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| Thursday, 10th July, 2008 | |
| 7:32 pm | Whisper of the Heart  Some time ago I mentioned here that I'd been given, through the informal file sharing networks, a small, rather blurry copy of the film "Whisper of the Heart". It since became probably my favorite film of all. I'd shown it to my niece, Lois, who came to love it too, and through her, my sister, Sue. Today Sue visited me, bringing a DVD of "Whisper of the Heart" she'd bought. We watched it together and I fell in love with it all over again. What a truly marvellous piece of work that film is. Not long after it began I had goosebumps. I chuckled at many points and sighed with tears in my eyes at a few parts of the story. It is not often that I find such a relentlessly, unapologetically optimistic story, and one that has such wise observations to make about the human condition, making them with gentle humor and depth of emotion. This is a film that, by the time it ends leaves you refreshed, invigorated, uplifted. Many films these days leave you feeling like you've been put through an emotional wringer, exhausted, spent. I wish I had many more stories here that buoyed the mind like Whisper does. I want to write something that feeds the mind the way Whisper does... though unfortunately it won't be this year. |
| Monday, 7th July, 2008 | |
| 6:29 pm | comix  Cory Doctorow has become famous for his vigorous anti-MPIAA, anti-RIAA stance, and for putting his money where his mouth is in terms of copy-freedom. Each time he publishes a new book he releases it for free electronically online. http://craphound.com The publicity has served to give him a wider audience than better authors who use only restrictive practices to get their works out to eyeballs. I have read a few of his books electronically, but had not bought any for two reasons. Firstly, I don't like paper. It is uncomfortable and cumbersome to use. (I'm currently reading an old paper book to research this year's NaNoWriMo work and hating the discomfort of battling with the pages.) Paper takes up a lot of storage space that is in scarce supply. Most paper begins to disintegrate in just decades. Paper is not only chemically unstable (a small flame can quickly turn a thousand books into a raging inferno), but it must be protected from a wide array of organisms that would love to devour it. Secondly, I haven't enjoyed one of his books enough to spend my scarce pennies on it. Well, that has changed. Recently A number of Cory Doctorow's stories have been made into a set of comix published as a book "Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now". They give me new respect for his talent. In my opinion he is a much better short story writer than a novelist (though I'll keep checking out more of his novels make sure -- free books make that possible). True to his convictions the book has been released online for free at the same time as being published on paper. Unfortunately this one is released as an Adobe pdf file. Ugh! Comix are one of the few things that I'll put up with the inconvenience of paper for now. There are no really good ways of releasing comix electronically at the moment. So I bought it. It was well worth the money, and I highly recommend it. Terry Moore, who wrote and drew the brilliant "Strangers in Paradise" series, has begun a new series called "Echo". It is shaping up to be possibly as interesting as SiP. I'm only at issue 3, so it is a bit hard to tell yet, though the way I keep hankering to learn what happens next is a good sign. Joss Whedon, of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Serenity"/"Firefly" fame has been very busy writing for comix. He took over from Brian K Vaughn, writing the excellent "Runaways" series. Joss' dialogue and plot twists in those issues are just wonderful. Same with his writing for Marvel's "Astonishing X-Men". I normally steer away from anything by Marvel, but Joss led me back to what I remember as a kid was astonishing only for its lack of understanding in how the world works. Joss Changed that for his run in "Astonishing X-Men". The dialogue is at times brilliant and the plot is utterly unpredictable yet weirdly believable. I mentioned here some time ago that Joss also has been writing for "Buffy Season Eight" as a comic book series. That series (it hasn't ended yet) seems to be a little patchy, but when it works it truly shines, as Joss (and other writers) at their best. And the covers, mostly by Jo Chen, are to die for. There is something deeply affecting about issue 5 "The Chain" that moved me almost to tears. How many comix do that? If you are in Australia (or even overseas) I recommend buying all your comix from my friend Peter at Alternate Worlds. He is more knowledgeable about comix than anyone I've ever met and he will do everything he can to help you. He is a very cool guy. http://www.alternateworlds.com.au |
| Monday, 30th June, 2008 | |
| 6:45 am | my brain explodes So much to learn... Free science lectures http://www.freesciencelectures.com/ http://freescienceonline.blogspot.com/ Free science books http://www.techbooksforfree.com/sci Enormous, freely downloadable Medical Microbiology book http://www.gsbs.utmb.edu/microbook/t Algorithmic Botany includes the gorgeous book (downloadable) Algorithmic Beauty of Plants http://algorithmicbotany.org/ Free online Maths textbooks http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbo and of course there is the wonderful Wikibooks project http://www.wikibooks.org/ http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page Calm down... relax... eeeeek! |
| Monday, 16th June, 2008 | |
| 11:50 am | story idea Yay! I already have my story idea for NaNoWriMo this year. I'll put a lot more work into preparation than I have in previous years so that I get a better result. I've always put quite a lot of time into working up aspects of the story beforehand, but this time I want to have the entire thing ready to just regurgitate. Each year I find my storytelling ability improves, (though I'm still not terribly good). Janet Evanovich wrote 11 books before she sold one, so I'm not letting my current inability worry me too much. I figure I'm still in the learning phase. Only 4.5 months to go. Bring it on. |
