ARCHIVE: JANUARY 1, 2010 THROUGH MARCH 26, 2010
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Note: In reverse chronological order.
Caveat: Inevitably, given the ever evolving state of the Internet, some of the links on past postings may be outdated.
2010-03-26 – THEME: THE LAST BASTION OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Humour seems to be the last bastion of freedom of expression in these politically correct times. But that may have always been the case: the King’s fool could get away with saying things others in the King’s court wouldn’t dare say. So, too, can comedians say things that would get even tenured professors promptly fired. Not surprisingly there is a lot of humour about political correctness. One can only hope it makes The Crusaders For Virtuous Speech think a bit more about what they’re doing. Unfortunately, they’ll just be offended. These are just links to some of my favourite skits by some of my favourite irreverent comedians.
STICKS AND STONES WILL BREAK YOUR BONES, BUT NOT WORDS
Lenny Bruce
PC PANTOMIME: WHAT IS, AND WHAT IS NOT, OK
Mitchell and Webb
HEAVEN HELP US ALL
George Carlin
2010-03-19 – THEME: FORGET AI, CONSIDER AC!
The nature of creativity is one of my most passionate interests, and I’ll openly admit that my respect and admiration for the great creative minds in the arts and in the sciences verges on idolatry. However, the more I study creativity, the more doubts I have about this gift really defining our species as unique. And the paradoxes associated with creativity are confounding and counter-intuitive. One such paradox is that the heart and soul of creativity is not in the creating—but rather in the critical evaluation. Enough monkeys pounding on typewriter keys (or computers generating random characters) will eventually write “To be or not to be, that is the question.” But neither monkey nor computer can tell if that line is more worth keeping than “To be or not to be, that is the xjfjisll.” I’ve written software to write grammatically correct lines of poetry, some of which are awesome, but most of which are just silly. Although my program can sometimes produce lines I honestly wish I’d written, my program can’t tell they’re the keepers––only I can. Still, there is evidence of computers becoming capable of critical judgements. The advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are mind-boggling, but even more amazing (and disturbing) are the developments in artificial creativity (AC). They really threaten our probably exaggerated self-esteem, as evidenced by the reaction such developments elicit. Here are some articles to make us feel less secure about our allegedly unique human abilities––and make one seriously ponder what creativity really is.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CYBORG COMPOSER
I’ve been following this guy’s activities for some time. Thanks to my son for this recent article about his work.
AN OVERVIEW OF ARTIFICIAL CREATIVITY
Worth noting is something I’ve often said: The random number generator is the poetic soul of computers.
COMPUTER STORY WRITER
Just one–somewhat silly, but fun–example of computer-generated fiction. Type in “story generator” in Google and one will see many examples of programs that are in some small way creative writers.
2010-03-12 -- THEME: THE USEFULNESS OF DEPRESSION
We’ve just had a week of sunshine, record temperatures, and an early spring is in the air. Seems like a good time for dark thoughts. Physical pain is necessary for survival. But chronic, unrelenting pain can override the basic instinct for survival. This also seems to apply to emotional pain, but it’s easy to forget that such pain is also necessary for survival. How we manage both physical and emotional pain raises all kinds of questions, especially now that we have much better resources for managing pain than in the past. If you have a toothache now, you can take drugs to kill the ache. But most of us are sensible enough to acknowledge it as an important warning signal and go to a dentist. We don’t just keep taking the painkillers, assuming the problem is resolved. However, we now also have drugs to relieve emotional pain, but in this case some people seem to think that this really does resolve the problem. (Of course, sometimes symptomatic relief is all one can expect and something to be very grateful for.) There is no ‘dentist’ to quickly fix the underlying cause of a person’s depression with some kind of psychological ‘root canal’. I know mental health workers and so-called “spiritual advisors” sincerely try to fulfil this role, but their efficacy is questionable. It’s all very complicated and controversial, but the following perspectives on one form of chronic emotional pain are certainly food for thought while enjoying the early spring.
DEPRESSION’S UPSIDE
“Darwin wrote, it is the sadness that informs as it ‘leads an animal to pursue that course of action which is most beneficial.’ The darkness was a kind of light.”
DEPRESSION AND CREATIVITY
“A number of writers propose that mental illness may even help nurture creative potential for some people.”
MANUFACTURING DEPRESSION
“Am I as happy as I should be? We've become so obsessed with that question that it's making us miserable, says psychotherapist Gary Greenberg.”
