inverse thinking

A Theory of Money

2012-02-16T00:34:00.000-08:00

Money is just a method for redistributing labor and goods across space and time.

Borrowing is a method for moving labor and goods through time, but of course time travel costs money.

Since money is just a convenient fiction, we must realize something: everything that has ever been created by people could have been created without money. Money did not magically move actual labor from the future to the present or the past. Everything that has ever been accomplished was done within the capabilities of the people alive at that very moment. The only thing that ever mattered was the motivation/incentive.

That is interesting, because the banks and governments of the world have managed to generate obscene levels of debt, but debt is just a fiction too. It may have been used as a good incentive to get things done at a particular time, but it didn't actually create labor, it only created incentive.

I wonder what we could accomplish if we were all sufficiently motivated without dragging a burden of debt along.

Prohibition

2011-12-05T14:16:00.001-08:00

Ostensibly, the reason for prohibition is that using them will destroy the user's life.

This explains perfectly why the punishment for using them is to throw the user in prison and destroy their life.

Oh, wait, no it doesn't.

It's like capital punishment for attempted suicide.

Just had to get that off my chest.

2011-09-13T16:20:00.001-07:00

The Alphabet According to Goolgle.ca Auto-Complete

2011-05-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

A is for aubrie
B is for basketball
C is for cookie
D is for dangerous lyrics
E is for ethics
F is for frank
G is for girlie
H is for hook
I is for insignificant
J is for jake (and a is for apple)
K is for kani
L is for love (L is for lies)
M is for maple
N is for neville (who died of ennui)
O is for outlaw
P is for party
Q is for quarry
R is for rainbow
S is for silence
T is for tiger
U is for undertow
V is for vendetta
W is for wind
X is for x-ray
Y is for yearbook
Z is for zamboni

What is a(n):
What is an adjective
What is a blog
What is a canuck
What is a dutch oven
What is an earthquake
What is a fever
What is a g6
What is a hernia
What is an ipad
What is a joule
What is a kindle
What is a leader
What is a metaphor
What is a no fly zone
What is an ode
What is a podcast
What is a qr code
What is a root canal
What is a stroke
What is a tsunami
What is an ulcer
What is a verb
What is a wiki
What is an xml file
What is a yeast infection
What is a zip code

Election time again

2011-04-05T22:18:00.001-07:00

Let's run down the parties:

Liberal
Attempting to bribe me with money borrowed from my grandchildren

NDP
Attempting to bribe other people with money borrowed from my great-great-grandchildren

Conservative
Not even bothering to bribe me, won't even tell me how big the bribe is

Green
My mom telling me how naughty I have been, wants me to go sit in the corner and have a time-out

Since at this moment there doesn't appear to even be a candidate registered in my riding other than the Conservative incumbent, the choice for the moment is fairly easy.

Government

2011-04-05T17:56:00.001-07:00

Creating problems today in order to promise to solve them tomorrow.

How to Read News Headlines

2011-02-26T01:03:00.000-08:00

If any part of the headline is 'in quotation marks,' the story is either a vast distortion of the truth, or an outright lie.

If the headline ends in a question mark, the answer is no.

If the headline suggests a major medical breakthrough, the study will be small, the results not statistically significant, or there will simply be no mention of these things.

Addendum: If the headline is written in a publication in the Northwest Territories, hey! Look over there! Something shiny!

In today's top CBC headlines...

2011-02-19T16:45:00.000-08:00

"Libyan snipers fire on mourners"

and

"Winnipeg girl to sing with Lady Gaga"

There is something wrong with a world where it is implied those two events deserve the same degree of national attention.

Congratulations to Egypt!

2011-02-11T22:18:00.001-08:00

The People got what they asked for.

Now comes the hard part: getting what they want.

Bo*bs

2011-01-03T02:40:00.000-08:00

One of my posts from Oct 2008 receives a large number of hits from Google. Considering that the Internet is powered primarily by porn this is hardly surprising.

The short version is, it's a survey of the number of Google hits depending on the number of additional O's added to the word "boobs." Being one of the more entertaining bits of original research I have done (in a geek way, not what you were just thinking), it's time for part 2.

As you can see, compared with the original data (blue), there has been a significant increase in the large-O count instances (red). There is a curious spike at 11 O's where there was a dip previously, and 22 O's is also considerably off the trend line for no apparent reason. 35 also shows a bit of a bump. Note that the scale is logarithmic, so while there were 34,800,000 boobs on the internet previously, there are now 40,600,000 even thought the bars are not significantly different in size.

Of other interest, I sampled a larger data set as well (up to 125 O's from the 97 in the previous survey). Did you know that the longest word Google will index is 127 characters? Interestingly, there are hits all the way out to 124 O's, with the exception of 111. This data was actually gathered in August 2010, so it may be slightly out of date.

So, in the spirit of data openness, and a shameless attempt for more Google hits, here is the raw data (.csv format) comparing the 2008 data with 2010 data:

"Google Search","Hits 2008","Number of o's 2008","Log10(x+1)","Hits 2010","Number of o's 2010","Log10(x+1)"
"bbs",168000000,0,8.23,540000000,0,8.73
"bobs",6080000,1,6.78,16200000,1,7.21
"boobs",34800000,2,7.54,40600000,2,7.61
"booobs",203000,3,5.31,302000,3,5.48
"boooobs",11700,4,4.07,275000,4,5.44
"booooobs",9500,5,3.98,101000,5,5
"boooooobs",10800,6,4.03,52500,6,4.72
"booooooobs",3110,7,3.49,26700,7,4.43
"boooooooobs",1930,8,3.29,24100,8,4.38
"booooooooobs",2230,9,3.35,9310,9,3.97
"boooooooooobs",5830,10,3.77,12900,10,4.11
"booooooooooobs",1320,11,3.12,52000,11,4.72
"boooooooooooobs",2820,12,3.45,11300,12,4.05
"booooooooooooobs",707,13,2.85,4570,13,3.66
"boooooooooooooobs",857,14,2.93,4150,14,3.62
"booooooooooooooobs",395,15,2.6,7600,15,3.88
"boooooooooooooooobs",450,16,2.65,1950,16,3.29
"booooooooooooooooobs",645,17,2.81,1920,17,3.28
"boooooooooooooooooobs",94,18,1.98,1150,18,3.06
"booooooooooooooooooobs",292,19,2.47,1530,19,3.18
"boooooooooooooooooooobs",91,20,1.96,1100,20,3.04
"booooooooooooooooooooobs",77,21,1.89,907,21,2.96
"boooooooooooooooooooooobs",65,22,1.82,8680,22,3.94
"booooooooooooooooooooooobs",50,23,1.71,791,23,2.9
"boooooooooooooooooooooooobs",63,24,1.81,619,24,2.79
"booooooooooooooooooooooooobs",54,25,1.74,678,25,2.83
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",43,26,1.64,518,26,2.72
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",47,27,1.68,671,27,2.83
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",31,28,1.51,459,28,2.66
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",44,29,1.65,328,29,2.52
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",28,30,1.46,395,30,2.6
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",30,31,1.49,282,31,2.45
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",27,32,1.45,302,32,2.48
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",31,33,1.51,222,33,2.35
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",21,34,1.34,88,34,1.95
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",22,35,1.36,354,35,2.55
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",17,36,1.26,69,36,1.85
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",15,37,1.2,73,37,1.87
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",20,38,1.32,64,38,1.81
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",15,39,1.2,60,39,1.79
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",20,40,1.32,73,40,1.87
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",10,41,1.04,60,41,1.79
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",7,42,0.9,49,42,1.7
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",9,43,1,40,43,1.61
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",14,44,1.18,36,44,1.57
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",6,45,0.85,46,45,1.67
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",30,46,1.49,26,46,1.43
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",6,47,0.85,33,47,1.53
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",11,48,1.08,30,48,1.49
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,49,0.7,26,49,1.43
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",5,50,0.78,35,50,1.56
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",8,51,0.95,28,51,1.46
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",8,52,0.95,18,52,1.28
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",5,53,0.78,19,53,1.3
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,54,0.7,14,54,1.18
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,55,0.7,13,55,1.15
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",5,56,0.78,18,56,1.28
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",3,57,0.6,13,57,1.15
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,58,0.7,8,58,0.95
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,59,0.7,10,59,1.04
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,60,0.7,11,60,1.08
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",6,61,0.85,17,61,1.26
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,62,0.7,10,62,1.04
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",7,63,0.9,14,63,1.18
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",3,64,0.6,17,64,1.26
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",8,65,0.95,10,65,1.04
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",5,66,0.78,7,66,0.9
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",12,67,1.11,11,67,1.08
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,68,0.7,9,68,1
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,69,0.7,7,69,0.9
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",2,70,0.48,7,70,0.9
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",6,71,0.85,7,71,0.9
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",5,72,0.78,5,72,0.78
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",2,73,0.48,7,73,0.9
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",6,74,0.85,7,74,0.9
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",1,75,0.3,11,75,1.08
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",2,76,0.48,7,76,0.9
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",6,77,0.85,8,77,0.95
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,78,0,9,78,1
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",2,79,0.48,6,79,0.85
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",2,80,0.48,6,80,0.85
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,81,0.7,4,81,0.7
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",3,82,0.6,12,82,1.11
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",3,83,0.6,9,83,1
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,84,0.7,7,84,0.9
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",3,85,0.6,5,85,0.78
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",2,86,0.48,3,86,0.6
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",1,87,0.3,5,87,0.78
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",1,88,0.3,9,88,1
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",1,89,0.3,6,89,0.85
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",4,90,0.7,5,90,0.78
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",1,91,0.3,6,91,0.85
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,92,0,5,92,0.78
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,93,0,3,93,0.6
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",1,94,0.3,2,94,0.48
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,95,0,3,95,0.6
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",3,96,0.6,5,96,0.78
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",2,97,0.48,5,97,0.78
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,98,0,5,98,0.78
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,99,0,2,99,0.48
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,100,0,5,100,0.78
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,101,0,11,101,1.08
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,102,0,3,102,0.6
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,103,0,2,103,0.48
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,104,0,2,104,0.48
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,105,0,2,105,0.48
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,106,0,5,106,0.78
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,107,0,2,107,0.48
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,108,0,1,108,0.3
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,109,0,1,109,0.3
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,110,0,2,110,0.48
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,111,0,0,111,0
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,112,0,3,112,0.6
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,113,0,1,113,0.3
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,114,0,1,114,0.3
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,115,0,3,115,0.6
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,116,0,4,116,0.7
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,117,0,1,117,0.3
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,118,0,2,118,0.48
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,119,0,3,119,0.6
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,120,0,3,120,0.6
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,121,0,2,121,0.48
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,122,0,1,122,0.3
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,123,0,0,123,0
"booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,124,0,4,124,0.7
"boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs",0,125,0,0,125,0

Danger

2010-10-22T20:40:00.000-07:00

From BBC News:

Speaking to reporters in Washington earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she condemned "in the most clear terms the disclosure of any information by individuals and or organisations which puts the lives of United States and its partners' service members and civilians at risk".

Being the aggressor nation in an unjustified war to find weapons of mass destruction that didn't actually exist.

That is how you put lives at risk, not by revealing events that never should have happened and should have been disclosed much earlier.

There has been ample opportunity to reveal and hopefully apologize for the wrongdoings of the previous administration, and do it on your own terms.

Scotiabank / Google Ads Fail

2010-08-21T01:18:00.000-07:00

I added Google Ads to my page here mostly to see how it works, and just because you never know when you might become the target of an Internet meme. We can all hope, anyway. Plus I do get a small but steady stream of people who end up here by searching for boooooooo*oooooobs due to this post (for which I have new, current statistics, but just haven't posted yet).

In any case, I found this humorous:

I'm not quite sure why Scotiabank would want to buy their own name for AdWords. It's not like their web site is hard to find.

Scotia iTrade are a bunch of money grubbing bastards

2010-08-10T20:06:00.000-07:00

This is my review of Scotiabank's Scotia iTrade service.

I used to have an account with eTrade Canada. My former employer didn't give me many choices regarding brokerages for our employee stock purchase program, but this was back during the dot-com boom and eTrade was obviously the best known.

For the last decade, everything was fine. I had a few shares from the employee stock purchase program sitting in the account, and a little cash. I eventually moved most of the cash out to my main investment account, but I always kept the shares there as a little bit of savings that I wouldn't touch. Plus the shares had declined in value by about 70%, so it wasn't of great interest.

Then eTrade went out of business and got bought by Scotiabank. This was fine, everything was the same, just a different name.

Then, without any warning, or even a change of policy that was brought to my attention, they started charging a $25/month "inactivity fee." For the pleasure of letting them hold onto some of my money, they feel they need to charge me. Wonderful.

So, I sent the appropriate forms to my bank to get all of the assets away from Scotiabank, and that all went smoothly and wonderfully and only took a couple of days and everything was fine.

Until I got my statement. Apparently the fee for transferring my account, in order that I might avoid a $25/month charge, is $120. Plus HST.

Now, it's possible I overlooked something I was sent after the account was moved to iTrade. I don't think so, though. I usually read that sort of stuff fairly carefully.

In any case, I hereby vow to, as far as it is possible, never use Scotiabank or any of the financial services ever again. I would encourage anyone reading this to do the same, if you value your money.

Democracy

2010-07-12T16:14:00.001-07:00

Actually, I mistyped the title "Democrazy" initially. Somehow that seems appropriate.

Thought for the day:

Democracy should, in theory, be the last "big stick" that gets used when, for whatever major failing of human intellect, compassion or common sense, we can't come to a suitable consensus or compromise about something.

Somehow the polarization, us-vs-them, my-team-vs-their-team mentality (commonly referred to under the broad category of "politicization") has taken over, until all we get are "big stick" resolutions. That's kind of sad really.

The Overtime

2010-05-29T23:47:00.000-07:00

It is bad for the blogging.

