❮❮prevnext❯❯

Both Star Trek The Next Generation and the movie "The Goonies" have a character named Data.

---

---

Man it has been way too long since I've been on a rollercoaster. Always a little bummed that a lot of my friends don't dig 'em.

---

The present tense of regret is indecision.

---

Be proud of your place in the Cosmos. It is small and yet it is.

---

Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.

---

Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that's not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?

---

An in-depth look to the 3 pronged attack on our nation's capitol - you know, the one Republicans are unwilling to look into FOR SOME REASON.

So with the tactics used, with the main bunch of MAGA-hats at the front were a diversion for the two other entries of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys which was sort of smart, but luckily mistakes were made after.

---

Thinking on the "specialness" of Boston racism.

Sometimes in my bubble, full of folks who would say they are "not racist" (who at least feel that everyone is equal, though may not admit the systematic inequities baked in) and then well-meaning progressive who strive to be anti-racist (who recognize and are willing to to fight against the inequities) it seems weird to hear comedians specifically call Boston out as a punchline as The racist city.

It's frustrating to know that Boston carries this reputation, and that it's not just an artifact of, like, the Red Sox being the last team to desegregate or the Celtics being the 80's bastion of white basketball (after some initial firsts, like first Black drafted player, first all Black starting lineup, first Black head coach) or anti-Bus protests and that asshole attacking a Black guy with a flag

Trying to reconcile how folks in my bubble, while not perfect, are at least aware and will avoid being overtly racist, I think about this Slate review of "Gone Baby Gone"

Some cities are blessed with great filmmakers. New York has Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, and Spike Lee. Baltimore has Barry Levinson, David Simon, and John Waters. But the good people of Boston have been deeply unlucky in this regard. Whether it's the city's clannish insularity, the fine-bore segregation of its neighborhoods, or the mix of effete, overeducated latte swillers and "gritty, working-class" knuckleheads, Boston has never translated well on film.

So I dunno. I guess that's partially me just trying to say "well that's THEM, not US" (you know, the latte swillers not the knuckleheads) which could be a ducking of responsibility. But over all it's a f***ing bummer. On FB my bandmate Rayna Jhaveri asked

What's a persistent theme in your life?"

My answer was

Kirk Israel thinking that there's objective truth, but you can never be certain you know it, which makes me more empathetic (since other people might have a better view of The Objective Truth) and less empathetic (since I don't value their subjective truth, nor my own.)

Rayna:

Kirk Israel perpetual existentialism! So does it annoy you when people say "know your truth"?

yeah, My truth is that everyone's truth is bunk, including my own. we must always strive for a validation we can never reach.

Sebastian Lopez:

Kirk when you "let go" more you'll
Find more peace
I'm trying to come out of this conundrum
Myself
The irritable self wants to establish truth and argue
My advice is to forgive oneself
By letting go,
Even if that requires effort
Then the larger picture gets a lot clearer
( I know you don't know me. I'm Rayna's friend)

My long winded answer:

Hey Sebastian! Actually, when combined with the safety and privilege I enjoy in life, mine is a pretty peaceful mindset! Relative to many of my fellow lefties I have to avoid "both sides-er-ism", and I have trouble with the endlessly fomented outrage, as justified as that can feel in this age of racism and inequality and anti-expertism,

(I don't think the left and the right have equally objectively correct views- but I know the people on the right aren't the villains in their own story either, and are struggling for "good" causes. Possibly the wrong "good" causes, which is bad.)

To me, deep and abiding faith is a weird lack of empathy with all those people who don't share your faith. How could they all be so misled? So we can squint and have a "many paths" interpretation, the "know your truth" bit Rayna mentioned, but I find that deeply unsatisfying - a Truth that isn't universal isn't a real truth.

And what if the big underlying truth behind everything is an existentialist giant animated spinning GIF going "LOL NOTHING MATTERS"? Shouldn't we each then be free to find/know/make our own truth? In my way of thinking, no. Even if all truths are relative, with no rockbed of absolutism, some are relatively "better" than others (tho of course there isn't a single axis of worse/better, but still) and so people should be working to figure out which one is best.

