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Everybody Needs Money. That's why they call it MONEY.

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Very interesting framing.

I connect with it in terms of my frustration of so many people judging so many things all the time, which is deeply enmeshed with that hierarchy.

(It's kind of orthogonal to the other big issues I have for myself in witnessing others: the relation between thought and feeling, and a lot of people "letting the pigeon [of emotion] drive the bus" vs being more mindful in what raw emotions are amplified by semi-deliberate thought (against the concern of 'not feeling enough'), and also the balance of interior lives and preferences against the shared space; where the Truth doesn't cleanly flow from the top down (ala authoritarianism) nor smoothly from individuals up (ala individualism) but in a complex and emergent interplay.

One way to think about it is the longer your brain holds on to a negative event, or stimuli, the unhappier you report being. Basically, we found that the persistence of a person's brain in holding on to a negative stimulus is what predicts more negative and less positive daily emotional experiences. That in turn predicts how well they think they're doing in their life.

I do wonder to what extent this can be voluntarily controlled by people. I feel like I get good bang for the buck by drifting past negative emotions that don't serve me, refusing to let them snowball or self-sustain. And I feel like too many people are too emotionally driven. But then I feel like I might some kind of Spock-ian weirdo! Or that by working on my equanimity via self-"Talking Therapy" I've given up some highs as well as the lows.

I do feel I can be cheerful enough, mindfully acknowledging all the comforts of my kind of privileged life, though I feel I might've been bouncier/happier in the mid-90s. Like, after I got over worrying about nuclear annihilation but before getting worked up about Y2K and after that, adopting a kind of existential equanimity against a general panic about inevitable mortality.

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Final Sam's Jam Fam: the sisters' salute to George M Cohan (with me on laptop percussion)

Includes: Grand Old Flag / Give My Regards to Broadway / Mary / Harrigan

They say it was a car trip favorite, like right before they got home (which is kind of interesting, the family didn't even have a car until the girls were teens...)

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It's language that enables us to ask ourselves questions and reflect on our own experiences. Frogs notice all kinds of things in their world, but I don't think they can notice their noticings. I don't think they can dwell on them. That whole sort of stairway of curiosity that we have built-in doesn't exist for any species but us, and that makes a huge difference. Human consciousness is to animal consciousness roughly as languages is to birdsong. Birdsong communicates, but not much.

I like that line about the frogs.

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There's an old Maine joke that sums [our tricks for self-control] up. A farmer is in the outhouse, and when he pulls up his pants, a quarter rolls out of his pocket and falls down the hole. He swears and pulls out his wallet and throws down a five-dollar bill. Someone asks him later, "Why'd you do that?" He replies, "You don't think I'm going down there for a quarter, do you?"

One thing I remember from helping a native Russian speaker polish their English - "a spoon" vs "the spoon" was pretty easy but "this spoon" vs "that spoon" was tougher.

So I'm trying to codify my intuitive understanding of "this" vs "that" - Today I was editing a sentence from an old blog entry the started, roughly, "This poem captures the voice..." - but the comment came after the poem. My inner copy editor wanted to change it to "That poem...", but had the sentence preceded the poem (and ended with a colon) I absolutely would have stuck with "this".

So I guess there's kind of a temporal element to it? Like you use "that" when what separates the particular object from its peers has already been established - like "give me that spoon!" when the potential giver has already been using it. But "give me this spoon" might be used, along with a pointing gesture, to pick out a spoon from a bunch of its peers where what makes it different has not been yet established.

Of course, if you really didn't care which spoon, if there was no difference among them, you might say "give me a spoon". So kind of a spectrum: "a spoon" when you don't care which, "this spoon" when the narrowing is yet to happen, "that spoon" when it's already been narrowed down (but perhaps a peer spoon would have done) and "the spoon" when there's effectively only one spoon in that class.

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Ahh, Middle School (as Matt Groening calls it, "the deepest pit of Hell", high school being merely the second deepest.) Fun fact: for most of this time I went by my middle name "Logan". Anyway, mostly school stuff, plus the NEOSA Salvation Army Youth Band's trip to Mexico City.

