my ambition.
That the slivers of you rattling against and within
me might also be removed, piece
by piece.

Love me,

I wanted to say, as two of my friends
became pregnant and for a moment I wished
they were me. I was they.

No. I was lying- they
were pregnant and I didn’t want to be.

click, say the gems in their golden cell

The child in its bassinet, its brain a bowl of fire.
Above the crib hang tiny crystals, reflections,
refractions of sparks.
The body of his boy sleeps in a sleeve of crystallized light.

In my foil tube the colors clicked
and rattled against each other, changing hue
for hue.

You handed me the book by Brewster, I remember,
laughing-

Color, independent of form, is incapable
of producing pleasure, Brewster finishes. Color

is merely an accident of light.

*

What we took on the road is what we sang:

through the barbed wire, through the burst glass.
The quiet church built to last
through anything swollen
with the first voices, what
I still recall: our requiem in Latin,
our gift in drawn-out, foreign syllables.

It was a day after the bomb and everything
was the same but slightly
different: the fewer cars,

the emptier lanes. And us-
swollen with song, our throats like living hives
of light. Every man in choir was another shade
of you: a little more flesh chipped out
from chin or chest, a little more color
drained, fetlock and eye.

I could turn

and the world’s hues would tilt with me,
from blue into green and white, into lavender
stains: the light a powder of moth wing.

I wondered if, like Cuchulain,
you shrieked for your brother at the sea

which boiled like milk below the cliffs, the whole
island a reflection, refraction of rock:
stone stone stone stone

under which the faceless were buried.
If gulls wheeled in the flickering half-light
screaming back a version of your grief.

Later, in the utter island night

we walked through as if swimming- a dark
unlit by lamps or headlights
with only the sound of the swelling sea
around us- you stopped and grabbed my wrist
to light your cigarette and the one hot spoke of color
left in all the world
was your face

my lighter

your face.

We could go on like this forever, you said.

Me pushing into you, you
pulsing like the walls with sullen light.

Or maybe:

There’s a blankness to you
that could go on forever, you said,

meaning my lack of belief, of loss.

Once I read a newspaper article about your brother.
They found him on the floor, it said, crouched
with a hand flung up before his face,

blood like arrows of fire on the floor.
No. They simply found him.
What I knew about you

I had to write in

and over. There was a blankness to you
scrubbing the blankness of me, coastline to coastline,

chert to chert, stone breaking stone
until there was nothing left but low humming:

the kyrie in a requiem, death song anonymous
in its applicability to loss.

*

An inexperienced eye may still admire the circular
arrangement of the imperfect, the dissimilar;
but no person acquainted with the instrument could endure
even the slightest distortion visible at its center.

(ampoules of yellow oil, moth wing, glass shards roughed
to ruby, the slow blossom of green
at the heart turning lavender, tinfoil, pearl-)

The human figure consists of two halves, one
which is the reflected image of the other.

click, say the gems in their golden cell

A minute burns and then the blackout, the power surge,
the pillow dusted with animal hair.

The walls whisper. And shadows lurch
like cat’s wings, like bird whiskers, and the world,
ever so slightly, tilts.

Hang on, you say. There is no hospital. See me?
Look how well I am. Now you.
You be Me.

Outside, Dublin whirls in rain-slick streets goosebumped
with cobblestone that spin and crackle with nausea.
The world shudders. And on the streets: a kyrie
of flame, smoke like moth wing; I can feel

before I see the bomb on Grafton, the yellow helmet,

the man’s clever fingers nimbling under it.
The lifting of a hand
to cover the face-

-the pause, the pull away: light
blossoming into new light, bodies
pushed into new positions; the same,
only slightly different. A matched set,
snatched breath: all your clothes smelling of blood.

What I knew about you:
the silver eyes, the Austrian jacket, the bag of teeth
in flowers. You had a pocketknife and skin
stained moth wing. Your favorite author was Donleavy.

To be you is to pretend
everything’s tragedy, isn’t it? I asked.

You’ll never know unless you can believe, you said.

For awhile, this was enough. Then
it was never enough.

click, say the gems in their golden cell

The child in its bassinette, cold and gleaming.
You were once just his hair color and height.

your face my lighter your face

Pauses. Pulls away.
I think it’s over, the inventor writes.

There is no free will. There are no variables. There is only the inevitable. ~Chuck Palahniuk

Does free will exist?

It’s a knotty question if there ever was one, and it’s been debated time and time again through the ages. By philosophy. By religion. By college students passing a bowl and attempting lofty, intellectual conversation. By fiction. By science. By science fiction.