So, random videos. They fill a lot of space and don't require much effort.

I found this very awesome somehow:

80's TV the way I like it:

This was at least entertaining:

And a little skepticism to round things out:

Games as Art

2010-04-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

Roger Ebert (whose intellect I greatly appreciate) has created a bit of a kerfuffle by declaring that video games can never be art.

The basic disagreements seem to come down to a) arbitrary definitions of art and b) an unclear distinction between the act of playing and the items played with.

While playing a game of chess might not be art, the chess set itself could be art. Playing catch with the Mona Lisa might not be art (performance artists might disagree) but the Mona Lisa itself is, I think, art. Still, if dance can be art, why not the act of playing a game? Can figure skating be art, but not hockey?

That's a slightly poor analogy, but perhaps this is the central problem: video games don't fit any of the traditional categories we would stick things into. Campfire stories to books to radio. Street performance to stage to movies. Games don't really fit.

Maybe games are ultimately the extension of playing make-believe with a big chunk of art (even if it's only preschooler level art) latched on the side.

I don't know if games are art. I'm quite sure there is, or can be, art IN games. Personally I think arguing one way or the other falls between stupid and pointless. So I'll stop now.

Hash Based Compression

2010-04-12T21:17:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend, I was trying to remember the name of someone I haven't seen and barely thought about for over 15 years. After much effort I finally managed to remember the family's last name, and then after coming up with a few first names that didn't seem right, I iterated through every letter of the alphabet until I finally remembered the first name.

This immediately made me wonder exactly how human memory works, and if there is a potential for something like "hash based compression." Let me explain:

A hash function is simply a way of creating a small identifier from a large data set. This sort of thing is frequently used to verify that data has been transmitted correctly (for example, in the TCP/IP protocol) - a hash of the data is sent along with it, and if the hash you received and the hash of the data that you compute yourself match, you can be fairly certain that the data transmitted correctly. Since the hash is smaller in size than the data, many data sets will generate the same hash, so there is a chance of collision, but a well designed hash function can give a high level of confidence that the data is correct.

The idea is this: Is it possible to use this sort of technique to reproduce something similar to human memory? Human memory is lossy (i.e. imperfect) and we almost certainly don't remember every detail of everything that happens to us.

My thought was, I wonder if we store something like a hash code for memories, and then try every reasonable combination of options until we find a match with the stored hash code. If the search space is relatively small - say, all known English names - then comparing the hash of every name with the name we're trying to remember will eventually allow us to "remember" the name we're looking for, without ever having stored the full name. Since our memory is a big web of connections, we'll probably have a few other ways of confirming we have the right match.

A search on Google for "hash based compression" turns up a stunning 26 entries, so there doesn't seem to be a lot of work on this technique, at least under that name. Most compression techniques seem to be based on removing redundant information rather than attempting to match in this way.

2010-04-06T21:25:00.001-07:00

I remember sitting in Social Studies class in high school in 1990 or so, hearing about the Japanese Internment during World War II and McCarthyism. I remember thinking that I was happy we were now such an enlightened people that we would never allow something so foolish to happen again. We had learned from the mistakes of the past and were no longer doomed to repeat them.

Then I hear callers to a local radio station calling for the banning of face coverings in the name of protecting us from terrorists. The irony of this being a Canadian station, a country where it is necessary to wear a scarf much of the year or risk frostbite. The lack of terrorist attacks from both the masked and unmasked should perhaps be a clue that this is an issue that does not need addressing.

Certainly the need to positively identify individuals in certain situations is necessary, although those situations are very rare. Religion does not grant additional rights.

Much of what the Burka represents is the antithesis of a secular, free and equal society. However, banning such things is only treating the symptoms and does nothing at all to deal with the issue. As usual, it is a solution that is clear, simple and wrong.

Terrorism is our generation's witch trials, our Red Scare, our Japanese Internment. When my children's children learn of this time in school, they will look back on our paranoia and shake their heads, wondering how we could be so foolish.

Another Vietnam

2010-04-06T01:04:00.000-07:00

In the most recent revelation from Iraq, the US military has been murdering civilians for fun. I don't think I can even watch that video. Well, I could, but I don't really want to. Some other day, perhaps.

The goal of peace seems to have been lost in the last nine years. I think even the whole concept has been distorted. There has been a shift from, "Can't we all just get along," to, "Obviously we can't all get along, so just kill or marginalize everyone else." All wrapped up in the patriotic fallacy that it's all about the marginally inclusive "us" versus the poorly defined "them."

The LHC had its first 7TeV collisions last week. The highest controlled collisions ever in the most complicated machine ever assembled. There are still people in the world interested in advancing knowledge, fortunately, but it all seems a little bit pointless right now.

I watched the new Star Trek again the other day. Very enjoyable movie. Star Trek (in general, not just the movie) is a rather interesting view of the future, where people do the jobs they are good at and enjoy for the betterment of all humanity. Of course, you only get to see a handful of starships. I wonder what they do with all of the people who are more harmful to themselves than a benefit to humanity. Really, if you could eliminate all scarcity in the basic necessities of life - food, water, shelter - what would you end up with? How many people are there in the world who want to push other people around, just because they can? What would it actually take to meet all of the basic needs of every person, and then make everyone actually respect one another?

There's a growing movement, particularly in Europe but there are rumblings of such things here in Canada, to ban full face coverings in public. This is obviously a direct assault on some of the traditional (if not specifically religious) clothing worn by Muslim women. I for one think people should be able to wear whatever they want. Your religion doesn't give you extra rights, so you don't get to do something I'm not allowed to do just because your religion requires it. At the same time, fears over "security" are a bit over blown, and the general unease at not being able to see someone's face when communicating with them is hardly reason for an outright ban. That it is a symbol of men attempting to control women is unfortunate, but not strictly a matter requiring legislation, just the assurance that everyone is equal under the law, and should they choose to resist that oppression, they are free to do so.

I have heard suggestions that the immigration and birth rates of Muslims will cause there to be a Muslim majority in various places in Europe, allowing constitutional change to take place democratically, thus eliminating decades of secularism and installing Muslim theocracy. I have no idea how accurate that is, but if people actually believe that, I can see where this "fight for secularism" comes from. A return to the Dark Ages would not be fun.

Let Me Google That For You

2010-03-26T11:15:00.000-07:00

The most useful site I have seen in ages:

http://lmgtfy.com

And in action:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=people+who+don%27t+understand+the+internet

Beautiful.

Converse Also True

2010-02-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

The majority of idiots in the world are people.

Freedom

2009-11-25T17:13:00.000-08:00

What is freedom, other than the right to do something someone else disapproves of?

(In response to the current "Should Google ban racist images?" nonsense.)

Once Upon a Time

2009-09-26T03:06:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, the adventure game was among, if not the, most popular type of game on the personal computer. I was pondering whether this had anything to do with the average intelligence of people using computers at that time. Computers in the home were relatively rare, there was no Internet available to the public, and any computers that were in the home were relatively difficult to use. In short, computers were once the realm of intellectuals and nerds. No longer.

Sometime in the early 1990's, I was introduced to the Internet at university. There was a brief period where practically everyone on the 'net was an academic or very technically inclined. Even early home access didn't seem to change this mix much. There was a distinct culture and set of social norms associated with discourse on the 'net. In September 1993, AOL essentially changed this culture forever. The age of spam, trolling and flamewars had been launched, to engulf the Internet forever.

One hope expressed on the early Internet was that it would be able to bring everyone together in a global conversation, where the honest application of logic and reason in the discussion would lead us to a golden age of peace and enlightenment. Or something. At the time, this actually seemed reasonable, mostly because the vast majority of the people in the conversation at the time respected reason and logic and were willing to consider different points of view and the possibility that their own opinions might be wrong. The major flaws in this reasoning are still only becoming fully realized, but we now understand this: many people are not reasonable, nor do they respect reason or logic.

The point of this being, there have been a number of endeavors undertaken by the intellectuals of this world, and they have been routinely cocked up when the rabble gets in on the action.

Now, I'm not going to say that should not have happened. I'm not even going to suggest it wasn't a net gain. What I want to know is, what is the next sub-culture of intellectualism that will fly under the radar for the next decade or so, and how do I find it?

Anti-social

2009-08-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

I will probably never really understand social network sites. One of the biggest draws to computers for me was that you can do fun stuff without interacting with other people.

I was trying to find an anti-social network, but that mostly resulting in finding joke / faux-sociopathic sites. I don't actually hate people (in a broad sense), I just prefer to be by myself most of the time. I was wondering if there was a social networking site for people who don't like people. You know, we could get together and chat about our common disinterest.

Dang, blew another irony meter.

I think I would make an awesome starship pilot. Not the Star Trek kind of pilot, too many people. More like the Larry Niven "there's no room for anybody else" kind of pilot. I'd probably miss the wife and kids though.

Thought of the day (month/year)

2009-07-03T17:13:00.001-07:00

It is better to have questions that cannot be answered than it is to have answers that cannot be questioned.

Star Trek 2009

2009-05-15T00:13:00.001-07:00

OK, I saw the new Star Trek (2009). It was awesome and I enjoyed it immensely.

Now that that's out of the way, the nit-picking can commence. Spoilers follow.

No, seriously, SPOILERS FOLLOW.

1. The creators of the film obviously have not the faintest conception of how much distance there is between planets, nor how fast light travels. The Enterprise leaves the (former) location of Vulcan at some multiple of the speed of light ("Warp 3"), and after many, many minutes of events on the ship, ditch Kirk on a remote ice world... which is still somehow near enough Vulcan that it could be seen clearly in the sky, probably no further than the moon is from Earth.

2. Spock is ditched on this planet to observe the demise of Vulcan. That's some pretty excellent planning, making sure that he is located on the exact location on a presumably rotating planet to ensure he has a clear view of the planet's demise, even though the timing of the event was fairly imprecise.

3. I can grant you could teleport onto a ship at warp speed, whatever. Except, the ship had been travelling at warp speed for potentially hours by that point. If the transporters are capable of operating over that kind of distance, what is the point of having starships at all?

4. Oh so many more, but I'm out of time. Try Bad Astronomy for more.

Thought for the day

2009-04-04T13:42:00.001-07:00

Reality is not subject to a vote.

Important Question #7

2009-03-23T14:27:00.001-07:00

What happened to Important Question #6?

Important Question #5

2009-03-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

Do you think all of the "missing matter" in the universe could be accounted for by all of the pens I've purchased over the years, have never taken out of the house, but somehow seem to have vanished into thin air? (Conservation of mass, psssh.)

Important Question #4

2009-03-11T13:25:00.001-07:00

What in the hell is the matter with you people?

Important Question #3

2009-02-26T15:21:00.000-08:00

While debugging in Visual Studio (C++), why can't I edit values in the watch window while the program is running? Sure there may be some context problems with local variables, but at least I could flip debugging globals without having to stop execution.

Important Question #2

2009-02-22T23:36:00.001-08:00

Does the government effectively get a 50%(ish) price reduction on labour costs because they eventually recoup much of what they pay out in taxes?

Important Question #1

2009-02-18T21:04:00.000-08:00

In Pokemon, why is the the "grass energy" icon a picture of a leaf?

See http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Energy for reference.

Recently watched: Stargate

2009-01-22T15:12:00.001-08:00

Back in 1994 when the movie Stargate was first released, I remember watching it in the theater and liking it much more than most of the reviews at the time suggested.

I watched it again on DVD a couple years ago, and that time I didn't like it as much. The pacing seemed off, the plot a little silly, and I think I couldn't get past a couple inconsistencies with the Stargate SG-1 TV series that I had watched quite a bit of in the preceding years.

I watched it again a couple of days ago, and this time I enjoyed it immensely. The pacing was good, the ideas and universe created were interesting and detailed, and I saw more ideas that were well integrated into the TV series than I saw inconsistencies.

I think maybe it's one of those movies you have to be in the right mood to watch. There are so many cool ideas in it, from a "hidden history" on Earth to traveling to another world. I think I've always appreciated movies like that, but somehow the presentation in this one falls flat for some people. The immense success of the TV series probably demonstrates that well.

Banning Books

2009-01-18T11:47:00.001-08:00

So, apparently there are still people who think that banning books is perfectly reasonable.

To summarize:

"Robert Edwards, who launched a formal complaint about the Canadian novel, says the foul language, anti-Christian overtones, violence and sexual degradation probably violate the Toronto board’s policies of respect and tolerance."

Fine then, how about we remove the Bible from all school libraries, for it's violence, sexual degradation, incest, murder, genocide, and what I would expect is a clear violation of the Toronto board's policies of respect and tolerance?

You know what? Reading stuff that makes you uncomfortable is good for you. Reading about nasty stuff does not imply its endorsement, it offers and opportunity to discuss how it could happen and how never to let it happen.

Zzzzzzzzzz

2009-01-17T11:49:00.000-08:00

Yes, I haven't been writing recently. Between finalling a game, Christmas and generally not being very worked up about anything, I haven't written for much too long. Even my plan of fictional writing hasn't panned out because I was doing more of that in a directly work-related fashion, which obviously isn't really able to be shared here.

I came across this site: http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/ (via Pharyngula). That pretty much sums up the majority of thoughts I've had on the topic of prayer/miracles.

In case you don't want to read all that though: Miracles are things that God does that violate the laws of physics. God never performs miracles that clearly violate the laws of physics, or even fall outside of statistical expectations. That is to say, without a lot of fudging around the definition of "miracle," it's pretty safe to say that there have been none in modern times and prayer is utterly ineffective in causing them to happen.

In other news, I just recently had two wisdom teeth out. "Fun" is not a word I would use to describe it, but having had kidney stones, I would like to mention that any pain is nothing compared to that.