| Friday, 6th June, 2008 | |
| 10:50 am | pedophiles I don't listen to the radio news or watch TV or read newspapers (other than New Scientist) so I hadn't heard about it when Margaret told me today that a big pedophilia ring had been broken, with lots of people going to jail. Over the years it has surprised me to find out how many of my friends have had their lives damaged by being molested when they were kids. I grew up in blissful ignorance of such things. It always puzzled me that some people can be sexually attracted to children. How can that be? They don't produce any of the sexual cues that puberty brings. Margaret insists that it is about power. She was molested when young and is terrified of, and furious at pedophiles. She may be right. I can't even begin to understand what must be going on in the mind of a pedophile. But there are a number of things about the current approach to pedophilia that ring very loud alarm bells. It has become a witchhunt. All that is needed to destroy someone's life is to name them as a pedophile -- evidence is not really required. This is a very dangerous situation. Margaret said the people were obviously guilty because child porn was found on their computers, but I pointed out that is relatively easy to put files on almost anybody's computer if they are running Microsoft Windows. Finding such pictures on people's computers is circumstantial evidence at best. Also, looking at pictures doesn't mean those people actually go out and interfere with children. Do we throw people in jail for thinking about crimes now? Have George Orwell's thought police finally arrived? There is also the problem of what to do with pedophiles. "Take them of the street. Lock them away from the kids," Margaret said. Although mopping up afterwards will always be fairly ineffective, it should still be done. Taking offenders off the street keeps them away from their prey. It is a short term help, but it doesn't solve the problem. It closes the gate after the horse has bolted. Wouldn't it be better to prevent it? Is it fixable? Many people have considered being gay to be an illness, but now we know better -- homosexuality has always been one of the various shades of normal. That makes me ask the very discomforting question, is it possible that pedophilia is part of the normal range of sexuality? It has certainly been around for a long time. I think the Koran says Muhammed's youngest wife was 12, and there is no way 12 can be viewed as anything but a child. I don't care what excuses are made for earlier times; anyone pre-puberty is a child. If it is part of the normal sexual spectrum, what can, or should, be done about it? If it is part of normal then it will likely be impossible to "cure". Inded I've read of pedophiles who have tried to be cured only to find the desires simply remain. But many of my friends remain extremely upset about their experiences. It has had a very bad effect on their lives. By their descriptions I feel quite strongly that no child should have to live through such traumas. So something needs to be done whether is is a part of "normal" or not. Even if if it can't be cured perhaps we should be finding ways to prevent it happening. How do we do that? One of the temptations will always be to remove contact with adults. Unfortunately adults are not the only problem. I know of people who were sexually assaulted by older siblings. Isolation would never work anyway. It would simply impoverish a child's world and paradoxically make pedophilia easier by removing potential witnesses. I can't help feeling that the children themselves are the solution somehow. I don't mean using a child's accusations as evidence -- some years back a teacher in North Queensland had his entire life destroyed by such an accusation, only to have the girl admit many years later that she'd simply made it up. We need to find a way to prevent pedophilia without limiting kids themselves or victimising innocent people. Most of all we need to do this without a witchhunt. Witchhunts are extremely dangerous. They run out of control far too easily. I feel uncomfortable raising these concerns because I'm sure that in some people's eyes it will make me suspect. My stories and artwork clearly show I'm only attracted to sexually mature women, so it is not a great worry to me, but how difficult must it be for others to speak out in such a climate? The fear of such suspicions is part of the great danger any witchhunt poses. In engineering it is called a positive feedback loop and can be very destructive, wrecking things that have nothing to do with the original problem. |
| Thursday, 5th June, 2008 | |
| 12:31 am | warning signs I'm atheist, yet have deep admiration for some religious people, like the wonderful nun, Joan Chittister. Here is another: Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges gave a talk in Massachusetts last year titled "Who are the American Fascists?" http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?le In it he honestly and clearly describes the danger of fundamentalist christianity. Mr Hedges is brilliant. The world would be a much better place if there were more christians like him. Like a lot of religious people though, he still sees religion as the source of morality. This blindness disappoints me a little. But I guess I should not expect too much. In calling urgently for a tolerant and inclusive society while bringing into focus the real and imminent dangers of intolerant religiosity he does more to bring about a good future than most people, religious or atheist. |
| Wednesday, 4th June, 2008 | |