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Nerf Football Rah Rah Rah

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The biggest and most frightening impact of the AI revolution might be on the relative efficiency of democracies and dictatorships. Historically, autocracies have faced crippling handicaps in regard to innovation and economic growth. In the late 20th century, democracies usually outperformed dictatorships, because they were far better at processing information. We tend to think about the conflict between democracy and dictatorship as a conflict between two different ethical systems, but it is actually a conflict between two different data-processing systems. Democracy distributes the power to process information and make decisions among many people and institutions, whereas dictatorship concentrates information and power in one place. Given 20th-century technology, it was inefficient to concentrate too much information and power in one place. Nobody had the ability to process all available information fast enough and make the right decisions. This is one reason the Soviet Union made far worse decisions than the United States, and why the Soviet economy lagged far behind the American economy.

However, artificial intelligence may soon swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. AI makes it possible to process enormous amounts of information centrally. In fact, it might make centralized systems far more efficient than diffuse systems, because machine learning works better when the machine has more information to analyze. If you disregard all privacy concerns and concentrate all the information relating to a billion people in one database, you'll wind up with much better algorithms than if you respect individual privacy and have in your database only partial information on a million people. An authoritarian government that orders all its citizens to have their DNA sequenced and to share their medical data with some central authority would gain an immense advantage in genetics and medical research over societies in which medical data are strictly private. The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century--the desire to concentrate all information and power in one place--may become their decisive advantage in the 21st century.

"The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind."

Not sure it's humane to adopt this stance when other people haven't, and are suffering, but it's an intriguing lens.

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FB's "5 years ago" feature reminded me of these Tom Swifties I posted:

"Well, that was average," said Tom, meanly.
"Ow, my balls," said Tom, testily.
"Meanest. Waitstaff. Ever!" Tom yelped.

My bandmate Nate came back with
"I dropped the toothpaste," said Tom, crestfallen.

Which I thought I had heard but inspired me to:
"I couldn't possibly eat another bite of marsupial steak!" said Tom, ruefully.
and later:
"My robot cyber canine will be worth every price to design and produce it!" said Tom, dogmatically.

That inspired Nat to go with
"I think I might be gay," said Tom, half in earnest.
which was visceral enough that I responded with
"I just drew an obscene image of genitals to illustrate Nat's last joke," said Tom, graphically.
and
"It was a really startling and funny joke to be introduced to," said Tom, being all meta.
I really like Tom Swifties that work on multiple levels, both the simple pun but where the quote is accurately described in the emotion.

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I've heard various pundits point out that they've never seen their smartphone in a dream, but last night I was totally taking some One Second Everyday footage at some kind of birthday party in one.

I know you're going to be stunned by this, but I listen 4,000 times a day to WINS news radio. I have radios, they're on that station, and everything I have to do something that doesn't occupy my mind, like a chore, which is five million times a day -- to me a chore is also, you know, pouring a glass of water -- I turn it on. As far as breaking news, they are the best. And the other great thing about them is that they repeat the news every 23 minutes. It doesn't matter how horrible the news is: the fifth time you hear it, it doesn't sound that bad.

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Trump Voters aren't dumb. But they are thinking to break the system that's not working for them. As a moderate, I don't think they realize how bad things can get.

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blender of love The Placebo Effect and Videogames Interesting. I've been thinking about the imperfect information you get in videogames. Especially for FPS-style games for casual players: it's hard to tell if you're killed because of a smart computer opponent vs your inexperience or just because of a weapon imbalance in the game or what not- I think that tends to put a damper on the need for good AI in games. (I remember reading a book behind the scenes in "Wing Commander", that mentioned when the enemy spacecraft were visible they swoop and loop and try and look cool, but when you couldn't see them they'd just try to head straight for your tail.)