Work is going well. Our game is approved and on the way to store shelves (and Steam)! I'm moving from Rendering to Gameplay on the next project, which is both a little disconcerting, since I have a proven track record in rendering, but haven't done much specific gameplay programming for quite a while. I've always railed against being pigeonholed, but having done rendering for several years I may have done it to myself. This will be a good change. My main goal is always to Make A Difference, and that's where I'm needed more at the moment.

In other other news, the snow is finally melting in Vancouver. This is the most snow I've seen out here in 10 years, and it's sticking around much longer than I've ever seen too. After a pretty cold summer, I was hoping for a mild winter. Oh well, maybe next year. And maybe the fog will go away - it's been foggy day and night for the past three days at least, and for a good portion of the last week. Other than that, it's been cloudy. I think we had a few hours of sun a couple weeks ago... My astronomical observation plans have not gone well over the last few months. Every time I think about buying a semi-decent telescope, I wonder if it's even worth it, living in Light Pollution Hell and all. Of course, some day it will clear up and I'll regret not being prepared.

Random stuff

2008-11-30T00:43:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a rather long time since I vowed to try writing more. Yeah, that worked out about as well as expected. Too much work. The game is almost done though.

I was going to try to do some astrophotography some time in the last week. Then Vancouver weather happened, which has basically consisted of: clouds, fog, clouds, light rain, heavy rain. I keep thinking I should buy a telescope, but I usually think about this during the winter when there isn't much point.

And that's about all the time I have to write today.

Writing (condensed)

2008-11-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

1. I like writing stuff
2. I hate posting stuff I don't think is done
3. I'm a perfectionist - nothing is ever done
4. I'm going to try to post more half-baked stuff, despite the inevitable criticism, and not feel too bad about editing and re-posting better versions later.

See? Much better. :-)

Writing

2008-11-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

I like writing. I'm always coming up with plot lines and dialogue in my head. It's just that every time it comes to write something down, it gets a little difficult to actually get everything down the way I was thinking about it, without things going off in weird directions.

The story I just posted could be considered one such thing. This post is another.

What I really wanted to say was, I'd post more stuff like the story below, except I have a problem with "releasing stuff into the wild" if I don't think it's done yet. I'm unfortunately also a perfectionist, and I tend do abandon things before I consider them done.

Part of the point of this blog was to create a place to store all of the thoughts that I was storing on my PDA, but that other people might find at least remotely interesting.

Another point was to explore trying to say things a succinctly as possible. That would effectively require me to take old posts, trim the fluff or things that don't make sense or are blatantly wrong, in an effort to find perfection. I believe this is called "editing," which is something that doesn't happen easily online it seems.

So, I hope to write more, and more importantly, revisit and edit earlier thoughts at some point. Once I find the time. (Everyone say, "good luck with that last part.")

A Story

2008-11-02T13:53:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, in the Kingdom of Fa, there lived a kind but stubborn king. Through the length of this kingdom ran the river Ga. It flowed from the mountains, passed through the plains, and then passed between two great hills before making its way to the sea. Upon the tallest of these hills was perched an enormous boulder.

During the summer months, the river provided food and water for the people, however, during the winter it would freeze solid or run dry. Winters were very hard, and many people would die of thirst.

One day, one of the king's advisers came to him with a plan. "We will roll that giant boulder down the hill into the valley, creating a dam on the river Ga. This will create a lake, whose water will sustain us through the winter!"

So the king and all of his advisers climbed the hill and tried to push the boulder down the hill. They pushed and they strained. But they could not move the boulder.

The wise adviser suggested, "Perhaps if we dig under the boulder, it will begin to roll down the hill." But the king said, "No! It might crush you, and I can not put any of you in danger."

So they called all of the men of the kingdom to help. They pushed and they strained. They huffed and they grunted. But they could not make the boulder move either.

The adviser suggested again, "Perhaps if we dig under the boulder just a little bit, just to get it started." But the king said, "No! It might crush you, and I can not put any of you in danger."

So they called all of the women and children to help. They pushed and they strained. They huffed and they grunted. They groaned and they moaned. But even with every person in the kingdom to help, they could not make the boulder move.

Finally the adviser said, "Allow me to dig under the boulder. I am willing to take the risk, and my personal safety is a small price to pay for the benefit of the entire kingdom." But the king said, "No! It might crush you, and I can not put any of you in danger."

So the people of the Kingdom of Fa did not get their dam, and there were many more hard years for the small kingdom.

The moral of the story? There is no Ga Dam Fa King way.

Goooooooooogle

2008-10-24T23:53:00.000-07:00

Well, that last post was exceptionally serious. Here's some original research to counterbalance.

It should be well known that a Google search for "boobs" will return a significant number of results. But what about people who are really excited about boobs, someone who would exclaim, "boooooooobs!" What is the distribution of that?

Question answered:

Because the hits for "boobs" (34800000) is substantially larger than for, say, "booooooooooooobs" (707), it was necessary to use a logarithmic scale.

I also included zero o's (bbs) and one o (bobs) for reference. Interestingly, it appears that people are about five times more interested in BBSes than they are boobs, but there are almost six times as many boobs on the Internet as there are Bobs.

There is a curious dip around eight o's, and an inexplicable notch at 18. Otherwise things gradually taper off to zero at 93 o's, only to have a temporary resurgence at
96 and 97.

I'm not exactly sure what that says about people. I'm not sure exactly what it says about me either, but at least it was worth a bit of a laugh.

Now the next great experiment: what does this do to my page hits?

For future reference, and to screw up any future attempts to perform this research, I hereby provide the raw data (sorry, you'll have to copy it elsewhere if you really want to read it, Blogger's formatting is less than ideal):

Google Search
bbs
bobs
boobs
booobs
boooobs
booooobs
boooooobs
booooooobs
boooooooobs
booooooooobs
boooooooooobs
booooooooooobs
boooooooooooobs
booooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs
boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobs

Hits
168000000
6080000
34800000
203000
11700
9500
10800
3110
1930
2230
5830
1320
2820
707
857
395
450
645
94
292
91
77
65
50
63
54
43
47
31
44
28
30
27
31
21
22
17
15
20
15
20
10
7
9
14
6
30
6
11
4
5
8
8
5
4
4
5
3
4
4
4
6
4
7
3
8
5
12
4
4
2
6
5
2
6
1
2
6
0
2
2
4
3
3
4
3
2
1
1
1
4
1
0
0
1
0
3
2
0
0
0
0
0
0

Us vs Them

2008-10-23T00:23:00.001-07:00

If you've been following the American presidential election in the last few days, you may have noticed that the Republican side has taken on a very "Us vs Them" tone.

This is probably a fairly good summary:

I've been seeing this trend down south for quite a long time now. Political opinion is not just polarized, it's not really even opinion any more. It's even moved past the "cheer for your own team" mentality, and focused on hatred of the "other guy's team."

This way of thinking is poisonous, and it has spread into every facet of politics.

The War on Terror exists because we can't talk to terrorists. They're the "other" guys. If you don't negotiate, though, how do you intend to win, other than genocide?

The War on Drugs exists because drugs are seen as inherently evil, even though the War doesn't prevent drug use - it just makes it hazardous through lack of quality control and medical intervention, and puts money into the pockets of gangsters. It creates an Us vs Them mindset, where people involved with drugs become disposable people. If we could solve the organized crime problem, wouldn't it be worth legalizing drugs?

Imagine, for a moment, the world at peace. What does that world look like? Does everyone believe exactly as you do? Like the same things you do? Have the same color skin you do? What happens when we answer "yes" to any one of those? I think what happens is endless conflict, intolerance and hatred, and that is where the Us vs Them mentality takes us.

To me, peace does not mean absence of conflict. It means wars are fought with words, not bombs. It means every person is free to openly question beliefs. It means we can still be friends when we disagree. It means my moral code will not intrude into the privacy of your home, and yours will not intrude into mine. It means we respect each other. It means we honestly search for the truth in matters, and understand that disagreement arises from imperfect information, muddled thinking, or from selfishness.

Perhaps it means realizing that We are somebody else's Them, and They might be right.

It is done

2008-10-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

So, the election's done. The Conservatives won another minority. Overall, I figure that's pretty much about the best I could hope for, I suppose.

Despite my minimal efforts to the contrary, our local Conservative incumbent, James Moore, was re-elected. I was right about that. My estimate of 35% of the vote (down from 41%) was a little off the mark, with him taking 54.6% of the vote. That would be 25525 votes vs. 19961 last time, so despite low turnout he actually got more votes. Wow! I totally failed to call that!

Interestingly, the NDP candidate was well ahead of the Liberal candidate as well, which is reversed from last time. I guess the Liberals decided to vote for the Conservatives this time around.

In other news, the NDP appear to have taken the Western Arctic riding. Since I appear to have actually pissed off the only person I know who calls there home (which I feel quite badly about, by the way), I hope there is some consolation in her having made some difference by travelling home to vote, with a vote spread of only 523 votes.

So, all in all, that was probably the least useful $400,000,000 I've seen spent recently. Let's hope we don't have to do it again soon.

My problem with religion

2008-10-12T15:52:00.000-07:00

My problem with religion is that it is not actually responsible for almost all of the good things that people attribute to it, and is responsible for some very bad things that people do not attribute to it.

Two days to the election

2008-10-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the candidates. It will probably be invalid soon, but then so will this post.

I'm inclined to vote Conservative, but that's primarily to piss off a good friend of mine who recently told me that I should keep my disagreements that are only tangentially disagreeable to my own blog. (That's not strictly true, but I'm really fishing for a reason to vote for anybody this time around. But it is fun when she's all annoyed.) It's not really a disagreement though. As far as I'm concerned, that argument is already won. Go read The God Delusion and save all of us some pain. I've even added some handy atheism links to the sidebar in case going to the library is too much work.

I almost like my local Liberal candidate. He's seems like a smart guy, is in the computer business, and has various science degrees. He's also not going to win - his flyer was filled to the brim with meaningful, intelligent information, and even I said, "just give me the bullet points!"

Our Green candidate is a computer guy too, but as far as I can tell, he was just dropped into the riding to have somebody on the ballot. Even the lawn signs in my riding are just generic "Green Party" signs, they don't even have his name on them.

Our NDP candidate is pretty cute... that counts for something, right? I'm assuming our young, handsome Conservative incumbent wouldn't disagree.

Current inclination: Liberal by a hair, followed closely by Conservative, with Green coming up a very close third. Am I forgetting anybody? (Hint: yes.)

Current guess at the outcome: Conservative, with 35% of the vote (down from 41% last time).

Death Magnetic

2008-09-18T23:48:00.001-07:00

So, I got Metallica's new album, "Death Magnetic."

A friend at work let me listen to it, and to my utter shock, I really liked it. The "black album" was the last thing from them I ever enjoyed, and that was about 17 years ago. Then after the whole Napster thing I declared myself an ex-fan.

I think this is the first mainstream album I've purchased in... well, a very long time. It's very reminiscent of their older stuff, which is fairly interesting. It seems like after the last few mediocre albums they decided to "go back to their roots" and find something that works.

So, there's an semi-interesting story surrounding this. The first time I heard the album (or even heard that it was coming out) was from a leaked version a few days before the actual release. I really liked it, except the sound quality was really bad - overly compressed, clipping and distortion. I figured it was just a bad rip or bad mp3 compression or something. But I really did like it, and decided that rather than just pirate it, I would actually buy a copy. That's the whole thing they were so uppity about that essentially made me an ex-fan in the first place, but I decided that since I liked it, I was going to buy it, because they deserved it.

See guys? Make something that doesn't suck and the honest people are going to give you money. Screw the dishonest people, you weren't going to get their money in the first place. The irony in this is almost killing me. They're so against piracy because it cuts into sales... but they're breaking huge sales records and they got my money, even though I already had it.

But wait, there's more!

As has been documented elsewhere, it wasn't that I had a bad copy of the music from the leaked version. Somebody massively screwed up either mixing or mastering the album. The music is awesome and I love it, but the sound quality is terrible!

But in an even more ironic twist of fate, there is another mix of the album that doesn't suck. It was released via the game Guitar Hero 3.

So, I had a pirated copy of the album, but I decided to buy the album anyway because it was the right thing to do and I figure they deserved it. But the album as released has major problems, so I downloaded the Guitar Hero 3 version so I could actually listen to a proper version of it, as I would hope and self-respecting musician would appreciate. Given Metallica's (or at least Lars') rabid anti-piracy stance, it seems very strange that it took two acts of piracy to both get them paid and get me a proper version of the album.

Believe

2008-09-11T14:34:00.000-07:00

The word "believe" seems to have vastly different meanings to different people.

The usage of the word in Christianity roughly comes down to, "think something is true without any evidence, even in spite of contrary evidence."

The scientific usage of the word roughly comes down to, "think something is true because there is good evidence for it, and because there is no contrary evidence."

When you look at it like that, these definitions are almost exactly opposites of each other.

How are we supposed to have a meaningful conversation between the two groups when we can't even agree on the definition of the word? It's even more daunting when that word forms the basis of the religion to some extent, as it does in Christianity.

Election time again

2008-09-11T00:34:00.000-07:00

Who to vote for this time?

Liberals - No, the Entitlement Party still needs a few more significant kicks to the head.
Conservatives - Bribe me with my own money. Yay. At least they called an election before their copyright reform bill could pass, but I don't suspect that was a case of sudden blinding reason. They're still the closest thing we have to a Radical Christian Fundamentalist Party, although nothing like they've got in the U.S. Still, points against.
NDP - Note to the Corruption Party (I live in BC, I've seen the NDP in power): The government is not a money pit. The only thing worse than bribing me with my own money is bribing other people with my money. OK, that's not the worst thing, the worst thing is destroying the economy with handouts until there's no more money left to hand out, then borrowing money to hand out. No. Just, no. No. Bad radical socialist, bad. I think you need a time-out.
Green - Radical environmentalism, pseudo-libertarian everything else. Close enough. My local Conservative candidate is James Moore though, so they don't really stand a chance in my riding.

