March 2004 - Posts
i dunno; watching all the election crap this year, i've been wondering how hard it would be to get on the ballot. or even qualify for a write-in. why ? for the hell of it. ie - why not ? the hell with exercising one's political freedom by voting - i move that we _all_ run in every election. hell, it should be required. like jury duty.
hmm: http://www.americancandidate.com. “political reality tv” on showtime. nah, not for me. i just want to be a candidate, not a _quality_ candidate. hell, we all know how we've chosen en masse throughout history, and _that's_ quality ? but i dunno - a reality tv show with consequence. fascinating ;-)
well, here's a game: President Forever: 2004. not quite what i'm looking for. hell, i don't want to _campaign_, just run ;-)
there's a massachusetts link that answers directly to a “how to run for president” search, but it seems to be the only state site that does. i mean, come on, we don't want it to be _easy_ to exercise our rights, do we ?
to me it looks like one would need a phd in beaurocracy and bullshit in order to get this done. no reason to be surprised there. not only are there different procedures to follow for each state for simply being considered a candidate, there are financial reporting requirements (state and federal) as well. it seems the default assumption is that all people who are interested in the office are cheats and are rich and have staffs. sheesh.
here's a list of state election links, the link to which i found on firstgov.gov. but most of these don't seem to lead to anything clearly useful. lots of digging to do.
i like this: project vote smart. long list of candidates there (and some nicely humorous political parties). does this site help out somehow ? seems to be more of a voters resource - and a good one, at that. hmm - there's a line of business for ya - learn how to run for president, then offer those services. there should be a package somewhere with all the forms, etc. available. it'd be nice to do all this online. (i wonder - would the barking spiders candidate answer questions on how to go about all this ? maybe not, but i bet visiting some of the “little guy's“ web sites might have more good info.)
well, this one is fun. interesting site to explore as well. i believe its basic conclusion is correct. as long as i can get signed / notarized affidavits from potential electors in each state (and probably on the appropriate forms as well), then i'd be in. so let's see, that's 535+ (547 ?) people nationwide. there's another service - get all those people to agree to be the electors for any candidate using the “run for president“ package. getting them in the first place ? shouldn't be so hard. one good /. post would do it ;-)
here are some useful links to links:
good election links, even some ideas of where to go for more specific info.
ok, sounds like a project. “what i did on my summer vacation“. cool. now, if only i could finish my planetary defence essay. i guess that would be part of my platform ;-)
do they still make jello 1-2-3 ? the stuff that used to have layers of regular jello on the bottom, foam on top, and something in between in the middle ?
i only ask because i was making black-and-tans, and it always reminds me of that old jello with all the layers. mmm - beer jello...
...dooo-bee-do-be-dooo...
ah, yes, spring is here, the green stuff is starting to grow (including the lawn - already), i shaved off my beard, and i just took a run down to taco bell with the top and doors off the jeep. still, i miss winter. i do wish i could find a place where it was winter all year round. high altitudes and latitudes, i guess. or if i had the money, i would chase the snow by skipping back and forth between the hemispheres. and there's always the antarctic job fair - i think. i haven't looked into that since 2001, i think.
but then there's still the summer activities to get into. it's like i've said before, i need seasons that are a lot longer. they need to last at least a year or two for me. i guess i'm just in the wrong orbit for that. hmm - this could be arranged as well. just need a job _way_ down south, winterover there, and alternate years doing that and doing diving / sailing stuff in the tropics. now _that's_ living. of course, there's no downhill skiing in the antarctic. lots of other stuff though.
so let's see, a hotter sun to support an earthlike climate in an orbit at about jupiter's distance. meanwhile, time to put this computer back into the cold end of the house, near the patio doors and back porch, see a bit of the outdoors again. and then all the yard work starts all over again. maybe this year i'll get the air conditioning fixed.