There has never been a consensus, however. Depending on the situation and the lens through which you are viewing it, the answer seems to shift. Some people hold strong beliefs one way or another, while others, like Jawaharlal Nehru, have tried to find some sort of middle ground:

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

One would think that almighty science, rife with equations and no-nonsense logic, would have the answer. Would be able to concretely say, “Here, world. This is how it is. Not that many of you are going to listen, but hey, that doesn’t change facts, now does it?” Alas, even science is still wrestling with that damn question. For example, the laws of classical physics are deterministic. Therefore, in a classical universe, people would have no free will. People are made up of particles and the laws of classical physics could determine everything about your constituent particles at any moment. As Brian Greene says:

The equations are indifferent to the supposed freedom of human will.

However, we don’t actually live in a classical universe, we live in a quantum universe. Now, Schrödinger’s equation lines up a deterministic universe. If Schrödinger’s equation is all there is, then the universe is deterministic. But there is a small chance that we’re missing part of the puzzle, that there is something else required to pass from probability to definite outcome. So, technically, there remains a tiny chance that free will could find a concrete home in quantum theory.

Of course, even if the universe were found to be deterministic, it wouldn’t stop the debate. Because there’s still another divide, that between people who believe we are more than the sum of our parts and those (like myself) who do not. And this “more,” this “soul” or “essence of personhood”, could allow for free will. Or, at least, allow the debate to continue.

Do we have free will? The question remains unresolved. And while we could spend hours here in circuitous chatter (which is a favorite pastime of mine, to be sure), in the end, I’d have to type that same sentence again: The question remains unresolved.

Instead of plunging stark-naked into the sea of free will vs. determinism, we’re just going to look at a small microcosm of it, a tiny pushpin on the map of this theoretical land.

So, galleons… do cells have free will?

***

There are immune system cells responsible for making antibodies. We call these little guys B cells (which makes them sound like the day crew at a strip joint), and B cells are interesting because they can actually have multiple fates. They can die. They can divide. They can start secreting antibodies. Or they can change what type of antibodies they make.

Now, all of this happens while the cells are growing in the lymph nodes. Up until now, scientists have believed that the end fate of a B cell is determined by external forces, such as particular hormones or cell-signaling molecules, acting upon the cell in the lymph node.

A recent study by Professor Phil Hodgkin, Dr. Mark Dowling, Dr. Cameron Wellard, and Jie Zhou from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute says otherwise. Their study was crafted to observe B cells and create mathematical models of their behavior, particularly in relation to how those hormones and external molecular cues impacted cell development (the end result being a tool to be used in the development of new immune therapies and improved vaccines). The surprising result of their research is that those little B cells actually determine their own fates.

It’s like cellular Invictus all up in here.

The group’s study involved a recreation of the conditions required for B cells to develop into different cell types, which was then filmed (using new tech and image analysis developed by an Australian bloke). With help from an Irish mathematician with an expertise in probabilities, the team studied 2500 B cells.

What they found was the little B cells acted as if they had little internal devices deciding their fates, like each fate was on a timer. Dowling explains the idea further:

Each cell will, in some sense, set up a clock that starts ticking for each of the outcomes and whatever clock goes off first is the decision that the cell makes. The cell is trying to do everything but only one fate wins.

But how can we be sure these decisions are based on internal devices and not external cues? Naturally, as part of the test, various external forces were exerted upon the developing B cells. Despite receiving these external signals, the group still found considerable variation in the final B cells, suggesting that those external cues don’t so much tell the cells what to do as, perhaps, tilt the probability of what they were going to do anyway. Make a few of those little internal clocks tick faster, so to speak.

In the end, it’s not that the cells have complete control over their destiny, but that they do have some say. Complete free will? Perhaps not. But there is a level of autonomy evident there that flies in the face of what our researchers expected to see.

Interesting, no?

I want to walk through streets where it rains ruined men and women
I want to walk the yard or boulevard by the light of dying stars
I want the ticker-tape to fall like confetti from the broken windows above the square
This is a wasted wonderland, and it’s all ours

I want to whisper empty words to you in empty cities
And see the billboards loom like headstones against the sky
I want to follow the cracks in the sidewalk until we find the edge of the world
We run with ashes in our hair and fear in our eyes

I want to dance beneath burnt-out streetlamps and constellations
I want to sing the song of the concrete in the voice of the vines
I want to creep across your soul like the ivy on the stones
I want you to hold my heart in your teeth and my face in your mind

Galleons, the last time I bothered with so much as a mention of the Kinect and… whatever-fuck-name the PS3 version is sporting was back after E3 in 2010. So, back when these were both being unveiled. This is because I have little-to-no real interest in the systems. Having since tried the Kinect, I can say that I felt the same way about it that I did with the Wii. At first, it was mildly interesting due to its shiny newness. But as the novelty wore off, so did the appeal.