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Lately I've been thinking about scanning some old high school and college docs and getting rid of them. The cringe-worthiness of my writing at the time made this Slate article on youthful writing haunting us online resonate for me. And I wonder if I'm a better writer, a better judge, or what. The Banner (thanks to EB, and there's EBD!) on its jury-rigged display, ready to march!
Sometimes I am simply appalled that smartquotes are STILL an issue with copy and pasting and web display.

"Laziness, well-applied, can be a virtue!"
"That sounds like something lazy people make up."

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by pie comics

Bonjour, bonjour, Our most hardworking son,
As they say in France, whence We
Have lately come. C'est bon. We hope that you
Can visit it today, a side trip as you roll.
As though that's possible; oh, well. Make Us a star!
Roll Us up a katamari full of things.

We have no Royal Gift, so take your pick of things
You roll up while on Earth, Our pee-wee son.
You have three minutes, by Our watch, to make a star
To grace the graceless sky. Make haste! Lest We
Grow disenchanted with the way you roll.
Should you create too small a ball, We will berate you.

Our sky, our lonely, empty sky, cries out to you
(To Us, to be precise. But you will do) for things!
What are you waiting for? Roll, Princeling, roll!
We delegate this task to you, Our only son.
Create a stylish katamari, one that We
Would not be too ashamed to make a star.

It takes ten thousand things to make a star.
What sort of things? We'll leave that up to you
But make them shiny! Shiny! Yes. We
Have no use for boring, ugly things.
A sparkly, stylish katamari, princely son
Is what We need. To Earth! It's time! Let's roll!

Oooh, look! So many things. Well? Roll
Them up! You'll need a lot to make a star
Worthy of the King of Cosmos' son.
Roll coins, and lobsters, plants and fish. You
Must be quick! Get bicycles, and other things
That add girth fast. Get houses! Ships! We

Hear the clock tick on, and We
Will come down to inspect your roll
In ten! Quick - roll up cities! Roll up seas! More things
On top of more. Roll up the Earth! Roll up a star!
Roll up the Moon, the sun, the sky, and you
May yet be adjudged fit to be Our son.

And what is this, most laggard son? So small. And dull. We
Are displeased. We told you you should do your best to roll
A katamari fit to form a brilliant star! Not this pathetic lump of misbegotten things.

That sestina captures the very idiosyncratic voice of the "King of All Cosmos" in the Katamari Damacy games...

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"You know, dad, in some cultures, they made a point of using every part of the animal"

"So do we, son. Now eat your hot dog"

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15265317 You are what you think when you drink

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There won't be humans in 500 years. Enough people choke themselves when they jerk off we gave it a name. We ain't a species made to last.

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Google+ Leak fascinating document says tons about Amazon, Google, and "service oriented architecture" - great writing, read the full thing.
--by james cupboard on b3ta.com

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The Office "Dinner Party" episode (one of the best, actually) had a great idea for a custom candle smell: Bonfire-scented, like a campfire.

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--via kate




EB and me, Topsfield Fair. It's like Johnny Jump Ups for big people!

I am moderately proud of my double backflip presented here, less so of my odd, froglike sumo stance. Still it had a great dreamlike quality when you were doing it...tiring as heck though!

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"870 Handy Home Hints" (looks like it might be one of those Home Depot mags) is almost disturbingly clever.

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<<peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo, peek-a-boo, i love you>>

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Damn it, ANY word containing four letters is a four-letter word. As Evil B pointed out to me, yesterday's entry was pushing the already high self-indulgence bar for this site. Mostly it was just a goof.

I was in Rockport helping EB clear way for an insulation work crew last night, and I crashed there and took the commuter rail down this morning. He mentioned that if you stay on the left side of the Rockport-to-Boston early train you can some nice sunrise views. I was too slow for some shots, but I thought this one was OK, if a bit pedestrian:

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Article of the Moment

Lieberman, Michel, and colleagues built upon previous study of seven competing rules for verb conjugation in Old English, six of which have gradually faded from use over time. They found that the one surviving rule, which adds an "-ed" suffix to simple past and past participle forms, contributes to the evolutionary decay of irregular English verbs according to a specific mathematical function: It regularizes them at a rate that is inversely proportional to the square root of their usage frequency.

