Pattern Recognition

Thankfully, there are still a few things that our gelatinous, lumpy, carbon-based data processing organs can do better and faster than a machine. One of these miraculous 'mutant powers' is called pattern recognition. This ability was an important milestone on the road to higher intelligence. A child is better equipped for many pattern recognition tasks than some of the most sophisticated computer hardware running cutting edge software. Some day computers emulating human/animal neural processes may force me to eat my words. The advent of truly 'intelligent' tools and devices will allow humanity to scan the infinite nooks and crannies of the natural world in an explosion scientific discovery. I just hope I'm around to see it.

If, by chance, you want to apply your amazing gift for pattern ecognition skills to a useful purpose . Go to GalaxyZoo and help astronomers categorize some of the millions of entire galaxies (clusters of hundreds of BILLIONS of stars) that have only been seen by a few (if any) human eyes. After taking a simple 3-5 minute tutorial, you are charged with a simple but awe inspiring task. You will be shown an image of a real unclassified galaxy in our universe, you need to click a button for spiral galaxy (and which way it's spinning), elliptical galaxy (round but not spiral arms), or something else (a star, a satellite in the telescopes view, alien starship, etc.). I keep finding myself going back there again and again, but it makes me feel like some kind of meat computer.

Do you Buntu?

While I've gotten around to updating my blog, I wanted to mention my successful transition to Ubuntu Linux. For those of you dreading the upgrade to Vista and are of an experimental nature, I highly recommend giving Ubuntu a try. It's becoming the most prime-time ready "distribution" (expert collection of open-source programs/utilities/extras) out there. Personally, I went with the UbuntuStudio, which includes a bunch of audio/video/art based applications. However, the most important thing to understand is that the software is FREE (well, the developers would probably like you to know that it's not free, it's "donor supported"). Regardless, I've been using Linux now for about 4 months and I'm very happy with the outcome. Dare I say that I'm actually having a lot of fun with it. I still have Windows XP set-up, all I have to do is restart and select Windows XP, though truthfully I can do everything I need to do on Linux and not have to worry about the vast majority of the bugs/security hole and just bloated inefficiencies of Windows. Ubuntu tells me when updates are necessary and it does so without having to restart the computer, or even stop what I'm doing, aside from clicking "install updates" and my password.

On top of all this, it looks great, has the cool 3D desktop effects (wobbly windows, burning, shimmering, shrinking menus, etc.). I love Linux, and I like that it's empowering this entrepreneurial instinct in me, showing me how to turn a computer into a server, media workstation, cross-platform device, and I can even see myself creating some unique Linux powered devices someday. Finally, there is a massive built in repository of additional sowtware to play around with, anything from children's edutainment to complex physics/chemistry/mathematics simulators. All for free, including future upgrades.

Letter to a Senator

If you've ever been told to write to your congressional representatives, the time to do it is NOW. Our government is becoming more and more independent of the will of the American people, in effect creating a new class of elites that work with the corporations and interest groups to make decision for you that may really affect your lives. Get angry and do something. With no further ado, here's my letter to Senator Ben Nelson (D) - Nebraska, after he voted against de-funding America's #1 scumbag, Vice President Dick "The Dick" Cheney. You can read about the story here.

Stand up to the Vice President’s office!

Your inability to use your authority to pressure this secretive and corrupt VP is, to put it lightly, disappointing. The only way that this administration will comply with the will of the Congress, as elected representatives of the citizens of the United States is to apply the “power of the purse”.

By standing idly by and rubber-stamping this administration’s ridiculous and questionable expenditures, you are personally responsible for creating even more doubt and disapproval from the American people. This administration needs to be heeled in, like an aggressive and out of control dog. By failing to call the Vice President on the ridiculous idea that he is a separate entity from the Executive branch is nothing short of dereliction of duty.

I, like many Americans this decade, have been forced to have a dead reckoning with the political process in this country and can no longer care about your years of patriotic service, your length of Congressional tenure, who you are, were and what you’ve done for us in the past. Today, you failed the American people. You stepped carelessly aside at your post as a sentry at the gates to the Congressional treasury.

I know that some people may have seen this attempt to de-fund the VP’s office as a cheap news headline ploy, but the venom and bile that Americans feel for this man and his shadowy, back-room operation requires dramatic action.

I can only hope that your inaction on this issue was because of a principled stance that hopes elevate political discourse in the country in spite of your opponents’ ruthless attempts to nickel and dime the political process until the American people are so frustrated and lost in the mess of national politics that they just tune out.