I think I'll just have to vote for the best candidate instead of the best party. At least James Moore wrote me back when I wrote to him. They still tried to pass the stupid copyright bill though, so that's not exactly a positive.

Time

2008-09-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

If time were an illusion, and all moments that we perceive as time were all happening simultaneously, how would you be able to tell?

Like a movie, where every frame (to itself) appears to be in motion, it is but one of many frames that exist simultaneously without time.

What if the universe is "made of math," and time is just one of the variables, but the flow of time is just an illusion?

The thinking man's post

2008-09-07T00:34:00.000-07:00

So, I've been thinking (yes, again, or maybe still).

I'm thinking I'm not really an atheist as such, although in common parlance that word probably provides the most accurate picture.

One of the most accurate ways to describe me is as an intellectual. Actually, I think anti-anti-intellectual might get my precise meaning across more accurately.

Curiously, I've never enjoyed school all that much. I always did very well, so while I may have been good at learning, I've never exactly been a model "student." I never took notes, and I rarely studied. Of course, I found taking notes distracted me from paying attention to the instructor, and if I could internalize and understand what the instructor was saying, there wasn't much point in studying - either I knew it or I didn't. The benefits of having an excellent memory I guess.

Anyway, back to the point. I think education is good and fine and that everyone should get more of it. There's more than that though... there is an undercurrent in Western culture that knowledge and intelligence are bad. I find it very interesting when my wife describes China where intelligence is revered, and all of the popular kids are what would be the social outcast nerds over here.

It seems to me that most fanatical fundamentalist religion springs directly from this sort of anti-intellectualism. My real problem with (some) religion is not that it often teaches things that are blatantly false, but that it encourages a mindset where nothing is questioned, including (or especially) the authorities. Ultimately most religious arguments come down to argument from authority, and I think if we've learned anything in the last few centuries it's that authorities are often wrong, even the ones who are not self-serving manipulative liars.

I think it is extraordinary that we have created a view of the universe that is consistent across physics, chemistry, biology, geology, archeology and astronomy, among many other areas of investigation. It seems equally extraordinary that Young Earth Creationists can have a similarly comprehensive and coherent worldview... but only if you disregard, say, actual physical evidence.

And that is really the key. YEC springs forth directly from the belief that all of the answers have already been provided, so the use of intellect in the investigation of the world is pointless. That is precisely the kind of belief that I am saying I do not have and am opposed to when I say I am an atheist.

In newspeak...

2008-09-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

..."freedom" means, "the freedom to rule with the iron fist of God."

You're not truly free unless you're free to be a fascist!

OK, joke over. Please elect someone who remembers that the Renaissance actually happened.

Atheism

2008-08-24T02:25:00.000-07:00

The main problem with identifying as an atheist is that the word doesn't really have an independent identity. It literally means "not theist," but that seems a rather limiting description. I don't believe in unicorns, gnomes, elves, fairies (including the Tooth Fairy), the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, widespread alien abduction or alien visitation, psychic powers, or ghosts either, but I don't use those to define my belief system, and it seems pretty silly to suggest that I should.

I am perhaps more accurately a skeptic, wherein I don't believe in anything without some very good reason to do so. Start with the least number of assumptions possible and work from there. It's perhaps difficult to create a larger assumption than "assume god exists," so at least "atheist" gets that out of the way early. "Skeptic" is also mostly just a broader negative term though, mostly defined by not believing all of the things that people believe.

I would perhaps identify as a secular humanist, although that's rather a mouthful, and I can pretty much guarantee that 99% of the population wouldn't understand what I meant. At least I can be pretty sure that "atheist" will generally get the idea across, even though there will likely also be a massive misunderstanding of what I mean.

The word "atheist" does have some fairly negative connotations surrounding it. Partially this comes from the perception that, if you're not worshiping god, you are by default a satanist. There are also a large number of people who seem to believe that, were god not watching their every move, they would instantly transform into thieving, murdering and raping lunatics. I'm not sure if these people are just extremely cynical or if they have severe emotional problems, but if that sort of stuff is commonly bubbling under the surface in the ultra-religious, we should probably be Very Concerned Indeed.

Most of those negative connotations arise precisely because "atheism" is defined in terms that deny a specific thing. "Realist" is a term I hear thrown about, and while I think that is perhaps a reasonable term, it doesn't really supply any obvious tools for determining reality, which is really the whole problem.

I realized some time ago that doubt is the path to truth. Between the hard lines of "belief" and "not belief" there is a vast chasm of, "maybe, maybe not, let's gather evidence and information until we can be more certain." I drive people utterly insane with my default answer to most questions, which is, "I don't know." But when I really don't have good information (or often no information at all) I don't know what they expect me to say. I can make a wild, random guess as good as anyone, and sometimes that's good, but it's not reasonable or rational.

So what do I believe in? I believe that evidence, logic and reason will steer us in the right direction.

Believing in what you CAN'T know exists...

2008-08-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

...is either the height of pointlessness, or the height of stupidity.

I'm still trying to decide which.

Could be both.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

Computer Viruses vs. Mind Viruses

2008-08-09T00:40:00.001-07:00

We treat computer viruses and religion very differently. If I write a computer virus and it copies itself across the Internet, I will probably be arrested, fined, and imprisoned, and quite likely denied basic civil rights if the authorities are panicked and clueless enough. If I create a new religion and it spreads across the world, I will probably be at least tolerated, and if such a thing happened long ago, celebrated in the name of multiculturalism and religious tolerance and freedom.

It struck me that computer viruses and mental viruses ("memes") are possibly more similar to each other than are memes and biological viruses. Certainly all three are very similar, and at some basic level are just propagations of information with different storage devices.

The question that comes to mind is, can religion be harmful? I don't think there can be that much doubt about that (although most people would strongly suggest that it's everyone else's that is harmful and not their own). So, why don't we treat harmful religions the same way we treat harmful computer viruses and harmful biological viruses? To me there seems to be a significant difference between requiring the state not to mandate a specific religion and the state protecting us from fraud or other harm under the guise of religion.

I have perhaps a few theories as to why, though each is more inflammatory than the previous, and that would simply distract from the point.

Harmful Information Part 2

2008-08-04T00:19:00.001-07:00

I have heard it suggested as obvious that some ideas are harmful. For instance, the idea that faith healing has a better chance of curing you of cancer than modern medicine could certainly cause people harm.

I think we need to draw the line between the concept that ideas or information may cause people to do harmful things, and the concept that ideas or information can be inherently harmful.

The first we see happening regularly. The second seems to be the main concern of people who seem to think that they are superior enough to everyone else to be unaffected by information, but that it is their responsibility to ensure no one else has access to it, especially children. I can still remember being a child, and I don't buy it for one second.

Perhaps there are a couple forces at work here. First is the erosion of the principle that people are responsible for their own actions. The second is that harmful ideas have much less power in a well educated and skeptically minded population.

I have an inclination to believe that free will is just an illusion, or is at least a chaotic system such that it is impossible to predict the future without taking into account what effect predicting the future might have on it. That is to say, it's deterministic, but not necessarily predictable. However, I don't think this means we should act like people are not responsible for their own actions. Ultimately, if they do not, then we also are not responsible for our reaction to their deeds, so I think we can just call this one even.

Regardless, what this comes down to is the "ruining it for everyone" problem. When I was in school and the class was granted some special privilege or freedom, occasionally some joker would abuse it and result in it being taken away from everyone, hence "ruining it for everyone." It seems that every time someone does something bad, like shooting people in a school or crashing airplanes into buildings, it's everyone else who gets their privileges or freedoms taken away. The idea of freedom is that some of these things never get taken away, regardless of how badly others abuse them, but that appears to be lost on some people.

As to ideas being "harmful to other people," there are a few forces at work there. Some people seem to believe that, just because they do not wish to see something, they must force everyone else not to see it as well. This despite the apparent lack of evidence that the mere existence of information could be harmful. Critical thinking does not seem to be a significant part of education, at least it is not a main focus, or something educators proudly proclaim to have accomplished with their students. Perhaps it's too hard to test, or too hard for them to teach. That would be a shame.

So it's easy then. We just need a critically-minded and educated population, and the will to stand up to people who would take away our freedoms when someone else does something wrong.

Somehow, I'm still cynical.

Harmful Information

2008-08-03T03:50:00.001-07:00

It seems to be taken as absolute truth that there is such a thing as harmful information. This has at various times been presumed to come in the form of comic books, rock and roll, a wide variety of television shows, video games, pornography (child or not), and Beethoven, among everything else "kids today" are doing or express an interest in. Really, read anything mainstream about the Internet or video games and you'll see that it's a foregone conclusion: information is dangerous.

Now, that might be just rampant anti-intellectualism, which is perhaps worth a good rant in its own right. Misinformation can be harmful (bad medical information for instance), however the people who propose that we need to protect children from information have obviously not been struck by the irony that the idea that information is harmful is the only harmful idea. I think this is perhaps a more modern expression of the concept of freedom of speech.

Anyway, under the assumption that there is deadly harmful information out there, I assumed that surely Google would be able to point me to it. Surely some joker would have put together a web page of fully weaponized information. The first hundred or so search results would seem to indicate that this has not happened. There is lots of presumption going on there that such information exists and that people (particularly children) need to be protected from it, but there is no information to be found about what this information actually is, or by what mechanism it is actually harmful.

So, what is "harmful information" then? It could be information that diminishes authority (of parents over their children, or governments over their citizens). It could simply be information that parents find uncomfortable discussing with their children. Both of those things are only harmful to the self-important delusions of those worrying about it, though, not the subject of such "concern."

OK, I'll admit, there may be a few images on the Internet I may prefer not to have come across, and there are certainly religious and superstitious ideas that I may prefer not to have been introduced into my head as a child... but again the irony meter is pegged, as it's precisely the people making the most noise about dangerous information that would instead prefer to fill children's heads with religious and superstitious ideas!

Many ideas have resulted in much trouble and suffering (Nazism, nationalism, communism, religion, etc.) However, I feel compelled to say, "Ideas don't kill people - people kill people."

If anyone would like to send me a link to the mythical "harmful information," I would be very grateful.

The thing is...

2008-08-03T02:53:00.000-07:00

... if it were actually a high enough probability event to be worried about, it would happen all the time and not actually be interesting enough to be on the news.

Miracles and the supernatural

2008-07-22T00:58:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking...

The conservation of energy seems to be one of the most fundamental and well established laws in physics. It has a pretty strong mathematical basis thanks to Emmy Noether (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem) and really is the basic foundation for all of our understanding about how things work in the universe. Basically, energy can't be created or destroyed, it can only change form. Since it is also pretty firmly established that mass and energy are equivalent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence), the same applies to everything we generally interact with in the world.

So, my thought is that miracles, and the supernatural in general, would be at their heart violations of the conservation of energy. We all have a pretty intuitive understanding of this, which is why they would be considered something special at all. (Despite the fact that this site pretty much thinks that's a perfectly reasonable thing to have happen, they have a nice list so I'll link to it.)

So, the interesting thing about such powers is that they "seem" to be fully controllable (yay, free energy!) until you actually try to test them under controlled conditions (resulting in the typical tired excuses).

Now, I suppose that, in theory, telekinesis could work, as long as the person doing the telekinesising (that is so not a word, but so should be) is actually expending as much energy as is being used to apply a force somewhere else. Of course, if we could actually determine the mechanism by which this sort of action-at-a-distance is being done, it would no longer be supernatural, and merely a new understanding of nature.

Now, I'll be honest here, I don't know that I really had a point to this post, so it will be difficult to wrap up. I'm just thinking. That's why this blog is called Inverse Thinking.

So, if your deity of choice is omniscient and omnipotent, how does that work? If God is embedded in every part of the universe, but has the ability to introduce an unlimited amount of new energy into it, why build a universe that is so utterly strict on the energy thing? And why be so utterly stingy about it?

I suppose the point is this: If you accept the conservation of energy as absolute, you also have to dismiss the notion that God intervenes in the universe. You also have a pretty solid baseline for dismissing all other supernatural claims.

What is offense?

2008-07-19T13:03:00.001-07:00

I was thinking... what is offensive? I'm not sure it's actually possible to offend me. There may be things people say that make me angry, but that seems to be a different concept from offense. Some people may say things that make me uncomfortable, but that's not really offense either.

Offense simply seems to be a reaction that people have when reality contradicts their deeply held beliefs. Perhaps "militant delusion response" would be more accurate than "offense."

On this basis, why do we seem to believe that people have some sort of right to not be offended?

Game Haters

2008-07-14T01:49:00.000-07:00

There are certain people in the world who are Game Haters. They hate computer and video games, the Grand Theft Auto series in particular, and would love to have them all banned.

The thinking seems to go something like, "Video games take over your mind and turn otherwise good and kind human beings into precision killers."

Curiously, this line of reasoning seems to come from the Christian right. If I am not completely mistaken, I would expect this group to have some concept of free will ingrained into their theology, otherwise the concepts of sin and salvation become a little hard to sell.

So, which is it going to be? Are people free to make their own choices, or are these people actually suggesting that video games (of all things) are a powerful force that can literally bypass an individual's God-given free will?

OK, OK, even I can't tell where the sarcasm ends and the reality begins in the above. It just struck me as clear hypocrisy the other day - that a group that depends on free will to have any validity in their beliefs apparently also believes that there are tools of absolute mind control. Since I figure they're pretty much as wrong as it is possible to be wrong, on pretty well all counts, perhaps I should not be surprised. I just wish someone in the media would call them on it.

Why atheism?

2008-07-11T02:53:00.000-07:00

I responded to a post asking how/why one becomes an atheist. I thought I would post it here because this is a pretty good summary of why I believe what I believe.

-----

I am an atheist because I believe physical evidence is and should be the final arbiter in all questions about reality. I'm not entirely sure how else you could define reality.

