"Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Deeply earnest and thoughtful people stand on shaky footing with the public"

  - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Problems with Online Facilities and Cloud Computing

I am also having an interesting time using everything on the web only, as opposed to PC only.
At the moment it is a bit of a combination - which is probably where things will pan out in the long term - provided that better facilities get put into place to share information between the two worlds.

It is the information storage - ie saving documents, and snippets of information etc - which is really really really bugging me.
I am finding that I am putting the same piece of information into 2 or 3 (sometimes more) different locations, since I haven't settled on a single facility (site) or single interface for where the information goes.
So, for instance, all the information I researched on web services components and user interfaces etc.
I ended up creating all these entries:
1. del.icio.us records and tages
2. google notebook clippings and associated text
3. reply to the discussion forum in Central Desktop on this topic

and then I got the whole discussion forum replies into a single document, using an RSS Feed, and placed it into a TikiWiki page.

I could have also stored the searched entries into my Evernote space, and placed them into my Dokuwiki.

When I get documents from people via email (which is still, unfortunately, the predominant method of sharing information at the moment), I find that I am saving them locally on my PC (well, the one I am using at the time - being the Linux system, although I also use Windows PCs and have to save documents on them as well) and then re-loading them into Google Docs or into Zoho Docs. I have setup some "email-in" capabilities for Evernote and Google Docs and also into a TikiWiki and so also forward the documents into those facilities using the email facilities - but usually I may have to change the names of the documents to be better than what is sent to me (people are so so so bad at naming documents so that others can use them) - and so I mostly use the "mail-in" facilities when I am sending back a document and can set the subject line on the email properly (people's use of subject lines is infinitely worse than their document naming conventions - awful awful awful) and can name the document effectively as well (in relation to the ultimate storage of the document).

It is all a little tedious - I must admit.
It is the correct way to go - keep items online - but the whole ecosystem (online, laptop, applications, services, etc) is really a little broken I think. It really needs an excellent piece of integration work between all these facilities.

And furthermore, I find that I am copying and pasting and re-posting material into different environments.
For instance, this little piece of rant about the use of online facilities is going to go into some sort of blog and then some sort of commentary in another facility where I want to keep this information, as well as in this email (but I don't need the other material in the email) - yet I can't easily do this from a single facility. So I will copy it into a new "document" in Kate (the editor, not a person - but, that would be interesting) and then paste it into the other websites as appropriate.

Keeping everything setup and organised is quite a large task. It may be exacerbated by the fact that I like trying out new facilities, and am still looking for the perfect structure of all the facilities together - but I hold by the initial premise of this post - there is still a long way for all these cloud computing and online facilities to go - even though it is absolutely the direction in which everything needs to head.

style

Style is in no way an embellishment, as certain people think, it is not evean a question of technique; it is, like color with certain painters, a quality of vision, a revelation of a private niverse which each one of us sees and which is not seen by others. he pleasure an artist gives us is to make us know an additional universe.

-- Proust, Marcel "Letters of Marcel Proust", translated by Mina Curtiss, Random House, New York, 1949, edition Helen Marx Books, 2006, page 274

memory

Voluntary memory, which is above all the memory of the intelligence end of the eyes, gives us only the surface of the past without the truth, but when an odor, a taste, rediscovered under entirely different circumstances evoke for us, in spite of ourselves, the past, we sense how different is this past from the one we thought we remembered and which our voluntary memory was painting like a bad painter using false colors.

-- Proust, Marcel "Letters of Marcel Proust", translated by Mina Curtiss, Random House, New York, 1949, edition Helen Marx Books, 2006, pages 272-3

That invisible substance, time

There is a plane geometry and a geometry of space. And so for me the novel is not only plane psycholoy but psychology in space and time. That invisible substance, time, I try to isolate. But in order to do this it was essential that the experience be continuous.

-- Proust, Marcel "Letters of Marcel Proust", translated by Mina Curtiss, Random House, New York, 1949, edition Helen Marx Books, 2006, pages 271-2

a piece of work is a thing which, although born out of ourselves, is still worth more than we are

I feel so strongly that a piece of work is a thing which, although born out of ourselves, is still worth more than we are, that I find it natural to take trouble for it, like a father for his child.

