flotsam and...

evil does not announce itself

2012-01-28T14:02:00.000-05:00

It was a week or so ago and we were feeling self-congratulatory. The comically bad SOPA bill had been stopped by popular appeal to the Congress.

Google, Inc. was a notable advocate against the bill and used their considerable voice to drive people to be aware of the issue, come to their own decisions and petition their government for redress of grievance. Google was congratulatory of the 7'000'000 US citizens who stood with them to defeat this in the name of "liberty".

But back in Google's own yard, liberty was being threatened not by the Congress but by Google themselves. In a strongly worded statement to a poster on YouTube, Google used language I'd not previously seen used by the firm whose motto had been "Don't be Evil.":

Your account has received one Community Guidelines warning strike, which will expire in six months.Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the permanent termination of your account.

The poster, whom I shall call "Nomad" as that is what he calls himself, says he is baffled as to why the takedown had occurred because it was merely a parody of Google+ policy vacillation. I have every reason to take Nomad at his word, and considerable reason to expect he'd not knowingly violate YouTube policy and standards.

The problem with censorship is that I have to take Nomad at his word, because the violating video isn't available for me to consider.

This action puts Google at variance with itself. When it came to SOPA, they were very clear that they didn't want to be compelled to police their services and be held liable for failure. In the "Nomad takedown" it appears they are happy to police content on their own terms. And the policing they do is private, does not afford Nomad with any indication of what policy he may have violated, nor does it afford any avenue for appeal. Furthermore with recent announcements from Google that they will be changing their Terms to span their myriad services there is the very real possibility that Nomad could loose access to GMail or Google Documents if he makes additional violations.

So, be careful Nomad, if you do any more of whatever it was that you did that they didn't like and that they won't describe to you, they may just permanently terminate you. In the online world that Google is promoting, "termination" isn't actual capital punishment but it has some aspects in common.

The authors of the US constitution knew too well the privations that can obtain when justice is secret, the accused does not get to know the charges against him, and punishment can be arbitrary and unusual. Google claims to want to be a significant player in the nascent cyber-society and would do well to look to history.

Evil authoritarianism can enter a bureaucracy by giving minor functionaries too much power and too little accountability. And all it takes for evil to flourish is for people of good conscience to say nothing.

the second great depression

2012-01-03T10:02:00.000-05:00

You usually find the seed-crystal of a complex of ideas in the most unlikely places. The other day I overheard an old rant by Penn Jillette where he made a passing reference to the First Great Depression implying that there was or would be a second. Within the last hour I've seen multiple G+ posts about the reported troubles and closures of Sears Holdings stores, and over the last few months I've been thinking about #Occupy, over the last 4 years about the Second Great Depression, and over the last 20 years about what has happened to the global society that has brought us such malaise.

Even if the Fed cannot bring itself to say so, we are in the Second Great Depression; naming the phenomenon something else is just a rhetorical game.

So in the context of all that, I found myself reading the most profound book review that I can recall. As no clear-headed thinker could dispute the simple, self-evident truth of Darwin's explanation, this little book appears to reveal the fundamental cause of what we have allowed the 0.05% to do to the entire world in my lifetime.

I can't read this review for you, and I've not fully wrapped my head around it yet, but this is big, requires no conspiracy, no secrets, no deep cleverness. You may, like me, have to gloss over the initial football analogy, but I'm not even sure that Denning grasps the importance of this.

This post was ripped in its entirety from my post on Google+ because there is little permanence to be found in streams. I still have not fully understood the implications of the idea contained therein, but there are hints of this being an explanatory framework that can be applied to systems larger than just Wall Street.

a snail trapped in a man's body

2012-01-03T00:21:00.000-05:00

Ever since I was a child, I've been filled with the certainty that I wasn't like other boys. When other boys wanted to play baseball, I felt that bi-pedalism was just not right for me. When told it was bath time, I felt only dread that my protective mucus coating would be stripped from me and I worried yet more about the salt content of the bathwater. When teased by classmates, I tried to retract into my shell only to be frustrated to discover that I didn't have one. But perhaps the most cruel insult was the discovery that did not have both a penis and a vagina and the gonads to match. Fortunately, with the assistance of a support group and a surgeon sympathetic to my plight, I am scheduled for experimental shell transplantation as soon as a suitable donor is found. If you think this is hard to read, think about what it must be like to know that you've been born into the wrong phylum.

Except you can't think about what it is like to be transphyletic, not only is it philosophically problematic, it is a patently absurd claim to even make. So too are the claims of people who believe themselves to be transgender; to say that they are mistaken is generous because to merely be mistaken assumes there could exist a world in which they were correct.

Mistaken beliefs

It is important to note that I don't deny anyone the right to imagine that they are truly a malformed snail. If you wish to believe that, my objection would be as foolish as commanding that you must believe the earth is spherical. However, if you want me to accept your delusions of snailness and make accommodation, you are going to have to present me with reason to believe that your claim could possibly true. And that is something that the transphyletic and transgender advocates have failed to do because it is impossible for them to do.

This is certainly an audacious claim for me to make and an understandable retort would be “how the hell could you possibly know what it is like to be transgender?” to which my answer would be “that's exactly my point”.

In his seminal 1974 essay titled “What is it like to be a bat?” the philosopher Thomas Nagel explored the idea of knowing what some other's conscious experience might be like.

Although concerned with a broader discussion of the reductionalistic analysis of the “mind-body problem” Nagel's investigation must cross areas of direct relevance to the question of transsexual claims:

To the extent that I could look and behave like a wasp or a bat without changing my fundamental structure, my experiences would not be anything like the experiences of those animals. On the other hand, it is doubtful that any meaning can be attached to the supposition that I should possess the internal neurophysiological constitution of a bat. Even if I could by gradual degrees be transformed into a bat, nothing in my present constitution enables me to imagine what the experiences of such a future stage of myself thus metamorphosed would be like. The best evidence would come from the experiences of bats, if we only knew what they were like.

Nagel, being a philosopher, writes like a philosopher which is often dense but precise, so fret not if that passage bears a second reading. Notably, long prior to modern analyses of transgender, Nagel was using the language “future stage of myself thus metamorphosed”. I call attention to this turn of phrase as “metamorphosis” is a metaphor common in the transgender literature so much so that some transgender advocacy groups use a butterfly to symbolize the experience they are trying to describe. But Nagel's claim, and my own, is that the phenomenology of experience does not fluidly slip across the boundary of “what I am” to “what I imagine my future self to be”.

There is no fluid slip across the boundary; the claim is that the subjective experience is wholly inaccessible. In order to make the contrast greater, Nagel used a bat as the target of exploring another mind, but his conclusions are just as valid human to human, a point which he mentions in passing:

The problem is not confined to exotic cases, however, for it exists between one person and another. The subjective character of the experience of a person deaf and blind from birth is not accessible to me, for example, nor presumably is mine to him.

To which I amplify, the subjective quality of what it is like to be anyone other than exactly who I am is also inaccessible; as with bats, if I have to guess what it is like to be you or you me, all we can do is guess. And here is why I believe people who claim to be transsexual cannot be other than mistaken, that their claims are guesses at best and more akin to fantasy than anything that they could possibly know. People who claim that they are transgender can only imagine what it is like to be other than themselves, no matter how strident their assertions to the contrary.

Transgender phenomenology

So if people who believe themselves to be transgender are mistaken, what are they reporting? I'm certainly not accusing anyone of lying, for we know too well that it is possible for anyone to be mistaken regarding just about any subject but this implies neither that they are stupid nor stating something contrary to their beliefs. For example, I can believe that Boston is a large, coastal city in Texas, be completely consistent and honest in that belief and yet still be utterly, indisputably mistaken.

I expect that there will be responses from people who argue that not being them or people like them, I cannot possibly understand the dysmorphia they experience because I am not them. This is actually a discussion that I have had multiple times. To date, the only objections that have been presented to me are purely political ones of the form “I refute this because I am adamant that everyone should be allowed to believe what they want”. The reason transgender rhetoric falls in on itself is that one cannot consistently assert that I have no basis for saying transgenders are mistaken yet that they have valid basis for believing that they ought be other than they are.

Put more simply, if you are willing to tell me that I cannot know the mind of someone not like me, do you truly believe that you have unique privilege on the matter? If you think my claim about someone else's imagined identity audacious, the counter-claim can not be any less arrogant.

So although we can't both be correct on the subject, I do concede we could both be incorrect. But there is an asymmetry present, though. Transgender advocates are asking the world, thus me, to grant the existence of something imaginary which, by definition, they cannot consistently claim. The burden lies with them to show cause to accept that view; it is not incumbent upon me to accept that claim as valid simply because someone would like me to believe that fantasy.

An alternate guess

So if claims of transgender are mistaken, is there a better explanation? I think so, but I don't even elevate it to the level of hypothesis. Almost everyone has at some point felt something that we call “uncomfortable in my own skin” or the existential confusion of “I don't know what I am, but I'm pretty sure I'm not that”. This is so common that I can't even call it aberrant; I tend to think of it as the birthright of every human. For some people I'm sure that this feeling is particularly intense or lasts longer than it does for others.