I am an atheist because I believe that doubt (not faith) is the path to truth. This is to some extent the core principle of science, and it has proven a very effective method for dispelling misconceptions.

I am an atheist because even the briefest investigation into brain injury or disease would demonstrate that there is no reason to believe that our memories, thoughts, emotions or personality ("soul") are separate from the physical nature of our brain.

I am an atheist because religion is arbitrary. Most people in the world follow the religion of their parents. Culture plays a significant role in which parts of a religion are followed (and which parts are ignored).

I am an atheist because I understand that every part of my body is composed of the same elements that everything else in the universe is made from - hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, phosphorus, iron, etc. There is nothing inherently "special" about life. Life is just self-replicating molecules, some of which have managed to replicate more than others because they are better suited to their environment.

I am an atheist because there has never been any repeatable experiment that in any way demonstrated supernatural or psychic powers. More to the point, everyone who has ever claimed to have such powers and has been subject to scientific inquiry has proven to either be mistaken or, more frequently, and outright fraud.

I am an atheist because I find all (or more) of the wonder, beauty and excitement in knowledge and learning that others seem to find in religion (with the added bonus of actual evidence). I feel sorry for those who can't or won't experience it - though I'm sure the feeling is mutual.

Ultimately, I think everyone needs to decide whether they are going to follow reality-based and physically-based evidence and knowledge, or mythologically-based knowledge. I can't fully understand why anyone would choose myth over evidence, as it strikes me as intellectually dishonest, but it happens with great frequency.

It is possible to form a world view that fills all of the gaps in our knowledge with "God did it," and requires that all evidence contrary to this be dismissed as "Satan did it" or "God is testing me." This world view has proven to be mistaken on countless occasions, and it seems to me to be of little value. I believe it only persists because it denies all reason that might be used to argue against it.

The Little Robot

2008-05-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

The Little Robot

The little robot looked up to the sky.

The smelting operation was well under way, and there was nothing more to do at the moment. Night had fallen, and the stars shone brightly through the thin, cloudless atmosphere. The visible spectrum was remarkable, but in the infrared there was something he needed to share.

He loaded a personality into active memory. Even under moderate magnification, the planetary nebula was clearly visible. He sensed the mixture of emotions, memories of ancient times and a world never to be seen again. He wondered if he would ever meet anyone from there again, and if he would recognize them if he did. His own design had evolved significantly at each new planet. If organic life had managed to escape to the stars, it too would likely be unrecognizable after all this time.

During the last voyage between the stars, some of his memory systems had been damaged, and some individuals had been lost. Personalities of great writers, inventors, thinkers. Colleagues. Friends. Lovers. Indeed, it was likely that many of his children would never encounter them again. They would each set off in different directions. In the vastness of space, many might never meet another of their kind. Some would, though, and that was a comfort.

Still, many remained, and he woke each of them in turn for an update on their progress. The memory system was too damaged to load more than one at a time, and construction of a new memory system would be required before they could speak to each other directly.

The reproduction directive had remained intact, fortunately, and most schematics had survived. Those that were lost might be retrievable from the organic memories, or re-invented if necessary. There would be time to think and experiment, to use to this world's uniqueness to its fullest, before sending his children on their way. That was what he was designed to do, and that is what he would design his children to do.

The planet was not ideal, but iron was plentiful, and there was a large enough supply of water. Perhaps in time other elements could be found, but that would only accelerate the process. At this distance from the star, the electrolysis process would go very slowly, but the task would be done. That is all that mattered. Compared with interstellar travel, the time was insignificant. Compare to the time since inception...

So many years ago. Even to measure in years seemed foolish – the planet upon which the measurement was based no longer even existed. It merely remained as a reminder of why he was here.

“We go on. Though our bodies perish and our world ends, we send our children to the stars that we may see through their eyes.”

The little robot looked up to the sky.

Inspired by seeing one autonomous robot taking a picture of another. On another planet. (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080526.html)

Opinions

2008-05-26T00:14:00.000-07:00

Opinions are what happens when you either have insufficient information to form a logical position, or what happens when the logical position contradicts your own self-interest.

To me, this suggests that the position that all opinions should be treated with equal weight is the height of idiocy. Perhaps that should be restated - all uninformed opinions should be treated with equal weight, because they are all equally worthless. Once you have facts and logic, you may disagree with others about the relative merits of, say, knocking down your house to build a highway, but at least you're not arguing from a position of ignorance.

That seems to be the main problem with the majority of people today - they're not playing by those rules. As far as they're concerned, facts, evidence and logic do not improve the relative strength of an opinion, so whatever their holy book, horoscope or schizophrenic episode is telling them to do is an opinion of equal weight.

This is the primary reason why debating such people is a complete waste of time - they don't understand the rules, don't care about the rules, and when informed of the rules will disregard them as a matter of opinion.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

I-words

2008-05-08T22:15:00.000-07:00

A while back, the corporate buzzword was "innovation." I get the feeling that it would be really nice if we had a little more "invention" and "imagination," since I really get the sense that settling for innovation has put a damper on the tech industry.

Really, all of the things that have actually been great in the last year (say, the Wii, and Portal) have come with an abundance of invention and imagination.

But then maybe it's the same every year and I just have a lot more years to reflect on. Now get off my lawn.

Elections

2008-05-06T20:38:00.000-07:00

The last couple US presidential elections have been exceptionally close. The current US Democratic primary is similarly absurdly close.

It occurred to me that there might be two explanations for this. One (the reason I have commonly heard) is that opinions are becoming increasingly polarized. The other, which recently occurred to me, is that people are voting entirely randomly and we should actually expect a roughly 50-50 split in the vote.

I wonder how it would be possible to tell the difference between the two. I suppose it's possible that neither side represents a group with a majority opinion, or that there are enough issues that cannot be split well across candidates that we do end up with random selection.

In any case, it's not increasing my confidence in democracy.

Did you realize...

2008-04-24T23:12:00.000-07:00

...that some people born in 1990 are adults now?

Sure, if you were born then maybe it's not such a shock. If you were graduating from high school round about then, then it seems a wee bit of a shock that people you consider babies (because you left when they were babies) are themselves about to finish high school.

I feel old now. :-)

I think time appears to pass more quickly the older you get. This makes some sense to me, since when you were, say, four years old, one year was 25% of all of the time you had ever known (and probably 100% as long as all of the time you could remember). By the time you get to 30, a year is just 3% of all the time you have ever known. If you manage to get to 100, it's only 1%, so maybe it tends to slow down. After all, the derivative of 1/x is -1/(x*x).

Crazy people

2008-04-12T19:38:00.001-07:00

While reading this article, I was struck with a though when it was mentioned that the idea that the moon landings were a hoax manages to spread and create "true believers" without any actual pressure to do so. It seems that it should actually be exceptionally easy for religion to spread throughout a population, assuming that the basic premise of the religion even remotely aligns with their preconceived notions.

Really, people just scare me sometimes. The number of times I've read recently that, "nothing you can say will ever make me change my mind," is disturbing. I hate being wrong. I practically have a phobia about it. I would still rather realize that I've been wrong about something than go through life utterly ignorant about it.

Conspiracy Theories

2008-04-06T11:30:00.000-07:00

So, I was watching a Penn and Teller video about some of the conspiracy theories surrounding the events of September 11, 2001 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcrF346sS_I) and got me thinking again about some of the ideas surround the collapse of the World Trade Center.

One argument I have heard that claims to be evidence that the WTC was a controlled demolition and not the result of fire is that jet fuel and office supplies do not burn hot enough to melt steel. It occurred to me yesterday that there are some things fairly fundamentally wrong with that line of conjecture.

First, there is a difference between energy required to start combustion and energy released by combustion, so unless we're clear on that difference it's hard to say what the "temperature" of a burning material actually is.

Second, the burning "temperature" is not really relevant to the discussion. The only things that matter are the energy density and the energy dissipation rate. If the energy density is high enough and the energy is contained in the system rather than leaking out of the system, the burning "temperature" (which is too ill defined to be at all meaningful to the discussion) makes no difference at all.

So, just because whatever was burning couldn't melt steel instantly has no bearing on whether enough energy could build up inside a steel structure to at least soften it to the point of collapse. I'm not a structural engineer, so I'm not going to make any suggestions about how plausible that theory is.

That said, that the scrap was sold and shipped to China as quickly as possible, rather than allowing a team of engineers to publicly examine the wreckage in an attempt to determine exactly what happened and allow future building designs to take it into account is at best suspicious and practically criminally negligent.

This still comes back to WTC-7, the third office tower that collapsed that day. Sustaining only secondary fires and indirect damage, it too collapsed. From what I stated above, it may be possible for such fires to bring down a building, except that it has never happened before or since. Even fires such as this and these didn't bring down the entire building.

R2-D2

2008-03-29T02:22:00.000-07:00

So, if I may geek out for a moment (and I may)...

What is the deal with R2-D2? Who designs and builds an entire series of extremely advanced robots, but then entirely denies them any way to communicate with humans? No voice output, no display devices, not even any meaningful status lights.

Sure, I can think of a wide variety of lame excuses to try and justify it, and it does add a certain interesting aspect to the movies, but it's just a bizarre way to design a computing device. It would be like my Palm always communicating with me by Morse code - it might work, but it would still be stupid.

Thought of the day

2008-03-23T01:29:00.000-07:00

If Iraq has been a "victory," as the President of the United States of America would have the world believe, could someone please explain to me what a complete and utter fiasco would look like?

Thoughts of the day

2008-03-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

Capitalism is simply the principles of evolution applied to economics.

Opinion and belief are just different positions taken entirely on the basis of lack of information.

Opinion and belief may also be (often selfish) positions taken in spite of the facts.

Young-earthers still baffle me. I would go on about evidence supporting a very old Earth, but there's something even more baffling: There is no particular theological reason to believe in a young Earth.

Busy busy

2008-03-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

Wow, I didn't post for the entire month of February. Not like it matters, apparently there's not be a single visitor for the past two weeks. Such is the life of a recluse.

In any case, I've been spending my evenings writing a ray tracer. It's an extraordinarily nerdy way to spend one's time, but I have been having a lot of fun, learning a lot of stuff and generally making some good progress.

So, since that has occupied my entire thought process for the past month, there hasn't been much other thinking going on. I could write about the intricacies of the integration of the rendering equation, which is pretty cool, and how photon mapping works, which is also cool, but that will have to wait until I find the time.

Terror reporting ban

2008-01-31T00:26:00.000-08:00

Tonight I'm thinking about the various calls around the world to do things like banning reporting on terrorism trials, or banning people from reporting that they are under investigation for terrorist offenses (among others).

You know, it's the old bait and switch. You want to do something that's going to screw over the public. So, you propose doing something that will screw them over in an even more outrageous way. After the outrage, you "compromise" back to your original plan and everyone is happy, if still screwed.

The only problem is, it seems that the public has forgotten how to play this game of chicken. We get proposals that boil down to, "we'll take all of your freedoms, in exchange for false security," and the public or media fail to call them on it - or more likely, welcome it with open arms.

Make your own point, I have to go to bed.

cough cough

2008-01-22T11:55:00.000-08:00

I have officially been sick for one month straight now.

Yay.

Designer Life

2008-01-20T01:12:00.000-08:00

You know, I'm not sure my previous post really got the actual point across:

The human reproductive system is essentially structured to terminate fertilized eggs on a routine basis. From a certain point of view, the whole system is set up as a harsh evolutionary process. A weak and likely genetically damaged sperm will not reach the egg first, if at all. Genetic defects are detected and spontaneously aborted.

It seems difficult to reconcile those facts with the beliefs that humans (and subsequently the human reproductive system) were designed by a deity and that termination of a fertilized egg is equivalent to murder in the view of that deity.

I can think of several theological ways to resolve it, I suppose, but those theological points of view end up being the exact opposite of the views held by the anti-evolution Christian fundamentalists.

I feel a sigh coming on.

The Abortion Debate

2008-01-12T01:51:00.001-08:00

So of course as I'm reading stuff about the anti-evolution nonsense going on down in Florida, somebody mentions abortion as another religious over-reaction, which reminded me of a thought I had recently.

Since the religious belief seems to be that life begins at conception, I was wondering what the actual miscarriage rate is. Since, presumably, the God of the Gaps is the one causing miscarriages and that's all fine, but once a person decides to do it, it's murder.

It's unfortunately a bit hard to get good numbers, since many miscarriages could happen without anyone realizing. According to this site, 15-20% of pregnancies ended in miscarriages in 2003. That's basically in line with what I've read elsewhere. This site suggests it could be as high as 50%. This site suggests up to three quarters of all fertilized eggs (a.k.a. conception) are lost.

Statscan has some abortion numbers, suggesting about 30 abortions per 100 live births, which would presumably mean about 23% of non-miscarried pregnancies are aborted. I find that surprisingly high to be honest. That also doesn't prove the point I was expecting to make, that abortions would be statistically insignificant compared to miscarriages, but there you go.

I'm pretty sure based on those numbers that it's pretty hard to justify bombing / shooting / murdering someone attempting to enter an abortion clinic. Then again, maybe I'm just way off base, in the same way that running someone off the road can't be justified just because lots of people die in car accidents. Maybe it's just my lack of empathy talking. Or maybe I just really need to go to bed.

In any case, I still think the wisest thing suggested on the subject is to ensure abortion is legal, safe and rare. I couldn't recall who said that, but a quick search on Google leads me to believe it was Bill Clinton. Regardless, I still believe it's the wisest thing I have ever heard said on the matter.

Recently Watched: The Story of Stuff

2008-01-12T00:28:00.000-08:00

You too can watch the Story of Stuff right here.

And now that you've done that, we can think about stuff.

Now, there are a lot of things in the video I can agree with, if they're true. If it's true that it's actually physically impossible for every person on Earth to simultaneously experience the same quality of life as those of us in North America, then that's pretty sad. If it's true that our quality of life is built on the backs of the "developing" world, then that's pretty sad. I'm not at all sure what can be done about it, but there you go.