...dooo-bee-do-be-dooo...
recommended: American Dynasty: Excerpts (kevin phillips). also the recent book out on karl rove, and the latest from the ex-security chief. the first link references a long read, but it is an interesting perspective.
as usual, my lament is that there are no good alternatives for president, so we make our choices among the lesser of two evils. well, not sure that applies to kerry, really, but i would like to see a really charismatic and honest candidate for a change. is that ever a possibility ?
the two things that are my highest priorities are re-establishing america's foreign relations, and removing the erosions of civil liberties in the name of security, and it's clear that bush is not the guy for this. a high second priority is a continuing commitment to finish what we started out there - iraq, afghanistan, haiti, the balkans, korea, and african and south american commitments as well. kerry may actually be stronger than bush on these counts.
domestically ? bush's tax policy is flawed. kerry's protectionism will backfire and his other programs may be too expensive. it's kind of a toss up really, except that our freedoms are being stomped on right now, and anything done to relieve that will help the other domestic issues.
it occurs to me that electing kerry may head off the specter of another clinton running in 2008. then there's arnold's comments of overturning the requirement for a natural born citizen to be president.
bottom line is that i'm tired of the same political scene being there year after year, decade after decade. change is too slow. two term presidents ? well, ok. but i suggest that we only let people run once for any office, except when they are incumbent (having already nominally won a vote of confidence at some point). and maybe even limit family members to some extent - none within 25 years, say, and make sure a relatively extended family is affected. the idea is to reduce the ideological inbreeding in government that has brought much trouble throughout history.
we're beginning to develop the tools to employ more and more direct representation in our governmental activities. we need to quickly overcome the remaining hurdles in implementation of such technology. through nonlinear scaling effects, the sheer mass and size of our society and its institutions is resulting in effectively the same autocratic systems that this country was built against. (of course, this doesn't mean we should remove all buffering and filtering systems, as in the problematic financial markets. the correct response is to deliberately institute buffers for specific intentional purposes, rather than implicitly accepting the accreted anachronisms of history.)
crap. i told myself i wouldn't write about this. “self,” i said, “don't write about this”. but i never listen to me anyway.
looks more like "science" than "scifi"...
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,62687,00.html
thoughts:
- disease ?
- sexual preference ?
- fluids and odors in public areas ?
- what if you/they are not toothsome ?
- yuk.
- another reason to upgrade your tech.
- correlation between technical “haves“ and specific disease vectors ?
thanks again to craig for this link. ;-)
(actually, i wasn't sure what to call this post ;-) )
In a message dated 3/18/2004 13:52:40 Eastern Standard Time, craigg writes:
Books that most influenced you --
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/4/3157/15548
Another good kuroshin article. Mostly a posting, not a lot of content but still. Maybe I'll starting posting to my blog and start up with my top 10 books.
(update: here's his posting - Books that have influenced me
and i started to comment - and comment - ...
yeah, that _is_ a better than usual topic there. it would take me much work to remember such books in my life. a couple of observations:
- i'm not sure everyone's being completely honest, when i see listings of classic philosophical works and the like. perhaps they did most of their development later, and i know that happens, but sometimes i think they are trying to impress someone...
- which is interesting, because there is a lesson to be learned (for authors) from these postings: if you want to influence people, target your audience when they are the most open to it. that period seems to be late childhood / young adulthood. look at the number of heinlein references, etc. yeah, well, maybe that is a bit trite of an observation, but it's a good reminder nonetheless.
- something that is perhaps _not_ so obvious but that can be derived from the same information, is how minds can be influenced by the _lack_ of exposure to certain material at critical times in life. if appropriate works are inaccessible through mistargeting an audience, or an individual is busy with other reading, or for whatever reason, _exclusion_ of important content has an equally important effect on the developing mind.
- i only read about a fifth of the way down, but how come no one took a meta-view look at the list like i'm doing here ? odd.
- that the books listed show commonality tells you something about the self-selected posters in this group. i wonder how the same question would have turned out in other groups.
- i saw one reference to non-reading material in there, which may an indicator that exposure to other media may be becoming more and more important. again, perhaps a trivial observation. i'm sure a topic about "most influential external inputs" would bring that information to light, but that would include general life events as well. could be interesting, but more difficult to sort out due to the lack of focus.
- what about "_least_ influential" whatever. or is that by exclusion everything else ?
- that thread is a good source for additional wishlist items. beats the crap out of some of the amazon lists. so perhaps i'll link to it from my own as a related item of interest.
- where's the joke entries ? wow, such a good topic apparently sucked humor out of consideration completely. interesting. anyhow, i had an urge to post a list including "run, spot, run" and stuff like that.
