fractalnavel

top 100 movies that you have seen: take the poll.  based on the imdb top 250 list.  but obviously there will be some volatility with newer movies.  it's tempting to draw a line in terms of age, and select only those, but clearly some recent movies belong regardless.  so, it is what it is.

polls ?  eh, they're easy to set up, and this one seemed obvious.  you can alway go to imdb and register, to record your own movie list, etc.

anyway, i'm sure this one will be less exclusive than the “top 100 wonders” poll.  have fun!

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to be, or not to be: that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? to die: to sleep; no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wish'd. to die, to sleep; to sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause: there's the respect that makes calamity of so long life; for who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death, the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of? thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pitch and moment with this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.-- soft you now! the fair ophelia! nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remember'd.

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(shooting off my mouth)

ok, here's some stuff i've written recently that i'm not even sure i agree with; off the cuff crap, or a rant, really.  but the starting point for improved conclusions is often erroneous ones.  so here goes...

on “creative” baby names (and remember, some babies grow up to your dentist):

craig:

Kind of like that baby name website. Someone pointed out it's not "edgy" to give your kid one of those freak names. Edgy would be to NOT give it a name at all.

me:

names have been idiotic for some years now.  kinda scary when you think about the mental processes that occurred behind them.  and these people are _parents_ ?!  and now we're dealing with second order effects.  where's an exterminator when you need one.

no name. kinda like "the artist formerly known as prince". must we have some means of identification ? if so, what constitutes a valid means ? back to alien communication considerations.

what's this crap about "edginess". extreme baby naming. oooh, i'm impressed. name your kid "fuck you", if you must use words. it'd be interesting to see when the kid figures it out, and what sort of mind bending ensues.

ah, hell: wikipedia:Personal_name, wikipedia:Given_name is more sobering. if one considers the purpose of "names", and their usage, the more bizarre concepts are readily excluded. they're linked to current sensory / communications modes. so one valid form of name for the deaf might be a simple sign/gesture ("what's your name?" [flip 'em the bird]). but we are still limited by our senses, and pictures might be too dynamic (as in aging, or clothes, etc.). so we still use letters and words to communicate. it's conceivable that other capabilities could evolve; could be an interesting experiment to see if a brain could adapt to a purely visual "vocabulary", or things other than linear dimension.

what's in a name: this seems to be what people are doing. such an ancient superstitious - and pretentious - thing to do, naming one's kids to show off one's _own_ creativity, and so on. and then there's the perceived effect of name on the person's life. this is one of those cases where perception can become reality. an ideal name would be a completely neutral identifier - but the neutrality itself would be taken as a statement in this society. so "john" and "mary" etc. are the true neutrals, the common names. but the connotations of ordinariness are also unwanted, and so these won't work either. and these also indicate sex in this culture, and that should go as well.

if we must go with pretensions and descriptions, i like the old american indian tradition. "dances with wolves". ha! we could have all kinds of nasty stuff. but that will only fit in certain languages; english is too clumsy with these forms, and we cross the line from naming into description.

so perhaps "edgy" would be a pure rationalization of naming, something based on, yet not exposing, a philosophy, not "see what i can do with spelling!". or mythology. or whatever. geesh. what morons.

so the next time someone tells you their name, an often appropriate response would be "i'm sorry".

craig:

I say we have id names like a database unique id, perhaps a guid. And then we could have display names. I feel like a Carl this week, next week I may like Quasimoto. Or like you said, your avatar changes with the times. Last year I had the "death to Bush" avatar, this year I'll be "catch a tsunami".

me:

nope, those'd be invalid names based on purpose/function/usability considerations.  our comm modes/senses don't work that way, although i'm sure that might be something valid for a digital ai.  yet, i doubt they would choose such, as they would have a much larger, richer set of options available.

on marriage:

craig (expanding on dynamic names - an interesting jump):

Marriage should be like a business contract that is only good for 1, 3 or 5 years. After the contract expires, the parties can decide whether to renew it or not. If not the assets are easily split with no strings attached. The children issue would mess that up but it's a start.

me:

that's an old marriage idea, actually.  but it wouldn't be considered "marriage", vocabulary-wise.  i've seen it in various forms of scifi.  what would be the purpose of such a contract ?  for that matter, what is the purpose of marriage ?  fits the current arbitrary social structure, is all.  there is already property law, sex law, and some rudiments of child-rearing law (one purpose of marriage is to avoid this last one).

