It’s a Sunday. And what better way to celebrate a Sunday than to bring up topics that would make a priest blush? How about a good ol’ dash of technology and science in human sexuality!

Nature or nurture? Frankly, I’m not even going to try to answer that. Hell, I’m not even sure it really makes a difference. Personally, I don’t give a fig. You are who you are. Who cares why?

However, what if it really was nature?

Where could there be such proof?

Try this.

New Scientist has an interesting article by Ivanka Savic and her colleague Per Lindström (conducted the study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden) on how scans of brains show that being gay or straight is a biologically fixed trait from birth. That it is not something that “develops”, and thus is not something that can be “cured”.

There have been previous studies that showed things like this, but were typically based on sexually driven cues. They were designed to show responses to sexual stimuli. And in that, they didn’t really prove anything more than the sexual preferences of the participants. Where as the difference with this study is that it does not scan for anything sexual in the brain. Instead of studying sexual responses, it uses PET scans to measure blood flow to the amygdala, part of the brain that governs fear and aggression.

Yes, that’s right, it traces the effects of how our brains handle fear. This study examines brain parameters likely to have been fixed at the very point of birth. It examines something we’ve been wired for all along, not something that we could have developed into.

With heterosexual men and women (HeM and HeW respectively) on the left showing their typical fear responses in the left amygdala, we can see clearly that the results are near opposite between the hetero sexes. In straight men their blood flow triggers the sensorimotor cortex and the striatum, which are responsible for “fight or flight” active response to a situation. In straight women on the other hand, the blood flow goes into regions of the brain that manifest fear as intense anxiety, a more internalized and less reactive response.

What is fascinating is that the homosexual woman (HoW) responds identically to fear as the heterosexual man (HeM). And the homosexual man (HoM) responds identically to that of a heterosexual woman (HeW). It’s a clear-cut case of a homosexual brain responding to a non-sexual stimulus in the opposite manner of a heterosexual, or in other words in the same manner as their sexual gender preference.

Besides the study making this wonderful observation, it also gives rise to actual proof of other observations-turned-stereotypes.

Men do take situations head on.

Women worry.

Gay men worry. And thusly are more likely to be prone to acts of drama and even suicide.

Where as gay women are more likely to just brute their way through.

It really is all right there, in the scans of brains.

And so it would seem, our sexual preferences are perhaps not so much a matter of nurture, but simply who we are from birth. We were wired a certain way, and there’s just no fixing that.

Now, I would hope that everyone knows who Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. is. I mean how can anyone not know about the man that drug the United States kicking and screaming into modern thinking like civil rights, and by doing it through peaceful means at that? He was a man of the age. He was an icon.

But does he really need to close down the banks, schools, and post offices?

I mean “Presidents’ Day” is questionable enough. George Washington at least founded the country though. And Lincoln - who was just kind of thrown into Washington’s birthday for the heck of it I guess - was another major founding father - who coincidentally also did a lot for civil rights. But do we really need a holiday to be patriotic on when we have, oh, I dunno, the 4th of July. Or Veterans Day? Or Memorial Day?

Don’t get me wrong, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. certainly was an awesome guy. But compared to the scope of what defines the other national holidays, does he really stack up? Or is giving him his own holiday like this just some politician’s way of pretending to care about civil rights to quiet the angry oppressed black folk?

I mean what about people like Rosa Parks? Or why isn’t there a holiday for someone who did great things during women’s suffrage? We have a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin that no one uses. Is that supposed to be equal?

In a decade or two will we have some notable gay rights movement leader with a face on a three dollar bill? (That no one uses.)

It just seems to me that today not only do we not yet have all of the civil rights that so many have fought for, but we even fail to equally recognize the people who have done so much. Were we really so desperate for a holiday that we singled out Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.? Or is it more like “equal opportunity” where you pick someone based on color to make it look like you’re not picking based on color?

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man who did awesome things. I hope we can all learn from him.

But is he and he alone worthy of his very own holiday? Or should we do to Martin Luther King Day what we did to George Washington Day and make Civil Rights Day where we can promote everyone who did great things for all civil rights: race, gender, religion, age, sexual preference, etc.?

To me it’s sadly ironic that today this use of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. is in fact oppressing other civil rights. I have a feeling if he were alive today, he’d agree. I’m sure he wouldn’t want us to concentrate just on race.

Though, being a reverend, I’m not sure where he’d stand on gay rights.