But that "relative best truth" might easily have different faces, it might say that the faith you should practically live is context dependent - like if you're raised in a Christian family, the best path for you is likely to be a good Christian, but if you're raised in a Hindu family, the best path for you is to be a good Hindu. But even then, when people do their own casual "comparative religions" study, they tend to appeal to core humanistic principles. Truth is not democratic, Reality can't be put to a vote... but you go against widely held consensus at your own rhetorical peril, and if people from many faiths say "well this death cult is probably tragically misguided, for these instinctive humanistic principles", then I would nominate those instinctive humanistic principles as being closer to the "relative best truth" than any of the separate faiths.

(but again, a caveat: you can come up with cases where our moral intuitions are suspect! People have LESS empathy when shown a pair of siblings suffering than one child alone, and even less when shown a whole classroom-ful... I think it's because a single case of suffering seems like an anomaly we might be able to help with, but once the numbers go up, it just feels like the way of the world... so our instincts and appeals to human feeling are unreliable judges. Emotion and Intellect have to work it out, together.)

I suspect ALL human motivating force comes from an intrinsic emotion. (And at least one form of depression comes from that motivating force just running out, leaving an intellect intact but utterly drained of vital energy.) The paradox In my case is my intrinsic overwhelming emotion is to not be controlled by mere intrinsic emotion, to always second guess and look for that which can be externally justified. (It come from the kind of Christianity I was raised in and then personally fostered as a kid, a Sky God figure I could have a tenuous direct connection to, and then who would judge me for infinite stakes at the end.)

Sorry for the length of this! I probably coulda/shoulda left off after the first two paragraphs! But I find it satisfying to try and summarize where I'm philosophically at, and this seemed like a bully pulpit.

---

Some fun emulations of LCD games. Mario's Cement Factory is especially good.

---

---

I guess I didn't watch much "Friends"... I was today years old when I found out Ross and Monica were siblings. It's difficult for me to explain my views that A. A Most True description of the world and how you should act in it exists (even if that has to be, like, metaethics rather than a specific ethical system) but B. It is something akin to blasphemy to presume YOU have the most accurate view of that Truest Truth - especially if your certainty comes at the cost of discounting the views of folk of good faith who disagree with you. This duality can sound like a moral relativism, but the persistent sense of an absolute truth behind the scenes makes it the opposite of that.

Talking this over while driving with Dave, he suggested a pretty good metaphor: what the GPS was showing, as we tried to find a good route from Mass Ave to Porter Square:


The GPS offered 3 or so paths, recommending one, saying this other one might be -1 minute faster, this other one +2 minutes slower, another route is estimated at about the same length of time. Something like that.

So here's the thing: I think it is blatantly obvious that one of those routes will be the fastest. And it is also obvious that you can't KNOW which one it is. You can guess which one is most likely to be best, but there's a fundamental unknowability there, once the rubber meets the road, and since we can't rewind our lives and try again we have to live with never quite being certain. (I think of Milan Kundera: "We never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.")

Of course, the metaphor is imperfect. For example, "fastest route" is such a crisp, obvious metric. Even in car navigation land, we can think of other things we might want to optimize for, like "fewest turns" or "least stressful drive" or "not taking me near my ex's house and dredging up painful memories". And compared to the myriad of possible goals and corresponding "shoulds" that come from ethical systems, figuring out where or when to turn left or right is pretty simple.

More troublingly for the truth of the metaphor: the stakes of ethics feel so high, which might be a result of the fear of fire and brimstone I took on as a youth. It's as if the GPS wasn't saying "take the wrong route and risk being ten minutes late", but "the wrong route might have dragons or pits or explosions and you will probably die!"

Researchers talk about "maximizers vs satisficers" - people who take pains to seek out the very best solution vs folks who can make a quick decision and be happy with it - usually I'm very content being in the latter group - but when it comes to morality, when I'm dealing with these systems many of which say "people who don't believe this will be punished eternally" and those stakes are taken very seriously by millions of believers, I find it hard to just let go and follow whatever the GPS thinks best.
Played with the Natick Legion Band in the Natick Memorial Day Ceremony - 150th anniversary of the first official Memorial Day. A centrist expression of appreciation for the folks of our armed services, and a left leaning wish we were keeping our volunteer force out of harms way more of the time. Been thinking about "Not my circus, not my monkeys...." I really like how it slots with the dual relation of "this is not my problem" and "this isn't my fault and/or I can't do a lot to fix this", like the circus/monkeys split represents the whole scene vs our role with it. View from Kimball Castle Seemingly paradoxically, I think the path to some improvements to my life might be *more* time in front of a computer: namely, using my desk + monitor, sitting upright, and not just reclining in bed to surf etc... both in terms of focusing and getting stuff done, and also that whole "blasting yourself with blue-ish light right before bed isn't the best for sleep" thing. Having a laptop as my main machine is relatively new to me, and it's a great luxury, but I get the idea the old sitting at a desk routine might be better for focus.

