I have a date with my pillow later
You wish you knew Krystal. She's so fly.#
BlogCount, a blog from Phil Wolff, asks "How many blogs and bloggers? How big is the blogosphere?"#
KurzweilAI links to a New York Times article from Kenneth Chang about consciousness.#
Unlike any other scientific topics, consciousness — the first-person awareness of the world around — is truly in the eye of the beholder. I know I am conscious. But how do I know that you are?
[...]
Through logical analogy — I am a conscious human being, and therefore you as a human being are also likely to be conscious — I conclude I am probably not the only conscious being in a world of biological puppets. Extend the question of consciousness to other creatures, and uncertainty grows. Is a dog conscious? A turtle? A fly? An elm? A rock?
"We don't have the mythical consciousness meter," said Dr. David J. Chalmers, a professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. "All we have directly to go on is behavior."
So without even a rudimentary understanding of what consciousness is, the idea of instilling it into a machine — or understanding how a machine might evolve consciousness — becomes almost unfathomable.
KurzweilAI links to a Michigan State University press release about evolution.#
Researchers have found new evidence for an alternate theory of evolution in which instead of an infinite numberof small genetic changes over a long period of time, the process begins with several large mutations before settling down into a series of smaller ones.
[...]
Schemske compared the process to the repairing of a finely tuned watch.
"In our model, the first adaptive adjustments might require big changes, similar to banging the broken watch a few times before making the final small tweaks to restore its optimal performance," he said.
Seems to require more knowledge in the mutation than I'd like to allow.
Josh Marshall is skeptical about a report in the Independent.#
The United States accepts that to avoid humiliating failure in Iraq it needs to bring its forces quickly under international control and speed the handover of power, Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, has said. Decisions along these lines will be made in the "coming days", Mr Solana told The Independent.
Steven Lopez at nonDependent asks if our elected officials are delegates or trustees.#
[Are] elected officials chosen as delegates or trustee's. On one side of the debate were the delegates, they argued that elected officials were chosen to represent the poeple that elected them and see there wishes to be represented. That if the majority of poeple who elected an oficial decided on an issue that the official was sopposed to delegate that decision and see that it was represented in whichever field the official was elected to.
The opposite side was for the Trustee. That officials are elected on trust and that the poeple he represents trust in his judgment to make decisions for them.
The debate's main arguments was the quality of "work" the official had to do. Say if he was a representative in the house, the local populace would have a very direct and personal intrest if the question to declare war comes up. Likewise most poeple could care less weather a new policy would change the speed set on traffic signals by a few mph. Or a regulation to build fenses for cows a certain way.
I belive that there are certain issue's were the public opinion is strong enough to make an official vote/decide in a certain way. I also belive that many issue just don't concern me and should be made by the official as he see's fit. Many points of view were raised on this subject and I would like to know if when you vote for a candidate how do you see him as preforming his duties in relation to his style. A delegate or a trustee.
Hal Macomber introduces his idea that "projects are people-centered."#
Continuing in the series of postings on variation as an enabler let's explore more of what I mean by "projects are people-centered."
Why do I keep making this point? Because our language in business is so often that of the machine. In the last ten years the computer metaphor has gained ground. Those metaphors hide the nature of what happens on projects. Work doesn't flow like material flows in factories. People don't access their memory bank like computers. That people are not machines nor computers hardly needs saying, but how can we speak of our projects with a vocabulary that brings forth the nature of the project?
Ed Cone writes about his children's grandfather who has Lou Gehrig's disease.#
In February, Andrew started experiencing some loss of sensation in his left arm. It persisted, and spread. There is no clear diagnosis for ALS. You rule out other stuff, and you're left with the bad news. By early summer, there was no more doubt. In Alaska this July, Andrew's speech was slurred and he was experiencing leg cramps, but he still managed to hike, kayak, and eat solid food. In September, he was using an electronic keyboard with speech software to talk, but he could beat Lisa in straight sets on the tennis court. He seemed to level off for a while, but the last several weeks have been downhill.
Tonight Andrew typed to me that it's hard to know you are going to die, but it makes it better knowing that you managed to accomplish what you set out to do. I said that he could add grandparent to that list. After a decade with my mom, Andrew is a no-asterisk grandfather to Elijah and Syd and to my sister's girls. He smiled. His blue eyes were shining the way they used to.
Dave Winer writes about his new CMS.#
This is going to be a product, not one that I plan to sell (although I may give it to UserLand and they might sell it). It's a new kind of outliner-based Web CMS, that does weblogs and all the other stuff you see popping up here on Scripting. I spent much of the day exploring ideas for how to package, test and then ship this. Should it be a Manila plug-in? Or something that's linked to Manila on a sort of peer basis? Or should it be completely independent of Manila? I want to deliberate on this decision, because I expect to live with it for a long time.
