Monthly Archives: February 2012
What’s up with NPR’s comments?
A friend sent me this NPR article about the origins of Valentine’s Day. Despite my usual love of history it didn’t strike me as especially interesting, I like my historical info much more in-depth. Preferably with citations. But then I looked at the comments.
Great Scott the comments are insane! People claiming the article slanders catholics, people bragging that NPR will soon be defunct, people howling that history wasn’t like that and in one memorably bizarre instance, someone claiming that the dark ages were the time before religion “stopped the heathen practices of their uncivilized, ancestors”. Exactly what that’s supposed to mean is unclear to me, but it sure was a strange thing to read. Read the rest of this entry
Future History
When ever we create a new technology, there’s a question of how long it’s going to last. This particular issue is well worth considering today, when we have planned obsolescence and the latest greatest thing that you absolutely must pay hundreds of dollars for right now will be useless in five years. But I was thinking about the nature of the internet and wondering how long it will survive.
See the ‘net isn’t a single thing, it’s an infrastructure, a collection of many, many technologies working together. Like roads and sewers the technologies change while the structure remains in place. This means that the internet has the potential to keep existing for a very, very long time. The remainder of human history, perhaps. It might even outlive us, if there are others to maintain it.
Since we tend to archive just about everything redundantly, it also allows for things like the Wayback Machine. Already, it’s possible for you to look at websites that are not only no longer maintained by their creators, but gone from their proper domains, too.
How long can those archives last? If we keep backing things up as we upgrade the servers, and keep using redundant systems that are good at maintaining data integrity, those archives could easily last centuries. It doesn’t seem implausible that they could survive as long as the internet itself.
Which means historians of the future will search internet archives to study our civilization. And since this is the beginning of the age of information networks, this period, right now, will be under intense scrutiny. They’ll be digging into our blogs, our videos, our tweets. Searching for understanding of how this age worked, how things changed. How we dealt with the transition to knowledge being so readily available to anyone with a wifi connection.
It’s a little intimidating to think that scholars of the future might be reading these very words and evaluating how accurate my speculation was. It’s also disconcerting to be speaking of my present in the past tense, come to think of it.
I wonder what they’ll think of it all. Will the internet of that time still be mostly nonsense? Will they marvel at how we once had to fight for free speech and used what were usually glorified rumor-mills to communicate vital information during a crisis? Or perhaps they will see it as a natural progression of the information networks we developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, as logical a next step as telegraph to telephone was, as obvious as using radio to coordinate emergency services. Or will they not know at all, will this data be suppressed or destroyed and lost to the people of the future?
A sobering thought, given the many attempts by many governments to censor or control the flow of information. We’ll just have to make sure they fail, so future generations will know what happened today.
Boundaries
It’s been a pretty intense week for me, and I ran into a problem today when I was trying to write. Everything I wanted to write about was so personal that I don’t feel comfortable posting it here. I scanned the greater blogosphere, but nothing jumped out at me as good writing fodder.
So I’ll just take a moment to ponder the boundaries of blogging in general and this blog in particular.
Fucking Perfect.
Spent pretty much the whole day on a bus or a train, and I’m beat. I’m back home where the air is brown, now. I’m feeling pensive, the way you get after a journey when you’re tired and putting off unpacking, and a friend sent me to this video. And since I don’t have anything interesting to write about just now, I’m going to share it with you.
Each and every one of you.
The spirit of letters
So there I was, looking for something to write about, and coming up empty. And as happens so often in both my blogging and my daily life, Wil Wheaton saved the day. He shared a post from Tim O’Reilly which included a link to this on Google+ and some good commentary.
Quoth Tim:
We must remember that the patent system was supposed to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts,” not to enrich people who know how to work the legal system.
I haven’t read the Wired link there because what caught my interest wasn’t patent trolls, but the strange duality we have between the letter and the spirit of the law. I suppose to a degree this is unavoidable, simply the price of working with words, but it really is a strange thing to me that we see arguments over what a law says versus what it means.