| 10:00 am | interface What is the purpose of the icons on a computer screen? Some people would seem to think they are simply decoration, and as such should be color coordinated and a of regular size and shape, but they are wrong. Icons are a visual index to things on your computer. It makes very good sense to make each icon be as different from all the others as possible to aid in quick recognition. Hence icon makers should exploit variety in size, shape, color, tone, and orientation to let your vision pick out the desired pattern as quickly as possible. I have seen many icon sets that look incredibly uniform, varying only in the slightest little detail, and even worse, many times this variation is in simply a few text letters in the icon. What does this convey that the name doesn't? Little or nothing. Such icons become a waste of screen space and of CPU cycles. My desktop uses hundreds of icons I've created or filched from other operating systems and from many icon sets. All my icons look different. Some people consider my desktop to be unattractive, but it is not meant to be a work of art. I'm an artist. If I want a work of art I'll make one; if I want something that is maximally usable then I will have that. And my desktop is extremely usable. In a similar manner window decorations can add to, or detract from the usability of an interface. I've seen many interfaces that look utterly gorgeous, but are as useful as high heeled shoes and a white ball gown are when you need to push your car out of mud. Many such interfaces bog the processor down with displaying complex window shapes and pretty baubles instead of the more clear, simple, informative symbols. Many interfaces have extremely thin borders that are absurdly difficult to grab and often entirely omit the top resizing border from windows. All these things misguidedly reduce an interface's functionality for the sake of fashion. And you know what they say about something that is fashionable: that it is guaranteed to go out of fashion. Over the decades I've witnessed many fashions come and go, and I have to say there are few things more ugly than old fashions. They aren't even redeemed by usefulness. |
| Monday, 2nd June, 2008 | |
| 5:15 pm | privacy If a state is truly worried about being able to snoop on bad guys (organised crime, terrorism, etc.) then it is in their best interests to make an open and tolerant society because one of the strongest arguments for privacy is that those in power arbitrarily criminalise people who have done no wrong (gays, drug users, people with different skin or hair or clothes, porn consumers, political dissidents, other cultures, etc). This means police will always be severely restricted in their ability to investigate real crime. The only way this could ever change is for society to open up and become tolerant. But in a weird, twisted way, it is perhaps a good thing that society has not become that tolerant yet, because so long as powerful people are easily corrupted it remains dangerous to discard privacy safeguards. The rules an open society operates under could easily be changed again at any time and the innocent criminalised. Quite apart from that, contrary to what is often assumed, privacy is not a luxury. Animals as uncomplicated as lizards need some privacy or they simply die. Privacy is almost certainly required for health in creatures as complex as humans. |
| Wednesday, 28th May, 2008 | |
| 5:27 pm | streaming excludes your audience If you are ever in a position to decide whether to make audio and/or video available on the net, please do what you can to present it to your audience as downloadable files, not streaming-only. Some formats, like mp3, and I believe ogg, can be downloaded or streamed at the discretion of the listener. Streaming-only formats like the absurdly named "Real" media files or the various Microsoft streaming formats shut out many potential listeners. Like most people, I am on dial-up internet. Streaming-only formats are impossible to listen to when they play like "The qu...............ick br...............own f............ox j..............ump...............s..." In theory they are supposed to buffer properly so that they can play continuously, but in practice they almost never do. The broken, pause-ridden nature of such programs means it can take an hours to listen to a short piece because of all the wasted time. Some specialised programs exist that allow the user to defeat streaming by accumulating it to a file, but the difficulties of streaming mean that this sometimes works and it sometimes doesn't, and if it doesn't you have to begin grabbing the file from the beginning all over again whereas downloadable files let you skip over the bit that did download and continue from where it prematurely quit. But even if you do have a program that collects a stream into a single file, the makers of streaming formats are specifically opposed to this and use various underhand techniques to battle it, such as changing their formats from time to time, and mounting legal suits against creators of such programs. Streaming formats reduce the options for audiences. Last night I tried to stream 13 talks to files on my computer because their pauses and gaps rendered the content impossible to listen to. Only 2 succeeded. All the rest stopped between several minutes and an hour into the program. If I want to hear these I must attempt again from the beginning. What an absurd waste of my time, the bandwidth of the server, and the bandwidth of everybody between. It is a waste in another way. I listen to many of the audio files on my computer more than once. If the only way to hear a program repeatedly is to re-connect then that loads down servers and increases their costs. Much better to make the file downloadable and allow the end-user listen to it locally as many times as they wish. This has another nice flow-on effect. People like to share. This means they will pass interesting material on to others, who will may then become audience members for the site. Streaming-only files don't have that advantage. They make it harder instead of easier. One of the worst aspects of streaming-only formats is that from a historical perspective it forces much of our culture to be ephemeral, so that it leaves little behind for historians to study. This also applies to locked ebooks. What will we leave for future generations if we have forced all our culture to evaporate behind us. We may become the first generation to leave our children an impoverished culture, with a blank gap where our explosive culture grew fastest. What will YouTube, all the RealMedia sites, all the locked ebooks, and register-only sites and programs leave for the future? Nothing except vague recollections. |