People are keen on finding explanations for things we don't understand, even if we have to manufacture them. Although I strive toward rationality, I know that I have constructed false explanations for things I have felt and will likely do so again.

Barring some rare but dramatic organic defects, sex is pretty binary in the animal world, humans being no exception; you either have ovaries or testes, but not both. Gender is a term that is used to describe complex constellations of behaviors and dispositions which don't cleave neatly in two. That is: they form continua across multiple dimensions. We find it convenient to stick labels on the ends of a spectrum, for example light being bounded by red on one end and violet on the other. Since these are labels of convenience, points along the continuum are necessarily fuzzy: where precisely on the spectrum does red turn to orange or blue to green? The answer to these questions is clear: there is no firm dividing line between green and blue.

Similarly, for convenience we label the extremes of gender as feminine and masculine, but just as there is no clear point where a person goes from being tall to short, neither does gender afford clear division. And even though there are traits that we generally consider decidedly masculine or feminine, we have no problem accepting that people of either sex can slide along those continua of gender willy-nilly either by trait or even time of day.

Why is it anyone else's concern?

The preceding could be said to be purely academic or even mere sophistry. As right-thinking people of our time, we are firm in our belief that someone's sexual orientation ought not concern us and certainly tells us nothing of the content of their character. Nor, like skin color, do we have any reason to use sexual orientation as a reason to deny anyone equal protection of the law or even equal courtesy. Is not someone's mistaken belief regarding their gender on completely equal footing with sexual orientation, religiosity, or ethnic heritage? No.

I did consider the epistemology of transsexualism to be largely academic until I read that people are acting on these mistaken beliefs and their acts range from utterly benign to manifestly evil. The latter are why this question matters. In the US we've had unfortunately too much experience with body dysmorphia, especially among teens. While there are few responsible, knowledgeable people that would advocate for extreme anorexia or bulimia as being a matter of valid personal preference, there are significant "pro-anorexia support groups" which promote self-starvation. Similarly, as the transgender community fights for the right to have their confusion accepted as a legitimate life-style choice, children are being given hormone antagonist drugs to suppress their adolescence. Unfortunately, hormones don't merely affect the development of visible sex characteristics: they are used throughout the body to coordinate myriad, complex, developmental pathways. What are the neurological correlates of interfering with body hair? What are the cardiopulmonary effects? We don't know, and given the small number of recipients of such well intentioned "treatments" likely won't soon. Arsenic compounds had historically been used to help people cope with the social stigma of the condition of unwanted pregnancy. Is something as patently foolish now being advocated to cure a disorder from the imagination?

many rivers to cross

2012-01-01T12:31:00.000-05:00

Update: Dr. Mesibov was kind enough to review my amateur analysis and has filled in some guesses I'd had to make with hard data. Please see his comment attached to this posting. As the primary point of my note here — the role of hyperbole in popular science writing — seems uncontested I am leaving the post as it was until I can better incorporate his well received corrections.

Someone asked about a story posted in the Science News Blog with the enticing title Mysterious Border Between Two Millipede Species Runs for Over 140 Miles. I've never been able to understand why headline writers need to spice up what is actually interesting science as if someone who is going to read about carrion eating millipedes really needs to be titillated into paying attention. A quick search of the Science News Blog article title shows that the story has already been picked up by multiple outlets.

The article summarizes a paper describing a methodology for gathering data. Although the observation by Dr. Mesibov is of the form “that's a slightly surprising result, I wonder why?” the Science News, like too many popular science accounts tries to sex up a rather mundane story (which is kinda funny for a class of animals that are most easily distinguished by microscopic examination of their penises).

Assuming Mesibov's data are correct (and Mesibov certainly knows his Tasmanian millipedes) it is just a notably long measurement of the well known phenomenon of parapatric speciation.

As usually happens when a parent species splits into two, hybridization between the species is severely penalized by selection because the mixed genes don't work together as well as those of either species separately. A common example is the human guided hybridization of horses and donkeys to produce mules which are almost always sterile (where sterility is the ultimate penalty in natural selection). Humans have to cause the interbreeding because although horses and donkeys share a common ancestor and are so closely related that they can produce viable offpring they don't — of their own free will — interbreed. In the course of their speciation, selection retained preferences in each that made them want to mate with their own and not across species lines.

I expect Mesibov's preliminary discovery is a result of a few factors: The total range of T. compitale is small (125 hectares, or about the size of a US single family farm) so the ability to gather specimens is particularly good. Contrastingly, although a zone of parapatriation of 100m may sound narrow to us, to a 15mm millipede that's a long distance.

There isn't a ton of data on home ranges of small earth dwellers because it's kinda difficult to catch-mark-release-repeat with bugs the size of a fingernail. Picking the beetle Abax parallelepipedus as a reasonable arthropod stand-in (biased by ecology to likely having a larger home range than tasmaniosomans) our friend the Black Ground Beetle never makes it much father than 10m from where it hatched over the course of its entire life. So, if you are a Tasmanian millipede with extremely goal directed ancestors, it could take ten generations or more to cross that 100m boundary zone. This multi-generational journey would be rather difficult because somewhere in the middle you're going to have one hell of a time finding a mate.

Is it interesting? Sure. Is it “mysterious”? No. “As yet unknown” is a more accurate description of the phenomenon that Dr. Mesibov reported.

a public apology to a child pornographer

2011-12-31T09:17:00.000-05:00

see note below for important disclaimer

It is with reluctance and remorse that I have had to report Brian Rose, self-described Community Manager of the Google+ Photo project for:

Knowingly creating and publishing a photograph of a child, apparently in restraints, on a service intended to distribute said image to multiple recipients across the several States.
Suspicion of production and distribution of similar works for possible distribution among child pornographers clandestinely through the internet, a known mechanism for trafficking in such contraband.

I do deeply regret that Mr. Rose will likely be subject to:

Seizure of his personal effects including his photographic gear and computing devices for use as evidence against him. This seizure may also include the taking of assets at his home and work even if they don't belong to Mr. Rose on the basis that he may have used these devices for criminal ends and that to leave them in situ would give opportunity Mr. Rose or his confederates to destroy evidence of wrong doing.
Police investigation of his at his place of employ and residence, including vague interview of his colleagues, superiors, neighbors, and friends which hint at the possibility of malfeasance, and even the broad nature of the offense to society, while coyly declining to name the suspected offense.
Release of Mr. Rose's name and likeness to the press by the police to accompany the allegation of his actions in child pornography. This release will likely be made in order for the police to demonstrate that they are vigilant and dutiful regarding possible threats to our vulnerable children.
Personal notoriety resulting from the reported allegations which will become known to his friends, family, community, and business associates present and future.
Trial in the "court" of public opinion prior to even being indicted for the allegations.

I do also regret that I am unable to include the offending material or link to said material lest I myself run afoul of applicable law. I understand that this affects the reader's ability to make their own judgment regarding the allegation, but I am quite afraid of having a charge of trafficking in child pornography leveled against me which could severely impact my standing in my community and workplace.

It is an reasonable question as to why I have made this allegation against Mr. Rose despite the pain, expense, incarceration, and corruption of his subsequent life as a registered sex offender that may result. My primary motivation is a poster on a wall in Terry Gilliam's 1985 film Brazil:

Don't Suspect Your Friend… Report Him

which I have long taken to mean that I shouldn't presume to judge my fellows but to instead yield that responsibility to the state because they can always be trusted to do the right thing. I also do feel for Mr. Rose as being the public face of Google+ photographic policy, in particular being charged with promoting community in the face of Google's confusing and confused photographic censorship policy. It is my hope that through my actions Mr. Rose will be empowered to act in accord with his titular responsibility.

Finally, I think it the duty of concerned citizens of the world to speak out against evil where they suspect it as a means of promoting the general welfare.

Some people, noting the sardonic tone of this essay will conclude that I did not actually file formal allegation against Mr. Rose, and they're almost certainly correct^†. However, times being what they are, I could be the sort of person that I satirize herein, but you don't know.

Like the capricious and arbitrary policing by Google of their service, the lack of transparency, trial by allegation, the stance of "guilty until proven innocent, unless we decide to reverse ourselves at whim" and Google's history of tying their determination of in one realm (G+) to that of unrelated properties (e.g. Gmail and Docs) that is the problem. No, Google is not the government, does that mean they should strive to that minimal standard of "just" or should they aim higher?

