Winding down merrily - 22 January 2007

Starting to take care of those important things - put in my application for graduation today. Tomorrow, I need to go collect some signatures, fill out the rest of my “Hey! I got all the stuff I need, assuming I pass!” sheet, print off a transcript, and turn that all into the right person. Assuming that’s all in order and correct, then I’m set to finish. Just have to work through papers and projects and come out on the other side alive. Once all the graduation stuff is done, though, I think I’ll ask for more resume help and start floating that out to people who might be hiring.

Anyway, there’s lots to be said about the stuff in my IN pile, so here we go.

One photon carries data for a 1.0 mm x 0.5 mm picture. Coming on the heels of the invention of a one-pixel camera, this particular data photon has several pixels fed into it, and then is buffered long enough to be retrieved with little signal loss. It looks like photonic storage is still a ways off, though - the light needs to be able to be delayed long enough for retrieval. In fixed-disk sorts of situations, that means nearly indefinitely. It’ll take some doing.

Going from small to regular-sized, right now, privacy laws and computers leave much to be determined. So if you’re running into situations where you’re worried about governments or corporations searching your data without warrant or cause, or using things not specified in warrants, you may want to back up sensitive data off the computer when you’re around those kinds of people. Still, I’m confident that digital privacy will be worked out in an acceptable manner. Assuming, of course, that privacy hasn’t already been totally compromised by a backdoors being written into operating systems and Internet data and legislation forces search engines and other hosts to archive their data.

Continuing on into the realms of the slightly odd, a flower used for fighting fire. Instead of granting the user the ability to shoot fire, it’s used to put out something else shooting fire. Almost had a perfect Super Mario Bros. joke. Ah, well. Follow that thought (with good 8-bit soundtracks) into an article that suggests video games may help fulfill the need to achieve, to be competent at something, to be connected to others, or to be independent. This is no blanket endorsement, but when everything goes wrong in life, sometimes bashing the hell out of something in a video game can help right the emotional balance.

And from there into the virtual, we turn to the experiment called Second Life. When France's Front National party opened up shop, they were met with protests and exploding pigs. So how much of First Life spills over into Second Life, and how much should? There are some unavoidable ties, like the Linden dollar to the American one, but how far do we want to intertwine what’s out here and what’s in there? Second Life being too much like the first one could be a disaster. The Reuters Second Life division has Warren Ellis noting that land prices are going up, mostly because people seem to want to build their own private Second Lives. I’d say this is another instance of First Life spilling into Second Life, with people wanting to build fences and wall themselves off, although Warren suggests it could just as easily be more people wanting to interact rather than wanting to wall themselves off. We’ll see how it turns out. With the open-sourcing of Second Life's software, people may do less buying of their own private Fantasy Islands and start building them. I’m not sure whether the open-sourcing will make more people interact or make more people want not to interact.

A man wearing an anti-Bush shirt was barred from flying Qantas and has threatened legal action. Qantas’s policy works against expression by saying that any comments made verbally or on a T-shirt that could offend others would not be tolerated. Barking up the wrong tree, Qantas - the people you’d want to be worried about as disruptive are going to look as normal as possible. The people willing to display their affiliations are probably safe.

In South Korea, fearing that the national spirit and values are being eroded in times of prosperity, parents are putting their teenaged children through boot camp. (NYTimes) The teenagers are generally not pleased about this, and are sometimes deceived into going. Even if it supposedly does instill values in them, an unwilling audience will resist taking on those values - I’m betting on resentment being the chief thing the teens take away from boot, along with any other skills they may have had to learn to get through it.

In other military matters, stepping ever more toward powered exoarmor, Troy Hurtubise unveils a prototype that has sights, lights, and other gadgets - and can take a hit from an elephant gun. If we’re not already there, we’re definitely moving toward the point where military personnel all look relatively the same - and have their faces obscured. That could very well mean significant loss of context for people on the other end of their guns. Perhaps a sea of Guy Fawkes masks will stare back at them curiously?

Rather than direct them to services that could help them (or perhaps after failed attempts - the article is unclear in saying one way or another), an owner of a shop is suing the homeless who camped out in front of his shop for $1 million U.S., claiming that they disrupt his business with their presence and actions. If the transients in front of the shop are as bad as they’re claimed to be, then I can see why, but it still seems to be an over-the-top reaction.