2010-03-05 -- THEME: THE MULTIVERSE
If anything is likely to cause your head to explode, it is thinking about contemporary theories in physics. The Nobel laureate physicist, Richard Feynman, once remarked, "Anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics doesn't understand quantum mechanics." Well, if Feynman can say that, heaven help us dilettantes who try to grasp these ideas. An easy way to develop empathy with Alice in Wonderland is to venture into the Wonderland of modern cosmological theory. But then, hell, it's fun to get lost in this topsy-turvy world of modern physics. Forget the tired cliché of "thinking outside of the box"; these scientists are thinking outside the boundaries of the whole known universe. Back in the mid-fifties Hugh Everett proposed the many-worlds interpretation (MWI), which suggests there is a multiverse, of which our known universe is only an infinitesimal part. (Interestingly, it was the pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James who coined the term “multiverse” half a century before.) At first Everett wasn't taken seriously, but now his MWI is one mainstream interpretation of the established paradoxes that empirical support of quantum theory throws in our faces--such as the arrow of time not really existing!
ONE PHYSICIST HUNTS FOR THE ULTIMATE THEORY
A clearly written article about theoretical physicist Sean Carroll's theory to 'resolve' the time paradoxes of modern physics by turning to the multiverse idea. (Thanks to my son for pointing me to this.)
ARROW OF TIME TALK
A taping of a full one-hour lecture by Sean Carroll where he clearly and wittily explicates the current theories that attempt to resolve the mystery of the Big Bang, entropy, and time's apparent unidirectionality. It concludes with his own preferred explanation, one that posits a multiverse.
THE MANY WORLDS OF HUGH EVERETT
This article is about the tragic life of the originator of the revolutionary theory which started it all. It is sad that the personal lives of so many of the brilliant people who explored the farthest regions of philosophical science were so tragic. One thinks of Frege, Wittgenstein, Godel, Turing, etc.
2010-02-26 -- THEME: SICK TV
Television is a great and versatile medium. But, as in books, it is content that really matters. (The medium isn’t really the message. It’s only the container that shapes it to some extent.) There are a lot of PBS, TVO and BBC (even CBC) programs that are more literate than the majority of books and magazines sold at convenience store check-out counters. Despite the once-justified contempt for most of network TV, in the cable and satellite era it is hard to say whether the ratio of trash to quality content really is worse for TV than for print media. It may just be that the crap that makes it into print isn’t as much in everyone’s face as it is with TV. The popularity of trash TV shows is more obvious, because it, unlike tabloids, is in our living rooms every time we turn on the Tube. The following links are to popular TV shows that seem to represent some strange ideas––and say something about our baser natures. All these clips are intended for immature audiences and viewer indiscretion is advised. It is worth contemplating what is the ‘idea’ behind each of these nasty shows.
THE JERRY SPRINGER SIDE SHOW
Each episode of this show focuses on some lurid topic and places guests in confrontational situations where they expose ‘dirty’ secrets which frequently result in physical fighting between these ‘guests’. Topics include bestiality, incest, infidelity admitted publicly, dubious parenthood, pedophilia, strange fetishes, dwarfism, or transvestism. Here is a sample episode.
PRISONER’S DILEMMA: GOLDEN BALLS
What could be more entertaining than watching people lie and cheat -- out of greed?! There are no winners in this game show. One person ends up broke. The other shows himself or herself to be a lying asshole in front of the apparently large audience for this sort of nastiness. Here is a sample episode.
SURVIVOR SILLINESS
This is perhaps the original and archetypal “‘reality” TV show, extremely popular throughout the world. In the show contestants are allegedly isolated in the wilderness and have to compete to ‘survive’ for prizes. During each episode the members of the group vote off other ‘tribe’ members until only one final contestant remains as the "Sole Survivor". It, and its various spin-offs, may be a mini-psychodrama about how politicians and grifters behave, but it sure isn’t based on rewarding competitors for being the best at something. Like all these so-called ‘reality shows’, it is cheap to produce and focuses more on our species’ ability to be nasty than being really good at something. Here is an amusing parody of “Survivor”.
2010-02-19 -- THEME: TRAVEL IN THE INTERNET AGE
The science-fiction writers and futurists of several decades ago got one thing very wrong. They believed there would be revolutionary developments in transportation, but it was communication where the revolution occurred. However this revolution did have a major effect on travel. We don’t fly around with jet-packs, but we do a lot of virtual travel that was inconceivable a mere few decades ago. I was thinking about this as we recently flew home from Malta. Planes haven’t changed that much. In fact many of the metal boxes that contain us as we fly over the Atlantic are older than almost any cars still on the road, and a transatlantic flight takes just as long now as it did fifty years ago. But the revolution in communication has made travel a very different experience. The Internet casts a wide net over the whole globe, and access to it is widely available while travelling. I wonder at how I managed the logistics of travel before the age of the Internet. Examples follow.