- again, why no (or few) early childhood stuff ? like "rufous the redtail" or "runaway robot". we can only see so deep, i guess. penetrating the source of our own illusions is difficult.
- timing is critical. that phrase "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear" comes to mind. combining this concept with the comments on targeting and availability above, it's apparent that serendipitous confluences of life events with environment are the true influences, while the reading material chosen is more of a reflection of the learning being obtained from other sources.
- and then there are implied influences, those that we absorb because of indirect yet strong effects on the society around us and in our past. i suspect that most of us aren't aware of the really strong influences in our lives. thus, the list topic is implicitly "books _that i've personally read_ that most influenced me". again, seems a trivial observation, but i think this is important to explicitly recognize. we are products of our history, culturally and genetically. we should tip our hats to these pervasive world shakers. this also falls in the category of too deep to penetrate.
- it's good to see someone acknowledging comic strips. cool.
- and i haven't even begun to consider the posted reasons that people use to distinguish what is influential. rich material.
- someone makes a comment on the influences being in some cases _unwanted_ ones. yeah, that too. and then what about influential stuff that the _rest of us_ wish hadn't been - on others ?
- comment on posting technique: i saw only _one_ post where the author bothered to create links to the books listed. thank you ! geez, is that asking too much ? but then, it would be relatively easy to create a "create book link from title" app...
and more. good raw material for some research in there. anyone feel like a master's degree ? ;-)
S. African Scientist Wins Religion Prize
(why can't i get news directly from the ap anywhere ? it's always through one of their customers.)
quote from the article:
"The way in which science and religion by and large complement each other is becoming ever clearer, as are the natures of the various points of tension between them and some possible resolutions of those tensions," Ellis said. "It is a good time to look at these issues."
this is an area in which i often find myself thinking, but i came up with somewhat different conslusions on the relation between religion and science. still a very thomist way of looking at things. is there really still a need to attempt reconciliation between these concepts ? i understand where this was necessary centuries ago, when without such reconciliation the powers-that-were would have effectively stomped science out in its infancy. but now ? there is no inherent conflict. people have such a hard time with the paradoxes of being human.
do we really need religion to tell us when science is ok ? and do we need science to validate religion ? silly, right ?
well, he says “complement“. still senseless; these systems are each comprehensive and complete in themselves (outside of godelian and such considerations).
on the other hand, in the context of how we humans experience the universe, illusions and all, such efforts are understandable.
the spanish electorate: when they were handing out balls, spaniards thought they said dolls, and they wanted tiny ones, please.
the new spanish prime minister: his endorsement of john kerry will help george bush. nothing like having an idiot give you his full support.
geez, i had no idea:
U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny
now think back about all the news you've ever seen, heard or read, and consider how much of it may have been constructed by government or corporate entities without your knowledge.
we assume we have the protection of certain laws and rights, but apparently that's not the case as much as we might want to think. naive ? but i'm already cynical enough. the alternative is to become so skeptical and doubtful that i must independently check all facts myself. yeah, like _that's_ going to work. i'd be like those people who disbelieve the holocaust, or that man walked on the moon.
i've said it before, that one of the most distinguishing features of this country is that it's so much better at propaganda than everyone else. the soviet union's problem was that is was overtly manipulative, especially in areas that were gratuitous applications of power and not necessary to the corrupt practices of accumulating power and wealth - or even the well intentioned but misguided application of political ideals.
there needs to be some level of well placed faith and trust in order to function in this world, doesn't there ? even when the targets of such faith are illusory, such illusions are often necessary and inevitable, or at least useful. i trust that my floor won't fall out from under me. etc. and there are more significant examples of well, of course. i believe in my own consciousness.
but how do i operate as an independent entity when unknown wizards are manipulating the inputs to my senses for their own ends ? in these cases our belief in our own free will betrays us.
the trick is to somehow mentally escape the corral of history, the media, and even the common beliefs of friends and neighbors, while still being able to partake of the fruits of the mass efforts of humanity. but is the fruit unavoidably poisoned ?
whatever happened to all those predictions of the 50's-60's about colonizing the ocean ? i think they were thinking of the sea bottom at that time. i would add to that with surface, mid-ocean and above-ocean capabilities as well.
in fact, undersea living even for research has just about died out. i think there is one lab off of florida that is struggling to retain funding, and that's it.