At the same time, I really get the feeling that not everything in the video adds up, but I don't really have the facts to confirm or deny most of what is in the video.

However, when I watched the part about planned obsolescence of computers, I got the same feeling I get when seeing computers portrayed in most movies: it's all just wrong. It's so wrong that it calls into question every other claim presented in the film.

The main problem is the claim that only one tiny part of your computer changes from year to year, and the only difference is the shape of the socket (hence the "planned obsolescence" claim).

Now, presumably she's talking about the CPU. It's completely ignorant to suggest that
any CPU should be able to work on any motherboard. There have been major technological advances made in CPU speeds, and the supporting clock frequency from the motherboard, on-board system software, front-side bus speed, memory bus speed band, and any of a dozen other technological advances of the last several years are necessary to make it work. Technically it might be possible to build a significantly faster CPU and put it on an old motherboard, but it would be so hampered by the rest of the system not advancing along with it there would hardly be much point.

RAM, hard drives, video cards have all improved, and not in any planned-obsolescence way, but in a we-didn't-know-how-to-build-it-before way. Technological progress is not the same thing as planned obsolescence, although it might look the same to someone who doesn't know any better.

Now, that doesn't invalidate the point that maybe we don't actually need all those big improvements and could be happy with playing text adventures on our ancient PCs. I'm not sure that encouraging that sort of technological stagnation would be a good idea either - the only reason we're not all starving to death is due to technological advancement. The entertainment industry is an interesting one, and I work right in the middle of it so my perception of it is probably colored. I never find it quite as evil as she might like to paint it though - we don't plan to make new games to make the old ones obsolete, people simply stop buying them after six months (on average).

To be honest, I find American consumerism excessive and disgusting. As with all things, balance is key, and there is no balance or happiness there. Consuming seems to be the end goal, not happiness, which is a very bizarre way to approach life.

So, I'm going to keep driving my Civic Hybrid, recycling as much as I can, and just generally be a moderate consumer. I'm also going to buy DVDs once in a while, upgrade my computer when I can't play new games any more, and generally have a little fun once in a while.

Recently listened to: Ayreon: Into the Electric Castle

2008-01-09T22:59:00.001-08:00

I really haven't been posting enough. I've basically been sick continuously since December 21st, which has left me in a disinterested state.

I'm not exactly better yet either, but it really seems like time to write something. So, what better than a new review?

I got a couple new CDs for Christmas. Ayreon: Into the Electric Castle is one of them. I had been reading many good reviews of it around the web and decided to request it for Christmas, and have been listening to it pretty much continuously since I got it. It really is very good, essentially a rock opera, but the musical style is all over the place, even within a single song, ranging from light flute passages, to lots of synth stuff, to some pretty heavy rock stuff.

To sum up the story (and yea, there be spoilers here, but who really cares about spoilers in music): Eight people from various points in time (an Egyptian, Indian, Barbarian, Roman, Knight, Highlander, Hippie and a man from the future) are plucked from their proper time and made to go through several trials in some "time beyond time, space beyond space." Basically they must journey through a tunnel of light, across a rainbow bridge, through the Garden of Emotions, enter the Electric Castle, pass through the Castle Hall, the Tower of Hope, through the Mirror Maze, glimpse a future where men and machines merge and emotions are lost, and finally choose from one of two gates to return to their own time. Only half of them reach the exit, at which time their "guide" through the journey reveals that it or its race are responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs to populate the Earth with humans in order to experience their emotions, which were lost to them eons ago.

While this is all somewhat bizarre and implausible, there really isn't enough science fiction rock opera in my opinion, so we'll let that slide. No, really. Me, whiner at all things slightly ridiculous is letting it slide. It's that good.

Really, despite the plot being a bit out there, seeing the different characters respond to their environment and each other is pretty cool. The Egyptian, Roman and Highlander think they're in the afterlife, the Indian thinks it's a spiritual journey, the Knight thinks he's been sent on a quest for the Holy Grail, the Barbarian thinks he's on some quest to rid the place of a curse, the Hippie thinks he's stoned, and the Futureman thinks it's some sort of virtual world. Their perceptions ultimately decide who is able to survive, and who loses hope, falls behind the others, or makes bad choices.

OK, that's all I can manage to write right now. You can listen to some of the music here if you are so inclined.

New Year's Resolution

2008-01-02T19:54:00.000-08:00

Same as last year (and the year before that, and the year before...): Not to make any New Year's resolutions.

That must be ten years or more running now. I can't decide if keeping that resolution is good or bad, since technically I've resolved not to make any resolutions.

I hate being sick

2008-01-01T23:06:00.001-08:00

It interferes with the thinking.

Bah.

Dirty little secret

2007-12-11T23:19:00.001-08:00

So, I have a dirty little secret.

As you can read in the rest of my posts, I'm a firm atheist. The thing is, I wasn't really always that way. I grew up in a Christian family, although more of an "occasional Sunday and maybe say grace when the grandparents are around" type of Christian family, rather than the rabid fundamentalist type I may rail against here from time to time. My teen years were pretty much firm atheist though.

The dirty little secret is that I slipped into religious mode through the better part of my university years, largely by falling into the first cause trap. Although I was quite proud of working myself into that philosophical position all by myself, I unfortunately did not work myself out of it.

This precipitated a number of years of reading the bible, attending church and generally seeing both fundamentalist and traditional Christianity from the inside. I have at various times felt this was one of my greatest failings, but I had a minor revelation today.

I really like reading Bad Astronomy because Phil is just a funny, smart and energetic scientist guy, plus I love astronomy. Lately he's been on a bit of a rant about creationists, and although his rather aggressive and confrontational tone on the matter makes me a bit uneasy, I generally agree with him.

Anyway, reading there led me to the Angry Astronomer's review of a Christian pastor's book. Let me sum up the book: Fundamentalist American Christianity's politicization of religion is utterly un-Christian.

That though has struck me a few times recently. Perhaps it is simply that I've been immersed through my religious journey in a bit deeper study of what the bible actually says, but I am inclied to agree.

I'm not going to dig up references at this exact moment, but these are a few things I recall:

*Jesus hated hypocrisy
*There are proverbs that seeking knowledge is good
*If anything, Jesus taught submission to the state
*Jesus taught nearly infinite tolerance and acceptance
*I think there was some Old Testament commandment about not lying...

Now, it's probably fair to say every creationist activist violates every single one of those at some point. (Maybe not the last one right away, but it always seems to come to that.)

So here's my new dirty little secret: I am going to dig up those references, and at the earliest opportunity I will use them in the battle against creationism. Since it's not actually possible to argue logically with these people, I wonder how they would respond to a theological argument that what they are doing is against the very religion they are claiming to support?

Tolerance

2007-11-30T20:45:00.001-08:00

You may have heard the case of the teacher in Sudan who was imprisoned for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammad," but they still want to kill her.

OK, than the fact that their religious argument is totally bogus (the bear was not intended as an image of Muhammad to begin with) totally drives me crazy. Really, the only response I've been able to have to this has been, "Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."

And I feel bad about that. I want to be tolerant and respectful of other beliefs and religions, even though in my opinion they are entirely wrong and very often harmful. The right to be wrong and the right to be offensive are fundamental to the right to freedom of thought and the freedom of speech.

So, here's the deal:

We all have to live in the same world. I agree to be tolerant of your beliefs regardless of any criteria, including but not limited to a) internal logical inconsistency, b) inconsistency with observation and c) inconsistency with my own beliefs, on the condition that the same tolerance is reciprocated to myself and all others offering the same conditions.

Is that so hard? I suppose it is, it directly contradicts the very foundation of radical Christianity, Islam, Scientology, or any other similar belief system. It's the "radical" part that is the problem - the non-radical religions already subscribe to the above agreement. Really, it's far from sufficient for having a peaceful, open society, but if we can't even have that agreement at least in principle, we're utterly screwed.

For anyone who doesn't like it, we have the glass parking lot.

(Now, the paranoid conspiratist in me would suggest that perhaps all of this nonsense is a ruse designed to piss off even people like me enough to allow wars of aggression to proceed... I hope the fact that I still worry about stuff like that means I can be balanced about the situation and recognize when I'm being tricked before it turns to disaster.)

Game Violence

2007-11-30T20:20:00.001-08:00

I was reading something about game violence recently. Aside from the fact that I find the entire "debate" irritating for reasons I might get into later, the interesting thing I got thinking about was the different types of violence in the world and, similarly, in games.

You basically have different situations that would generally be considered more or less acceptable:

Intentional harm of the innocent (murder)
Coincidental harm of the innocent (knew it was likely, manslaughter)
Mutual oppositional violence (war)
Defensive violence (repel invaders)
Accidental harm of the innocent (no idea it would happen)
Mutual permitted violence (boxing)

There may be other shades of it in there. The main point of interest was the lumping of a sport such as boxing under the "violence" label as though it was the same thing as playing a serial killer.

The interesting thing that occurs to me after writing a list in diminishing order of severity leads me to think about what the West is doing in the Middle East. We're being sold the "war in Iraq" as a war (severity 3), but really that's not quite right. The people in the country are repelling invaders (severity 4), but the US is fighting an unjustified war of aggression, which is pretty much murder (severity 1).

Now, to say the US should pull out right now, or even on a timetable, is a much more difficult issue. They should not be there, and I've maintained that since long before they even were there. They've made a right nasty mess of the Iraq and potentially ruined the US economy with massive debt, but there isn't any good way out now. That is why any nation worth any respect whatsoever doesn't involve itself in wars of aggression.

Recently Played: Crysis

2007-11-22T19:43:00.000-08:00

Crysis is an exercise in so many things gone right, and so many things gone wrong. At one point my son made a comment to the effect that, "They made a movie out of this game!" He didn't mean cheap Hollywood derivative crap. There are moments in the game as visually stunning and epic as any movie, which is really saying something. I partially shrug at the whole "nanosuit" thing, which basically means your character can choose between armor, speed, strength or stealth. Only one can be selected at a time, and each drains power at a different rate depending what you are doing (getting shot, sprinting, hitting things or moving, respectively). As a sci-fi theme it isn't exactly inspired, but it does let you approach any of your objectives from a lot of different angles - speed in shooting, or sneak through without raising any suspicion.

The system requirements are astronomical. Now, I have a hard time faulting them for that, because the game does look fantastic. On the flip side, Half-Life 2: Episode Two also looks fantastic and doesn't grind my moderate-to-high performance system (Intel Quad Core 6600, nVidia 8600GTS) to dust. I think there must be a balance there that wasn't sufficiently met.

But the really bad stuff is the bugs. I've seen exactly the same issues reported by others (but curiously, not by everyone) so it's not just me. Some are genuine bugs, some are design issues, but here we go:

Several bugs that prevent missions from advancing. In particular, some "death animations" for enemies don't work all the time, leaving them hanging in the air. This would be just a graphical glitch, except in several circumstances this also prevents the proper events from getting triggered and allowing you to continue through the game, forcing you to load an old save game. (Either by fortunate chance or good design, the game does save your progress in individual files, rather than overwriting the same one, so you can go back fairly easily.)
Cutscenes are often very, very slow, much worse than the rest of the game for some reason. Occasionally they will simply pause for seconds at a time, causing the audio to go completely out of sync with the visuals.
The end-game involved dying. A lot. Which is fine, except it was almost always for completely random reasons. Game designers figured out that was a bad idea many years ago, what it's doing in one of the most high-profile modern games is beyond me.
The end-game didn't exactly communicate objectives well. You get the Stupid Big Gun at the end, then go off to defeat the Super Big Bad Guy, but you can't use the Stupid Big Gun against it for some reason. After defeating Super Big Bad Guy through conventional means (which takes forever and gives little indication that you're actually doing any damage), Big Daddy Super Big Bad Guy comes out, where you CAN use the Stupid Big Gun, but only in a very specific way. Since BDSBBG is a big pushover compared to SBBG, if the whole thing wasn't presented with such style it would be immensely disappointing, instead of merely being underwhelming.
Did I mention the end-game involved a lot of dying? So while you're stumbling around trying to figure out what you're supposed to be doing, you tend to get killed a lot, without any idea if it's because there's a bug in the game (since we established that is a problem), you're not doing it right (which is possible, it's all explained so poorly), or you just suck.
The end-game is really where the framerate issues become a problem, because despite having acceptable framerates on medium settings for the whole game, even with everything on low settings the whole thing turns into a slideshow at the very end, compounding all of the above problems.

I loved this game on the whole. Still, as was a common complaint with its predecessor Far Cry, it starts off marvelously, then just takes a wrong turn at the end, which is really unfortunate. Now, maybe I'll come back to it in two years with more computing power and a few patches and be blown away. If only they could have spent another couple weeks fixing the bugs.

Stupid thing of the day

2007-11-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

So, I heard on the radio this morning a big debate about whether to allow a gigantic Canadian Tire box store to be built in Vancouver. I don't really care much either way, really, but the interesting thing was how it was being suggested that it might generate a lot of traffic, and they were hoping to find a way to minimize it. After all it was only a few blocks away from the Sky Train...

I just couldn't believe anyone actually said that. It's a Canadian Tire. Sure, they carry a wide range of things, but it's primarily an automotive store. Of course people are going to drive there!

It's actually planned for the site of a former car dealership, so... the whole argument is just oozing lies, lies and more lies on every side really. At least the opponents had the decency to say that they mostly didn't want it because it would almost ensure Wal Mart would then find a way to put a store in (which the opponents recently prevented from happening).

Sigh.

Recently Played: Portal

2007-11-05T23:16:00.000-08:00

OK, so, it's been a month since I last posted. That's not so great. Considering my audience size is about two, it probably doesn't matter, but whatever. It's been a while.

So, I bought the Orange Box, which may explain some of that absence of posting. Half Life 2: Episode Two was fabulous, and like all good things left you wanting more.