VIEW FROM THE STREET
You want to quite literally see what you’re getting into at your next destination? By now everyone uses Google Maps which is global, but the area covered by their Street View option continues to expand as well. Upon getting home I happened to notice that they’ve even done Northern Ontario. If homesick, I could’ve walked (virtually) up my street and looked at my house back here in North Bay. (Mind you it was my house last summer, so there was none of that white stuff to make me glad I was in the Mediterranean.) This link below is to the road into Nipissing University’s campus. (The URL is extremely long and has to be pasted in as one ‘word’. It is easier to simply type “Nipissing University” into the Google Maps’ search box and then drag the little man icon to where you want to ‘stand’ and look.)
A MULTITUDE OF PERSONAL GUIDES
It’s nice to have a guide, especially one who doesn’t make you follow a timetable -- or charge you for the service. No matter where you are, you can learn about the place online, get everything from formal detailed information about the place to personal advice from recent travellers to your destination. When in a Wi-Fi zone you can search out all the relevant websites and save them to your mobile device to carry with you as you explore. One such free software application is “Instapaper”.
A DROPBOX IN THE CLOUDS
At one point I needed a file from home. I emailed my son who uploaded it to a ‘cloud’ (a storage folder on a remote server), and I then was able to download it onto my laptop computer. “Dropbox” is a free application that connects one to several gigs of free storage in virtual space. One can upload files to this dropbox, and download from it, it on any computer or mobile device such as one’s iPhone.
2010-02-12 -- THEME: OTHER MEN FRIDAY
Seems this Man Friday isn’t the only Friday guy. (Gosh, and here I thought I was unique.) Check these websites out.
WHAT’S NEW BY BOB PARKS
The physicist, science commentator and author (Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud; and Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science) sends a Friday newsletter to anyone requesting to be added to his list. This one page, usually four-item report, of what is being done right––and what is foolishness––in science, as reported and as funded, is always delightfully frank and entertaining. The link is to the archive, but from there one can subscribe to a regular Friday email.
SPEAKING OF POEMS BY DAVID KOSUB
An incredibly thoughtful and articulate blog about poetry (and life) posted every Friday. Each posting is a beautifully crafted essay, and, unlike so many blogs, the contributors of comments are consistently literate and informed.
SCIENCE FRIDAY RADIO AND PODCAST
This website links to an Internet radio and podcast program broadcast every Friday about what’s new and interesting in the sciences.
2010-02-05 -- THEME: SCIENCE AND THE POPULAR MEDIA
Once upon a time there was a canon, a body of knowledge and a skill set that every educated person was assumed to possess. Any educational curriculum has to specify what percentage of time to devote to what are considered the essentials, the canon. An education exclusively devoted to what someone (or some committee) has decided is essential is bound to be parochial. (The Athenians wouldn’t even consider ‘electives’ in foreign languages, for they considered them barbaric.) But an educational system without a canon is no education at all--and education in Canada and The States is approaching that abyss. We allegedly have more educated people than ever before. More than 90% of Americans 25 or older have completed high school, yet according to one survey by Baylor University, 55% of Americans believe in guardian angels! And look at the widespread belief in astrology, homeopathy, faith healing, parapsychology, and other utter nonsense. Obviously one desperately needed item to be introduced to the mandatory curriculum is science. I don’t mean a whack of courses in specific sciences. I mean training in how science works, how to think critically and skeptically, and––very importantly––how to evaluate what is presented as science in the popular media. It is ironic that science has such cachet that con artists routinely dress up their nonsense in lab coats. It is disheartening that the solid scientific principle of opposing hypotheses battling it out is so misinterpreted by the popular media. One result is the attitude that because there is disagreement between scientists, one should just believe in what feels good. (Hell, if scientists debate whether the Big Bang occurred 13.5 or 14 billion years ago, you might as well believe some Almighty God made the whole mess in 4004 B.C. The hard-core creationists are all in precise agreement with their dates!) Another result is that of giving equal credence (and equal time on the tube) to some charlatan speaking pseudo-scientific gibberish as to a respected scientific expert in the field. Journalists interested in ‘presenting both sides‘ should realize that doing so doesn’t mean giving equal time to every nutcase disagreeing with an established scientific consensus.
DISAGREEMENT IS AT THE HEART OF SCIENCE
The author of this column is also the author of a wonderfully sane book: Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear. “We are the safest and healthiest human beings who ever lived, and yet irrational fear is growing, with deadly consequences—such as the 1,595 Americans killed when they made the mistake of switching from planes to cars after September 11. In part, this irrationality is caused by those—politicians, activists, and the media—who promote fear for their own gain.”