^† I did not, and would not, make formal allegation against anyone for expressing their views. I did intentionally mischaracterize the unnamed photograph in Rose's stream for rhetorical purposes; it is a good photo and not harmful to anyone under any rational perspective. Of course, as a citizen and parent if I truly did believe that there was any child who was being abused in any way that I could mitigate through my actions I would be obliged to do so, but to reiterate, Mr. Rose did not do anything that hints at malfeasance or even mere impoliteness. To the best of my knowledge, and by my presumption, he is as fine a person as anyone can hope to be. The photograph that accompanies this essay is not mine but has been copied from his public profile under US terms of Fair Use for criticism and commentary in accordance with 17 U.S.C. § 107, the rights-holder cannot be determined.

what censorship really looks like

2011-12-14T17:53:00.000-05:00

For the last couple of weeks, I have been receiving notifications from concerned organizations of what "the internet will look like if SOPA passes". Although attention getting, they don't present the most accurate picture. And then hours before the Stop Online Piracy Act is passed by the fair Congress who calls the entertainment industry "master", an abuse of existing bad law shows up on my virtual door step. This is what SOPA style censorship would look like, except far more ubiquitously:

Here's the problem. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 is also considered to be a bad law written and paid for by the entertainment industry. Under the terms of the DMCA, a company need merely claim they hold a copyright interest in the infringing material, and the hosting service is obliged to "take-down" that content or lose their defense that they were merely unwittingly transporting alleged infringing material. Note the key word "alleged". Prior to the DMCA, a copyright holder would have to provide some evidence that the material was infringing their copyright; after the DMCA their word was considered good enough.

What has been censored here? You have no idea, and if SOPA passes, you'll might not even be able to find out at all. Fortunately as of this writing, a smaller body than YouTube is still hosting Tech News Today 391 so you can still see what the kerfuffle is about. At about minute 26 in TNT#391 there are three journalists talking about the abuse of the DMCA in the takedown of a different video.

And here's the kicker, UMG then told YouTube that the journalistic criticism of UMG by TNT infringed UMG copyright. What have they infringed? TNT doesn't know, because they didn't have to be told, I don't know, and we might never.

The long standing Fair Use Exemption (17 U.S.C. §107) of the US Copyright Act of 1976 has carved out an exception “… for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting…” where one doesn't need to have permission of the rights holder to make a news report critical of the material. But the DMCA is being abused to abridge that provision of law. Remember the take-down displayed above is not for the original material but journalistic discussion about the original material.

This will almost certainly get worse when SOPA is passed. I thank Tom Merrit of Tech News Today for bringing this to my attention.

Occupy Ignorance

2011-12-14T08:34:00.000-05:00

photo courtesy of larry rippel

In today's editorial titled "Occupy Elsewhere", the PIttsburgh Post-Gazette unwittingly demonstrates exactly why OccupyPittsburgh ought not and will not vacate the public space that BNY/Mellon claims dominion over. They manage to completely undermine their own claim by the simple expedient of having no idea at all about the core issue underlying the worldwide Occupy movement and the reasons why peaceful protest and a functional free press is essential to the operation of a democratic republic.

The specific ignorance shown by the Post-Gazette pervades the editorial but is highlighted in a single sentence:

The movement's fight against economic inequality and corporate greed is laudable and justified, but there is little to suggest that the Pittsburgh group's continued presence in Mellon Green will advance its agenda.

If the movement were fighting against inequality and greed, it is possible that this claim by the editors could be true. Unfortunately, given a brief three months in which to study the movement, the Post-Gazette has somehow failed to understand the purpose and meaning of Occupy. It would be easy to claim that the last remaining newspaper of daily circulation in the city was deliberately playing the fool regarding their public duty, but I'm going to afford them the greatest possible charity and assume that their specific ignorance is a result of the editors having watched too much television.
OccupyPittsburgh is insufficiently entertaining and therefore must be irrelevant. Ironically, this same cause has largely been blamed for the impending death of the American newspaper.

In other parts of the world, the Occupy protests make lead stories: moderately violent clashes between the police and the people are always good for front pages. Here in Pittsburgh, the peaceable assembly of the people to petition their government for redress of grievance isn't selling any newspapers.

By any measure, OccupyPittsburgh has been a model of peaceable protest. They are tidy, maintain a cordial relationship with the police and BNY/Mellon security staff, and have gone to great effort to be good citizens. Exactly one month prior to today's editorial, the Pittsburgh City Council had unanimously resolved to support and declared their solidarity with OccupyPittsburgh. Certainly, such pleasant display of public and city cooperation is noteworthy, but the Editors probably don't consider it "newsworthy" and that is their defect.

At the core of the Occupy movement is the simple fact that the government of the United States has ceased to be a government of the people as it was originally chartered, but a government beholden to corporations. There are many ways to demonstrate that, but I'll use one of the more dramatic. As noted by Lawrence Lessig, with only about 10% of Americans currently expressing confidence in our Congress, "there were more [American] people who believed in the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than who believe in our Congress today".

Unfortunately, no matter how profound Mr. Lessig might be, he isn't what one would call "overtly sexy". Less sexy still is perhaps Jerry Sandusky whose salacious sex scandal trial was what the Post-Gazette editors considered to be the most important news of today. But to be fair, the Editors do know their market and the un-news of Sandusky waiving his right to a preliminary hearing is certainly more entertaining and digestible to their readers than the complicated failure of US society.

And this is precisely where the Post-Gazette abrogates its responsibility. As we are fond of teaching our elementary students, a free, inquisitive press is the implied fourth branch of the US government, adding the external check upon the operation of government for the people. If the claim of Occupy and its various predecessors and contemporary scholars is true, that the people have effectively lost their voice within our government, then how are we to reclaim it?

Through my entire life I have heard the continual call for meaningful campaign finance reform as a necessity to retain our status as vibrant representative democracy; also over the same time, the problem has gotten ever more worse. Prior to the Occupy movement, this issue wasn't even part of the national conversation. Now, in part because of some tents placed in a public space in downtown Pittsburgh, the conversation has at least begun again.

I am doing what I can to educate myself, my peers, my associates, and my child regarding the single most important issue of our day. I ask that the Editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette endeavor to give the matter sufficient consideration to be slightly better informed than their customers. I consider the time I've spent understanding the movement to be my civic duty; I would like to think that the Post-Gazette considers themselves to have at least as much duty as does one ordinary citizen.

Who is Arthur Brisbane?

2011-11-22T04:25:00.001-05:00

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the nascent Occupy Wall Street movement citing The New York Times coverage of the protest that almost didn't happen. Since then I have read much, spoken with occupiers and people whom I call “Occupy who not occupy” (of which I am one). I have engaged many in conversation about what the point of the movement is, what is isn't, and why we should care.

I just read Arthur Brisbane's article Who is Occupy Wall Street? and have had my crucial conjecture confirmed: Occupy does not conform to the conventional framework of modern journalism and will continue to defy the ability of the press to speak coherently about it.

Fortunately, answering my title question is easy as Mr. Brisbane has already done it for me. According to his trade biography, he acts in the role of editorial ombudsman at The New York Times and his credentials and work are formidable. Unfortunately, he has fallen into the trap of attempting to coerce the story into a traditional narrative and in his professional role so guide the work of other journalists. To continue this course does a disservice to the movement and to journalism and I hope to show Mr. Brisbane that there is a more useful way to proceed.

Brisbane thinks that perhaps by getting a bead on the origination of the idea some insight can be obtained. In his cited article he's already gotten as far as that will take him. The Occupy movement in its current form was, as he notes, little more than a concept written up in Adbusters Magazine which has invented and promulgated various ideas over the past couple of decades, some of which have achieved some success (e.g. Buy Nothing Day) and others which didn't and therefore I've forgotten what they were. Adbusters itself was founded by Kalle Lasn who wrote the 1999 book "Culture Jam: how to reverse America's suicidal consumer binge - and why we must" which received critical acclaim, had some readers, but like most ideas drifted into relative obscurity.

Here lies Brisbane's first error: he thinks it is worthwhile to plumb Adbusters in the hope of increasing his understanding. It won't. I don't know if Lasn is associated with the organization any longer but it doesn't matter. In the same way we consider argumentum ad hominem to be fallacious because the merit of a claim should not depend upon the character of the person advancing the statement; the converse is also a fallacy. That is, an idea is valid or invalid on its own merits and the originator is immaterial. And Lasn's ideas were also not new with him. I recently became aware of the remarkable Doris "Granny D" Haddock who had spent half her 100 years as a political activist most notably concerned with campaign finance reform and its necessity to the proper function of our democratic republic. Ironically, one of her last public statements was regarding the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision which had the disastrous effect of giving corporations unfettered ability to lavish money on political campaigns. This corruption of government is perhaps the central concept of Occupy, so Ms. Haddock is Occupy, as much as is Mr. Lasn, as much as am I.

So if asking Who is Occupy isn't useful, what is? Occupy is an idea, or a collection of ideas and therefore is as easy to cast into a narrative as to nail a soap bubble to a wall. Journalism has too long relied on the "Who, What, Where, Why, How" formula to construct its stories. But since Occupy is an idea and the formula accommodates events, Brisbane and colleagues are asking precisely the wrong questions.