i was just reading something about the us navy's “sea base” concept, made me think of civilian scenarios as well.
so why don't we have an ocean nation ? not an archipelago based one; there's lots of those. i mean a fully dry land independent entity. do oil platforms constitute one solution ? it would seem so.
yes, there are a lot of obvious constraints, but none that could not be overcome in some way. at the moment, i was thinking of security and transportation, and how ocean communities would differ from land communities in these ways. well, specifically, acheiving and controlling movement.
dry land geography imposes directional constraints, and there's a necessity to reduce friction somehow. in combination, these restrict vehicle size. in contrast, ocean vehicles accept the drag of their medium, and the general lack of geographical constraints allows them whatever size they can acheive.
but why not reduce ocean friction ? and why not have large land vehicles ? i guess hovercraft have been one common solution to this problem, but that hasn't been applied on a very large scale, either in numbers or in vehicle size. it's the difference between planing and displacement hulls, i guess, and the physical constraints involved, not to mention reliability, etc.
there's more to consider there, but there was one idea in particular that has intrigued me: what about using the air-bubble cushion not as support, but solely as a friction reducing layer ? say, for a torpedo. what if you could push a cushion of air out the nose (or perhaps a porous body surface) in such a way that, as far as the torpedo is concerned, it thinks it's traveling through air. would seem to me that the whole thing could move an order of magnitude faster. sure, there are practical problems to overcome, such as the source of that much air - or rather, gas - and how to expel it in such a way that the net propulsive force is not negatively impacted, but hey, sounds like a neat experiment. (gas - why not use fast generation of steam somehow ? then it becomes an on-board power generation issue rather than gas reservoir issue.)
now, say you get really good at this type of technology. what happens to submarines ? i think you end up with the ocean equivalent of fighter jets. zoom ! and at that rate, you probably have very fast fully amphibious vehicles - in, on or over water.
back to basics - how can we get an object simply to drop to the bottom of a water tank very quickly using this concept ? many jets of air going in all directions ? what about the net size of the “bubble” about the object and displacement / bouyancy effects ? doesn't the front air cushion become compressed, tranfserring pressure to and slowing the object ? so how fast do those air jets need to be ? and in what directions do they point ? never mind transitions, how does this bouyancy affect fully submerged objects ? what about using water jets instead ? and solid matter jets for a land craft analog ? and so on.
finally, the ultimate slipstream/envelope technology would be to find some way of inducing / creating a vacuum around an object. no friction based speed constraints at that point (ie, “supersonic“ is no longer an issue). and, to get even more speculative, and highly improbable, what about spacetime slipstream effects ? the idea being to escape light speed constraints by “cushioning” against spacetime. now it sounds like i'm talking about the andromeda series. no need for “subspace“ or “hyperspace“ drives. just disconnect from the universe temporarily, that's all ;-)
anyway, just some odds & ends thoughts that have occurred here & there.
... shouldn't i be able to call in to a re-run of a psychic show ?
as so often happens, blogging is prompted by email:
craig writes:
In a message dated 3/04/2004 13:30:59 Eastern Standard Time, craigg@ writes:
<snip>
I saw Bill Maher on Larry King last night. He made an interesting comment about offshoring. He said all of these candidates are talking about protecting jobs when we should embrace this global change and work with it. He quoted Bill Clinton (who he adores) on that. Clinton apparently said hey look offshoring is coming, we can't stop it, it has too much momentum. Instead of fighting it we better use it to our advantage. Instead of throwing up trade barriers lets retrain displaced workers in higher skilled jobs and make this country more competitive. That's a big debatable item today I know but I usually lean more that way than going with protectionist policies. Unfortunately I can't find anyone that agrees with me -- you, gregg, Lou, my mom, people at work all think alike. Maybe I'm wrong?