Please for the sake of the republic that we all cherish, stand at your post, speak out against this administration and this pointless war. Expose the wasteful expenses and unsustainable policy of this entire government. Let history remember you for taking a stand for true American values and against the status quo.

[my contact info]
Los Angeles, CA

Police State?

The LAPD inexplicably cracks down on a peaceful immigration rally in MacArthur park in the Mid-Wilshire district of Los Angeles. You couldn't ask for a more dramatic comparison between the stormtrooper-esque anti-riot gear kitted-up legions versus men, women and children. Here's a description of the video from LAIST.com:

"LA blogger, GameJew, has put together a very well-done NPR-style video of what he saw and experienced at MacArthur Park yesterday when the LAPD decided to disperse the crowd with rubber bullets.

A peaceful crowd of unarmed men, women, children, and the press, tried to unceremoniously scatter but were pelted with rubber bullets anyways.

Not only does GameJew capture the fear and anger that people felt, but he has some really excellent interviews with locals as the action goes down."

Awesome video, with some really well done commentary. Hopefully this will shed some light on the outright peril facing our Constitutional rights. Get involved people, and please keep an eye on your government.

Here's another link to the video

In response to The Information Clearing House...

I've been having the same concerns from what I've been learning about financial markets, international debt, globalization, trade, and how currencies have failed in the past. The writing is on the wall and it pretty much may come down to whether or not people can accept vast changes and cutbacks to the role the government will effectively fill in American life. If you were to go beyond the actual possibilities of currency collapse and think about the realties of such a crisis, you will start to realize how much we take for granted here in America. There are wast empires of intangible wealth and applied know how [i.e. patents, copyrights, trademarks, data, etc.] mostly based the stability of America's international and domestic legal treaties. If the government goes bankrupt and the ensuing financial dissolution doesn't leave you shitting your proverbial pants, this article and its topic are over your head.

I worry that America doesn't make that much any more. Well we make a lot of stuff, but there may not be a market for these products. There is stuff that we can always make like grain, raw materials, and some manufactured goods. However, a lot of the things we take for granted are made elsewhere and our lives would be significantly affected with disruption in the availability and relative value (meaning effectively, the cost) of pretty much everything around you. Older generations know a great deal about these realities, ask grandma and grandpa what the thought of rationing during the last great war, or dad if we had to wait 4 hours to buy gas in the 1970's.

These harder times will come eventually, maybe not next year like the article says, but sometime before you are ready for it. The financial and institutional shockwaves that would accompany the collapse of the US Dollar could effectively turn most large cities into filthy, crime-ridden pogroms, dissolve the very idea of a middle class almost overnight. In fact a small shaving of the population could effectively trade vast fortunes of wealth into safer more global friendly currency leave leave %99.9 percent of us left holding the bag(s).

what we still dont know

Astronomy

This video has an awesome part about finding lifelike patterns in a random tile based massive Checkers or Go system. The trick is that you have to add 3 simple rules of neighbor interaction and sequential turns. On a large scale over time, organic type patterns emerged as eye-opening repeating patterns that not only moved across the field of play, some systems created offspring of different shapes that moved off in different directions. On a super-massive scale and in three dimensions one could anticipate that some truly fascinating expressions of unpredicted natural orders could emerge.

As a hack Cosmologist, I think I have a pretty good picture on how life could emerge from a cooling chaotic chemical soup of a primordial planet somewhere in the vastness of space where there is water or some other solvent that can absorb heat and assist in some kind of chemical reaction. (at least three planets in this solar system have water in one form or the other, and it is now foolish to deny that there likely billions and billions of planet sized objects in space. Some rare gem (planets) amongst the soil (planets) will have demonstrated self organizing, replicating and branching patterns of matter that progress until different chemical formats of self-replicating massively complex molecules (DNA, RNA, hemoglobin, chlorophyll, etc.)

If one could somehow systematically explore (traveling unfathomably long distances and at currently fictional/theoretical speeds) and looking only for similar stars it would surprising NOT to find something. Lifeforms in all of their slow, self-adapting grace have found ways to adapt to hazardous and extreme environments like the hot steam vents of exothermic geological reactions, or on shady underside of a dusty desert rock.

Nationalized gun control laws?