I’ve been told that at least one country includes, after the actual text of a law, an essay explaining the spirit in which that particular law was intended. Can’t remember which one that was, and I don’t even know how I could verify that anyways. But it’s a neat idea.
I was thinking maybe every constitution needs a sort of mission statement, a statement of principles that are the guidelines for interpreting laws when there’s any ambiguity or uncertainty. Which is a nice idea, but I don’t see a realistic way to make it work in a free society. I mean, unless you basically had it dictated by a… I’m going to say “monarch”, you’re going to wind up with a huge document filled with loopholes and things. Which makes the whole concept redundant at best, and probably just more legal chaff clogging things up.
So perhaps what really needs to be kept in mind is that laws are about people, and should be to serve people. That seems to be surprisingly easy to forget, at least for some people.
I’m not really happy with this post, I’d like to think some more and rewrite it. But my deadline approaches, and I’m tired.
No regrets?
I often hear people speak about living with no regrets, and when I actually stop to think about it, I wonder what they mean by that. See, from my point of view I can only see three ways to live without regrets, all of which result in a life I wouldn’t want to live in the first place.
First, I could live totally alone and never interact with people. Why bother? Even at my most reclusive times, I can only bear to be alone for so long.
Second, I could never seriously consider the long-term effects of my actions on other people. Never ponder the ripples I leave in my wake as I move through the world. As some famous dead guy once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Third, I could just not care. Just live without empathy or compassion. Perhaps I could enjoy a life such as that, certainly many people seem to enjoy it. But appearances often deceive, and I suspect many of them are neither as callous nor as happy as they appear. While there are certainly simple pleasures to be had, all the greatest joys of my life come from the warmth and love I share with those closest to me.
If you interact with people, you will occasionally hurt them. If you consider your life and your actions, you will notice this. If you care about the pain of others, sooner or later you will pick up some regrets. And really, that’s ok. We’re imperfect beings in an imperfect world, doing the best we can with what we have.
See the thing is, I don’t think most people who speak of living without regrets mean the same thing the phrase brings to my mind. I see a thousand little regrets everywhere, swimming around the great big leviathan regrets like pilot fish around a shark. I think to most, the phrase means not to never have regrets, but not to dwell on them. Not to let them weigh you down until you drown in that sea. There’s certainly something sensible about that.
What does “no regrets” mean to you?
Tiring day
It’s been a very long day for me. Spent much of it traveling from one city I’ve never been in to another city I’ve never been in, by way of a city I’ve only briefly visited, and the last time nearly eight years ago. Only got mildly lost twice, not bad for being out of practice at the travel thing. I’d like to thank the bus driver who let me on with my too large suitcase with only a scolding.
I’ve caught myself writing the wrong word a couple times in here already, it wouldn’t surprise me if I missed a few. Sorry about that.
Some of you got a sneak peak at my post a day safety net. I remember when I made it there was some weirdness, I didn’t realize that I’d made it a page instead of a post. That’s fixed. If all goes well, it will never be public again.
Not much more to say tonight, I’m exhausted. Take care everybody.
Prop 8 struck down again
As far as I can tell, it only has two chances left, at best. The full 9th circuit 11-judge panel appeal, and the Supremes. Well the Supreme Court, not the Supremes.
Prop 8 Trial Tracker has all the details, and the text of the decision, in case you want to read it or read about it from people who are better journalists than I am. But there’s one bit I really want to highlight. From page 5 of the decision:
All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of ‘marriage,’ which symbolizes state legitimization and societal recognition of their committed relationships. Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.
(Scribd didn’t want to let me copy & paste, btw, so that was typed out by hand. Assume any errors are my fault. Sorry about that.)
I guess I shouldn’t feel bad that a panel of judges who spend a lot more time & effort putting their thoughts and decisions into clear words than I do said it so much better than I’ve managed. I don’t really know what else to say about this that I haven’t said already.