So what, then, is the idea? It is that the US government has become a corporocracy and has had to disenfranchise its nominal constituency Of The People in favor of its new masters, the so-called 1%. There have been claims that the movement had been just a bunch of kids who don't know what they want or want patently silly things like total student-loan amnesty. It is true that there have been people at the occupations who have said such things, but they're kids. What we can expect from young adults is that they have an excess of sensitivity over wisdom but that is not a fault. If it were a fault, it is one that they have no control over except through the fullness of time at which point their awareness will be transformed into conservative preference for the status quo. This is why society needs its young idealists, and I am glad we have them.

The members of Occupy sense that something is wrong and are petitioning anyone who will listen for redress of grievance. The press has asked repeatedly why not petition the government then? There are two reasons: the first is the disenfranchisement noted above, the second is that our national leaders have have demonstrated abject inability to fix the current crisis. Unfortunately, even the experts don't know how to fix things. For example, even non-partisan economists have no idea if TARP and similar stimulus packages have helped, hurt, or had no effect. Why assume that because people have noticed that something is wrong with our fair republic that a solution must or can accompany the complaint?

So of what use is Occupy? It has rekindled a necessary national discourse about the current state of the union and its future. Global economic circumstance has shown us that we can no longer count on our industrialization to keep us the world's pre-eminent power. We may not like that realization, but wishing doesn't make it go away. So we do have to figure out what sort of future that we want to construct for ourselves. Such a dialog has been the continuing habit of our nation since its founding, indeed it is the hallmark of democracy.

The US was founded by a group of elites who had the Enlightenment to build a nation not to benefit just their own kind, but one which would allow for the best possible governance for all its people. Its first 150 years have already demonstrated that a democratic republic can work extremely well. The corrupting corporate influences have displaced the plurality that had historically been our greatest strength. The system does require a good dusting off from time to time, fortunately, we can accomplish that with dialog and not the blood of patriots.

So, what is Occupy? It is the collection of ordinary citizens who Keep The Conversation Going. That is a definition that is true, complete, useful, accurate, and can fit on a bumper sticker.

This essay is copyright 2011 by matt wartell, permission is granted to republish it under the terms of the creative commons by-nc-nd license. As a response to Mr. Brisbane, more expansive rights have been granted The New York Times and their assigns so please don't get feisty at them if they use them.

what if they held a protest and nobody was allowed to go?

2011-09-17T22:25:00.001-04:00

As noted in the New York Times article “Wall Street Protest Begins, With Demonstrators Blocked”:

For months the protesters had planned to descend on Wall Street on a Saturday and occupy parts of it as an expression of anger over a financial system that they say favors the rich and powerful at the expense of ordinary citizens.
As it turned out, the demonstrators found much of their target off limits on Saturday as the city shut down sections of Wall Street near the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall well before their arrival.

I had been only dimly aware of the protest better documented at its home site than I can do justice to. A brief except from their intent I do much agree with:

We need to address the core facts: these corporations, even if they were unable to compete in the electoral arena, would still remain control of society. They would retain economic control, which would allow them to retain political control. Term limits would, again, not solve this, as many in the political class already leave politics to find themselves as part of the corporate elites.

I've yet to see how the members of the protest make sense of what transpired today, but I think they were witness to an archetypal example of that which they are opposed to.

Today was Saturday, on which Wall Street is normally dead of any activity particularly that of the Wall Street Corporations that are the subject of the protest. That is, the people who would have been the target of the protest were at home, probably in New York's various bedroom communities and precisely not present on Wall Street.

And despite a long announced, planned, peaceful protest, with more symbolic content than actual interference, the mayor of the city decided that it would be best to prevent protest in an area where nobody was there to see it. I don't know that the various firms on the street asked that the public thoroughfare be protected by force of police action, but no one can know nor will ever know if they had. It wouldn't be a great surprise if someone chatted with someone who chatted to someone else who suggested that perhaps the right of the people to peaceably assemble be abridged.

Or, if my conjecture is true, the corporations, or more accurately the people who run them, did precisely what caused the protest in the first place: used their corporate weight to have the government serve their interests above those guaranteed to the people by the Constitution.

Whatever may come of this, I do hope that the organizers realize that with this simple act, their opponents affirmatively proved what the protesters allege.

…getting ready for breast cancer awareness month

2011-09-03T11:49:00.000-04:00

I was trying to figure out what ribbon to get, being bored with the pink (and it clashes with almost nothing I own) so I think I shall either get a purple or pink/blue/yellow with clouds, one of which may be for Alzheimer's awareness but I forget which since they've run out of colors. Contrariwise, I can raise awareness of very many worthwhile causes with just one ribbon, so it is highly economical too.

Then I ran into the Think Before You Pink Campaign and am now confused as to whether to subscribe to the beliefs of the Breast Cancer Action Project or the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month Partnership.

On the one hand, I like grass-roots movements and think more people should be aware of them. To this end, I have created the Thatch Ribbon to remind people of the importance of grass-roots:

“thatch ribbon” and the thatch ribbon logo are the registered trademarks of the National Grass-Roots Awareness Partnership Program, anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight (not to be confused with the "khaki and yellow ribbon" of the National Incontinence Awareness Partnership Program which is solely responsible for its output).

Despite my attraction and support of grass-roots. I cannot yield my undying affection of AstraZeneca and their fine suite of oncological medications such as Arimidex® Brand Anastrozole (ask your doctor!). In the end I am left completely confused as to whether pink, purple, or thatch ribbons are Good or Bad, and thus fall back on the philosophers of yore for a useful parable on the Philosophy of Association.

...exploring a world of legos

2011-05-15T15:05:00.002-04:00

Usually late to a trend, I was reading too many references to a game called Minecraft that seems to have captured many hard-core gamers despite its comical simplicity.

Well perhaps it is comically simple for some as I am an abject failure so far and have resisted the temptation to look up "Minecraft for the Pathetic Dummy" as I think there is hope.

At present, my first goal is to "attack a tree until it yields a block of wood". Where "attack" means pound with your fist. You can see the representation of my fist in the lower right corner of the image.

Although I've beaten upon trees until my hand substitute ought be bloody, the wood eludes me. However, all is not lost as I have learned valuable skills upon the way:

I can punch flowers and sugar cane very effectively
I can punch the wool right off of sheep
Same for the feathers off a duck
I can annoy cows and pigs at will
I can dig up sand
I can shred tree leaves like a panda

But I think I am most proud of:

my ability to pound upon a tree until it explodes, nearly killing me, creating a hole, clods of dirt, and not a single block of wood

And at night Kokopelli comes and shoots me to death with arrows. But my will is strong, and life is but an illusion and so I continue in my days of constant desperation seeking exactly the right tree.

Spoiler after the fold:

You can click on an object until your index finger falls off and nothing will happen except the effects noted above. Holding down the left button is infinitely more effective.

Zur Einführung des Narzißmus

2011-05-07T23:35:00.002-04:00

A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal, “I would like to give you this personality test”, said the outsider, “because I want you to be happy.”

Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster, saying: “I wish the toaster to be happy, too.”

– Gary Drescher legendarily in MIT folklore

On the recommendation of friends, I have recently listed myself on an on-line site to ostensibly meet people. This is a bit of a novelty for me as I've not ever actually dated. I've had friends that have turned into lovers and actually find it hard to imagine myself seeking out a person with the intention of mating. So I'm imagining myself as trying to make friends (who are coincidentally female and not romantically attached) because it seems more plausible.

I've looked at a variety of sites from one-night-stands.r.us to seeking-stupid-old-men.with.money to desperation.and.needi.er (Eritrea's Hottest Spot for Singles) with limited success.

Each site has their gimmick, and one that I looked at claims to do a personality assessment, yielded in the form of an astrological "reading" but with worse grammar and punctuation. If you've never heard of the Forer Effect, then I have prepared this profile just for you:

You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. Security is one of your major goals in life.

Pretty accurate, neh? Well, of course it is as it defines the human condition in a way both vague and pointed.

So this site asked me some questions and then yielded a profile of me. I was vaguely impressed for about the first two sentences and then remembered Forer. So I put the question to you, dear reader, which of these three profiles best describes the me that you know?

Profile X

You are a wonderful friend and colleague. You are generally calm and entertaining, and always dedicated and reliable. Just about everybody likes you.
You have a traditional streak. Home, family, job and community are all central to you. You like being firmly embedded in your social group and you feels deeply responsible for just about everyone around you. You can be fiercely protective of those she loves.
You are skilled at managing people. You are sympathetic and cooperative; you are also hard working and display a good deal of common sense. And you can be very patient. So you can complete detailed, painstaking jobs more easily than most people.
You enjoy building social relationships. And you are skilled at achieving solutions to sticky problems so that all involved feel fulfilled.
You tend to be cautious but not fearful. You have a genuine sense of community. So you seek projects that enable you to contribute to a more stable world.