The latest over at twoheadsbetter is about media bias and representation. Part of the importance of journalism is doing good investigative work - and Information Liberation says there was significant twisting of words going on in the "Israel must be wiped off the map" quote attributed to the President of Iran. Translation is a tricky business - and this shows it. Meanings can be changed and words with different effects can be substituted without many knowing it. And in tense times like this, it’s possible that a wrong turn of phrase could cause an already wide conflict to balloon.

In medicine, NewScientist reports that a group at the University of Toronto has isolated a gene, SORL 1, that they believe leads to the conditions that create Alzheimer's if the gene is mutated in a bad way. The bad genes are unable to process amyloid protein into the proper units, and instead create a toxic beta-amyloid. (And that’s about all I can explain. Perhaps the biochemists in the group can provide a bit more detail about how this all works out.) If the research is right on, then perhaps the mutation will be spottable and fixable. (And then we can all be sure that our minds will be relatively more safe in our old age.)

Protesters heckled at an equal rights for homosexuals march on the holiday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., where a new frontier of civil rights debate has opened up. One can only hope that we’ve learned from the last sequence and accelerate the time it takes for homosexuals to at least get to the same amount of acceptance that racial minorities have. On the other side, Desmond Tutu urges Anglican clergy to focus on real issues, like HIV/AIDS, rather than fretting about homosexuality. It does seem at times that the focus of the clergy and the people is concentrating on specks while missing planks.

If you want to see how other people in the world live, and how they decorate, have a look at Normal Room, which offers pictures taken of various normal rooms around the world. Well, normal may be a matter of judgement, especially in color schemes, but still - you get to see whether IKEA really has taken over or not.

And last for the night, it was apparently Blog for Choice Day today, where those participating are asked to simply enumerate the reason(s) that they are pro-choice, which in this context means they are in favor of a woman’s ability to choose whether or not to continue their pregnancy. (You never know if your blog is going to be how future historians study your times.) I support the idea that a woman should be able to choose to end an unwanted pregnancy. I support more the idea of effective birth control and sexual education such that women and men are properly informed as to the risks and consequences of their behaviors, and are taught how to minimize unwanted consequences. I’d rather not have to see any abortions outside of cases of criminal sexual conduct because all those consenting were informed and able to protect themselves and their contraceptive methods were all effective. I realize, however, that contraceptives do fail, even when used correctly, and that there are occasions where the child being carried to term has significant deficiencies in genes or in fetal development and may not survive or have any quality of life. But until those times where we can assure that all babies will develop in a healthy way, contraceptives will always be one-hundred-percent effective, and there will never be any criminal sexual conduct, I support a woman’s choice to terminate her pregnancy. One should not add stress and trauma to an often already very difficult decision.

That’s all for the big post tonight - I’ve lined up a series of articles for analysis, but those will probably have to wait until tomorrow - it’s already early in the morning and I don’t want to spend another 90 minutes or more composing that entry. So, slep, and possibly more writing in the morning.

A Modern Plato's take on education - and my unease after reading it.

As promised, I’ve got much to say about a series of three opinions posted in the wall Street Journal recently. Together, they describe the writer’s vision of what public schooling and education in America should be. It could be the tone, it could be the content, but all of them rub me the wrong way in one way or another. The first one, Intelligence in the Classroom, says that education need to take into account the innate intelligence of the people being educated. If soemeone’s IQ isn’t high enough, they’re going to struggle, he says, and there’s really nothing education can do about it other than teach them what they’ll be able to understand and leave it at that. Some people just aren’t smart enough, he says. And then he says: “It is true that many social and economic problems are disproportionately found among people with little education, but the culprit for their educational deficit is often low intelligence.” Not smart enough to learn, and so problems will follow them because they couldn’t learn. It’s their lot in life, and that can’t be helped, he says.

The second topic, What's Wrong With Vocational School? says that far too many people are going to four-year colleges where two-year colleges, technical and vocational schools are really where they should be. Again, because people just don’t have the brains to hack it in college courses. He does say that this isn’t necessarily a disadvantage, as there are plenty of professions and occupations that someone can perform with average-to-good IQs and intelligence. Just that college isn’t the place for them to go, and they should go get trained in a trade or a vocation instead. After all, with the power of the Internet, the college campus is becoming an unnecessary expense, and people can learn what they need to without having to put a foot on the campus (or having to step on campus much less often). At vocational schools, community colleges, and technical schools, they’ll get practical training in a shorter amount of time and be perfectly ready to take on the working world. He mentions that skilled tradesmen are going to be in high demand, can’t be outsourced, and make good money, so there’s no shame in taking one on. His solution is for society to stop putting a premium on four-year degrees, and for hiring to be more about experience and ability and less about degrees. That way, education costs for everyone go down and start becoming affordable, and only those who truly belong in four-year colleges, through the virtue of their superior intellect, actually end up going there.