LETTER TO MR. MEDIA FROM MR. SCIENCE
A personification of science writes a letter to the personification of media. This is from from a neuroscientist with a great sense of humour. His whole blog archive is a delight. (Thanks to S. Hevenor for this link.)
“MEDIA SENSATIONALIZING SCIENCE” (PSEUDOSCIENCE ACTUALLY)
This is a short BBC news piece that somewhat acknowledges what is wrong with most news about science. The “see also”s are worth reading as well.
2010-01-29 -- THEME: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
Every university in Ontario is being held hostage by the provincial government; in fact, apparently every public sector organization in the province is. The bosses demand 100% compliance from their employees to an indoctrination course on dealing with “persons with disabilities” or the consequences are dire. ($100,000 per day per organization and $50,000 per day for each director and officer of the organization!) Yes, while the course is inane, it is well-intentioned and relatively innocuous; and, unlike in Orwell’s 1984, one doesn’t have to pass a test that says 4 fingers are 5 or indicate one has learned in this course that it is wrong to call the disabled -- “people”! Not yet, anyway. Maybe the next round will require everyone ‘pass’ some PC test. So, just maybe, this is a precedent worth worrying about? Enuf. Friday is about offering up ideas, not about serving as a soapbox. This government’s idea is certainly an ‘interesting’ one. Two of the links below are humourous, for Political Correctness is inherently funny (except to the grim-faced politically-correct or those who are penalized for failing to be PC), and satire of it can be thought provoking. The third link is more serious, because censorship isn’t funny at all.
ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE CLOSER TO HOME
2010-01-22 -- THEME: IT’S BEEN A YEAR!
It has not been a month of Sundays. It’s been a year of Fridays. Time flies when you’re having none.
TIMELINES FOR EVERYTHING
Wonderful resource for putting things in temporal perspective.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME
Movie very loosely based on Hawking’s book with a sound track by Philip Glass.
PART1 PART II PART III PART IV
SPACETIME CONTINUUM
The poetry of time.
2010-01-15 -- THEME: IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND!
You can’t cure cancer by “the power of positive thinking”, nor will negative thinking cause cancer. But there do seem to be a lot of medical and psychological disorders that are caused by our attitudes as well as alleviated by our attitudes. The former are called psychogenic illnesses, and the latter are the mysterious result of placebo treatments.
2010-01-08 -- THEME: I ROBOT
Is it time to put Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics on the books and hardwired into all our new devices? Robots are coming along nicely, although not as quickly as the ‘hard AI’ folk forecast several decades ago. Still if would be good to know that the command "Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL!" would have to be obeyed. Interestingly, the development of AI and robotics has been most successful when modeled on biological evolution rather than human engineering. This is to say that natural selection seems to work better than “intelligent design”––assuming of course that we humans qualify as being intelligent.
2010-01-01 -- THEME: HAPPY NEW YEAR AND END OF THE WORLD
You wake up with a hangover. You think you’re going to die from the agony. And then you realize you’re not––and now you’re even more despondent. You'll live. And a hangover isn't The End of the World. That was supposed to happen back at the turn of the millennium, when everyone was buying lots of bottled water and unplugging their computers before the whole technological infrastructure crashed just because some frugal, byte hoarding, computer programmer only used two digits to represent the year. But you know––promises, promises, promises! Well, the promises keep coming. Maybe our Western calender was flawed, and we should rely on the Mayan one, which cycles on the lucky number 13 and promises our end in the year 2012. The Mayans were, after all, a sophisticated people, full of good ideas which we still could gain from implementing. For example, some entrepreneur could make it big time by selling to soccer hooligans tzompantli, a stake the Mayans used to mount the heads of defeated ballgame opponents. It may even be possible to avoid the end of the human race by reinitiating the Mayan practice of human sacrifice, where children were killed by having a priest cut open their chests and tear out their hearts as an offering to the gods. Even if you don’t believe in these bloodthirsty gods and prefer you own slightly less nasty ones, this public policy would still do much to reduce that major threat to our species' survival: over-population.
WILL IT BE FIRE OR WILL IT BE ICE?
Frost favours ice. (Pun intended.)
WILL IT BE...THE LIST GOES ON AND ON!
So what are the chances of it being over in the next 70 years by various means? (Personally I would prefer to wait for the Second Law of Thermodynamics to get around to finishing the great heat death of the universe––but then I’ve always preferred unpleasant things being put off to the last minute.)
DOESN’T MATTER REALLY, FOR THE EARTH WILL BENEFIT ANYWAY!
In his book, The World Without Us, Weisman agrees with Horace: “You can drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but she keeps on coming back.” And then, of course, Gaia breathes a big sigh of relief! (Infection cured.)