Profile P

You have a great deal of vitality. You are curious, imaginative and resilient. And you find pleasure in doing and thinking about all sorts of things and ideas, often at the same time.
You tend to be optimistic, seeing the world as a place of adventure. You seek first-hand experiences. And when you embark on a project or expedition, you like to be organized, thorough and responsible.
You are firmly grounded in reality and live in the here and now. You stands up for your beliefs. And you has a sympathetic and spiritual side that adds warmth and depth to your being.
In spite of your search for novelty, you have a genuine respect for home, family, work and community. You are conscientious and dependable. Yet you occasionally surprise those whom you love with generous presents.
You generally enjoy life. You have a keen sense of humor. And because you are broad-minded, flexible and playful, you can be a wonderful friend.

Profile Q

You love adventure, both intellectual and physical. And you greet new challenges with passion and bravery.
When you get interested in a project, you can become extremely focused on it. You will complete it carefully and thoroughly, often with great originality.
Because you have a lot of energy and tend to be enthusiastic about your ideas, inventions, and projects, you can be very persuasive.
You tend to like to collect things, experiences or ideas. And you are eager to make an impact on those around you, as well as the wider world.
Although you enjoy people and can be charming and humorous, you are not very interested in routine social engagements. You are comfortable being by yourself, pursuing your own interests.
People probably call you a non-conformist. You like to have good conversations on important topics. People tend to admire you for your innovativeness.

Quite by accident, this has become a double blind experiment because in the time between cribbing the profiles and publishing them, I've quite forgotten which was which and haven't looked hard enough. So in a thoroughly unscientific test, if you have read this far, let me know which is the real me, either drop a comment here or contact me privately. This could be interesting, fun, or stupid, I leave it to you to judge.

flat affect and semantics in Communication 2.0

2011-04-16T18:37:00.001-04:00

The exchange between us was brief:

me: I can still give you a ride there if desired.
him: thx, I'll be going straight there anyway
me: Kk

I didn't even mean to capitalize the first "K" of "Kk", my communicator did it for me. I thought about what my reply meant and had a McLuhanesque realization that, as with any new medium a new variety of discourse is created. And the affordances of text messaging, like every other new technology are slightly different than those that preceded it.

What does "kk" mean and is it different than "ok"? I believe there is a difference, both subtle and useful.

A lexicographer would probably point to the "kk" having entered the lexicon of quick messaging as it was quicker to type on limited keyboards. While that origin may well be true, "kk" has since acquired a new semantic which hearkens back to the earliest days of remote communication: simple acknowledgement that a communication has been received and understood.

There are probably ways to signal this is smoke signals, semaphores, Morse code and, for all I know sign language. But aviation and military radio voice protocol is easier to talk about. Radio voice protocol was invented by people who had to communicate terribly important information over terribly noisy channels, this was made even more difficult when – for technological reasons – the initial consonant might not even be transmitted turning "difficult" into "ifficult". This is one reason why the elements of the English International Phonetic Alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.) are all more than one syllable long. On wired text communication, receipt of a message was often acknowledge by sending "R" for "received". When translated to radio voice protocol this became "Roger".

There are two common uses of this word in protocol. "Roger That" and "Roger Wilco", where the former is often just "Roger". "Roger That" simply means "received and understood" or ACK as I'll call it here. "Roger Wilco" has been variously translated as "received, understood, and will comply" Clearly when orders or instructions are being transmitted, there can be a vast difference between the meanings of those two statements: ACK means only that, ACK and will comply says that you can also expect that I will execute those instructions which is pretty vital in air traffic control. ("Roger Wilco" can be abbreviated in actual use when compliance is assumed by both parties).

In common speech "Ok" can mean ACK but it has also been used to signify agreement, obedience, defiance, patronization, and myriad other sentiments depending on context, tone, and other cues. The meaning of "Ok" is thereby overloaded and ambiguous. "Kk" being of relatively new coinage appears to have absorbed little of the connotations of Ok and has returned to the less ambiguous ACK.

the story of true: or how to copyright nothing

2011-04-10T19:01:00.003-04:00

I stole this logo off the net.

I wish I could find an authoritative reference for this, but as will become clear, it is very hard to search for the relevant bits, so I'll just stroke my hypothetical grey beard and reminisce.

In Version 7 Unix, affectionately known as V7, there was a programmable shell interpreter known at the time as sh or what we now call the Bourne Shell because it was written by Steve Bourne of Bell Labs.

Although programmable, sh didn't have many intrinsics, in large part because memory on a PDP-11 was quite limited and added features would have made the shell too big when its primary purpose was as a user interface for entering commands. It is funny to think of a plain $ as a user interface, but if you had seen the toggle switches, punch cards and Job Control Language contemporary to it, you probably would have been struck by the elegant improvement too.

The Bourne Shell had conditional constructs like if and while but it had a total lack of predicates by which to control a conditional. That was okay because Unix was great at plugging together programs and the exit() convention was already well established. When a program terminated, if everything was fine it called exit(0), if any error happened it would exit with a non-zero status. The stage was set for constructs like:

if grep dixie /tmp/whistling
then
    echo I wish I was...
fi

which would, if "dixie" was contained in whistling, emit the first bar of lyrics. Just to put this accomplishment into perspective, the output of the echo command was probably sent to the 30 character per second teletypewriter that the shell script was executed from. Also, there was no need to put a file type like ".txt" on the end of a filename because in those days the file either contained ASCII text or it didn't; if it didn't contain text, you better know what program could interpret it or it might as well have been /dev/null as far as you were concerned.

So looking through a file for text was already taken care of, what if you wanted to know if a file simply existed or if you had permissions to write to it or various other simple predicates that mostly consisted of one system call to stat(2) and the proper extraction of results? So someone wrote the program named test which following the Unix tradition would accept option flags preceded by a dash (e.g. -f to see if a file existed) and the pathname to test. Unix already had hard links (or simply "links" as they were known then as symlinks had yet to be invented) so if you just linked the test program to the name /bin/\[ and changed test so if its last argument was ignored if it was "]" you could then write scripts like:

if [ -x /bin/echo ]
then
   echo I can talk
fi

Which made it look like the shell had intrinsic predicates. You could still use {{if test -x /bin/echo}} but the bracket command looked nicer. Yes, even echo was not a shell intrinsic then; did I mention keeping the shell small was important? As in 64KB for instruction and 64KB for data space maximum for the OS and the shell and programs that did actual work, important. And that was the whole address space for the machine, virtual addressing existed but not in a cheap (about $100k, inflation adjusted) minicomputer.

But what if you wanted an infinite loop in your shell script? The while construct was already in the shell, but how did you get a predicate that would always return 0 to its caller? Well the obvious solution would have been:

$ cat > true.c
main() { exit(0); }
$ cc -o /bin/true true.c

but once you link in the C runtime package and the system call interface, what looks like so little source code compiles into a not small binary that does essentially nothing. Oh yes, disk storage was also quite limited and very expensive. Could there be another mechanism that already existed which could be turned to this purpose but more efficiently?

It turned out there were two and only two types of executable files then. Unix binaries, produced by the linker which the exec() system call could identify because they began with a magic number meaning "I am a Unix executable binary". Everthing that didn't begin with that magic number would be presumed to be a Bourne shell script and a new shell would be forked to interpret it.

Following the Unix philosophy of "a program should behave in an expected fashion when given uncommon inputs", the shell itself had a convention on how to behave when handed an empty file to run as a script. It would do nothing and just return 0 (an empty script, by definition, contains no errors).

Using the tools of the time, /bin/true could be written with

$ cat  /dev/null > /bin/true ; chmod 755 /bin/true

and, as expected, it was quite empty

$ ls -l /bin/true
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 0 1982-03-19 18:46 /bin/true
$ cat /bin/true
$

But then as the 1970s slid into the 1980s, AT&T newly freed to sell things by the Bell System divestiture decided to make a product of their Unix and started stamping all system source files and shell scripts with big copyright banners. For some things this was pretty standard practice by 1984, but /bin/true which was kept around for compatibility's sake, became infinitely larger:

# Copyright 1984 AT&T Bell Laboratories Unix Systems Group. 
# All rights reserved.
# Any copying of this program in violation of your License Agreement
# is Strictly Prohibited
# NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, FOR ANY PURPOSE WHATSOEVER IS 
# GRANTED BY THIS LICENSE
# Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' for a fight.

Okay, I pulled that from memory and made up what I didn't remember, but it was four lines long and was pure comments that were completely ignored by the shell followed by the full body of the original true script, which is to say, exactly nothing.

I am pleased to note that as of this writing, true has indeed kept pace with the times. On my current machine, /bin/true still exists but is now 18kB and links with a 1.4MB dynamically loaded library in order to run and makes two dozen system calls to do absolutely nothing. Well it does do something as it now takes option flags, too:

$ /bin/true --version
true (GNU coreutils) 8.5
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later .
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Jim Meyering.

Which leaves me with two questions: who is Mr. Meyering and why did it take him at least eleven prior versions to get this program correct?

theodicy for a young woman in pain

2011-01-26T00:40:00.004-05:00

People are the best wonderers in the world. We wonder why the sun rises and why the rain falls, we wonder why bad things happen and we wonder what we could have done to make things happen differently than they did. This capacity can - at once - be our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.