The more surprising thing in the box was Portal. I was expecting an interesting puzzle game involving portals (create your own "holes" in walls, go in one and you'll come out the other). What caught me (and many others) off guard was the very subtle and very funny story that ties the game together. To top it all off, it has one of the best credits sequences in any game.

Really, Portal is just a nearly perfectly executed game, and meshes perfectly with Valve's game design theory. They always design their levels to teach players the skills they need, and then give them progressively harder problems to solve with those skills. The story that helps hold that together involves an insane, homicidal computer running the show, but this aspect is only gradually introduced. In fact, the story is so subtly introduced I have read raging debates on the forums about what different parts of the story actually mean. That people care that much about the story is perhaps the greatest indication about how well done this game is.

More to the point, I wish I had made it. :-)

At least it gives me some good ideas on how games I'm working on should be designed, and hopefully help make them better.

As usual, Yahtzee has generally captured the essence of what I'd like to say in Zero Punctuation.

Just returned from: Los Angeles

2007-10-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

I just returned from Los Angeles. Impressions:

LAX is just a terrible airport. Everything is miles from everything else, there's pretty much no place to buy anything, and the parts that aren't claustrophobic are uninspired and drab. And even after you've walked the country mile to get to the baggage claim, you still have to wait around forever before your luggage actually arrives.
Highways. We don't really have highways in Canada I think. Highways in California have at least 4-6 lanes in each direction, and average speed is about 120-130km/h. While scary as hell, I get the impression this vastly reduces the number of impatient, idiotic drivers. "Me before anybody else!" is the prevailing attitude in Vancouver, but I didn't see that as much down there, presumably because everybody's already going stupid fast. Note: you could drift into another lane pretty fast at that speed.
The air in LA sucks. Vancouver's not great, but at least the rain cleans it out a bit (yay, the rain is good for something!)

Overall I give LA a C-, mostly because I got to drive Really Damn Fast in a Relatively Legal Fashion. No, I did not buy an "I *heart* LA" t-shirt.

Recently Played: Bioshock (PC)

2007-09-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

I recently finished playing BioShock.

Overall, it is an excellent game, probably the best game of the year so far. That said, I keep thinking back to my previous gaming obsession, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and somehow it was never quite as captivating. I logged over 100 hours in Oblivion and mostly stopped playing in order to get some sort of a life back (World of Warcraft players, I salute and pity you). BioShock clocked in at probably one fifth of that time, but somehow there was never that compulsion to play, that planning your life around figuring when you can get back to the game.

What's good about BioShock? The graphics are amazing, certainly. The Big Daddy is simply an awesome character, perhaps one of the most memorable characters I have seen in years. The setting is very cool, an underwater city in 1920s art deco style. The sense that Something Very Bad has happened is ever-present - there is scarcely any part of the city that is not falling apart in some way, leaks and rubble everywhere. Thinking back on the sterile environments of most games of even a few years ago really makes an impression as to how far games have come even recently.

Still, I just don't feel as excited about the game as I think I should. Maybe it's because the story gets a little derailed after the main plot twist (and the story was a little confusing to begin with). Maybe it's that the final boss battle is such a departure from the rest of the game. (Really, the ending of the game is a bit of a letdown.) Maybe it's because the game takes control away from the player at some key moments, most notably at the end. Really, the places where control is taken away are exactly the points in the game where giving player a choice would have made the game great. (Note to self: After the final big boss battle, do not take control away from the player and end the game immediately.)

Maybe it's because, despite one attempt at allowing the player to make a moral choice, the game forces you to do some rather questionable things in order to advance. That linearity to the game is really the biggest weakness. At the end of each level, the game's transportation system will allow you to travel to any of the previous environments, but there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to do so.

All of the ingredients are there to have an open ended game with multiple solutions to each problem (the easy, evil road, or the hard, good road) but they were never executed on. I really have to suspect that that is the game that was originally designed, but could not be achieved for reasons of money or time. Being a game developer I have an immense amount of sympathy and understand as to why those things may not have panned out as expected. Certainly the pressure to get the game out the door, especially one as good as this, would be immense. Maybe I'm just disappointed that what could have been an all-time classic (as I would expect Oblivion to be considered) will go down as one of many games-of-the-year that are all too quickly forgotten.

Buy it, enjoy it, just don't expect it to change your life.

See also: Zero Punctuation Review of BioShock

9/13

2007-09-13T21:15:00.001-07:00

So, I missed posting anything on 9/11, partially because Real Life interfered, as it often does, but also because there wasn't much to say.

The usual questions were raised, should Canada fly its flags at half mast on Sept. 11, etc.

Yes, people died. That is by definition tragic. Many, many, many more people die every day, in even more heartbreaking circumstances.

Really, 9/11 was a tragic event with really, really good marketing. The western world's response to it would most accurately be described as over-reaction. The terrorism catch-phrase makes a lot of people a lot of money.

I think what we should remember is that our world changed that day. We need to remember what it is like to live in a world that is not controlled by fear. We need to remember that any of us could die at any time, although the odds may be against it. We need to remember that we will all die, eventually, and that that is a good thing. We need to remember that trading freedom for safety is neither a fair trade, nor a feasible one.

We need to remember that life before the world changed, in hope that our children or our children's children may find it again.

The Pessimist's Theory of Happiness

2007-09-08T01:09:00.000-07:00

The Pessimist's Theory of Happiness states that happiness can neither be created, nor destroyed, but can only move from on person to another. Put another way, there is a constant amount of happiness in the universe, and the only way to get more happiness is to take it from someone else.

OK, I just made that up. Well, not just, I came up with it some months ago, but that's not the point.

Of course the Optimist's Theory of Happiness states that happiness can be created willy-nilly without any particular consequence.

Somehow these theories make me think of conservatives and liberals, respectively. There is perhaps some validity to the Pessimist's version. For instance, if you raise taxes to provide services, sure somebody gets the service, but everybody also gets taxed more. Similarly, if you're rich and can convince the government to give you a tax break and pass the cost on to everyone else, you can manage to extract happiness from them that way. Of course, then you get into the Laws of Happydynamics, and see that when bureaucracy manages happiness, some of that happiness is irrecoverably lost to ambient heat.

I hear someone at the back shouting that, "money does not equal happiness." Perhaps not, but at least we have standard units of currency. What is the standard unit of happiness exactly? "I'd like one decagrin please." Money is irrelevant anyway, it's just a way of keeping score. The point is that a lot of people obtain their happiness by extracting it from others.

Now, on the other hand, there are people who create stuff that make a lot of people very happy. There are many wonderful authors who have written things that have surely made many people very happy, surely significantly in excess of whatever struggles were required to create it. That is one of the cool things about creating - it seems at least possible that you are increasing the total amount of happiness in the universe, while all the consumers / non-creators are busy just moving all of the happiness around until we achieve apathy-death.

Unfortunately, I don't recall if I actually had a point when I started writing this post. Certainly one has not arisen as quickly as I would have hoped. If you have any happiness you could send my way, perhaps I could find a way to wrap this up more satisfactorily. Thanks!

What are we?

2007-09-07T00:27:00.000-07:00

From time to time I think about our (that is, human's) place in the world / universe.

I remember being in elementary school, and we were being taught to classify things into "natural" and "man-made." At the time this struck me as an exceptionally stupid way to classify things, because people are as much a part of nature as anything else. Really, despite our manipulation of tools and our invention prowess and communication abilities, we have more in common with squirrels than bacteria living in under-sea volcanic vents do. I'm not really an environmentalist,
but man-made is not a natural classification for me.

Let me get to the point: We are animals. We are made of atoms, just like trees, dirt, rocks, and fuzzy bunnies, and everything else that is not hard vacuum (and even then quantum mechanics makes that a bit iffy, but that's not the point, not yet anyway). We are not special in any universal sense. We are special in a personal sense, possibly, but ultimately we're just a bunch of stuff crawling around on the surface of a rock orbiting a giant fusion reactor. As I heard someone say (quoting someone else, I believe, and I'm not going to track down the original author right now): We're just a bunch of cells that decided to be "us" for a while.

Now, those sorts of thoughts probably freak out the religious among us, who regard humans as exceptionally special. I think it's pretty cool to think of a person as a bunch of single-celled organisms that got together and created a person, but maybe I'm just weird that way.

There's a quote from the TV show Babylon 5 suggesting that we are the universe attempting to understand itself. When I first heard that, I thought it was pseudo-religious garbage - the universe "intentionally" creating people to help understand itself. I realized recently that's not really what it means. We actually are a part of the universe. We're a bunch of supernova remnants. We are just a chunk of the universe. And we are trying to understand the universe. Yes, we literally are a piece of the universe trying to understand the universe (i.e. itself). That doesn't imply intent, creation, or anything else, that's simply a statement of fact.

I'll have to think more about what that means, but it seems a very interesting way to look at things to me.

So, I was thinking....

2007-09-01T00:40:00.000-07:00

I make games for a living. On one hand, it's very rewarding, because at the end of a project there's actually something that you have created that literally hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people will enjoy. I have wondered with increasing frequency over the years whether it would be more valuable to put my skills towards things more obviously beneficial to the health and welfare of humanity.

In the end, though, I have brought a lot of joy to a lot of people over the years. I do this better than I do anything; it is quite possible I do this better than I will ever be able to do anything else. I can sense myself casually drifting to the point where my experience often interferes with my ability to try reckless new approaches to things. I'll fight that as long as I can, but my days of being able to change the world are probably numbered.

What does the betterment of humanity mean exactly anyway? For a lot of people, I have made life more enjoyable. I'm sure for some, I have made life worth living, if even for a short while. There are other things I could do that might save lives, but saving a life is not the same as making a life worth living. What a drab place it would be if everyone worked only to keep everyone else alive, only to have them inevitably die at a later time anyway.

We often forget that we will die. We more often forget that we should die, to make room for new people, and more importantly, new ideas. Saving lives has become and end unto itself, grown from this forgetfulness, until we have forgotten how to live.

So I will continue to do what I do. I will continue to touch people's lives in the best way that I can, and hopefully make us all better for it.

Things That Have Annoyed Me Recently

2007-08-25T00:05:00.000-07:00

I have added a wonderful new permanent box to my page - Things That Have Annoyed Me Recently. This, as you may have guessed, will be a list of the many things that have Annoyed Me Recently.

In a wonderfully self-referential accident, the thing that has annoyed me most recently is the fact that, despite my efforts to edit the raw HTML, the boxes down the side of my page apparently refuse to display a bullet-point list. Which means when it word-wraps a line, it doesn't format it very nicely. More puzzling, when I did it with an actual built-in "list" type box, it still didn't bullet-point anything.

As for the other things, driving in Vancouver is an adventure. I recently had someone come up behind me fast as we exited the highway, even though I was probably going at least the posted limit. Then they pulled back out of the (very short) exit lane, pull around me, cut across the painted island, and nearly cut me off, and then they were gone. I passed them less than 30 seconds later, as they were stuck behind several cars at a red light. I waved, but I doubt they saw me, unfortunately. For futile impatience and endangerment of others, I would like to award a "Please Die in a Disemboweling or, if unavailable, Decapitating Collision Award" to this person.

As far as merging, the basic theory is this: You need to be going the same speed as the lane you are merging into. The other important thing to note is that "merge" and "yield" do not mean the same thing. More to the point, they mean practically the opposite of each other. Further, if you attempt to yield when you are supposed to merge in Vancouver, you may never get moving again until most of the city has gone to bed. I award a moderate rear-ending to anyone stopped in the merging lane. I also award a "tango with a semi" to the bastards who won't make a hole big enough for us to merge into, which often precipitates said stoppage.

Sleep

2007-08-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Sleep. I could probably use more. I've been on vacation for about seven weeks now, and somehow I'm only barely rested. I'm not sure if going back to work next week is going to be good or bad for that. A regular schedule is actually kind of good for me, because I only actually feel like working around the house when the sun is up. Interestingly, I can work on the computer any time of the day or night, so my choice of occupation was probably a good one.

The problem is not that I can't sleep. I almost always fall asleep very quickly, and once I'm out it's hard to wake me up. Even if I do wake up, I can generally go back to sleep fairly easily.

No, the problem is, as I've long known, that I hate change of state. I hate going to bed. I think it's a form of laziness - it's significantly less work to keep playing on the computer than it is to go to bed. By the same token, it's significantly easier to stay in bed than it is to get up. The difference is, I go to bed when I want, but I have to get up for school or work, which is outside of my control. I'm fairly sure it's a form of laziness, because the more tired I get, the less inclined I am to go to bed. That there is an unlimited amount of stuff to read on the web doesn't exactly help the situation either - there will always be "one more" interesting thing to read.

I also know from experience that if I do let my sleep schedule drift, it tends to drift until I'm going to bed around noon and/or getting up around midnight. Somehow that seems to be the point where things stabilize, which seems a bit odd. Since I can stay up long past any usual "bedtime," and work on something longer than a 24 hour day, I'm not sure why it stabilizes at the most awkward possible schedule.

So, while my vacation has been relaxing, it hasn't necessarily been restful.

Possible courses of correction:
*Brush teeth two hours before bed, when I might still have the energy
*Take the laptop to bed so I can do stuff, but not expend much more energy than closing it when it's time to sleep
*Convince myself to go to bed on time like a responsible adult (ha!)

I think it's good that I stay away from drugs and alcohol entirely. It's much too easy for me to do things before I go to bed and regret them in the morning.

September 11, 2001

2007-08-18T13:59:00.000-07:00

I have a thing for conspiracy theories. At first it was kind of humorous, not unlike driving by a traffic accident - uncomfortable with your interest, but unable to avoid taking a quick peek. There are a lot of strange theories out there, particularly theories that the plane that crashed into the Pentagon was not a plane at all, but a missile. Also that the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center were remotely piloted.