---

How Pop-Tarts are made:

from this fascinating series (despite the captions lamely trying to generate extra enthusiasm.) Manufacturing has gotten so good, it's difficult to remember how much thought has to go into the physical reality of the products we enjoy.

---

Some find irony in the fact that a study of our brains revealed to us not the secrets of the past, but what ultimately awaits us in the future. However, I maintain that we have indeed learned something important about the past. The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I am glad that it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.

He's such a good author! http://flabbyphysics.com/flabbyphysics.swf -- coolest one button game I've seen in a while

---

So frickin' tired of nation-specific mp3/music downloads. I think Australia is the worst, but UK is bad enough. #shutupandtakemymoney

---

Your right to be stupid does not change the fact that you're stupid.

---

via http://tumblr.4gifs.com/ :

---

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/26/sunday-review/26corn-ch.html -- what a bummer, how nutrition can't easily win out in the marketplace.

---

Messing with Zoosk. So far it doesn't feel as much as my demographic as OKCupid does; like, Zoosk is eharmony what OKC is to match.com, or something. Plus with odd like Zynga like elements. Loved this re-imagining of Batman... check out the the source for the Joker, Riddler, etc... really terrific stuff.

---

A frame from every Loony Tune from 1930-1969... When the merry-go-round broke down, indeed!
--via gifanime but here for Amber...
--Fascinating coverage of an amazing machine, the Dice-O-Matic mark II. Just rolls dice and records the results.... over a million rolls a day! (And the Mark I was made of Legos!)

---

http://www.smackerel.net/black_white.html - a study in HyperCard and early multimedia-- cool but would have loved a wider study. The old B+W Mac screens - so cool and museum exhibit-y. I think I missed out not being part of that culture. In general, the way computers don't come with a widely-recognized programming environment (like BASIC back in the day, even) saddens me.

---

Note to Future Self: Eclipse UI design is a bit retarded- try double clicking on things, maybe it will show you a window right clicking won't. Still a work in progress but I've yet again revamped my personal start page. I've had it there for like 12 years...

For the first time ever... icons! I like the double-sized "favicon" look of it.

---

Review of the Moment
Slate reviews Susan Neiman's "Moral Clarity". It talks about Neiman's thoughts that the left has allowed the right to stake out "morality" as its own territory...

Reclamation, for Neiman, starts with rereading. She draws her first lessons from the biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham's response when Yahweh tells him that He plans to destroy the cities of the plain. "Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked?" the patriarch protests. "Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" When the Lord agrees to spare Sodom if 50 righteous men can be found there, Abraham presses his case: " 'Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Wilt thou destroy the whole city because of five?' And he said, "I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.' "

And so the bargaining starts. Neiman's heart is stirred by Abraham's universalism (these are not his people); by his resoluteness (this is God he is challenging); and by his insistence that the details matter (exactly how many just men are there in Sodom?). And because God seems to acknowledge the force of Abraham's moral reasons, the story allows her to assert, on the basis of the Old Testament itself, that we do not "need religious authority to maintain morality." It is an elegant rhetorical move to take a favorite story of the Christian right and extract a progressive lesson: the obligation of human reason to evaluate religion's demands. If you acknowledge with Abraham, she writes, "that serious religion and serious ethics are thus separate matters, you must believe things are good or evil independent of divine authority."

I think the problem is simpler. Post-modernism, and the idea that absolute truth is likely rare to the point of non-existence, makes it hard for the left who wish to respect a multitude of opinions (including, paradoxically, those opinions that reflect the same spirit of tolerance.) It's the old Bertrand Russell saw, "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." When some side is so willing to have belief without the need for evidence, and claim a specific, arbitrary moral interpretation as an absolute, it's tough to argue with those people from a more reasonable viewpoint!