I’m a gamer. I wanted to like them. I wanted to welcome them into my world, to frolic hand-in-hand with the Kinect through a field of slaughtered zombies while Sister Hazel plays.

Alas, that was not to be.

And while I could spend all day lamenting the wasted potential of the systems (or, perhaps, arguing the point that the lauded “potential” of these systems was nothing more than a slick veneer on an idea that always had far more flaws than anyone was willing to admit), the Kinect and Wii particularly (I hear less and less about the Playstation… whatever these days) have carved their own little niche in the gaming market. And, naturally, any small technological success leads to progressive leapings-off in new and exciting directions.

So, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to take this motion-control tech and apply it to other facets of life. To be fair, video games are far from the first to attempt motion-control, but they rank as among the most commercially successful. And certainly the most visible in the current market. As such, it can be argued that it was their success that has opened the floodgates, and thus why I’m not going to spend time tracking back through the history of motion-control.

Anyway, the latest offering to the humble altars of Finicky Public Opinion and First World Laziness is the slaughtered corpse of the classic television remote. At the Consumer’s Electronics Show in Las Vegas happening this very week, one of the big themes is going to be companies showcasing their work on motion-controlled television.

It’s shiny. It’s new. It’s got flash and style and a sexy tech allure. It’s the future.

And I don’t like it.

This is why.

***

For years, we’ve been waiting for all those science fiction dreams to become a reality (while tending to ignore the fact that so many have- look at your cell phone, with its likely camera and music and video and web capabilities, and tell me that’s not some goddamn “future tech” right there). “Where are the flying cars?” the public laments, despite the fact that Americans alone get in about 11 million traffic accidents a year just on the goddamn terrestrial roads (I’m not giving anyone license to use the airspace, too). And while physics keeps teasing us with glimpses of quantum teleportation (and telling us to STFU about goddamn time travel), we find ourselves yearning for the sleek and shiny world of the future promised us by authors and filmmakers (though why we want that is beyond me, seeing as how those future worlds are never the utopian societies they seem- it’s always “totalitarianism this” and “soylent green that” and “Carrousel all up in this shit”).

And a staple of this magical future world is always voice and motion control. With a command, food is on the table. With a wave of the hand, you’ve minimized a window on a transparent display. Pretty tricks on the big screen, but now we’re striving to make them real.

The tech is, of course, mired in problems. The primary one being that, much like all attempts at voice activation, motion-controlled electronics have no way of distinguishing between conversational gestures and deliberate ones. And while this seems like a serious obstacle toward ever making this tech a workable reality… there is, of course, an option. And that’s a censorship of gesticulation, a refusal to move unless it serves a purpose.

I shudder at the thought.

In order to make motion control work properly, we would have to stifle all extraneous movements. Which may seem like a piece of cake to you more stoic and reserved sorts, but for those of us who have been described as creatures with a tendency to “do flaily things with our arms,” it’s a terrifying prospect. Not just because of the amount of work involved in training years of wild gesticulation out of us, but because of what we will lose in the process.

Communication is about more than just the sounds we utter, more than the gargling, spitting aural cacophony jittering from tongue, teeth, and throat. It’s a combination of gestures, expressions, movements, words, and inflection. Hell, gesticulation is so much a part of how we communicate that it’s actually interpreted by the same areas of the brain as the spoken word- it is language. As anthropologist Adam Kendon said, “Gesticulation… is employed, along with speech, in fashioning an effective utterance unit.” Studies have shown that individuals glean more from speech paired with gestures than they do from speech alone. Not only that, but gesturing has been proven to help a speaker retrieve words from their lexicon more efficiently.

With gesticulation being such a prominent, useful part of our communication process, how could we justify technology that will force us to cease our spasmodic movements? To truncate our communication by eliminating gestures is a step toward the full-scale language overhaul imagined in George Orwell’s 1984. Without expansive vocabularies and methods of expression, our critical thinking and imagination whither. We lose our voices. We lose the ability to formulate arguments, to see mistreatment. We are dependent on language. And part of our language is our gestures.

These motion-controlled, remote-free systems being flashed about Las Vegas right now allow you to wave your hand or turn your head to manipulate your viewing experience. An errant twitch of the head could be interpreted as a change in channel. Frustrating, to be sure. We would train ourselves to stillness, and we would lose the vibrancy and depth of our communication. Even more so than the isolationism fostered by advancing technology, this communication degradation frightens me.

It’s an implication that few probably think about, but it’s been weighing on me since I read about this yesterday. Perhaps I have become a bit of a curmudgeon in my old age, unwilling to adapt to a changing world. I’ve already expressed my dislike of those goddamn e-readers, now I’ve hobbled onto my soapbox and bitched about motion control.

Well, if this is what it means to be old and set in my ways, so be it.