| Sunday, 25th May, 2008 | |
| 11:10 am | nuclear nuts Background Briefing today was about how the nuclear power industry is key to the spread of nuclear weapons, and how the two are inextricably tied together. Increase one and you increase the other. A while ago I posted a short rant about how dangerously stupid nuclear power is. I made the usual points about links to bombs, the difficulty and high cost of safe storage for millions of years, and the awful danger posed by nuclear accidents. I also made a number of other points, like the fact that Australia, being one of the driest places in the world should not be contemplating building power stations that are even more wasteful of water than coal-fired power plants -- both are glorified steam engines, and boil vast amounts of water away to run their turbines. But the point that seemed to catch in the throats of some was that nuclear power is driven by governments, not private capital. I said at the time that I'd back this up with more info, but never got around to it, having been distracted by many other things in the meantime. Well, here is data on why private capital is not investing in nuclear power, and how it is paid for by tax dollars instead. The article was published recently by physicist and energy consultant Amory Lovins and a couple of his colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Institute. The original is one of several articles in a pdf document which is here, but if you hate pdf as much as I do I have painstakingly extracted the article and reformatted it into a web page, which is far easier to read. http://miriam-english.org/alia/ForgetNu An extremely condensed version was published in Newsweek too. |
| Friday, 23rd May, 2008 | |
| 4:05 pm | Rudd wants to murder civilians One of the last things the outgoing evil Howard government did was to spend $14 million on cluster bombs. These vile things inflict great damage on civilian populations, laying in wait for years after to kill and maim children and other civilians. So what do you think the Rudd government is doing? These assholes are trying to stop cluster bombs being outlawed by the international community at the meeting in Dublin. Make Kevin Rudd take notice of us. We are supposed to be the good guys, not indiscriminate slaughterers and maimers of children. Stop him hampering the process to outlaw these horrid weapons. GetUp have helped Australians to force the creepy politicians to sit up and take notice of us. Do it again NOW. Time is running short because this is happening right now. The sneaky politicians thought they could get away without anybody noticing. http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/BanThe ---- Rudd is turning out to be not much different kind of scum from Howard. He has already reduced funding for alternative energy from the already miserable amount given by the Howard government. Much publicity has been gained from a few small funding projects that help a token number of homes and businesses become more energy efficient. But in the end he has simply given the same massive funding incentives to the same ultra-profitable power corporations and failed to open up our sustainable future. It is effectively business as normal. |
| Tuesday, 13th May, 2008 | |
| 7:07 am | the problem of beauty It is a nagging problem. I am an artist. I draw things, particularly women. It always seemed natural to me that of course those images should be of beautiful women. But why? Isn't it as important -- possibly even more important -- to draw serene, attractive pictures of unbeautiful subjects? Unattractive women are heavily discriminated against; far more so than unattractive men. Should I allow myself to become an accomplice in this discrimination? Being aware of it, shouldn't I do what I can to reverse it? To be fair to myself I have tried, but it is very difficult because paradoxically it's easier to draw something that's unattractive than it is to portray beauty. That means that making a picture in which the character doesn't look attractive simply gives the impression that the artist is incapable. It is hard to capture beauty, so that becomes almost a yardstick by which an artist's ability is measured. Yes, there are artists who draw ugly and revel in it, and they are often considered talented at what they do, but I'm sure if they created exactly the same kind of pictures, but including stunningly beautiful characters within them those images would be hailed as by far their best work. By definition, we are attracted to attractiveness. There seems to be a good evolutionary basis for seeing beauty. As we grow up we seem to average out the features we see in people, and that average largely becomes our ideal of beauty. I think it was in the early 19th Century that a Scottish (or was he English?) guy became interested in "the face of evil", so he resolved to average out a large number of photographs of prison inmates. He was surprised to find that this exercise resulted, not in the ultimate character of evil distilled down, but a very attractive and benign-looking face. It only takes a moment's thought to see why evolution would gear us to see beauty this way. It would help prevent us breeding with individuals who might damage the species. If someone is stricken by disease then their appearance can become flawed, or if they have a disfiguring accident then they might not be able to care for offspring effectively. Is there anything wrong with discriminating in favor of beauty? Well, yes, if you are