one of the few odd practical matters that people bring up in this context is health insurance benefits.  to be entirely fair to the unmarried folks, such plans should either allow _no_ coverage to anyone but the primary insured, or should allow _anyone_ to cover one additional arbitrary person indefinitely (corresponding to "spouse"), and an arbitrary number of "dependents" for some limited period of time (akin to "children").  this should actually be some rather easy class action lawsuit material, logically speaking.  but there are some interesting prejudices in society.

on an engineered society (BIG can of worms here):

me (extending the marriage line of thought to social institutions in general):

the use of government to encourage / discourage certain social behaviors, regardless of legality, is specious.  for example, "families", and all that this currently entails.  this is not the only viable social structure available.  why the biases ?  it's pretty obvious.  separation of church and state ?  how about separation of state and _value_.  again with the social engineering idea.  if you were to build a system from scratch, what would it look like ?  allowing legislative bodies to make arbitrary law, and inheriting a common law structure from europe, only implicitly embeds all the anachronisms accumulated over the ages.  even "democracies" are really suspect - what are the qualifications of the electorate and their candidates ?  none.  these are things for "experts" - yet, in truth, we have none (formally).  why is this (arguably, most important) academic discipline missing ?  surely something substantial could be cobbled together from existing programs such as sociology, economics, law, poli-sci, etc.  with, of course, a core of newly developed material. 

people object to being "controlled", but the objection is normally only to _obvious_ control, such as eugenics, or scientifc experimentation.  but control is being constantly exerted all along - and somehow, we seem to prefer this ambiguous arbitrary form vs. something more rational and conscious.

am i looking for utopia ? no.  more effective and "fairer" ? yes.  yet _all_ groups would be disempowered under this concept, and we all know the ruckus _that_ would cause.  the disempowerment is one of the necessary features.  yet there is still a need for focus, and this is where the new discipline comes into play.

and one of the first duties of such a discipline is to look after its own development, in that the power-hungry and corrupt types are excluded to the greatest extent possible.  in fact, it would probably decide to make itself an _un_desirable profession, and it would use a compulsory draft to select the appropriate individuals.

of course, maybe the ideal is that in a society there are no such things as inappropriate people.  now _that's_ utopia.

now, to me the idea of an “engineered society” (more comonly known as “social engineering”) sounds like a good thing.  but the history of these efforts is something far different (one reason i prefer the first phrase).  so there is a negative view of (overt / organized) attempts to control a society, and even some current examples that are seen in a less than postive light (eg, singapore).  but it's all in the way it's handled, and, as i said, it's happening anyway.

so i'd like to spend some more time reading in this area (wikipedia has good starting points), thinking about it, etc.  i'd like to see where my “neo-determinism” concepts apply, but it's a fairly complex effort.  however, i think that acknowledging the current state of such things, combined with a humanisticly informed mechanistic perspective, will lead to some solid ideas.  it's fun, in any case.

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take the poll: which have you seen / visited ?

i was browsing around, the The World's Top 100 Wonders site looked interesting, and it kept talking about checklists and feedback & stuff, but never provided much in the way of tools.  so i made my own ;-)

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file this one in the “what were they thinkin' ?” bin:

huygens probe: they plan a mission for ten years, wait for it to reach it's destination for another seven, then allow only three hours of battery life - actually, two and a half.  why?

• the primary reason appears to be political.  radio thermal generators (rtg's) are normally used on missions of this type, but the use of nuclear materials is still considered sensitive by the esa.
• there was some concern about contamination of titan's environment, but i would consider this to mostly be a rationalization for the above policy, and effectively an extension thereof.
• rtg's add significantly to payload size/mass, exceeding huygens constraints.  again, this may be a secondary effect - if you know you're going to exclude rtg's, you can design small. 
• why not use a larger (conventional) battery ?  part of the mission design was an expectation that the probe would not survive landing, so they designed only enough power for descent phase.  then they hoped it would survive, which is kind of silly.

which all kind of leads me to think that a more robust probe / mission could have been designed.  it seems such a waste...

speaking of which, that wikipedia article linked to above mentions two other mission screw-ups:

• the loss of one data channel, which caused loss of half the photographs and almost the entirety of one experiment
• a comm system error that was caught in time

after the beagle screw up, i'm beginning to think the esa should be on probation or something.  those resources could be better spent.  then again, to be fair, these aren't easy things to do.

but the fundamental problem is really humanity's relatively low priority for space things in general.  oh, we're interested, but we don't want to pay for it.  i wonder what an all-out intensive effort could accomplish.  and this applies to comments made with respect to cancer and aids research as well.  rather than have many concurrent programs that never seem to acheive the necessary critical mass to succeed (like iraq), why not pick these things off one at a time ?  well, a few at a time, anyway.

ah, the benefits of an engineered society.  note that i'm not saying “utopia”.  we just need to get our shit together here.  where's the project management office for this planet ?