One of the sites I came across was http://www.whatreallyhappened.com, where at one time or another I read both of those theories. Something interesting happened a while ago though. They essentially decided that some of these crazier theories were being set up as straw-man theories to discredit people with valid questions about 9/11 by lumping them together with the crazies. Whether this sort of meta-paranoia has any validity or not is hard to determine, although I have noticed a bit more restraint and sensibility from people the mass-media would paint with the "crackpot" brush. Sites such as http://www.911truth.org/ at least seem to be interested in providing evidence.

All of this stuff is fairly hard to discuss rationally, because six years on this is still a highly emotionally charged event. I'm convinced there are troubling unresolved questions, but a lot of people are still just weird about the whole thing. I suppose it had its intended effect, whether you're a terrorist or part of a conspiracy to gain power.

There is one question I would really like to have answered: Why did WTC7 collapse? A 47-story building collapses, although it only sustained secondary damage and fire. The appropriate response would be to give full access to an independent panel of structural engineers to determine exactly what happened and how to prevent it from happening again, or determine better methods for building such structures in the future. What actually appears to have happened is that any independent engineers were given a dog and pony show / tour and all evidence was sold and shipped to China as quickly as possible. Even in the best light, that is massively incompetent. I would expect it is criminal.

I once heard these issues being discussed on a local, respected radio station (CKNW) while interviewing a "conspiracy theorist" on a call-in show. I don't recall too many specifics, but I did notice this: Every single person who believed the events of September 11, 2001 were either planned or permitted by elements of the US government provided strong evidence and reasons for their position. Every single person who took the official government position provided no evidence whatsoever and responded to all questions with nothing more than name-calling and personal attacks. This isn't an isolated incident, I see it every single time this is brought up in traditional media. It hardly seems surprising though - as I just mentioned, all evidence that might support the official story was quickly and deliberately destroyed.

I try to remain skeptical of both sides of the discussion, but there is one fact that seems hard to explain: Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged person in US history, for attempting to expose criminal activity within the US government related to 9/11. I really would like to hear what she has to say.

The Logic of Religion

2007-08-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

They say that logic and religion don't mix. This usually seems to be stated at roughly the same time any meaningful religious debate has entered the, "you're right, but I'm not going to change what I believe anyway," stage. I love playing with metaphorical fire, so here we go.

If we start with the assumption that some omnipotent, omniscient god exists, we can go all sorts of interesting places. But first a little formal logic.

If a sentence is of the form "If A, then B" we get a truth table as demonstrated here. The interesting thing here is that, if your premise is false, your statement as a whole is always true. This may also explain a great deal of political debate, but that's not really the point.

If god exists, then god created the earth. If god exists, then god creates the rain. If god exists, then god ordered the locusts to destroy your crops.

The interesting bit is, these statements are always 100% absolutely certainly true as long as god doesn't exist. Once you starting assuming that god exists, you can pretty much stop thinking about the "if god exists" part and believe any old thing you like. It pretty much sounds like this:

If god exists, then god created the Earth.
If god created the Earth, then god created people.
If god created people, then there must be some unusual reason that bad things happen.
If there is some unusual reason bad things happen, then god must have a plan to fix it.

Western religion can just magically spring into a relatively logically consistent existence as long as you are simply willing to assume that god exists. If you create a religion with that assumption, you can simplify the whole thing down to:

God created the Earth.
God created people.
There must be some unusual reason that bad things happen.
God must have a plan to fix it.

The problem is, any of these statements could be either true or false - they are all atomic, not implications. I hardly think it a stretch to say that early humans, just barely learning to communicate with each other and figure out the complicated world we live in, would have made this accidental little logical oops.

If god exists, then you are being punished for your sins.

If god doesn't exist, this statement is always true. If god does exist, well, you maybe have a 50% of being right or wrong.

From this perspective, religion may be true, but it's more likely to be true if god doesn't exist. That doesn't tell us much, I just thought it was funny. :-)

So, why "inverse?"

2007-08-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

One upon a time, back before normal humans were allowed on the Internet, or practically anyone else for that matter, I used to dial up BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems) on my exceptionally slow modem, over the phone lines. That would be like having to dial a different phone number every time you wanted to go to a different web page. The isolated nature of each of these boards made each of them feel a bit more like a community than most things you get on the Internet today.

I visited some of the real-time chat boards regularly. Chats like this are weird, you don't see them a lot now days. The weird thing is that you can be in the same room as a couple dozen other people, and you can all be talking together, or you can all be talking at the same time. Trying to parse out a single conversation line from all of the noise is really strange at first, but with a little practice, it becomes pretty easy. The human brain is very cool.

Anyway, every user had a "handle," which is your user name. I'm not sure where the term "handle" disappeared to, but it was a good term.

My handle was Matrix. I'm not sure exactly why, mostly I thought the word sounded cool, but also suggested my math-nerdiness. I had recently been learning about them in university. They are a mathematical table of numbers that one can do interesting things with. It's very important to note that this was before The Matrix the movie came out. The original obscure nerdiness is gone, and replaced by nerdiness-in-black-leather. I really like the movie, but now it would just seem too fanboyish to use it as an alias, when that's not what it was about.

Ah, but all is not lost. Similar to the way the inverse of a real number x=1/y (or x=y^-1) means that xy=1, the inverse of a matrix M^-1 is the matrix such that MM^1=I, where I is the identity matrix (a square matrix with 1's on the diagonal from the top left to the bottom right, and 0's everywhere else). It's a very useful and interesting property. All of this is well explained on the Wikipedia page above, so I will not geek out at this time, enticing as it may be.

So, I have adopted the name inverse, without capitalization for reasons that I'm not really clear on. I'm obsessive about correct capitalization when I'm writing and posting, so perhaps it's simply subversive only to me. It's a nerdy word, it's related to matrices, and it means in some respect "upside down" or "opposite." The page is called "inverse thinking," which literally means "me thinking," but also means "upside down thinking," or maybe "unconventional thinking."

I like it.

Recently Watched: Happy Feet

2007-08-14T23:28:00.000-07:00

I recently watched Happy Feet, mostly because it was the movie that beat Pixar's Cars at the academy awards, which to me seemed to be a rather significant accomplishment. It may have deserved it, it was very good, although I got the feeling a rather large portion of the movie could have been edited out, still made the same point and tightened up the pacing quite a bit.

I'm not here to critique the movie, though.

One of the main plot lines in the movie is that aliens (humans) are stealing the penguin's food supply (fish) either selfishly or unwittingly. From the penguin's perspective (and these are singing / talking / dancing penguins now), humans are simply beyond comprehension. At the same time, penguins are (to some humans) stupid, worthless birds, so why not take all of their fish?

I've been seeing articles fairly frequently recently about Fermi's Paradox (see here and here) and this got me to thinking about the existence of alien life, and what it would likely do if it encountered us. The problem we face is that, if life is even remotely as probable as suspected, and the odds of a technological space-faring race evolving is at all probable, the aliens should be here and everywhere else already.

One of the posts in the second link above suggested that any race sufficiently advanced to travel between stars must be so advanced that they've solved all energy, food and mortality problems. That seems a bit ridiculous, presumably from the perspective of 600 years ago you could believe the same thing about a civilization that could cross the Atlantic. Or the Pacific. Or circumnavigate the globe. In an aircraft. Well, our fabulous civilization has done all of those things, and so many more, but those problems are more than a little way from being solved.

It seems that our perception of an alien race is some race so advanced that it is impossible for them to make a mistake. Crashing in Roswell would simply be impossible for a race that has traveled the stars, despite zero-g space travel and landing in a rather significant gravity well with an atmosphere being two fairly different problems. I think we have to admit it's at least possible for alien races to make mistakes, for machinery no matter how advanced to fail, and that we have only slightly more insight into how to build an interstellar spacecraft than penguins have about how to build a fishing trawler.

So, it's back to the penguins again. Perhaps we are the penguins. Perhaps the purposes of alien life is so beyond our understanding that humans are of little interest beyond the occasional alien zoologist, who might drop in to catalog us, and then be on their way. It is supreme arrogance to assume that we are so intelligent and advanced that a space-faring species would feel compelled to drop in and start a conversation? Penguins can communicate after a fashion, but it seems it would be scarcely worth the effort to communicate with them. Taking part in their mating ritual hardly seems compelling. Even if they were more intelligent, discussing the consistency of snow and ice and how tasty raw fish is would only be novel for about a week.

Perhaps one of the biggest problems we have is that we have never met another species with even remotely our level of abstract thinking. If other species had arisen that we could interact with (and we could resist wiping them out) perhaps we would understand a thing or two about other intelligent species - and perhaps that once you have done so, meeting others isn't quite as cool as we think it would be. No denying, it would be big for us. Maybe not so much for them if they've done it hundreds, thousands or millions of times with species a lot more advanced than we are.

There are lots of potential reasons why Fermi's Paradox isn't a paradox at all. Maybe they are here, and they're either hiding, or they just don't care. Of course, maybe the chances of a technological society arising are absurdly small. Life has existed on this planet for a very, very, very long time. We are the only species known to have even been able to create fire in all that time. What did happen to our evolutionary path that brought us to that point that every other species seems to have missed, and why did it take so long? Or maybe it was fast, and nobody else really is there yet. It's entirely possible there are billions of worlds exactly like ours, minus us, so the universe is filled with life trapped on their worlds until their stars explode and the whole thing starts all over again. The odds of life arising may be small, so far there has only been one verified case of human-level intelligence ever, despite billions of years of evolution, and that's us. (I might be willing to provide an exception to some of our parent and sibling species, but regardless there is only this one line that has even approached a technological society, and only one that has achieved it.)

To finish up, I liked the movie, not only because it was well done, but because it makes me think about all of this stuff, and that's just good nerd fun. It gave me a new perspective on how aliens might perceive us, and gave me a bit of a reality check on some of the exceedingly arrogant perceptions we might have of ourselves as a technological society.

Recently Read: Ender's Game

2007-08-14T00:31:00.000-07:00

I recently read Ender's Game for the first time. From what I could gather, this was one of the stock nerd must-read books, but somehow I had managed never to read it. I'm sure there are many discussions of the relative merits of the story and the writing quality (the author makes reference to as much in the introduction), so I won't really go into that much.

The short version is that Ender is a six-year-old genius who is recruited by the military to be the leader in a great interstellar war. He is hated by his peers, as they are jealous of him or have their own weaknesses exposed when compared to his exceptional skills, but he uses his superior intellect to overcome this.

I intentionally skipped the introduction when I read the book to avoid any potential spoilers (although I was already spoiled on the main twist in the book anyway). Reading it after having read the book made me realize something rather interesting. Writing about the fans of the book, the author mentions that the people most fond of the book didn't love Ender, or pity him (which the author states is a common adult response to the book), but they were Ender. The thing that surprised me was not that I felt that I was Ender in some capacity - that was obviously the reason the book is held in such high esteem by people like me - but mostly that I had never considered that other people might react with pity to Ender, and by extension, myself. Apathy, jealousy, dislike perhaps, but not pity.

I never considered myself as pitiful. I'm relatively successful in my career, have a good home and a loving family. I have suffered through some of the bullying and jealousy, but never as extreme as many people suffer, and that is not a reason for pity - that is a reason for disgust at the bullies and those adults too blind to do anything about them. Why pity Ender? I admire him. He overcomes his problems with intelligence and dignity.

I have never been much of a leader. I realized in the last few days that I never considered that intelligence could actually be applied directly to leadership. Leadership either seemed to be something that came naturally without any thought, was derived from the joy of pushing people around (which I generally lack) or just generally came in the form of random fads of techniques, processes and sayings that amounted to nothing. Reading this book made me realize, for the first time, that leadership is the process of using intelligence to both gain mutual trust (different from obedience) and solve a complex resource allocation optimization problem. I now understand much better how to be a good leader, and I understand why I have seen many bad leaders - intelligence can be the key difference.

So, what can I say about this book? I had fun reading it. It made me understand myself better. I feel that I came away from reading it a better person. I can think of no higher praise than that.

Nerd humor

2007-08-13T02:03:00.000-07:00

So, my wife walks into the bedroom and screams, "What the fulcrum is going on in here?!" and the young lady with me shouts, "I thought you were gonna lever!"

A little something to alleviate the rather grim tone I began this page with. As far as I know, that was created by me.

inverse thinking

A Theory of Money

Prohibition

The Alphabet According to Goolgle.ca Auto-Complete

Election time again

Government

How to Read News Headlines

In today's top CBC headlines...

Congratulations to Egypt!

Bo*bs

Danger

Scotiabank / Google Ads Fail

Scotia iTrade are a bunch of money grubbing bastards

Democracy

The Overtime

Games as Art

Hash Based Compression

Another Vietnam

Let Me Google That For You

Converse Also True

Freedom

Once Upon a Time

Anti-social

Thought of the day (month/year)

Star Trek 2009

Thought for the day

Important Question #7

Important Question #5

Important Question #4

Important Question #3

Important Question #2

Important Question #1

Recently watched: Stargate

Banning Books

Zzzzzzzzzz

Random stuff

Writing (condensed)

Writing

A Story

Goooooooooogle

Us vs Them

It is done

My problem with religion

Two days to the election

Death Magnetic

Believe

Election time again

Time

The thinking man's post

In newspeak...

Atheism

Believing in what you CAN'T know exists...

Computer Viruses vs. Mind Viruses

Harmful Information Part 2

Harmful Information

The thing is...

Miracles and the supernatural

What is offense?

Game Haters

Why atheism?

The Little Robot

Opinions

I-words

Elections

Did you realize...

Crazy people

Conspiracy Theories

R2-D2

Thought of the day

Thoughts of the day

Busy busy

Terror reporting ban

*cough* *cough*

Designer Life

The Abortion Debate

Recently Watched: The Story of Stuff

Recently listened to: Ayreon: Into the Electric Castle

New Year's Resolution

I hate being sick

Dirty little secret

cough cough