-- Proust, Marcel "Letters of Marcel Proust", translated by Mina Curtiss, Random House, New York, 1949, edition Helen Marx Books, 2006, page 269

time is a process of reckoning that corresponds to no reality

The philosophers have certainly persuaded us that time is a process of reckoning that corresponds to no reality. We know that, but the ancient superstition is so strong that we cannot escape it, and it seems to us that on a given date we are inevitably older

-- Proust, Marcel "Letters of Marcel Proust", translated by Mina Curtiss, Random House, New York, 1949, edition Helen Marx Books, 2006, page 267

Language

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

 - George Carlin

Stupidity

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

 - George Carlin

Our species

If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

 - George Carlin

 

Colmar and Pithara - A Study in Difference and Sameness

You know, I was looking at the photo's of Colmar, the medieval town in Northern France (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=colmar,+france&ie=UTF8&ll=48.080679,7.359972&spn=2.429462,4.707642&z=8 - just south of Strasbourg and north of Basel) and I was immediately struck by how it would be to live there - what it would be like.

 

Firstly, because it appears to be so different from living in Perth - from an urban and suburban environment.

 

Secondly, by the beauty (old-worldly, etc, etc) of the buildings, and the way that they are all put together - cobble-stone streets and small shops, and three story height and nothing more - etc etc.

 

What is it like to live in a place where one has to participate in the place in a certain manner - walking and riding, rather than driving.  And arranging lifestyle in that manner.  A closer and more intimate way of living, rather than driving quickly from one place to another, parking, doing one's business, and then driving back again.  More connected to what is around one - rather than the inside of a car.

 

I was struck by this because of the recent move to inner city living rather than purely suburban living - with the consequent change in behavioural patterns relating to travel and transport and connection to the rest of the community.  This was a GOOD move - and I can see how it may relate to living in a place such as Colmar (although I am probably disregarding the downsides of living in a place like Colmar.  I live in an inner urban community, which is a quick train ride from the centre of the city and has the rest of a large city available to it in short distance.  Colmar seems to be smaller - but still appears to be a medieval village inside a larger residential area, and probably only less than 60km away from Basel - which is still within the suburban sprawl of Perth now.  Maybe it does not have as many facilities available as we have in this city.  Maybe it does within a reasonable driving distance - which would include a reasonable train distance as well.  And it does seem to have a massive forrest close to it - so maybe it has everything that anyone could want in living in a place!).

 

But the thing that I REALLY wanted to write about was the fact that medieval towns like Colmar have not only survived, but are vibrant and a part of the whole living in Europe experience - and are maintained as such, as part of the lifestyle of the place - rather than simply being pulled down and destroyed, or left to rot.

 

There are a whole range of similar towns etc in Germany which I have visited as well - they are more the norm rather than the exception.  They all have their own peculiar character which makes it a wonder to visit and enjoy.  I am sure that there is an element of appreciation by those of us who have never lived in such a situation, when we visit, that the locals do not understand or are aware of.

 

The houses, the streets, the idiosyncracies which make the place so interesting.

 

It struck me that we have little towns in WA that have a certain element of the same character.  They have their own ambience, their own idiosyncracies, which lend a unique style to the experience of being in that town.

 

Except that most of the towns like that in WA are really slowly deteriorating into a state of decrepitude.  There are some that are surviving, but losing their individual character as they move forward into survival - they are simply small versions of a larger urban and suburban sprawl (a la the American model).  The really little towns are struggling.  There is no real equivalent to Colmar (maybe there is, but surely not in the same manner or capability.  Maybe someone can advise me).

 

And, to me, that is a real loss - since the little WA towns have their own character, so different from elsewhere in the world, which provides a unique lens on the experience of human habitation - a uniqueness which offers something to the whole vitality of life on earth - which will gradually fade away (in a manner in which medieval towns in Europe have not really faded away).

 

A touch of sadness at this realisation - heightened by an awareness that there is little which can be done about the situation.