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having a discussion over at craig's blog on his Faith post.  and no, it's not about “does god exist”, or anything first order like that.  more of a meta discussion on issues around the issue.

which i kinda like, as it belies the naive absolutism that many folks bring to the "debate".  there are many deep philosophical and psychological issues involved, even, at root, physical ones, and to ignore all that while attempting to impose one's worldview on others is an act of political manipulation, not faith, and certainly not intellect.  it sure isn't responsible behavior.

and yes, this would be a meta meta discussion ;-)

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the lodge

who says jeeps don't get stuck ? well, no one, really, that's why they make winches. could have used one. remember that road marked by a dotted line that i mentioned ?  well, it got me on the third night. it had just begun to snow, and on a single lane steep section i slowed down when i saw the minivan (!) in front of me slip its tires.  at that point i lost momentum, and my tires wouldn't catch, so i started backsliding down the mounttain with my wheels locked (note: antilock brakes only work in forward!).  choices:  floor it, try and get moving again - but that was torquing the vehicle around.  try to steer the slide backward down the road - uh uh, especially if it starts to get faster - there's a turn back there covered with ice !  the left side was down the mountain.  so i put it into the ditch on the right, as gently as possible, the right rear corner of the jeep stuck into the mountain side.

so here i am out in the west virginia / maryland boonies with my niece, on the side of a mountain, and it's snowing.  apparently this lack of traction is only a jeep wrangler problem, since a couple comes by in some suv shortly and gives us a lift.  after trying to push the jeep out first.  it was that close to being unstuck.  but i guess i would have needed locking differentials to drive it out of there.  the left front wheel was hanging six inches off the road, and it was blocking some of the single lane.

wish i had a picture, it was pretty funny, considering. 

so, back at the lodge: (no cell phone reception in mountains):

found out aaa wasn't worth a damn.  after having my call redirected several times (the confusion because i was staying in west virginia, but the car was in maryland), and 45 minutes or so of getting the information across, i am told i have to be with the vehicle or they won't come out.  i'm like - hey, there's six inches of snow out there, and it's still falling, and you want me to have someone go back to that steep icy spot and wait for an indefinite amount of time just so you can positively identify the vehicle ?  thanks a lot, buddy.

if you can see the little red circle penned in...

speaking of buddy, that was the name of the private towing service i tried next.  he was like, no, i don't do aaa service anymore, and sure, i can get you outa there.  how much ?  oh, $150. 

sorry, buddy.  no sale.

screw it, we packed it in for the night, after calling the sheriff to let them know a vehicle was on the road in a bad spot.  he didn't seem concerned, didn't ask for any info at all.  maybe he was buddy's brother.

we get out there the next morning, taking the “safe“ way around the mountain, instead of over it.  the truck we're in won't make it up the slope; the four wheel drive won't catch.  after messing with that for a while, we walk up a half mile or so to see what's what. 

the jeep's still there (under a foot of snow), no one has run into it or anything.  but the battery's dead, of course, from the flashers being on all night in zero degree weather.  can't take another shot at driving it out.  a bit later a friend of the lodge's owner shows up in his bronco, but the battery won't charge (time to junk those old jumper cables i have).

meanwhile, the mailman, who lives at the turn in the road at the bottom, has noticed our efforts.  he talks to the to the guys running the big (big) road plow / cinder truck, and eventually that thing just pulls the jeep right outa there (so that's why the tow hooks are on the front of my jeep!).

after some more help from the mailman (who drives a suburu outback with studded tires), we manage to coast the jeep off the hill, get the battery charged and checked, and on my way.  by the time i'm back at the lodge, it's 1:30p, and everyone has headed home.

which was the way this had all started three days before, when i arrived hours before everyone else, and had this way cool hunting lodge all to myself for a bit.  lots of dead things and killing things on the walls, big old fireplace.  sleeps 50 (we had 30).  and - get this - satellite tv.

