2010.02.11
--Snow Plows in the Financial District - ready for action which never quite arrived. Boston got just a few inches in all...
Sawyer's scifi book "Mindscan" brings out the "philosophy of consciousness" idea of the zombie: a person who acts indistinguishably from a person but has no "inner consciousness". The book pushes an idea I hadn't heard, which is that we all have this kind of zombie, and it's the zombie acting when we're driving without thinking about it, or when we have to go back and reread a paragraph because we weren't paying attention. I don't buy the zombie/consciousness dualism though, nor do I think a person could convincing play a lively person 24/7 with "just" that kind of zombie - I don't think it would pass the Turing Test, for starters.
Thinking how little I like Gmail/Google's "Buzz". It's A. yet another thing to check if I want to find out what people are thinking, and B. it's convenient, but a distraction, because it pushes notification of public-ish announcements and musings into gmail, a space I generally have reserved and monitor for messages directed more specifically at me.
Valentine's Day is also Chinese New Year? And it's going to be Year of the Tiger? And I'm a Tiger? Oh, for awesome.