Steve Kirks responds to Dave Winer about what to do with his new CMS.#
Dave is writing about flipping the switch on scripting.com. He also public muses about a web CMS that uses an outliner. Dave, I'll send $40 to you now to get on the beta test list for that one. My advice: give it to the community and watch it grow. It will move faster to acceptance than if you sell it yourself or give it to Userland.
Pat Delaney on classification and the web from reading Doug Miller on Dave Winer.#
Doug Miller: "Finally, at the end of the day, what tends to interest me most are the relationships...and relationships are often the most relative thing in the world, at least when one is talking about people or ideas. Relationships between people and ideas change and evolve constantly, and so any system that seeks to reflect those relationships has to change and evolve constantly as well. That makes maintaining taxonomy and hierarchy, particularly shared taxonomy and hierarchy a very, very high-cost task, if not down right impossible."
That last italicized paragraph, applied to teaching practice and the emerging field of "learning object repositiories (LORs)," explains my standing contention that learning itself "objects" to learning objects. I remember teachers from my learning history, moments of being educated, "led forth" to some new discovery. I don't remember textbooks, those ur-LORs. From my teaching history, I remember teaching partners, those magical relationships that pushed me to make something new out of what I already knew in order to keep fresh a passion for learning in myself and in my students. I don't remember scope and sequence binders. (And Buddha be priased, I don't remember any "learning standards." LOL!)
Blogs, linking and unlinking, are just such non-toxonomical partnerships. More power to the WWW's Dewey Decimal System pioneers. As you proceed, however, revere the unclassifiable.
What I like about Dave Winer's idea is that it puts a directory at the hands of every person on the web. It doesn't suppose that we will create the One True Categorization, and thus is less likely to succumb to the self-importance of ignoring the unclassifiable and inability to express relationships. Our directories relationships to each other with help relate the rest of the web by proxy.
Brian Leiter quotes Nietzsche:#
"When stepped on, a worm doubles up. That is clever. In that way he lessens the probability of being stepped on again. In the language of morality: humility."
--Twilight of the Idols, "Maxims and Arrows," sec. 3
Derek M. Powazek is selling his PowerBook. I'm "selling" stuff too.#
Adam Gessaman has an incredibly strange picture of some hot cocoa, or some other drink.#
Andrew links to a symphony concert...#
Last August in Leipzig, Germany was apparently the world's first symphony concert to feature music from popular Western and Japanese videogame soundtracks, including Final Fantasy, Battlefield 1942,and Zelda Wind Walker. Andy Brick conducted the Czech National Orchestra. (via Game Developer Magazine)
Cosma writes about the Pax Americana.#
Every political regime relies, for much of its power, on the opinions of the governed: that support for the regime is morally right, or is in their interest, or both. For more than half a century, America has exercised hegemony (not imperium) over much of the rest of the world. We have been able to do this because the rest of the world has thought it in their interest to cooperate with us, and that it was the right thing to do, because we would do the right, the fair, thing. The support of the "opinion of right" is dissipating, because the world no longer trusts us to do the right thing. (Whether this distrust is objectively justified is irrelevant.) What will happen to the "opinion of interest" if our legacy in Afghanistan and Iraq is two failed states? Without opinion, power rests only on force, and "force is always on the side of the governed". We are pre-eminent, but not invincible, and right now we're stretched thin (the Army has thirty three combat brigades, with one in the Balkans, two in Korea, two in Afghanistan, and sixteen in Iraq).
As an American, I don't particularly care whether my country is powerful, but I do care whether it's safe, and whether it does right by the rest of the world, and I can't see any way for our current hegemony to collapse without both of those going to hell. As a Left Popperian, I look at the Pax Americana and see a set of interlocking institutions which have done a lot of good for a lot of the world. They're not democratic institutions, because they exercise power over people without being particularly accountable to those people, but they could definitely be made more democratic, and should be. I see places where the effects of American hegemony have been pretty awful, but that makes me think that we should reform those institutions so they produce fewer outcomes like, e.g., Guatemala, and more like, e.g., South Korea. Most of all, I don't care how or why American hegemony came into being; what I'm interested in is what we can make of it, and what the alternatives are. If we want a peaceful, open, prosperous world, getting rid of even the present limited degree of global governance is an extremely bad idea, and I can't see any way for American hegemony to break down without taking that governance with it. The goal, then, of good internationalists should be to transform the Pax Americana into an organization of free, cooperating and mutually restraining states, not smash it and assume the usual suspects, freed from even their present constraints, will make things better.
