Adoring Fans

I've come to realize in dramatic fashion that this blog, and the interests it draws on, are a liability in my life, at least for now. Blog silence will prevail for quite some time. Sorry.

Curveball, Futurist Edition

More blockquoting from Edge. This time, I give you Jaron Lanier, who looks a bit like a Psychlo:

If all this sounds a little too fantastic or obscure, here's another approach to the same idea using more familiar reference points. Imagine a means of expression that is a cross between the three great new art forms of the 20th century: jazz improvisation, computer programming, and cinema. Suppose you could improvise anything that could be seen in a movie with the speed and facility of a jazz improviser. What would that mean for the sense of connection between you and someone you love?

It would mean that we were both awesome. There are plenty more details if you follow the link, but honestly: what a beautiful idea.

On a less reverent note, that Wikipedia article on Psychlos (the alien villains from Battlefield Earth) explains that (according to L. Ron Hubbard) "because of their extra digit, the Psychlos naturally developed a 'base 11' positional notation system, the mathematics of which is the basis of the teleportation technology that enabled them to dominate the galaxy." Um. Besides being ridiculous on its face and mathematically idiotic – base 11, base 10, who cares, it's just notation, and even if it does have some effect on the development of mathematics, that effect would undoubtedly shrink to nothing by the time a culture came up with the technology necessary for teleportation — this premise fails to take into account the fact that polydactyly — extra fingers or toes — is actually a genetically dominant trait in humans. So if working "naturally" in base 11 really did translate into reproductive success — which is precisely Hubbard's claim, at least according to Wikipedia — then polydactyl humans should be everywhere. Not just because their genes would own the pool, but because they could fucking teleport.

Further Wiki probes reveal that the Amish have higher rates of polydactyly than other groups, which I suppose I could have guessed. This immediately suggests an idea for what would be an all-time classic sci-fi movie — one that would not only rake in billions at the box office but finally end the brutal war between Scientologists and the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Not an action movie — an action-at-a-distance movie.

(Wamp wamp.)

Admirably Even-Handed

I'm sure we've all done this before, but:

One Man's Fantasy

When I die, there's going to be rappers at my funeral — hopefully, you know what I mean.…

—Lil Wayne, "Weezy on Retirement," Dedication 2 track 13.

Something to Chew On

The Edge World Question Center has released the answers to its 2007 head-scratcher, "What are you optimistic about?" The respondents are mostly scientists/technology people, and/so the answers aren't uniformly gripping, but I found this riff, from psychologist Martin E.P. Seligman, pretty fascinating:

I am optimistic that God may come at the end.…

Consider…the principle of NonZero that Robert Wright (2000) articulates in his book of the same name. Wright argues that the invisible hand of biological and cultural evolution ineluctably select for the complex over the simple because positive sum games have the survival and reproductive edge over zero sum games, and that over epochal time more and more complex systems, bulkily, but necessarily, arise.…

A process that selects for more complexity is ultimately aimed at nothing less than omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness. Omniscience is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of science. Omnipotence is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of technology. Righteousness is, arguably, the literally ultimate end product of positive institutions. So in the very longest run the principle of Nonzero heads toward a God who is not supernatural, but who ultimately acquires omnipotence, omniscience and goodness through the natural progress of Nonzero. Perhaps, just perhaps, God comes at the end.

A Solid Sentence from a Blog I Read, That's All I'm Offering Here

He's not a geotechnical engineer, or some wildly charismatic salesman of earth-moving equipment; he's just a man with a water hose and access to a few corn silos.

Via BLDGBLOG.

Fuck this year.

One of the Best, Most Thorough Nerd Riffs I've Seen in Some Time

Via Merlin Mann's del.icio.us links, something no one will enjoy:

The phrase “giant penguin cock” is bound to offend someone. The destination anchor itself is harmless. Semantically, we want to let our visitor’s user-agent know that within our A element, the user may encounter a word, or phrase, or paragraph, or image, that is NSFW. REL would be the incorrect attribute under that scenario. CLASS would work much better.…

There's more, of course. I also enjoy this comment from "Ned Baldessin":

Funny geeky idea, but don't you find it slightly ethnocentric to standardize in a universal spec a very western set of moral/cultural values?

Of course, goatse is probably off limits on all continents, but what about corner cases like female breasts, that you can see on huge billboards over here in france…

The Thing about Derrida

On page 27 of Of Grammatology (trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976)), Derrida asks, "What can a science of writing begin to signify, if it is granted…that historicity itself it [sic] tied to the possibility of writing…?" That should be "is" — an obvious typo.

Or is it?