In other words, a verb used 100 times less frequently will evolve 10 times as fast.

Other tidbits: New verbs entering the language are always regular, and the word "wed" might be next to go, with "wed" being dropped for "wedded"

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Site of the Moment
Unclutter.com... yet another one of "those" sites, but pretty good.

Zinger of the Moment

Last week, Zastava, the Serbian company that built the now-defunct Yugo, signed a deal to begin producing Fiats under license. The first step will be to rebuild Zastava's factory, which was bombed by NATO in 1999. A Fiat-Yugo alliance -- can you think of a worse conjunction of low quality? It's like saying you've invented a new food that combines Spam and corn husks

The article goes on to suggest that if it Yugo (which is, in retrospect, a clever pun on the company and the action) was out today, they could target a female demographic with the "Yugo Girl".

Quote of the Moment

If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.

I also liked his 1995 quote "I don't understand this whole thing about computers and the superhighway. Who wants to be in touch with all of those people?"

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Links of the Moment
Wired.com had two neat biology stories lately: humans as superorganism, that we should properly consider the bacteria that live in us as part of "us", and growing a jacket from living cells...what's funny with that is people are more squicked by the idea than by, say, killing a cow to make a nice leather jacket...we're so weirdly sentimental about living tissue! It reminds me of this idea for "Chicken Little" in the book "The Space Merchants", that we can grow meat from a big slab of ever-growing tissue, cutting and packaging slices and sending 'em off... Sox slipped behind a game, alas. But we did get to the amusing view of Don Zimmer rolling on the ground after trying to bullrush Pedro...

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Video Game Quote of the Moment

Seriously though, who would believe that mansions get given away in contests?! Talk about stupid! What do they feed you Mario brothers anyway...gullible soup?

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Braingame of the Moment
Dylan sent me this 7-Up themed mathematical "Read Your Mind" game--it's pretty convincing, the tricks it uses to guess the digit you circled are relatively subtle. The UI is so-so...took me a second to realize I was supposed to click on the guy in the lower right corner.

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Image of the Moment

...cartoon via Ross' page

Small Irony of the Moment
Mo just bought a book called The Simplicity Reader. It's 872 pages.

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View and Software of the Moment
This is the view outside my shared office workspace. It's a lot better than the view I had weeks ago, which was a white cement wall with a small window overlooking a big strip of asphault and the next building over. Because of this terrific view, and the way you can see how the waterline moves against Salem's wharf, I've become a bit obsessed with the tides. So far the coolest thing I've found for that is Tide Tool for the PalmPilot. It provides a table with the day's high and low tides, as well as a cool colorful graph. Databases for tons of different locations come included with it, and it also tracks the phase of the moon and sunrise/sunset times as well.

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Quote of the Moment

That smugness I saved from the nineties- where did I put it?

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Quote of Another Moment

A mind is a terrible thing to ugg.. I forgot..

Hmmm. I see kirk.com is back in "inscrutable" mode. For the longest time it had a picture of a VW van, and nothing else. Then for a while it was some sort of half-baked portal wannabe. Now it's just a graph of the word "Kirk" with a merged i and r. Odd. For a while, especially during the VW bug stage, I had this vision that "rats! if only that site wasn't there I'd have one of the ultimate vanity domains!" but the fact is there are a lot geeky Kirks out there, many of whom are more wired than yours truly, even by the standards of 1996.

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Link of the Moment
Excellent essay on Fundamentalism and its conflict with the modern world, from the NY Times. I think people who say religion is bad should temper that sentiment...after some of the worst atrocities were by "godless" regimes. But they were, in a sense, fundamentalist. I'm begining to think fundamentalism is pretty much evil but right now I don't have a defintion of fundamentalism I'm happy with. (via camworld)

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Quote of the Moment

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.