 

A minor example of such a situation would be Pithara, where I grew up.

This Picasa album - http://picasaweb.google.com/sutherlandswa/20071013Pithara - has some snapshots taken during its centenary celebrations on 13 October 2007 - note the huge difference in age between Pithara and Colmar.  It is highly likely that Pithara will never make it to a 200 year celebration, let alone to a 500 year celebration!  (Those very very attentive amongst you will notice that not every single photo in this album is of Pithara.  I leave it as an exercise for you to work out where the other location is!).

 

Is there any beauty in the snapshots of Pithara, its buildings and locations?

Cemeteries Of London - Coldplay

Cemeteries Of London

- Coldplay

At night they would go walking ‘till the breaking of the day,
The morning is for sleeping…
Through the dark streets they go searching to see God in their own way,
Save the nighttime for your weeping…
Your weeping…

Singing la lalalalala la lé…
And the night over London lay…

So we rode down to the river where the toiling ghosts spring,
For their curses to be broken…
We’d go underneath the arches where the witches are in the saying,
There are ghost towns in the ocean…
The ocean…

Singing la lalalalala la lé…
And the night over London lay…

God is in the houses and God is in my head… and all the cemeteries in London…
I see God come in my garden, but I don’t know what he said,
For my heart it wasn’t open…
Not open…

Singing la lalalalala la lé…
And the night over London lay…

Singing la lalalalala la lé…
There’s no light over London today…

---

http://www.metrolyrics.com/cemeteries-of-london-lyrics-coldplay.html

http://teanaelf.com/cemeteries-of-london-coldplay/

---

CHORDS & LYRICS

some lyrics may be incorrect
_________________________________
________________________________
_____________________________________



Verse 1:

----D--------------------Dm------
At night they would go walking til the

--C-------------Dm
breaking of the day

-----Dm
the morning is for sleeping

-------------D---------------------Dm
through the dark streets they go searching
--------C---------------Dm
to see god in their own way

------------Dm
save the nighttime for your weeping

------Dm
your weeping


Chorus:
___________________________________

--------Dm----------C------Dm
singing la la la la la la yeah

---------Bb--------Am-------Dm
And the night over London Lay



Verse 3:
____________________________________

------Dm-----------------F---------
So we rode down to the river where the
---Am------------Dm
toiling ghosts spring

-----------Dm-----------F--Am
For their curses to be broken

------Dm---------------F------
We go underneath the arches where
------Am--------------Dm
the witches are in, saying

-----------Dm------------------F--Am
There are ghost towns in the ocean

------Dm
the ocean


Chorus:
_____________________________________

---------Dm----------C------Dm
singing la la la la la la yeah

---------Bb--------Am------Dm
And the night over London lay

Verse 3:
______________________________________

Dm--------------F---------Am-----------Dm
God is in the houses and god is in my head

--------Dm-------------F----Am
All the cemeteries in London

---------Dm------------F-----------Am
I see god come in my garden but i don't

--------------Dm
know what he said

--------Dm-------------F--Am
For my heart it wasn't open

-----Dm
Not open


Chorus:
__________________________________________

--------Dm---------C-------Dm
singing la la la la la la yeah

---------Bb--------Am-------Dm
And the night over London Lay

--------Dm---------C-------Dm
singing la la la la la la yeah

------------Bb---------Am-----Dm
There's no light over London today

---

The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.

The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.

  - William Gibson

trying to delve through what is happening now to discern the bigger picture and longer term aspects of being amongst the happenings

We do seem to be living through a period of turbulence - I am sure of it.
The most interesting thing is that everyone goes about their daily lives, living as best they can, as if nothing will be that different tomorrow.
We probably all know that it is probably going to be different tomorrow, and maybe we think we should do something, except that the momentum of daily life means that one simply keeps going, and the directional changes are minute (yet felt over the long term).  Rather like the massive aircraft carrier or cruise ship.  Indeed, the prevailing metaphor for many people would be that we are on a massive cruise ship (the whole earth), cruising along in luxury, or at least, relative comfort, not quite knowing where the cruise ship is really going and not really having any control over where it goes - apart from where it theoretically has said it is going (when we signed up and paid our money).  Now, let's not try to push the metaphor too much, but ...