unattractive. Unfortunately, these things no longer apply to humans. We have long since outstripped such simple constraints upon our fittedness for survival. Our amazing brain is the most potent force for survival that we possess and doesn't correlate with physical appearance at all. By colluding with the instinct for physical attractiveness we work against ourselves, possibly even damaging our species' potential. But even worse, we damage our morality. How could it affect our morality? Some years ago I was speaking to a friend who is one of the most beautiful women I've met. She is not stupid, though she is no intellectual star either; she would be the first to agree that she has merely an unremarkable mind. We were chatting about work and she was happily saying that she never had to try particularly hard for any job. Her appearance would nearly always cause her to be chosen over other job applicants. I'd always felt that this damaged both her and the other applicants. Some time back I heard another beautiful woman bemoaning the fact that constant focus on a child's beauty causes them to grow up with the belief that their worth is in their appearance, causing major problems when they age and their looks start to fade. In an interview, Gwyneth Paltrow told of how surprised she was at the frank rudeness of people when she spent time in public places disguised in her fat suit, researching for the movie "Shallow Hal". Sadly this dismissal is no news to those of us who don't look pretty. We are all fond of saying that beauty is only skin deep, but we never seem to actually take it to heart. I understand this extremely well, both because I work very hard to capture beauty in images, and because I'm aware that physically unattractive myself. But I'm dismayed that even with the knowledge I have, I still have no control over the way my heart leaps and my knees turn to jelly when smiled at by a beautiful woman. Beauty is a real problem. |
| Friday, 9th May, 2008 | |
| 8:06 am | humanoids, anti-democracy, surfaces, and sight humanoids I had a big win yesterday. I've been teaching myself Blender lately and had been adopting a crawl before you walk, walk before you run approach, which is unusual for me. I finally got to one of the more mouthwatering parts: putting bones in a humanoid so that I could easily animate it. Expecting this to be difficult, I was one very delighted and surprised fool to find that it was simplicity itself. Joy! I am so gonna have fun with this! See? This is why I don't play games. Learning this sort of stuff is the greatest fun to be had, ever! anti-democracy Our parliament has suddenly become flooded with very active lobbyists for the richest, most polluting companies in Australia. Now that we have a government that looks like it might actually abide by the wishes of the people and get something done to fix the problems facing us, big industry is funding a multi-million dollar propaganda rush on the fragile intelligences of those in government. Sign the GetUp document to pressure the Rudd government to remember that they were elected by us not a small number of ultra-wealthy sociopaths. GetUp campaigns have worked wonders so far. If any movement can stop or slow this corruption it is GetUp. http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/Climat surfaces Related to that last point, I've been thinking a lot about the surfaces of materials a lot recently. It seems to me that you will hear much more about this in the future. The surfaces of most materials act quite differently from the bulk of it. This is why you can float a metal needle on water. The molecules at the surface act differently from those inside the water. Having less water molecules around them (because they are at the surface) they hold onto their fellows more strongly -- we see this as surface tension. There are a number of other effects peculiar to materials' surfaces. Easily shattered materials, like glass, become flexible as thin strands or sheets. Weaving or interleaving materials with different qualities creates composite materials with capabilities vastly surpassing any of its components. Electronics, in studying the problems of making very small circuits has turned lemons into lemonade by finding that very small bits of stuff, and even the gaps themselves, can have very useful qualities. It is leading to new kinds of electronics and optics, simply by switching our interest from large scale to small scale. And that's how this point relates to the one in the previous paragraph. If we take up the challenge of making good use of a low-energy world that pollutes less then we will find great opportunities there for us. At the moment we "need" massive power stations, coal mines, aluminium smelters, concrete plants, steel plants... but if we look carefully we can find vastly superior alternatives that not only pollute less, but make us wealthier and improve our lives. We are surrounded by power -- sun, brownian motion, wind, geothermal, sound -- we simply need to learn to use it better. Coal and oil, while "convenient", are not viable in the longer term and are destroying what we have in the shorter term. Aluminium is a wonderful metal, but is extracted at unbelievable cost. In the end it corrodes away like most metals. It has also been implicated in Alzheimers disease. Much better alternatives exist in ceramics and organics if we look for them. Seashells are grown from the ocean's water by an incredibly low energy system. They are far, far stronger than concrete. There has been a trend away from pouring concrete, using prefabricated parts instead. If such parts were made in the sea in environmentally friendly, low energy fashion then we would all be better off. All our problems are actually opportunities in disguise... sight ...maybe even my continuing eye problems. About 2 years ago I was told that I have macular degeneration and that I could expect to lose my vision within the year. Well it turned out on further investigation that it wasn't that at all, though nobody knows what it actually is. I am still losing my vision... just more slowly. It has made me consider my mortality with more urgency. I am a notorious procrastinator. I think I need a kick in the pants like this to actually get something done. If it serves to do that (and it seems to be working) then I could actually end up grateful for it... kinda... |