Some of the questions we ask are easy. The Sun rises because the Earth rotates constantly and changes how it faces the sun. Most every rock in the universe does this unerringly so it wasn't all that hard to figure out. So too have we figured out the rain, winds, tides, fire, atomic theory, relativity, ecologies, and parasites. All of these are pretty great accomplishments which resulted from asking why and then watching the world for its patterns and regularities. It is not enough to ask why, we also have to add causation to our explanations for them to be useful. The Sun rises because the Earth rotates, the tides ebb because the Moon tugs on the Earth.

People are so good at finding the patterns and the causes in the world that we have come to expect that most everything that we do wonder can be answered. And this is where where we meet our unhappy surprise, not everything that happens does so for an understandable reason, or a good reason. Sometimes bad things happen which defy our ability to explain. A loved one may die, far, far too young. Is there any reason for this? Sometimes we know the cause, some part of the loved one's body stopped working as it should, and we may know exactly what part and what caused it to fail. But we are still left unsatisfied: even though we can know all the causes, there is no reason that it happened, it just does.

It has been said that "life is a continual struggle against the forces of the universe that act to make you one with it". Physically speaking we know this to be true. There is one aspect that tells us without a doubt that a thing is alive: it actively works to keep itself distinct from its surroundings. We can see these processes everywhere we look from bacteria to elephants, yeasts to sequoias. When the tree falls in forest and stops being alive we no longer see it working to keep itself distinct; and in a matter of years, it may be hard to tell that there ever was a tree there because it has become one with its surroundings. So it is with all things that have ever been alive including people.

Did the tree fall for a reason? Well it had a cause (wind, rot, erosion, etc.) but we don't find that a fully satisfying answer. Was there some purpose to the tree falling? No. Did it fall in order to allow something else to happen? Again, no. To the best of our understanding, it fell because it fell and there is no better explanation to be had no matter how hard we try to find one.

Normally, we don't fret much about a random tree falling in some random place where we may never know it was to begin with. We may walk past a fallen tree in the woods, but accept it as something that happens all over the world. We don't mourn that particular tree, in part because it had no significance to us.

As do trees, people fall too. And in the time that you've been reading this, countless people and trees have fallen all over the world but you don't know them. When a loved one falls, you do care, and you do mourn. And then you start asking why. But as with the tree, although we may know the causes, there is no reason to it, it just happened because it happened. But we find that answer terribly unsatisfying and may spend years looking for the reason which just isn't there to be found. And this hurts.

In the romantic fantasy film The Princess Bride, the protagonist says to the princess:

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

There are many people who would like to disagree with that statement, because if true it paints a world that not many would choose to live in. Unfortunately we don't get to choose the world we live in. We are stuck in this one with all its pains, sicknesses, sorrows, losses, and unanswerable questions. There have been some thinkers who have remarked that we have the capacity to be happy at all is wholly accidental. And for most creatures on most of the earth for most of time, happiness may truly not exist.

But isn't your pain unique in all the world, and burns with an intensity that no one else has ever felt? For you it is. The pain that you feel will always be greater than the pain that others experience because your pain belongs to you and other people's doesn't. From this you should not conclude that your pain is trivial or ordinary or cliché. Your pain is what it is to you and you cannot hope to communicate how bad it feels to another so that they feel it as intensely as you do.

It is this seemingly unbearable pain of being human that has driven a large part of the arts. Artists have struggled mightily to use their craft to communicate their pain and perhaps by doing so obtain some solace. Some people use poetry, others music. One can easily point to Mozart's Requiem Mass in D minor as a very famous example of the use of music to come to terms with unbearable loss. I prefer to point to a more recent composition intended to express the inexpressible.

In his song What's Good, Lou Reed sings:

Life's like forever becoming
But life's forever dealing in hurt
Now life's like death without living
That's what life's like without you

What good is seeing eye chocolate?
What good's a computerized nose?
And what good was cancer in April?
Why no good - no good at all.

This song appears on Reed's album Magic and Loss and was his attempt to cope with the deaths of two close friends. It is a sincere album. I don't know if it made him feel any better, but I know it has made me feel better at times. How could hearing Lou sing about his losses help me? First, he is a skilled artist who if he couldn't make me feel his loss directly certainly gave me a taste of it. Knowing that you aren't the only one to grieve like you do can be surprisingly helpful. Another way this work makes me feel better is built into the album's title and woven throughout the songs. It isn't titled simply Loss but also refers to Magic. The magic is nothing more than the joy that these friends had brought into his life while they were alive. If there hadn't been that magic, their loss would be unnoticed and meaningless.

If you never cared, you wouldn't hurt like you do, you wouldn't feel the loss. One way that some people chose to cure themselves of the pain is to convince themselves that they didn't care or that they don't care - but self-deception almost always fails. Sometimes people let their pain convince them that they should never care again so that they will never have to experience such pain again. If people could actually numb themselves in this way, would you really give up all the magic to spare yourself the loss? There are people that have been hurt so badly that they try desperately to never feel again but - because they are human - mostly fail at that too.

This may not make sense to you right now, or even some years from now, but that doesn't make it false: be glad that you hurt. Be glad that you mourn your loss because the alternative would be to say that the loss doesn't matter. That would be a lie and a discourtesy to your memory of the loved one. You feel the loss because you once felt the magic. And there will be other magics and other losses, such is the price of life. You may feel that you have spent most of your life trying to get over this one hurt, and that's close to the truth. But what you cannot see from where you sit is that it will get better in time, I promise you that, for it always does. And until it does, follow in the footsteps of Mozart and Reed and Joni Mitchell and countless artists and musicians before them and express your pain. Because in all of human history, we've not found a better way than that to ease the pain that is our birthright along with the bits of magic.

on the generosity of the artists on the web

2010-10-01T12:43:00.000-04:00

A wallpaper created for my Maverick Meerkat desk. This is slightly tweaked from LostAndTaken.com which is the creation of the elegant, prolific, and generous Caleb Kimbrough. I became aware of LostAndTaken via the blog BitBox which has all kinds of resources for digital art production.

There really isn't much to say other than to thank the kind artists of the world for sharing their work and Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

in which my daughter requests a bulk data transfer

2010-07-29T23:20:00.000-04:00

It begins with a mobile voice call:

Me: Dude! Sup?

Her: Can you please mail me dataset 2356?

Me: No, I can't mail it to you, it's about 2 gig.

Her: Okay, put it in my Dropbox then?

Me: Sure, I'm at the grocery store, send me the ID number?

Her: OK

My daughter is 13 years old. Her Dropbox is a secure data server somewhere out in the cloud of the internet. That she called me using her actual voice instead of sending an SMS text is significant: it tells me that this is so important that it needs isochronous response.

I can't think of a single event in my youth that is in the least bit analogous. Oddly, I'm pleased at the nature of the request. O brave new world, that has such beautious people in't!

of words and presentation

2010-07-05T11:09:00.016-04:00

This entry is a prelude to my next entry which wanted to incorporate an idea I had in a university English Composition class far too long ago. I didn't save much of my college work, as it wasn't worth keeping, but this class - and in particular, the instructor, really inspired me. I think I was taking a course in rhetoric contemporaneously, so my thoughts were clearly informed by that.

Through the magic of Optical Character recognition - and Knuth's "Computer Modern Roman" font - resurrecting my old composition from paper was a trivial effort. I've included it here as an historical artifact. It was written so, so long ago, with a prose style that one would expect of an undergraduate. I've resisted the temptation to revise it so you - gentle reader - may simply wish to skip it and wait for the next post which really does have something to say and will excerpt a couple of sentences from the essay below the fold.

I'm also trying to forget that my copy of this essay has begun to yellow around the edges.

Of Words and Presentation

Matt Wartell
Writing Assignment 2 January 31, 1989

Doug Rice
English Comp 005 (FCL)

In his article The Nuclear Winter, Sagan attempts to do what Amis and Postman say is impossible in their respective texts, Introduction: Thinkability and Megatons for Anthromegs. Sagan tries to talk rationally about nuclear threat, and despite the protests of Amis and Postman, manages to do so fairly well. The reason the protests do not fully apply to Sagan’s case is that Sagan conducts his argument outside the boundaries of discourse described by Amis and Postman. This, of course, does not show Amis and Postman to be wrong, but only limits the extent of their arguments. As a demonstration, I will show the central arguments of Amis and Postman, carefully delineating their boundaries, and then show in what manner Sagan circumvents these roadblocks.

Postman’s article Megatons for Anthromegs appears to be the clearest of the texts. It is an outright satire of the current, highly euphemistic political rhetoric. By juxtaposing extant terms about nuclear weapons with ambiguous ‘nice’ words, Postman satirically shows that switching lexicons does not change the underlying situation. The form of his presentation would not be complete, however, without the brief text Etiquette immediately preceding Megatons.