Nova Spivack links to an amazing discovery.#
A brain scan that can apparently root out racists has been developed by scientists.
The technique was used on white volunteers shown photographs of black individuals.
In those with racist tendencies, a surge of activity was seen in part of the brain that controls thoughts and behaviour. Scientists believe this reflected volunteers' attempts to to curb their latent racism.
Faré writes about libertarianism.#
Tel Éris, déesse du Chaos révérée avec humour au n-ième degré par les discordiens, l'État vous promet de résoudre (un jour prochain) tous vos problèmes, mais, en échange, il exige que vous résolviez (dès aujourd'hui) tous ses problèmes; y compris le problème de tenter de résoudre peut-être ceux parmi vos problèmes passés qu'il aura pris en charge. Et c'est là que le bât blesse. L'État n'offre rien qu'il ne prélève d'abord. Il ne fait que détruire liberté et responsabilité, et profiter aux nomenklaturistes kleptocrates qui se servent au passage.
In reality the State is actually Chaos. It offers to you that it will fix all your problems, provided you fix all it's problems, with the constraint that the only problems it will fix are ones that you fix before becoming part of the state. Therefore, the State "does give anything that it does not take initially." It does nothing but destroy freedom and responsibility, and benefit the kleptocrats who are used by the system for the system's ends.
Will R. at Weblogg-ed on what makes a good school.#
It made me think about my school, which for all intents and purposes is a great high school from most standpoints. But there's no doubt that much of our success can be attributed to the fact that our kids come to us pretty successful to begin with. It's almost like we just have to be careful not to screw them up. Now that's not to say that we don't have good teachers and good intentions to improve our practice. But we're really not doing much that I would consider "bold" in terms of getting the most out of our kids. And I think all the posting of late about e-portfolios and alternative assessments has made that even more acute for me. It would be so cool if we were to push the envelope, challenge the assumptions more. But we're so concerned, it seems, with doing well in the standardized areas that it leaves little room for real innovation. It's too bad, not only for our kids but for the millions of kids across the country who are taught to pass the test without really knowing for sure they can put that knoweledge to productive practice.
Jorrit Wiersma sees an amazing sky.#
I just saw the most beautiful sunrise.
I was just innocently riding to work on my bike when I noticed the bright sky overhead. Almost the whole eastern sky was filled with clouds whose undersides were streaked with bright magenta. The sun was hidden behind the clouds on the horizon but shone at just the right angle on the higher clouds to create an intense spectacle contrasting sharply with the dark cyan-grey tops of the clouds.
Higher up in the sky the magenta looked more like dense cobwebs punctured here and there to show the darker clouds beneath (or actually, above them). Occasionally the clouds parted a little to show the light green morning sky behind.
The Yeti writes about a problem worth having.#
Here's a question for you. What do you do when you have too many dates and you like all the girls? I know, I know, it's a position that really doesn't allow one to complain - but we already know that I live a charmed life.
How and when do you make decisions when you find several women you like? Isn't there an inertia that builds in relationships where you can't wait long enough? Guess I'll have to be manly and make my own decisions.
I would think that you can't spread yourself too thin or you ruin them all and get nothing out of it. Don't get yourself into that situation to begin with.
Richard is the master quoter.#
George F. Will: "Thirteen months after winning an excruciatingly close election, Bush proved himself less principled than Bill Clinton regarding the free-trade principles that have fueled world prosperity since 1945."
Richard links to Walter Kirn on "Remote Control Sex-Ed."#
Walter Kirn: "The most powerful lesson about sex that TV teaches, of course, is that everyone's having more of it than you are -- and they're having it with more attractive partners than you can ever hope to meet."
Kirn is generally positive about the prospect of sexual education on happening primarily on TV as compared to the classroom. The article talks about how mechanical sex is as taught in the classroom (a gripe I had about it: sure, it taught important stuff like how babies are made, but not the really important part which is how to get someone in the sack), but also about some of the implications for letting TV be the sole educator: there are "dozens of other lessons, many of them not so helpful, that teenagers absorb from watching shows like ''Friends.'' For example: the ideal weight for full-grown women is between 95 and 98 pounds. Or this one: the best route to true romantic fulfillment is to seduce your closest buddy's girlfriend." Overall, though, Kirn sides with TV as an effective medium for burrowing into the crowded teenage brain, even if the message isn't as good as it could be.
Shriram Krishnamurthi writes on ll1-discuss about ll1-discuss.#
The great thing about the LL1 list is that if you wait long enough, not only will someone explain your views for you, someone else will have already contradicted them, yet another person will have anticipate the contradiction and refuted it, all while someone invented another Web scripting language and Parrot added support for it.