A member of the somthingawful.com gun forums posed this question and I put together this reply. In regards to the idea of a nationalized gun law reform, here are my thoughts:

Pro:

For most Americans, this sounds like a good idea. The media does and excellent job of keeping the public paranoid about the realities of violence in this world. The entire life cycle for most Americans is based on the idea that America is some kind of utopia and that people should and will be protected by the government from the darker realities of modern life. That being said, most Americans would like the sound of a nationwide policy that unified gun laws that would likely be extremely close to revoking the very statute of civilian gun ownership. This fundamental right is a relic of a more dangerous time when there was widespread danger and lawlessness throughout the vast expanse of the emerging American territories. The idea that an American civilian militia would assemble to stand up to a domestic threat is unlikely. [Though I personally don't discount the possibility if the right wrong circumstances manifested).

The incongruence of gun laws between states is alarming. For example in California, one of a few states that are unabashedly aggressive on gun control legislation (also NY, NJ, OR, MA). There are various situations in while one citizen 30 miles from another could have access to many different types of firearms and different licensing and background check policies. I would be surprised if there are few other industries with such irregular government intervention from locality to locality. In one state a person could buy military grade 50 caliber slong range sniper rifle with the enough power to damage or disable light aircraft, where in some cities (NYC,DC, and formerly proposed in SF) even the most basic firearms (inexpensive, small caliber handguns) have been prohibited.

Also, with respect to gun rights in the rest of the western world, it is unlikely any country aside America own more firearms per capita. In most places in America there are few regulations that would prevent each and every citizen of of age 18 or 21 (sometimes handgun are limited to civilians in good standing 21 and over) to own vast personal arsenals. These unmitigated freedoms could pose a threat to national security in times of civil strife or national/regional disaster.

Since the early days of flintlock technology; striker, powder, ball and packing guns have been used are arbitrator in interpersonal disputes between gentlemen and scoundrel alike. The gun cannot be undone as a widespread tool, but their should be common sense regulations limiting the access to and keeping tabs on inventories of these devices. Guns may not independently cause crime, though it's hard to argue that the inherent inequity in scenarios between armed and unarmed persons, guns can make it easier to commit a crime. Philosophically speaking, if we are to look at this situation as a whole society and turn a blind eye to individual freedoms, it is hard to deny that guns pose considerable danger to the society's ability (gov't's) to maintain order and anticipate organized threats to the security of it's citizens. For the good of the many, there should be strict and responsible oversight by the gov't of firearm ownership.

Con:

Our forefathers vision for our self improving democracy included the basic statute that American citizens have the basic right to use deadly force against perceived threats to their personal security. Some obvious reasoning for this is the sometimes dangerous and unsure nature of everyday life in the 18th century. Americans faced established native populations, the looming threat of European colonial interests and military aggression, various everyday uses, animal hunting and trapping, etc. Who are we to think that this basic provision of American citizenship is limited to "way back when". Certainly our forefathers insisted that the citizenry should not be bound by a fear of the government's monopoly on the use of force.
of American sportsmen (and women) and the ubiquitous pride from this voacl segment
I don't imagine that you will have a problem making an argument for the freedomsof the community.

The idea of controlling access to guns is a natural extension of the governments implied (but not legally obligated)responsibility to protect people from harm. Depending on where you may live is likely an indicator for how likely this protecting is when you'd need it.

The author of Freakenomics (Steven Dubner?) says that the danger of legal civilian gun ownership, as indicated by the annual number of gun accident deaths per capita is actually lower than the per capita deaths by drowning in a swimming pool. Thus one can make the argument that there should be a vast and consolidated effort to outlaw or at least strengthen the gov't national laws on the ownership and operation of swimming pools and spas.

The actual data for the incidences of gun violence by law abiding citizens whom have obtained and operate their 100+ million registered firearms are far lower than deaths related alcohol and automotive accidents. The villification (is that a word?) of guns as a looming threat to our children's safety is a result of the shocking and sudden violence (read: newsworthyness) of the crimes. These crimes could likely be linked to guns that are obtained illegally, though some of these weapons used in violent crime were formerly legal guns.

The idea that the guns are a root cause of violence in society today is on shaky philosophical ground, although it is an unarguable fact that guns are used in many ghastly crimes. The old idea that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" still true. By vast majority, behind every horrendous act of gun violence is a motive to commit this crime in question.

The government, either state or federal, has been encroaching on the 2nd amendment rights of Americans for decades. The larger national policy as an initiative to unify state level regulations would involve increased regulation fees and annual taxes (in the form of annual registration stickers, and probably with RFID tech). This would fund new methods of tracking and new ways to coordinate the tracking of firearms and the comings and going of lawful gun owners. Depending on the specific provisions of such hypothetical legislation and implementation, this could pose Constitutional trespasses to rights regarding search and seizure and basic privacy provisions.