In the seemingly unrelated discussion of automated highway tollbooths of Etiquette, Postman establishes a base frame for reading Megatons. The grounding is not at all clear upon first or even second reading; on its own, Etiquette is an amusing anecdote and minor fantasy. There is even an enigmatic preface to Etiquette which does not reference it at all, but is directed toward Megatons. It is this ‘misplaced’ preface that was my first clue: Postman really intends for the two texts to be read as a coherent whole. Etiquette concentrates on the responses that automatic tolltaking machines provide upon receiving a toll:

“[e]ach basket has an appendage that has been programmed to flash ‘Thank you’ after the motorist has performed her civic duty ... After you’ve retrieved the coin and thrown it in, the basket’s appendage still says ‘Thank you’ but unquestionably the remark now has a sarcastic ring. . .” (Postman, 24).

What really concerns Postman is the machine’s use of language without intentionality; that is, the basket’s response really carries no content only a superficial resemblance to meaning. As a base, Etiquette provides for the intended interpretation of Megatons.

In Megatons, Postman presents his aforementioned new lexicon, now in the light of Etiquette. Postrnan’s intent is now clearer; he wants to show how modern political rhetoric tries to strip words of their intentionality, and therefore bolster thinkability (more on this later). Unfortunately, for the rhetoricians, and fortunately for Postman, this attempted stripping rarely works in the long run. The switch to emotionally neutral terms, and subsequent failure has been seen many times. In the United States, over the last 30 years, a group of people have changed from ‘colored’ to ‘black’ to ‘African-American’. These changes have been inspired by the negative connotations of the old label, and the hope that the new term, initially free of connotations, will remain neutral. What has happened is that the neutral term does pick up the negative properties of the old term, and no change is effected. Similar effects have been observed with the change from ‘crippled’ to ‘handicapped’ and the pending ‘disabled’ (NPR, January 1989). In the short run, however, the nuclear euphemisms can generate a number of further euphemistic statements about survivability. It is these corollaries that Martin Amis addresses in Introduction: Thinkability. Citing official British civil defense literature, Amis points out the silliness that springs from this use of language:

Language cannot live with this reality. “It is important to have a good supply of painkillers ...tranquilizers will be important...psychological problems in a nuclear war ...health problems in a. nuclear war . . .” Is problems really the word we want? Well, there will be extinction problems too. (Amis, 19; his italics and ellipses)

Amis’ contempt does not stop with the light use of the word ‘problem’, he displays the silliness of the “All Clear” sirens, “all clear for what?)” (Amis 18), and many other abuses of the language. What Amis wants is a clear, unanimous admission of the implications of nuclear war: “How long will it take us to grasp that nuclear weapons are not weapons, that they are slashed wrists, gas-filled rooms, global booby traps?” (Amis, 19). In this type of statement, though, Amis commits the same error as those he accuses, albeit in the opposite direction. Citing the military writers for their misuse of metaphor to downplay the issue, Amis uses his own metaphor to evoke a strong negative emotional response. Amis cannot seem to discuss the subject without anger.

Sagan tries to give a scientific account of one the the effects of nuclear war, the so-called ‘nuclear winter’. The form of this text is radically different from the others. First, the reprinting of the article starts with a biographic paragraph about Sagan, establishing him as an authority. Neither Amis or Postman give any grounds for their position other than personal opinion. Second, the text is almost a dispassionate account of the experimental and simulation data that Sagan and others have collected, contrasting with the vague inferences and pontification of (particularly) Amis. By eschewing emotion laden words or meaningless euphemisms, Sagan presents a far more rational case than Postman or Amis. By doing so, Sagan begins to sidestep the linguistic constraints that the others try to place on the domain of discourse.

Nevertheless, in pushing his own political agenda, Sagan lapses at times into the emotional rhetoric characteristic of Amis: “Some of what I am about to describe is horrifying. I know because it horrifies me” (Sagan, 7). This extrapolation from Sagan to the universe is self-defeating; if I fail to be horrified by his description, the credibility of his claims becomes questionable. The constraints imposed upon the language of nuclear threat does pose a substantial block to discussion. Sagan almost rises above this, but fails. Discourse free from such constraints is, in a sense, the unattained desiderata of the three authors.

Acknowledgements

Amis, Martin. “Introduction: Thinkability” in Einstein’s Monsters.
National Public Radio. (January 1988). “All Things Considered.”
Postman, Neil. (1988). “Etiquette” in Conscientious Objections. New York: Knopf.
Postman, Neil. (1988). “Megatons for Anthromegs” in Conscientious Objections. New York Knopf.
Sagan, Carl. “The Nuclear Winter.

where programming and art collide

2010-06-28T20:15:00.004-04:00

I was looking for a higher level abstraction for image creation and finally found one worthy of note. The NodeBox Gallery shows what the toolkit is capable of and is the first accessible drawing library that allows for Tufte's Just Noticeable Differences. I'm only now beginning to explore it, and am uncertain whether it encourages working in JND or the gallery curator just has an eye for such.

In other tech news - by which I mean "news to me" - I'd long had a love affair with the elegance of the TeX typesetting system and the amount of typographical art that Knuth formalized in its page layout algorithms. To my knowledge nobody has bested its running text composition abilities (it may in fact be optimal, see below the fold). But, put simply, TeX is a pain to work with. It is a batch-oriented system dating from the time when editing ASCII markup was quick but page creation couldn't be computed in real time. I'd sort of vaguely thought that computers have become fast enough to do TeX in real-time. Well they had, I just didn't know that the people at LyX had already done it. I was creating good looking documents again within three minutes of installing LyX. I'm perhaps too happy about that.

So, he asked parenthetically (and rhetorically), how could a paragraph layout mechanism be optimal? Well, first of all, this is Donald Knuth we are talking about whose stature in the computer-science realm for examining the bounds of optimality is unparalleled. But there is a difference between an optimal sort algorithm and a claim of optimality for something so much a practical art as typesetting is. But first an historical aside.

Knuth set out to write a multi-volume set of definitive review works in computer science. His first volume Fundamental Algorithms was set by hand in the good old style of Gutenberg. If photo-typesetters were in use at the time, I'm pretty sure that they couldn't handle the extensive mathematical "penalty copy" of Algorithms. By the time Knuth was working on volume two, automated typesetting had come into play and Knuth was disgusted with the initial galley proofs. So what does a skilled developer do when existing software isn't good enough? He writes his own, of course. In the course of his excursion into developing TeX, Knuth also made a stop in the realm of typography and created Metafont which was a language for describing how to draw letters. True to his academic roots, the TeX language is one of the few I know that allows the redefinition of the language syntax within the language; I've never decided if this was overkill.

But my favorite story from the design of TeX was how Knuth decided to deal with mathematical rounding errors. Floating point truncation is a problem well known to programmers but for reasons esoteric if you ask a modern computer to add 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 ... ten times, you'd expect it to come up with 1.0 but it doesn't, it yields something like 1.000000119 depending on how you do the math. People have the same sort of problem when we do arithmetic: just try to write a complete and accurate decimal expansion for 1/3. For a precise guy like Knuth, this wasn't good enough so he decided to do only integer arithmetic inside TeX and then was left with a question of how big and how small the numbers should be so that it would never be an practical limit. This is from memory, but he set the upper bound of his numbers used for measurement to allow for a page the size of a large room. On the other end of the scale, he allowed measurements so precise that rounding errors would be smaller than the wavelength of visible light, so - by definition - any rounding errors would be literally, physically, invisible.

Such thinking has lead me to believe that it is possible for a paragraph layout algorithm to be optimal. The TeX paragraph compositor has a notion of "badness" which incorporates things like how much extra space did I have to put between the letters on this row relative to the rows above and below, where a higher spacing difference between lines is more "bad". Other bad elements of composition are widow and orphan lines and Knuth's nemesis: artificially inserted hyphenation (which by default has a really high badness value). If the compositor is laying out a paragraph and hits a threshold amount of badness it goes back and attempts to redo the composition making different choices. Indeed, TeX may, on successive attempts backtrack all the way to the first line of a paragraph to get the layout sufficiently unbad. How does this make for optimality? Because the badness factors and thresholds can be set by a skilled typographer to reproduce all the artistic judgments she would make had she been doing the layout herself. Indeed, Knuth knew his limitations and had a highly skilled typographer set the "knobs" for him because it was beyond his skills.

the 22 minute web application

2010-06-24T20:31:00.001-04:00

I've decided that since I write so much about technologies that I was going to start aggregating my non-published works here. Woe betide the gentle reader; I shall look for a way to exclude posts labeled "tech" from my main stream.

This is just a brief note of "cool things I've recently discovered" disguised as shameless self-promotion. As Blogger has done for blogging, so has Google App Engine done for developing and deploying web applications. True, it isn't quite as easy for the computer novice to create an application as it is a blog, but I can't imagine making it much easier for the developer than they have.