| Tuesday, 29th April, 2008 | |
| 10:18 am | thoughts on programming I'm a bit bummed that I can't view my VRML worlds properly on my Puppy Linux machine. I've spent a couple of days trying everything I can think of, to no avail. It is no secret that I think Linux has become the major alternative now that Microsoft looks like it is about to go the way that the once arrogant and world-dominating IBM did. Microsoft's Vista has been a dismal marketplace failure. Many people attribute it to Vista's technical shortcomings, but I think Microsoft's deeply overdrawn account at the karma bank shouldn't be overlooked. They bring new meaning to the term "morally bankrupt". Few people trust them or their notoriously insecure operating systems. So, installing Windows on a partition just so that I can use VRML -- something I'd been considering -- seems a bit silly and wasteful. I sat down last night and wrote a long piece for myself on the state of computing in general and 3d in particular. I won't bore you with the details here, but one thing I stumbled across was the surprising realisation that a very large part the computing grief we endure is a result of the separation between source code and binary. One of the problems it causes is the way library code is constructed. If libraries were self-documenting then many of the problems of modern computing would simply evaporate. (If anybody is interested I'll enlarge on this.) It also occurred to me that the whole free and open source software (FOSS) movement has been based on the idea that we must put up with the inconvenience of source code in order to retain freedom, but that is a mistake and is doomed to always fail. Most users, given the choice between convenience or freedom will choose convenience. The separation between source and binary is the major cause of loss of software freedom. Compiled code brings about a number of other major problems too. But, you might answer, programs must be compiled into machine readable code which is unreadable to humans in order to give us high performance. That's not necessarily true. FORTH is one of the fastest and most efficient languages ever designed and it always remains human readable -- even the code directly executed in silicon by one of the FORTH chips. FORTH runs at almost the speed of hand crafted assembler and its programs have absurdly small file sizes. The core language is just 4k and the central execution routine is a few bytes in size. Compare this with Java, which compiles to code unreadable by humans and is renowned for being sluggish and bloated. I'm not suggesting we all switch over to using FORTH, but it does show that our assumptions are not necessarily correct. I've been thinking more and more about the 3d language I started designing some years ago... will I waste more years if I work on that? I already wasted years on VRML. The current crop of 3d games like World of Warcraft and the less violent 3d worlds like SecondLife are all built on Microsoft's operating systems. If Microsoft lose their footing then so do all those other things. A depressing thought. |
| Sunday, 27th April, 2008 | |
| 1:36 pm | divisors Here is something weird. I ran a quick little program today to see what numbers up to 1,000 are most divisible by other numbers. After collecting the results and running them through a sort I became a little puzzled at how the number of divisors seems to collect around certain particular amounts, so I charted the unsorted results to take advantage of our wonderful visual pattern perception. What I saw was a bit of a surprise. It looks really familiar, and I'm not quite sure why. The horizontal axis lists the numbers between 1 and 1,000 examined. The vertical axis how many other numbers the number could be divided by. The number itself and 1 were not included, so prime numbers get listed as having zero divisors. The really interesting numbers here are the ones on the top of the curve, which are (going from top right down to bottom left): 840, 720, 360, 240, 180, 120, 90, 48, 36, 24, 12, and 6 Next time you wonder if the Babylonians had rocks in their heads sticking us with such crazy numbers for calculating angles, think again. They are brilliant numbers. They divide up more easily than any others. There are some really noteworthy things. Primes are pretty uncommon, you'd think, but there are 168 of them. Far more uncommon are almost-primes -- numbers that have only one other divisor. There are only 11 of them in the first 1,000 numbers (4, 9, 25, 49, 121, 169, 289, 361, 529, 841, 961). Only 3 numbers have just 3 divisors (16, 81, 625). Only 2 numbers have 5 divisors (64 and 729). There are no numbers below 1,000 with 9 or 11 or 15 divisors, with many more higher up (the gaps become more frequent as you look for greater numbers of divisors). I wonder why the number of divisors falls into such prominent bands on 0 (prime), 2, 4, 6, 10, 14, and 22. Especially 14! That is such an odd number. It is nothing like the almost random distribution I'd have expected. ( click here for the chart ) |
| Saturday, 26th April, 2008 | |