i respond:
you're just feeling (political-issue) isolated, is all. me, my opinion is still up in the air.about this, and it's temporally dependent as well. eventually, a wide open global economy is both desirable and inevitable, but i think we should choose our footing on the path there when we can. and the final consequences (if there can be any such thing in this forever moving world of ours) are likely to be very different from what both main camps of opinion (protect or not) think. you think all things rise; not so. "progress" is neither monotonic nor inevitable, and its very nature is debatable anyway. resources, innovation, etc. are in finite supply. so to envision what happens, in a broad stroke view, basically just imagine averaging out living conditions over all participants in the economy. there's an analogy to thermodynamics as well (which is always a good source for looking for predictable patterns in systems of large numbers of "particles") - you need differentials in state (temperature, order, whatever) for useful work to be done. and one also has to recognize that people will generally view things from their own local temporal-spatial circumstances, and then large scale behavior will emerge from that.
so - there are realities and perceptions. it is inevitable that this transition will be most painful for those in currently advantaged societies. eventually the pain will secede not so much from real effects but in peception, which is all that's needed. however, that could take decades. and it is also inevitable that the large-scale global average will be _less_ than the sum of its parts, synergistic effects notwithstanding. there is an entropic analog in any large system. but this will be masked in large part due to perception, and there will be some real effect of "progress" as current inertial forces take us over the hump.
geographic (spatial) boundaries have been growing increasingly less important in all human affairs over the years / centuries / millenia. that's an interesting phenomena to ponder, and in this context one might consider such non-geographic differentials as the driving source for global power, but i need to think about that more. we also seem to be making inroads on temporal boundaries as well, but that's not always a good thing (for example, seeing the era of european colonization of the americas out of local context). these are interesting effects that merit attention. in the abstractness of these concepts lies their power, yet their obscurity will make their practical application difficult.
in a sense, to preserve a system's ability to do work, we will need to continue searching for and creating boundaries. part of the long (_long_!) term social engineering effort.
so how does this translate to near-term efforts in the transition to an ever more global economy ? that depends on one's goals, as always. formulate some goals for me, and i'll tell you how to achieve it ;-) this is where you took my posting on this topic the wrong way, maybe. i was merely stating a "then" to someone's "if". but you have to be very clear on your thinking first for this to work, in terms of understanding all your underlying goals and values. that's where we usually fall apart politically, we end up using one nominal battle to fight others. that may be an unavoidable political reality in actual appication, but in investigating and planning such applications, there's no excuse for such ambiguity.
note that the retraining system is largely corrupt right now, but that can be changed.
economically, it's useful to reduce things to a "basket of goods" interpretation. a "fair" economy would have the same goods costing the same in labor everywhere and at everytime. this interpretation (value-dependent definition, really) at least has some advantages of being relatively easy to understand and more widely acceptable than others. so, it seems that china, for example, can buy roughly the same goods for the same type of labor as in the us, and so corporations on either side of the ocean should probably not be able to take advantage of market differentials that are divorced from the underlying reality. on the other hand, it appears that software workers in india are getting a lot more bang for their rupee (?) for their equivalent labor. so pay them less ? pay us more ? perhaps that is making a statement about the intrinsic worth of this occupation. clearly, something's out of whack somewhere. so take a bit larger view. ahh, such a thing is manageable in india since the _average_ basket is lower. when we pay programmers there, we are actually paying the rich to be richer. and their labor laws and social mores with regard to work are different than ours. just as with steroid use, to what extent is "enhanced" output acceptable, and why or why not ? again, what are your goals ?
so that gets to the meat of it, really. this particular topic really uncovers our underlying individual (and collective) value systems, perhaps more so than other topics because we are "closer to the metal" of the survival instincts here. which is what it always comes down to.
you have never had a bout of unemployment, have you ? consider that list of people you mentioned. they all have, haven't they ? hmm ? does that answer some questions for you ? not to say anyone's right or wrong, but these things are important to one's perspective. you don't _have to_ have been there to understand, (as with a classic complaint about priests being marriage counselors) as long as you put in some careful consideration, but it can ensure that you don't miss the obvious without it.
overall, a very complex issue. i suppose the next step (at least in this particular analytic approach) is to break down and identify the major divisions of goals-values in this regard, then enumerate / evaluate (/ score ?) all options with respect to each of these divisions, and finally come up with some conclusions based on this exercise, but dang, if i was to write a dissertation like that, i would at least want some official credit ! ;-)
so that's why my opinions remain up in the air, and will likely remain so. it's because i'm both intellectually lazy and intellectually responsible ;-) but you can also see why i am not prevented from making strong statements on the topic, given some sort of context within which to respond. ask me no questions, i'll tell you no lies.