Having left the stupid and the average to their fates as failures and craftsmen, he turns to the intellectually elite in his last piece, Aztecs vs. Greeks, and says that those rare few who are gifted with intelligence are the future of the country. They will gravitate to leadership spots, wherever they go, they will run the country, they will head up corporations, they will be inventors of the cure for cancer or the next big software system. As the guardians of the future, these people need to be educated not only in their professions, but in their citizenship. They need to be recognized as special and taught to accept the additional responsibility that comes with it, and how to be wise with their gifts. The gifted need to have their own educational track, he says, so that they can be challenged sufficiently. So they can be groomed to be responsible and good in their inevitable place as the rulers of the country.

And yes, he does, in the last one, make mention of how much like Plato’s city founded on the Myth of Metals this sounds like.

So what feels off-kilter about this set of three? Well, it runs up against the cultural notion of the American Dream - that everyone should have at least the opportunity to improve their station in life through responsible decisions and good work. Admittedly, the American Dream is becoming more and more like a pipe dream these days, but the theory still stands.

Furthermore, I have a certain aversion to just declaring a class of people to be unable to learn the necessary materials for a profession. With a lot of professions relying less on memorization of things (say, the Dewey classification tables) and more on having procedures and data at hand to be accessed, it’s possible for someone who can understand the concepts well enough to make it “good enough for government work” can be happily employed. In cases where more specialized knowledge is required, then others can be consulted or hired in to do that kind of work. Smart people are making it possible for less smart people to do the same kind of work, with the help of assistants, or through mechanization.

With regards to college, it’s true that there isn’t necessarily a lot of practical experience in the standard college education, but college often bills itself as a place where people learn how to think, be critical, and pick up skills that will serve them in any number of professions. I also happen to think that college is currently being used as a way for people to get the education they should have gotten in high school. Perhaps if high school could be the place where people could get sufficient education to get a job that could support them - or at least ensure they could go to a two-year college and then get that job, maybe the argument about too many people at college would hold some water. Plus, some of us have to go to four-year college to get into the graduate school so we can spend another two years learning the profession we actually want to do.

It’s in the gifted kids segment that I have my biggest objection - from experience. (I don’t really want to make much of being “gifted” - what really matters is that I’m good at what I do for work and life.) While I agree that gifted kids do need classes suited to their level of achievement, there’s a lot of problems that can accompany that. The feeling of being superior to the peons is a possibility, but there’s also the social interaction problems. If all you ever see are people who are as smart as you, there’s going to be some system shock when you start having to work with people who aren’t as smart as you. Plus, if anti-intellectualism is bad in this country, implementing this kind of system will likely aggravate it even more, and start it early in childhood. Neither side, the “smart” or the “average”, gets to interact with the other and see that they’re okay. Lastly, there’s no guarantee anywhere that the smart kids themselves can handle the programs designed to push them. I’m told that I could have continued in private education, but in addition to the school being quite far away from home (and Mom knowing we would get involved in extracurriculars), Mom knew that the private school would have simply pushed me as hard as I could have gone, until I broke. I don’t know if I would have broke, or been miserable, or what it would have been, but I can see it happening - the smart track pushing people to the limits and then discarding anyone who breaks under the strain. Possibly to the derision of those still there, who make fun of the person who had to go to school with the normals.

Admittedly, that’s an extreme case, but I’m not entirely sure that wisdom can be taught in aphorisms, Confucian texts, and the writings of the many masters through time. Some of it must be experienced (sometimes multiple times before it finally sinks in).

So, while a lot of what this person says is probably true, I don’t necessarily like the conclusions being drawn out of it. Of course, I could be putting up straw men and setting them on fire, too. So if there are things I haven’t considered, logical errors I’ve made, or other things, don’t hesitate to point them out. I am, after all, still learning.

Another step closer to the end - 23 January 2007

Today, I put in all of my paperwork. It’s official - if I survive the semester, I get the degree. Now, for resume evaluations and the hunt for a job to commence (in a mostly automated manner, I suspect, since my attention will be elsewhere for a really big majority of the time.). So, keep your ears to the ground if you hear of jobs opening up in your area for kids librarians... I’ll want to take a look at them, if you can find a posting.