Yes, so a lot of this blog entry is tongue in cheek. If you’re looking to take it seriously and you get offended by it, I apologize. But it’s meant to make light as well as bring light. The United States of America, for being a “land of the free”, still has a long way to go and a lot to learn. And I hope one day we can get there, and even get there with laughter and smiles.

So for Yule I snagged myself a cheap ($20) new role playing game: Enchanted Arms. Only today did I finally sit down and plop it into the PS3. So how is it?

Well, for starters, the game is named Enchanted Arms not because it has magical weapons in it (it kind of does have them, but not so that they’re actually important) but because the main character has an enchanted arm. What do I mean? Well the premise of the game is that magic exists (it is a fantasy RPG after all) and the only type of magic humans know how to work these days is enchanting random items. Chests, barrels, boxes, oh … and golems. Golems being magical constructs like … well … Pinocchio. Basically. You make little wooden boys come to life, only generally mindless, so that they can serve you like robots. Only since the world has gone to hell now you have pizza-faced cardboard cutout golems throwing fire at you and cute little pink-haired Japanese robot girls in maid uniforms pulling giant gatling guns out of nowhere and shooting your enemies full of lead. That is the magic of enchanting. And your main character has an enchanted arm.

Okay, so by now either your interested, confused, or scared. Frankly I was kind of all three. But mostly scared not by that so much, as by how much weirder the game gets. You see just because you play the main character doesn’t mean you don’t also have friends. The game starts out with the main character: a dimwitted unfocused lad with an enchanted arm that actually breaks enchantments, his best friend: a genius gifted boy that everyone likes or wants to be, and the boy that wants to be that best friend’s lover who dresses in drag, fits all of the stereotypes, and when people attack with swords and guns he pulls out his magical saxophone and blows music at them. Um … yeah. Scared yet?

He wouldn’t be so bad if perhaps he just wasn’t so badly stereotypical. And annoying. Actually, mostly just annoying. Jealous much. Whinge. And disappointing because the character idea had so much potential that was just wasted. And he’s utterly useless in combat. Frankly either the animated golem stuffed animal tiger or the little girl housemaid with the gatling gun made much better replacements for him in a fight. And neither of them talk back.

But just when that annoyance really starts to get on your nerves and you think you can’t take it anymore and you want to push him off a high ledge just like you wanted to with Rinoa from Final Fantasy 8 (minor spoiler warning here) he gets crushed by a giant ball of ice. So you see, the game isn’t all bad then. It has some up points.

Of course that’s pretty much as far as I’ve gotten in the game. As I said, I only just plopped it in. But basically the premise is that humans a thousand years ago had all sorts of neat magic and made cool powerful golems that one day broke free of their human control and ran amok killing everyone and destroying the world. And just as humanity is almost getting the hang of enchanting again (but still clueless on all other forms of magic) they go and release the golems all over again. Oops. I guess humanity has a death wish. And so now you … and your enchanted arm … have to save the world. With the army of silly and cool golems of every shape, size, and color. That for some reason haven’t gone insane like the rest of them. Yipee!

As for gameplay, it’s actually a nice tactical turn-based approach to combat. The kind of which makes me want to hug and kiss the developers. Even the one who thought up the crossdressing character. Frankly, I thought that the world had no more good tactical games. Either they’re “real time” tactical where you micro-manage command generally useless unintelligent armies, or they’re first person shooters. Okay, so sometimes they’re “third” person shooters where you look over their shoulder … or up their butt if the camera is at a bad angle. So it’s a miracle that any game has turn-based tactical combat the likes of which haven’t been seen since … well … the Final Fantasy Tactics games. But in this game, since everyone pretty much has their own unique set of skills, it makes it much more … challenging. There are ups and downs, but overall it’s fairly good.

So if you like the thought of a game where you make all sorts of deranged magical enchanted robots to fight by your side, and you like tactical turn-based combat, then you may actually get a kick out of it. Frankly, for a PS3 game at the $20 price point, why the heck not give it a try? Of course the resolution is only 720p at best. And the voice acting is not so great … and that’s when there is voice acting … because it just goes between having voice acting and not having it like the files just went missing or something. But again, it all makes for a cheap silly kinda fun waste of time. If it’s not perfect, who cares? It’s only twenty bucks.

So far, I’d dare say I give it something like three out of five stars. Or maybe that should be three out of five dead annoying gay crossdressers. How’s that for a rating system? Hell, how’s that for a game review?