The decision is going to be appealed, of course. It sounds unlikely that the 9th will do a full panel appeal, and the Supreme Court generally takes about 1% of the cases offered. It’s not clear to me what’s going to happen from here.
Oh, and in case you were wondering the stay is still in effect. No new marriages just yet.
What do you want out of life?
I’ve never known what I wanted out of life, in fact the question never really made sense to me. Life isn’t something I chose to get into for some sort of goal, or purpose, it was thrust upon me unasked-for before I knew anything about anything. Literally.
Look, I know that there is a universe outside of my personal perception, vast beyond proper imagining, next to which I am infinitely small. But in a very real way, at least from my point of view, my life is literally everything. You might as well ask what I want out of the whole universe.
To consider the grand scale of existence, the countless wonders it contains, and ask only what someone wants out of it seems petty, narrow minded and missing the point. It puts me to mind of a person having inherited a vast collection of beautiful works of art and journals containing first-hand accounts of major historical events and their complete family tree for the last thousand years, and only wanting to know “How much can I sell it for?”
I suppose that provides a simple, but woefully incomplete, answer for what I want more of in my life: knowledge and beauty. Not necessarily in that order, and mingled together as much as possible.
Sorry, I suck today.
Busy day and network issues, so you don’t get anything interesting. Sorry about that, but I’m sure glad I wrote the rules to accommodate days like this.
Something more substantial when I get a chance to catch up to the world, until then you get crap like this. Yeah, I’m not happy about it either.
Written on a train while easily distracted.
There’s a strange exhilaration to travel. I don’t mean the excitement of traveling itself, I’m talking about the tendency to see even the very familiar in a slightly different way when you’re racing past and will only see it for a moment.
Heavens help me as we left town I actually thought I might miss the place.
We’ve been chugging along for almost two hours now, and I keep finding interesting things to look at out the window. I shot a little video, but then realized that what’s interesting as you go by it probably isn’t interesting from the camera’s point of view, so I’m just going to relax and enjoy the trip for now.
Train is by far my favorite way to travel, although I still haven’t tried travel by dirigible yet. I seem to recall hearing that Zeppelins were the height of luxury in their day, and maybe someday lighter than air vehicles will make enough of a comeback that I can ride one cross-country.
Hey, there’s a goal worth reaching for! Travel around the world by airship! Land on every continent and see the world. Well, I guess I could skip Antarctica.
Who wants to help design my world tour dirigible? Would you like to come along?
Traveling
At this time tomorrow I should be on a train approaching misty San Francisco Bay. Since I have lots to do to get ready for that, I’m not going to post much right now. I’ll try to have something more substantial up tonight if I can get everything done early enough. If not, well I’m sorry but this will just have to do for today. I’ll probably write tomorrow’s post on the train.
It’s a little sad that I’m so excited about this short trip. In days gone by I more than once left for other time zones on an hour’s notice, sometimes with no clue how I would get home. Once I called a friend who I heard was visiting a nearby area to ask for a ride back.
That’s all for now, though. Too many things to do to spend time reminiscing. Have a great day everyone.
Winter Comforts
In my impromptu facebook poll of “What should I write about?” the winner seemed to be creature comforts during winter. Which sounds kind of dull to me, but hey I asked!
My number one comfortable thing in winter is hot drinks. Tea, mostly, but also cider & chocolate and sake. I’ve always wanted to drink hot sake while it was snowing, and hold my steaming cup out to catch a snowflake like they do in every Japanese story I’ve ever encountered where characters were drinking in the snow. Read the rest of this entry
Climate change, and checking the facts.
I had just finished reading this post about climate change at Bad Astronomy and was skimming the comments when I saw an exchange that I thought was worth writing about. The part I want to discuss can be summed up as a scientist rhetorically asking how hard checking the the facts can be and a layman answering “Very”.
Maybe most scientists don’t appreciate how hard something as simple as checking the facts really is for the rest of us. It’s not a matter of stupid or lazy, it’s a matter of time and skills. Read the rest of this entry
The Adventures of Leo Tarvi 