And now, the links.

From the folks at Anime News Network, if you’re into classic 80’s robot shows and keeping good tunes going, then the Soundwave transforming MP3 player may be right up your alley. Works in both modes, robot and player, and has a mini SD card reader, if you’ve got lots of other things you want to play. Wonder if it’ll come painted in the right colors to show off for all your friends.

It appears that today was also National Pie Day. Not pi, but Pie. Most people like Pie in some way, regardless of their feelings about pi. So have a slice of good pie and share some with other pie fans.

Cindy Sheehan says Hillary is not a fit Presidential candidate. The Senator’s waffling, fence-sitting, and unwillingness to commit to peace strikes her off of the potential candidate list for the icon of many. Hillary may still garner lots of support for being a female, but she will probably garner as much, of not more, opposition because of her policies and track record.

Microsoft has filed for a patent on an "immortal computing" device - a way of storing digital information about a person or a civilization, with instructions for the future on how to access it. It could be used to e-mail descendants and wish them happy birthday long after the e-mailer is deceased. It could document the human history of this time to the archaeologists of the future. It could do quite a few things. How will we be immortalized? We’ll see if we answer that question in our lifetime.

Dr. Dino gets ten years for tax fraud. Kent Hovind will spend ten years of his life in prison serving sentences for fifty-eight federal counts. His wife, convicted in 44 counts, is scheduled to be sentenced in March. In the comments are people who are pleased to see him go to prison and those that are totally distraught that such a good Christian minister should be sent to jail. The comments section is worth a read here to get the range of opinions.

Bernard Chazelle, writing at Common Dreams, lays forty lashes on the American people, the mainstream media, and all the architects of the conflict in Iraq in Bush, the Empre Slayer. It’s an indictment of how the world’s last superpower was run into the ground by Bush and Co. For more examples of the punctual wisdom of Mr. Bush, Defective Yeti has a list of quotes where Bush mentions Iraq and a punctuation mark. If still not convinced, have a look at the Democrats' laundry list of Bush Administration military failures (although, seeing that makes me wonder what the Dems are planning on doing with regards to current troops and vets - hopefully making sure the vets are adequately taken care of and finding plans to ensure that those already engage arrive home safely. With as far as things have been going on, some are starting to suspect that chaos and instability was the goal from the beginning - to put a few troops in that get slaughtered, wait for the country to destabilize and kill most of the people themselves, then sweep in, conquer the last fragments, and set up shop. Either that, or all this seeming boneheadedness has been a plot by the neocons, the effects and ends of which we do not yet see.

Other ideas possibly being floated by the Administration may be a gigantic dirigible with a camera that can supposedly take good pictures of a circle 600 miles in diameter. Lockheed Martin, the venerable military supplier, may be building high-altitude spy camera. Now that I think about this, though, if you wanted to have a look from high up, why not just put good cameras on the satellites already there?

I suspect this was some time in coming, but now that it’s happened, I’m not sure whether to take it completely seriously or think of it as a one-off. Greek Pagans held a ceremony honoring Zeus, Hera, and the pantheon of myth. They wanted to use the temples, but the buildings are off-limits as historical treasures - apparently the ceremony was held on the grounds, which are also off-limits, but nobody reacted to move the pagans off. Perhaps if this becomes a regular event, with sufficient priests and priestesses for the temples to appear, I might think of it as something more than just a one-off.

A warning for those flying or otherwise seeking out wireless access available for no cost - peer-to-peer networks set up by nefarious persons may be masquerading as free wireless points. You might still be able to use the ‘Net, but you could be keylogged, have trojans and viruses dumped onto your computer that will turn it into a zombie or perpetuate the scam, or have your hard drive rifled through and important data stolen. Definitely not the kindest of things to have happen to your computer.

Going from selfishness and malice to altruism, Duke University Medical Center claims to have found a region of the brain that predicts how altruistic a person is. Of course, with each potential new learning about the brain and its chemistry could mean new drugs - a generosity-inducer for those in not-for-profits? A selfishness drug to help climb the corporate ladder? Or maybe something else entirely. Maybe Lem’s The Futurological Congress isn’t so far off...

...before I speculate too wildly, I think I’m going to go to bed. It’ll be that much easier. to dream of the world, rather than imagine it.