| 1:09 pm | hydrogen On the Science Show today they talked at length about some new developments in generating hydrogen cheaply for fuel in large algal ponds. Pretty amazing stuff. It turns out that the world's energy requirements can be met by a surprisingly small area of ponds. While I'm delighted that people are working on alternatives to petroleum as fuel, I can't help but worry about large scale adoption of hydrogen. Hydrogen is the "H" in H2O -- water. Hydrogen is also the only element that routinely achieves escape velocity, that is, it leaves our planet. Since its earliest days Earth has been losing hydrogen into space. This is not something that can be easily reversed... well, unless we go and collect more from some the other planets in the solar system -- not something we're likely to in the near future. We've shown many times that we are really sloppy about leakages and spills, but even if we were really careful such leaks are bound to happen, and if the world's economy changed over to hydrogen they would happen often. Dumping large amounts of hydrogen into the atmosphere would accelerate planetary loss. This, in time, would dry our planet because there would be less hydrogen available to make water. How long would it take to become a major problem? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it would take much less time than you'd expect. I'm surprised that nobody seems to have brought up that worry. It seems pretty obvious to me. |
| Tuesday, 22nd April, 2008 | |
| 12:46 am | geographies of knowledge ...or, the countries of Earth merge while the countries of mind emerge. Have you noticed the increasing separation between the realms of knowledge? It's nothing new for people to band together and then diverge from the rest of humanity. What is new is that these groups are no longer necessarily bound by geography. Their members can exist all over the planet inside an increasingly homogeneous society, but are becoming separated from other groups by vast gulfs of understanding. A geography of mind is diversifying, isolating regions that seemed not long ago to be the one kingdom. A kind of continental drift is in effect, but instead of taking millions of years to produce noticeable change, this works in mere decades, or even less. Hundreds of years ago any single person could reasonably hope master much of the knowledge and literature of the world. Now it's impossible to master just a single narrow disipline. I expect amazing new breeds of mental engineers will work out ways to build bridges between the rapidly separating continents of mind. Of course some relics will be left behind to despair about the three Rs, bewildered at what is happening around them... but that's okay. They can be the custodians of old knowledge. It's all good. It's all important. Humanity is embarking on an age where the strangest person in the world will be the one standing beside you. They'll understand concepts completely beyond your wildest imaginings, and likewise you will know things they couldn't hope to comprehend. Such an age will defy uniformity with its chaotic exploration of all the realms of knowledge. I've often felt that we live in a renaissance now, but the current explosion of knowledge and culture will pale beside what is coming. Don't let the fear mongers make you want to retreat. It's natural to feel unsettled by it; all generations have felt changes were happening uncomfortably fast. Prepare for the whirlwind. This is going to be the ride of your life. |
| Sunday, 20th April, 2008 | |
| 7:55 pm | bad Moon rising - hilarious and downright scary It is not often that I howl with laughter listening to a documentary program, much less a religious program. Tonight I was alternately laughing and horrified while listening to The Spirit of Things and the amazing tale of the Reverend Moon (remember the crazy brainwashing cult of the Moonies from the '70s?) who was crowned King of America at a ceremony in a government building in Washington D.C. attended by a slew of US Conservative government officials. Apparently Moon travels the world with George Bush, owns the Conservative newspaper The Washington Times, and is a huge contributor to Republican politics in USA. After being convicted of fraud and tax evasion decades back he didn't vanish from USA the way he managed to vanish from the headlines. He is now one of the most powerful people in USA and Japan. In Japan his "church" is been the target of a long-running class action because of their habit of extorting money out of rich widows. Moon calls himself the true messiah, and maintains that he and his wife (the second one after the divorce) are the parents of the universe, the only perfect beings. It is astonishingly stupid and funny, but also very, very scary because of the power this nutcake wields among the most powerful people in the world. He, himself has managed to become one of the richest men in the world. Go to http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofth to download the audio (soon -- the streaming audio is already there) and take the link to the video of the coronation. http://www.gorenfeld.net/book/cinem A little info about the coronation is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Myung_ [sigh] USA. Just when you didn't think it could get weirder... |
| Monday, 7th April, 2008 | |
| 6:45 am | making money Couldn't sleep. Thought I'd write this down so my mind will let me alone and I can go back to bed. In the course of a conversation yesterday my Mum mentioned a way to turn my artwork into money. I've often felt that my artwork was one of the things I should do more of and should find a way to use it to get more income. I thought about her suggestion for while, but ended up feeling that it was a bit hopeless -- the work would make a little money, yes, but not enough to make any difference. I would still live in poverty. When I thought more about why that was so, and whether I could somehow make it earn more I realised it resonated with something I've been hearing and reading more and more lately. If I did as Mum suggested it would cost a lot of money in outlay. The major costs were in managers and middle-men. Each thing shouldn't cost a lot, but did because it had to support layers of people above it that squeeze the maximum money from it. There is nothing wrong with paying for what you want in a healthy capitalist society; it can work brilliantly. The problem comes when people can artificially tighten a bottleneck and make people pay more than something is worth. It results in a very top-heavy system made up predominantly of managers and middle-men. Such a system is fragile