---

Note to Christian Zionists: people trying to hasten the end of the world are the BAD GUYS, you selfish schmucks! Up in Rockport this Memorial Day, so not much of an update...

---

Video of a Few Moments Ago

--This film, telling about Fair Use through tiny fragments of Disney works was making the rounds a week or two ago.

Similarrly, Spider Robinson's Melancholy Elephants was kind of re-released a little while back, arguing strongly against perpetual copyrights. The core argument there is that the space of potential meaningful POSSIBLE createive work isn't as infinite as we might assume.

In theory, if not in practice (probably due to the relative obscurity of most computer code) Programmers run into exactly that issue in terms of software patents. Coders and Architects, roughtly speaking, are paid to come up with new approaches (or meaningful repurposings of old ones), so the whole idea of "non-obvious to a practioneer in the field" becomes kind of thorny.

The weather has finally took a turn for the decidedly warm!

The weather: last refuge of the uninspired journaler. I think that's why like half of the Love Blender headers talk about it.

Did I mention that sometime late last year I made my 100th issue of the Blender? Totally missed saying anything! Ah well.

---

Line and Show of the Moment

It is what it is.

"Top Chef" had its finale recently, probably the only show I've watched on a regular basis so far this year. The antepenultimate episode had a "best quotes" segment, with that one along with "You're a snake. Sssssss." and "I'm not your bitch, bitch!"

For some reason "It is what it is" is a curious blend of fatalism and, I think, confidence in being willing to stand behind the product. It seems a very non-geek thing to say; geeks are always looking to tweak things, make them better. Though maybe that's just an artifact of the malleability of food vs computer code; there's only so much you can do to improve on a finished dish, but computer code is both more permanent (it's not gone after a couple of meals) and less (it's relatively easy to keep on making changes.) Advice and Ephemera of the Moment
Helpful hint: if you're at all attached to your car radio presets, used to certain stations being linked to certain buttons, write them down now, before something happens to 'em--like your car battery needing replacement, that kind of thing.

And so given my compulsion to share pointless Kirk trivia on this site, here are my Boston-area Car Radio Presets: (Hmm, in looking up one station I found a site with profiles of all the local stations...cool. I made links to the stations below...exciting!)

FM (first set...why do all radios have two sets of FM presets, and just one for AM?): 90.9 (public radio) 89.7 (also public radio, but sometimes has music, and I think it's the one with the Garrison Keillor show I always forget to listen to) 96.9 (FM talk, haven't actually listened to it much), unused, unused, and 104.1, which has Howard Stern in the morning for which I previously explained / apologized, plus sometimes decent music.

FM (second set) Except for starting out with 102.5 classical, is a big undifferentiated mix of popmusic that I click through if I'm in that kind of mood... 92.9, 93.7 (no link...odd,) 100.7, 107.9, and 98.5

AM...I've drifted away from "keeping tabs on the (christian right wing fundamentalist) enemy" with 590 (WEZE...if I was the rapper I'd be irritated by their callsign) and its sister talk station 1150 (WTTT--"the Boston T party -- changing the way Boston talks"--cute.) There's 1030 news (its "one commercial every few minutes" drivetime format is sometimes relaxing when one of the other stations is on a huge commercial streak,) 680 talk, 850 sports talk (I do like their "whiner line", as well as the Pats and Sox games) and then 1510, the perennial sports "also ran".

And now you know. And I have place to check if my car's battery runs out.

---

Tool of the Moment
So last night I was reading Wired, and it has coverage of Spielberg's upcoming "War of the Worlds" remake, including this sidebar comparing the original book, the infamous radio broadcast, and the 1953 film. I just thought that "Thunder Child" (from the original book) is the coolest warship name ever...so cool I decided to download the Gutenberg E-text of the book for download into my Palm's memopad.

Which led me to finally getting around to making a tool I've been talking about with LAN3 for a long while...Gutenberg E-texts (and also things from Usenet) usually have a lot of extra linebreaks to force 80-column width. My Palm of course has much smaller columns and the extraneous linebreaks are annoying. So, Enter The FATLINER. It can inhale even very large texts and spit out a version with the extra linebreaks removed.

