Salon Des Geeks

I heard this quotation on the radio(Fresh Air was interviewing the author of “State of War”):

“The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy.”

Bush of course, back in Decemeber.

It made me think of two things:
1) Bush believes that war is a zero-sum game.

I believe that the Geneva Convention proves that war is not a zero sum game. Moreover, by passing laws which require everyone to act honorably, we provide more for ourselves than our enemies. We would have acted honorably anyway, so it costs us nothing, and affirms our honor. But those who act with dishonor are doubly damned, by natural law, and man’s law. I recall a book I read recently where a character observed that societies ban what they most want to do so perhaps I am wrong about what McCain and Bush each desire.

2) I see a parallel between my complaints about Bush and Antony’s funeral oration.

No, I don’t think that Bush is Caesar. The American Caesar is the Constitution. It grants to us in its will its freedoms. But the The Bill of Rights was overly ambitious, grievously so, and for this fault Bush, who loves the Constitution slayed it, and Bush is an honorable man.

Antony’s conclusion also holds. Lest the crowd be incited to violence, wronging these honorable men, I should sooner wrong myself, wrong our dead liberties, and wrong you.

This quote from today’s NYT’s hinges around the word however neatly bridging the reasonable statement, and reasonable quotation from the Constitution. The by line was “By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN O’NEIL.”

General Hayden defended the program’s constitutionality. He said the lower, “reasonable belief” standard conformed to the wording of the Fourth Amendment, asserting that it does not mention probable cause, but instead forbids “unreasonable” searches and seizures.

“The constitutional standard is reasonable,” he said. “I am convinced that we are lawful, because what it is we’re doing is reasonable,” he said.

The Fourth Amendment, however, reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

An interesting word from the pages of The Economist:

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/autarky

The context was:

Mr [Hugo] Chavez[, President of Venezuela,] champions “endogenous development” for his country. Albeit inadvertantly, that is starting to look like autarky.

My literary love, Michael Chabon, has written a delightful homage to Arthur Conan Doyle called The Final Solution*. Although it is never explicitly stated, the main character is an older Sherlock Holmes, in retirement fifty years after his glory days. The following quote is at the heart of the novel, and I found it too provocative not to share.

The application of creative intelligence to a problem, the finding of a solution at once dogged, elegant, and wild, this had always seemed to him to be the essential business of human beings – the discovery of sense and causality amid the false leads, the noise, the trackless brambles of life. And yet he had always been haunted – had he not? – by the knowledge that there were men, lunatic cryptographers, mad detectives, who squandered their brilliance and sanity in decoding and interpreting the messages in cloud formations, in the letters of the Bible recombined, in the spots on butterflies’ wings. One might, perhaps, conclude from the existence of such men that meaning dwelled solely in the mind of the analyst. That it was the insoluble problems – the false leads and the cold cases – that reflected the true nature of things. That all the apparent significance and pattern had no more intrinsic sense than the chatter of an African gray parrot.

In an interview at the end of the book, Chabon expressed his admiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing and a wish that The Final Solution will inspire readers to pick up the old Sherlock Holmes books. It sure worked on me – I’m absorbed. Speaking of which, gotta go read….

* I love this clever title because it references not just the “Final Solution” of Nazi Germany, which figures in the novel’s plot, but also the name of the story in which Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893, titled The Final Problem.

A friend pointed me to this : http://www.pandora.com/

They build a ‘virtual’ radio staition based on liking individual songs. It took my stated preference for ‘Thousand Kisses’ by Leonard Cohen a little too literally, and started playing Barry Manilow. I decided not to register(yet) , but playing with the application for a little while was fun. Since I listen to so little music, I like the idea of being able to explore the …. search space in this sort of way.

You might remember that last year at a salon I raised a question that I shamelessly stole from smarty-pants online foundation Edge, which produces such a thought-provoking question each and every year and wheedles smart people into answering it. Last year the question, which I thought was fascinating, was: “What do you believe that you cannot prove?” I’m still interested in everyone’s response to this question, incidentally, even if The Edge is not.

This year’s question is: “What is your dangerous idea?” What they mean by this is not entirely clear — I suppose we’re supposed to form our own interpretations.

For anyone who hasn’t heard, my dangerous idea in 2006 was quitting my job. How dangerous this idea will prove to be has yet to be seen. Will litigate for food.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/06/science/06cats.html?hp

I am really enjoying the SciFi channel’s new series. I have a great nostalgia for the original series (`Face in Space’?), but I really think that the newer series has taken the general situation in interesting directions.

The basic setting of BG is that a robotic enemy, the Cylons, has almost completely eradicated the human race. Only one warship ‘Battlestar Galactica’ escaped the betrayal. The few survivors have decided to seek refuge with the lost tribe, which left to some place called ‘Earth.’ They are constantly running from the superior forces of the Cylons.

I really like the dynamic of having protagonists who are in an essentially losing position, and must constantly flee. So many series have superhero protagonists with plot immunity, which tends to remove character motivation. (I really like to use this technique in role-playing games).

The interesting direction the new series has taken is have the Cylons be man-made robots, and to have some subset of the Cylons appear human.

Now, I think the definitive film in this genre is Bladerunner. If you have not seen it, then you really should watch it three or four times. It is an aquired taste, but it is really the best Science Fiction film ever made. (Or is that Abres Los Ojos?) .

Any time I hear this sort of plot I begin to worry that the result will be an abomination like Will Smith in “I, Robot.” But, I really think that the new BG has steered clear of those pitfalls, and also has introduced a way to examine Identity, which is really what Robot Sci Fi is all about.

The net of it all is that I recommend watching the series….

There are many windows on a train at night. Out of each, you might see a glimpse of a city, a face, a scene. But the rushing movement takes each away. The action limits your capacity to dwell. Whatever catches your eye, you are held fast to the journey.

The characters in Kong are on such a train. They are confronted by mortal crises. They are surrounded by moral dilemmas. But in each moment is the action which carries them past. I think that this is a strength. It keeps the story pure. If any one character were to grapple with a problem, discuss it, analyze. They would anchor the entire train, and it would turn the film into a train wreck of dialogue. The response of action to each crisis, and action for each dilemma, prevents this. Which is good, because the central conceit is so delicate that without this protection we would not be held fast to it.

“And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.”

I have been playing recently with embedding google maps in my wiki. I’d like to be able to visually represent locations, and connect them with data. For example, take a picture of a view(or a um interesting rock), and show the location of the view(rock) on a map. Or, link the location of my brother with information about him. For now, the icons are really boring, but I am learning some new tricks.

It turns out that google maps are really quite fun. There is a lot of information out there about how to manipulate google’s javascript code.

As a side project, I decided to create a google map of Hyrule. For the uninitiated, Hyrule is the name of the video game world in The Legend of Zelda one of the best titles for the original Nintento Entertainment System. My plan is to provide a instructions for a speed route through the game via a map with pretty icons(coming soon).