so thanks to all the very generous people that helped:  the couple who picked us up and got us back to the lodge, the leaders of the scout troop i was with (same troop as august's crabfest (and btw, that's a real good group of people, that scout troop, from the leaders to the kids)), the lodge owner and his friends, the mailman, and the road crew.  a big round of bonus karma points to everyone.

the jeep ?  not a scratch, i think.  and barely any mud.  go figure.

oh, yeah - the skiing.  i knew i was out there for a reason ;-)  wisp had taken a beating from the recent warm weather, as we thought.  only half the runs were open, but the temperature had just dropped and there had been a tiny bit of snow, and they were making massive amounts of snow as well, which continued all weekend.  so the skiing was pretty good.  the trails are much prettier than what you can see in their web cams. 

part of the lift ticket package included a couple hours of instruction, so even though they only had beginner and intermediate groups, i figured i could always use some brushing up, and just join in the group for fun.  the instructor was very good at managing the multiple-level group we had, so we all had learned something by the end of the session.  i was happy - he had good things to say about my skiing ;-)  guess it's time to hunt out the advanced instruction when i can find it / when the opportunity arises.

 i was tempted just to stay at that lodge for a while (with permission, of course).  by the way, it's rentable, i forgot to ask for how much, but that would be a great place for all kinds of get togethers.  there's a large kitchen, several showers and bathrooms, lots of bunks.  one of the leaders had volunteered to do the cooking and stuff all weekend.  how nice can you get ?  and great food it was, too.  especially the venison sauce spaghetti saturday night.  ate way more than i should have.  but it was worth it ;-)

that's a beautiful area, and i ended up driving back on (sr7/sr26) us50 / us32, avoiding the interstates and traffic, and actually made better time as well.  but it sure wears on a person to deal with all that twisty turny up and downy steep and icy stuff for hours - wow.  but ol' jeep was up to it.  i guess one night out in the snow, dark and cold was enough ;-)

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(click on title)

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66 f. in the middle of january !  almost makes me want to throw a kegger.  i keep thinking i should be sailing.  the problem is that all the launches are under thirty feet of water (in some cases, the docks have floated away), and the roads are all closed off, in ways that can't be driven around.

well, at least i should be sanding & stuff.  lazy me. 

the temps will drop tomorrow to january norms, so it is said.  concrete slabs around here are still cold, so they are “sweating” with all this humidity.  will there be ice ?  who knows.

speaking of which, it looks like it has been warm and rainy for at least the last week at this weekend's ski destination as well.  which means slopes made of ice when the temps drop.

hmm, freezing water as floodwaters recede (slowly).  i wonder if that means a lot of ice in strange places.  could be a neat effect.

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q: how long do you have to go without sex before you become a virgin ?

a:

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i noticed something funny happening over at channel 25 (upn) last week: the shows didn't match the schedule.  and what's this “urban amerca television” thing ?  did we just lose upn ? 

not that it bothered me that much, since their low signal strength made them too fuzzy to really appreciate here.  made me do things like avoid “enterprise”, stuff like that.  (no, i have no cable.  i'm glued to this couch enough as it is.  hey - maybe that's why they call 'em “gluteus”.)

so i finally got around to checking - seems they switched stations / broadcast frequencies.  not that i understand the ins & outs of broadcast frequency distribution.  of course, i didn't pick up on this since i hadn't been watching; i'd guess that upn had made some sort of preparatory noise to its viewers - ?

anyway, my first clue as to what happened was by checking the channel numbers on my tv programming grid - and upn shows as channel 25 still, but broadcasting on channel 38.  sure enough, it's there when i switch over.

ok, time to change the programming on my remote.  not sure i want to even bother with the new 25/uatv right now.  although they do seem to show some cheesey movies at times of day when no one else has got anything interesting.  their primetime sucks though.  unfortunately, i can't find a channel for them in the zap2it.com data; 25 still points to upn.  i imagine they'll eventually straighten this out.

and in the end, 38/upn still comes in fuzzy here.  maybe they boosted their strength, but their location makes the net effective signal strength here pretty much the same.  which kinda makes me wonder what they really gained by that move - the local effective signal strength had to remain fuzzy for the same reasons that 25 was limited in the first place.  of course, that neglects their new frequency location, which makes that last statement somewhat inaccurate.  but still, it seems the new customers they pick up will be outside the cincinnati area, while the rest of us are still only receiving fuzzy upn. 

i guess enterprise will remain on the back burner.

update 2005.01.24:

irony: i founda new antenna orientation that brings in channel 25 very well, while 38/upn is still a fuzzy mess.

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