Let me know what you think LAN3!

Passage of the Moment

You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value.

"Thailand" is a short story in the collection "After the Quake". (Of course, Islamic terrorists have taken that kind of equality too much to heart.)

---

Archaeology of the Moment
The Archaeology Institute of America asks Was There a Trojan War? and reviews Troy as shown in current media (the movie and some television specials. I was hoping to be able to find this stuff after watching the movie, I was wondering how carefully the props etc were (Answer: they did a lot of research but felt free to grab from different periods.)

Of course the actual Trojan War was, sadly, utterly Brad Pittless.

---

Restaurant of the Moment
Found a new terrific place to eat last night...Cafe Belo...very authentic Brazilian food, in fact their default URL brings you to their Portugeuse site. It's buffet style, load up and they charge you by the pound. The buffet itself is terrific, and then they have chicken, pork, and beef roasting over charcoal at the end, and they'll carve you off big chunks of lipsmacking meat. Wonderful, so tasty, and cheap. (It's a per-pound cost, a bit more if you've Atkins'd-out and get pretty much all meat.)

Peterman and I went to the one in Allston, but I guess there are like 10 of them around...reminded me a bit of my visit to Portugal, all the way back in 1992.

• I loved the micromachines Z-Bots, small robot figures with builtin weapons and what not. I think they were out late highschool, early college for me. They were so cute! I had the one shown here, about 10 more maybe.
• "Every man is a spark in the darkness. By the time he is noticed he is gone forever. A retinal after-image that fades and is obscured by newer, brighter lights."
  --Warhammer 40,000, a wargame in a scifi dystopia. I also liked "But the universe is a big place and, whatever happens, you will not be missed...."
• I thought the first email and response on the 10 March 2003 Brunching Shuttlecocks mailbag was really funny. (A "Wilhelm" is a distinctive scream that shows up in many action movies, a bit of an industry injoke.)
• Iraq Body Count was trying to remind us about the human cost of our war. I admit it didn't go nearly as badly as it could have, but it wasn't the unmitigated victory we could have hoped for, especially in terms of the aftermath.
• Business 2.0's 101 Dumbest Business Moments of 2002. I thought the captions of 95 through 93 were really funny: "Slyly slipping a camel through the eye of a needle" "Taking a camel and firmly shoving it through the eye of a needle" "Chopping a camel into millions upon millions of tiny camel pieces and pushing them, one by one, through the eye of the goddamn needle". And I thought of trying to rig up something like 101 for myself, a final e-mail in the event of my untimely demise...

It was a good Memorial Day! Six or so people over, we grilled meat and veggie kabobs, buffalo burgers, Mo made a great "lemonade cake" and rum punch, played frisbee, Trivial Pursuit, Worms, Powerstone 2, Sega Soccer Slam, Quake III...wheee! And we managed to squeak in all the outside stuff between thunderstorms.

Hmm, I bought a genuine wham-o frisbee, brought out for this event, and it came with instructions. I'm not sure about the "CATCHING" section though... "Catches can be made with either hand. Squeeze hard just before the disc hits your hand." That doesn't sound like a recipe for a successful catch.

---

Link of the Moment
Ranjit and I were talking about some gamebutton ideas (including a gamebutton writing contest I'd like to setup) and he thought I should set up merit badges for good scores, on the honor system. It reminded me of the Activision clubs they had, where you could get patches if you sent in a photo with a high score. I found a cool webpage gallery of them at atariage.com. I should load up the old games and see which ones of these I could proudly (and rightfully) display on my webpage...I think I made the "Sky Jinks" club, I was pretty good at that little speedy game.

---

Quote of the Moment

There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY. There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS. I'm very probably wrong.

Memorial Day... a parade lined up just down the street from my house, wasn't expecting that. After all this time away from playing in that kind of band, I think I miss cool drum candences the most.

---

Quote of the Moment

I mean--I know I caughter her off-guard and all, but I think she was kinda' gettin' into it...right before she threw me through the sliding glass door.

---

Link of the Moment
In a similar vein of dealing with women, it's Don Juan Center (at the URL sosuave.com -- nice touch.) Be sure to check out the articles link.