and makes it very difficult for those who actually do create things. Last week I listened to an episode of Background Briefing that I'd missed much earlier. It was about the dangers the financial sector presents to our civilisation, and why something that is supposed to represent the purest capitalist philosophy has turned it all upside down. It creates little or nothing for society, but has become the richest of all, is sending viable businesses broke in the process, and is threatening the very fabric of our society. This made me think about how discouraged I become when I try to work out ways to earn money with what I can make. Everywhere I look, layers of middle-men stand between me and potential customers. I have nothing against people earning money without working. (I class doing something you enjoy as not working.) This is what almost everybody wants for themselves and their family. Yes, they do. Ask anybody what they'd like most. If they're honest they'll say they want their own business where others can do the work and they can retire and "live in the manner to which they'd like to become accustomed". Or they'd like to own property so they can live off the rent. Of course some people have been so completely taken in by the insane work-ethic they never think why they go to work every day. Or if they do, they guard their desires for a life of enjoyment as a guilty secret. Very few people actually do make the stuff that our civilisation lives on. We can actually have the same standard of living (or even better) without much of the worthless crap that clogs our society, and there really is no need to force people into slavery in order to produce it. Certainly we would use the world's resources at a less rapacious rate. What am I talking about here? Well, most importantly we could stop making all the disposable stuff. It fills up garbage dumps, makes fake work, and depletes the earth. We would be better off making the stuff properly once so that it lasted a lifetime. Also the culture of image, fashion, marketability, advertising, and yes, much art, could be lost and save us all a heap of time and effort. We would be better off paying everybody a living wage so that only stuff that was truly useful was made. Currently we pay people to destroy the planet. Much better to pay them for not doing it. When I talk about a universal living wage people often think I'm communist and am against people being rich. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reducing everybody to the same level of wealth would be as dangerous as the current system. Any ecosystem needs variety for it to remain healthy, and the same is true of society. Unfortunately the current system concentrates wealth in just a small number of hands, reducing what is available to everybody else. It would't matter so much if there was a reasonable amount of variability within the bulk of society and the ultra-rich were simply separate from the rest of the world, but this isn't how it works. The richest raise the price of goods and services beyond what the rest can afford. And in the crazy scramble to gain money it turns out that those who don't actually make anything get the largest slice of the money pie. I have a friend in New Zealand who is working herself into an early grave, for minimum wage, making meals for people in a nursing home. She is scratching out a bare existence, while the managers there live a much more luxurious existence. Something is wrong here. I'm not begrudging the managers their lifestyle, but I find it hard to reconcile that with the fact that someone who does the actual grunt work lives in what amounts to wage slavery. Part of the problem is our compulsion to over-consume. I'm proud of the fact that I manage to live comfortably on very little income -- I'm not a big consumer. Even if I manage to become moderately wealthy one day (yes, I'd like to) I will still not be a big consumer. I don't see the point. I don't want to spend money on an illusory lifestyle. I'd rather have less of truly worthwhile things. I don't want to have to discard vast amounts of packaging or pay for "services" I don't need. I don't want much, but I do need to put a bit more of a safety margin between me and starvation. Damn it. The sun's coming up. I'd better get back to bed. There is some programming that needs doing today and at this rate my brain's not going to be up to it. Darn... I wanted to mention the other thing I've been musing on lately: how people can think they like something when it is obvious they don't really, or have been duped into wanting something utterly worthless or self-destructive. That thread ties into my thoughts about why we consume so much and are so reluctant to change, but it will have to wait till later. |
| Saturday, 29th March, 2008 | |
| 8:55 pm | fairy story When I was very little my favorite story was one about a little fairy who would enviously watch all the children playing and desperately wished to be one of them, but of course couldn't because fairies walked above the ground, not on it. Also her wings were a dead giveaway. Over a long period of time she practiced stretching her toes down to the ground till she could actually touch it and give the impression she was tiptoeing. At this point she hid her wings in her clothes then went to meet the children. I don't remember much more of the story. What made a great impression on me was this extraordinary, beautiful, little creature putting herself through what amounted to torture in order to be able to play with ordinary kids. I adored the tale and have from time to time tried, in vain, to find it again. I think it was in one of those big children's storybook compendiums. Anybody heard of it? I've spent the last couple of days at my folks' place resurrecting first my parent's computer, then my sister's so haven't been on the net much lately. Succeeded with my parents' machine by cannibalising one of my own to rebuild it. Failed with my sister's -- I'll probably go get another of my machines tomorrow for her. |