True, Google has a decided interest in making the development of web applications ridiculously simple, but enabling going from idea to world-wide deployment of a (trivial) web app in twenty-two minutes is a impressive feat. As a side note, the advent of W3C standardization of downloadable fonts is enough to make a typography dweeb nearly weep with joy. Now if only they add T_EX paragraph layout algorithms... nerds are allowed to dream, aren't they?

noisy warnings - they should know better

2010-06-24T19:49:00.001-04:00

Somewhere in my wanderings, Google suggested that I add their own "Blog This" extension into my Chrome browser. I figured it might cause me to write more, the merit of which is admittedly debatable, and was certainly easy enough to install and un-install if I liked.

As is it's habit, Chrome properly warned me that the extension I was installing would have access to all my browser history and the pages I was viewing. In general, the warning is a good thing, however...

The tech community seems not to have learned the lesson of Microsoft's much maligned User Account Control misfeature:

Excessive warnings decrease the effectiveness of all similar warnings

Indeed, if you ask Google about Windows UAC, half of the first ten results are instructions on how to turn it off. I know Google knows about my web activity, I've explicitly given them permission to know all of it in about 10 different ways. Installing "Blog This" should have given me no warnings at all because I was installing software from a firm that I've trusted with my life details: my e-mail, my credit card, my telephone, my associations. Indeed Google's machines may well know more about me than I do myself.

The problem is, anyone can write a Chrome extension and they do, and I don't know them and I certainly don't want to give a random someone keys to my digital kingdom. But by putting themselves on equal footing with other extension writers, Google imperils the very trust that they have worked so hard to cultivate.

Google must implement extension signing in Chrome, the technology to do so is trivial; that they haven't is a potentially costly mistake.

I create because I must...

2010-06-20T01:52:00.004-04:00

I've had occasion to spend time with artists. I've able to do this through the conceit (or perhaps deceit) that I too was an artist. There was one plastic artist that I was speaking with while she was preparing some of her works for market; our chat took place within her tidy but overflowing studio. She said

I create because I must, if I can make some money from it, that's great.

Having heard the same sentiment stated less directly from other artists, it was at that point that I realized I was out of my league. I create because I want to and with arduous effort, I can empathize with the artist's claim as I think we all have something that we do that is as much a part of our constitution as respiration is to our bodies, but for me it is not in the plastic or performing arts. Fortunately, it doesn't stop me from trying to be an artist, but it does put me in my proper place on the scale of nature.

I've recently become aware of the burgeoning independent music community. Even ignoring the hammerlock that recording labels have had on music distribution since the birth of recording (and even, remarkably, prior to) there have been two technologies that have given musicians new wings. The ability to produce studio quality works in your bedroom for considerably less than the cost of a used auto, and the essentially free distribution channel of the internet. The now moribund MySpace was apparently an early vehicle for musicians to get their work out, which I knew of but never paid attention to.

I've recently encountered Jamendo and am quite frankly surprised at the high quality of the submissions. Well, some of them. As Sturgeon's Revelation of 1958 claimed, ninety percent of all art created is crap, and there are some true horrors on Jamendo. Contrariwise, using the same wisdom of crowds that powers Wikipedia, Jamendo is fostering a community which does push talent to the top without comb-over producers, payola, or exploitative contracts.

My find of the day struck me as a second-phase effect of Jamendo: presumably based on my publicly stated preferences and activities, The Postmen reached out to me from Switzerland to let me know of their music. As far as advertising goes, it couldn't have been less intrusive, indeed it consisted of a only single bit of information, they sent me a "friendship request". One click and it would have evaporated, a different click led me to their five track eponymous release and a desire for more. I could review their work, but that it moved me to write an article should indicate my level of interest, and I'll let the music speak for itself.

Free music for professional licensing

digging through the archive

2010-05-25T01:06:00.001-04:00

As part of discarding my internet anonymity, I pulled many prior works that I'd published pseudonymously; not because I didn't want them associated with me but because I want my pseudonym to die quietly.

Some of them still feel worthy of republishing, and although my eulogy for Robert Anton Wilson is neither timely nor my best writing, it was heartfelt.

So there will appear on this blog – from time to time – posts from the vault. It does make the chronology a little confused, but hopefully with little resultant suffering.

on discarding on-line anonymity

2010-05-24T23:46:00.003-04:00

Since the advent of web search, by which I mean Google, I've prided myself on having a nearly minimal internet footprint. I considered my virtual anonymity a precious thing, hiding behind pseudonyms and generally keeping a low profile. As of a month or so ago, searching on my name would have yielded little more than a joke I sent to rec.humor.funny some decades ago and some observations I had made on the ACM Forum On Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems (also known as comp.risks). It is perhaps worth noting that those links actually point to websites because the Usenet news system has been effectively dead for some years with some more stalwart groups migrating to the web.

For those who have never heard of Usenet, think of something like a World Wide Web which looks like plain-text email and has no hypertext links and you'll have some vague idea of the hot technology of 1980. The ironic bit is that the joke that comes up in most searches isn't even mine, I was just recounting someone else's. The other major Google hit for my name regards an author of non-fiction to whom I have no connection.

But as the sandcastle of Usenet falls into the ocean, so too identity doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange: a shift in sentiment regarding what is suitable for public consumption. Most of the new sensibility I have learned from my teen daughter who occupies the connected world and has challenged my old predilections and vanities. Thus this blog, and the post to come elaborating on those vanities.

the closest thing to drugs you can get without being drugs

2007-01-11T21:14:00.001-05:00

I read with mild sadness about the death of the author Robert Anton Wilson - perhaps best known for his novels The Illuminatus Trilogy, The Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, and Cosmic Trigger. While there will be writers far better able to eulogize Mr. Wilson,I felt it warranted mention and a note of my own fascination with his works.

I'd read Schrödinger's Cat twice; it is quite simply about nothing so far as I can tell. There were three things that struck me most. First, a silly pun, a monk named Ped Xing who would channel himself into various characters at various times. Second, was the way in which the story's Eigenstate would collapse and result in the same story only slightly differently.

The most confounding aspect was that while reading this book, I would have terrible nightmares of non-specific content - in particular they were not about the novel. I am of the impression that Wilson managed to underlie the story with a subtext that twiddled some part of my brain. Knowing what little I do about him, it is fully expected that if anyone could do that, Wilson could. I know this sounds like backward masking on records or other such nonsense, and being of a skeptical bent, I thought it coincidence. That is, until years later when I re-read Cat and thus began the nightmares again. Yes, I could have been expecting it and thus fulfilled it myself, no, this is not scientific in the least, and no, I don't have the deconstructionist or neuro-linguistic tools to figure it out. Yet, I still believe he'd done something to me without my knowledge through the mere written word. If that isn't high literary praise, I don't know what is.

Freedom Flows from the Barrel of a Gun

2006-12-29T00:26:00.002-05:00

Perhaps this is a story better suited for da fearmonger, unfortunately though, the following actually happened.

At her request, I took my daughter to our nation's capitol in order that she could see the places she is being taught about in school. She has a longstanding interest in architecture, and for reasons know only to her, a particular fancy for domes. I therefore made the United States Capitol building one of our destinations.

Unfortunately, the Capitol building was closed pending the funeral of Gerald Ford. So, if we couldn't see the building from the inside, at least we could view the outside. We hadn't come to the political centroid of our fine republic to not see it.

That day, we both got an interesting civics lesson. Our approach to the building was blocked by barricades; I understand that just as the building closure was to protect the congress and visiting dignitaries, so might be the barricades. All this time I'd been dutifully taking pictures of the building itself. I next noticed the fine, young, Keanu Reeves wannabe pictured here. I figured this too was part of the funerary plans until one of my fellow citizens asked Keanu-oid who replied that this was his standing, ordinary post. I was surprised.

When I see surprising things in public, open spaces and have a camera in my hand, my temptation is to photograph it. Immediately after my shutter clicked, Keanu-boy barked "NO PICTURES!" at me. Perhaps I'm not as confident as some might be whilst facing a uniformed officer with a shotgun, but despite my strong belief in government by and for the people, I felt I ought not question K-boy. Fortunately, he didn't demand that I delete the photo I had taken, nor did I feel at liberty to get a better angle. I was left with some questions unanswered.

When has the right of the people to record what stands on a public street at the seat of our government been revoked? When has the former focus of Liberty become redolent of a police state? Why does the District of Columbia look more like Beirut than the homeland of Justice? Why have we allowed this to be done to us? Would I have been shot had I lifted the camera to my eye? I might have asked these questions of an officer with a holstered weapon, but armed and brandishing doesn't afford the same dialog.

I'd have to call the preceding scene ironic after-the-fact. The cabbie who drove us to the Capitol building was a recent immigrant from Afghanistan; our conversation drifted from Ford's high world stature to the driver's contempt for the Bush the Younger. Surpisingly, the driver's irritation was that Bush hadn't killed more in his mother country but instead moved onto Iraq with unfinished business. I am pleased to live in a nation where an immigrant can make such statements about the commander-in-chief. I'm sure the driver is even happier that I wasn't a government informant.

and as things fell apart...

2005-02-26T22:24:00.009-05:00

This might well be a prelude to the "snowglobe theory of life" that is threatening to appear here.