In some ways, it is a little like being human overall.  We all know we are going to die.  Some of us are confronted with it sooner rather than later.  But we continue to live our life as we have made it, or was we think we want it, rather than radically change everything, simply because death sits on our shoulder.  Maybe it is BECAUSE death sits on our shoulder that we continue to live our life as we want it, or as best we think we can.  We all know that death is certain and immutable - so, just live.

So, maybe, it is almost the same in relation to the mega-events of the world at the moment, a dispersed reflection of the micro-world of each individual.  Our own death far outweighs the imperative of any other "death" (of others, of the world as a whole), and any other "deaths" are reflective of our own death, thus, in the face of such a certainty, we live our lives as best we can and want.

Which is not to say that things don't change.
As I said, it is as best we can and want.
Sometimes as best we can is hard and horrid.
Hence some of the stories which people are now starting to recount - about how life is returning to a hard way - like it used to be before.
And hence, the fear that one has for one's loved ones.  How hard will it be for them?  What can one do to help them?
Who knows - sometimes lots, sometimes nothing - sometimes it is simply thinking of them and nothing more to be done.  Who knows.

Mind you, little things do happen - as you have said - and the evolution of humanity continues - as much as it ever has.
All the writing of all the doomsayers (or even people simply "reporting") tends to disregard the pure adaptability of humanity.  Why are there so many of us - because we can adapt relatively well - maybe better than anything else apart from certain bacteria and other such "creatures" (actually, lots of things - but they are all rather different from our mammalian structure).

So, lots of adaptations will lead to a new world - no doubt about that.

Jean-François Lyotard: Introduction to The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/pm/lyotard-introd.htm

Jean-François Lyotard: Introduction to The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge

The object of this study is the condition of knowledge in the most highly developed societies. I have decided to use the word postmodern to describe that condition. The word is in current use on the American continent among sociologists and critics; it designates the state of our culture following the transformations which, since the end of the nineteenth century, have altered the game rules for science, literature, and the arts. The present study will place these transformations in the context of the crisis of narratives.

Science has always been in conflict with narratives. Judged by the yardstick of science, the majority of them prove to be fables. But to the extent that science does not restrict itself to stating useful regularities and seeks the truth, it is obliged to legitimate the rules of its own game. It then produces a discourse of legitimation with respect to its own status, a discourse called philosophy. I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse of this kind making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth. For example, the rule of consensus between the sender and addressee of a statement with truth-value is deemed acceptable if it is cast in terms of a possible unanimity between rational minds: this is the Enlightenment narrative, in which the hero of knowledge works toward a good ethico-political end -- universal peace. As can be seen from this example, if a metanarrative implying a philosophy of history is used to legitimate knowledge, questions are raised concerning the validity of the institutions governing the social bond: these must be legitimated as well. Thus justice is consigned to the grand narrative in the same way as truth.

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements--narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Conveyed within each cloud are pragmatic valencies specific to its kind. Each of us lives at the inter section of many of these. However, we do not necessarily establish stable language combinations, and the properties of the ones we do establish are not necessarily communicable.

Thus the society of the future falls less within the province of a Newtonian anthropology (such as structuralism or systems theory) than a pragmatics of language particles. There are many different language games a heterogeneity of elements. They only give rise to institutions in patches-local determinism.

The decision makers, however, attempt to manage these clouds of sociality according to input/output matrices, following a logic which implies that their elements are commensurable and that the whole is determinable. They allocate our lives for the growth of power. In matters of social justice and of scientific truth alike, the legitimation of that power is based on its optimizing the system's performance -- efficiency. The application of this criterion to all of our games necessarily entails a certain level of terror, whether soft or hard: be operational (that is, commensurable) or disappear.

The logic of maximum performance is no doubt inconsistent in many ways, particularly with respect to contradiction in the socioeconomic field: it demands both less work (to lower production costs) and more (to lessen the social burden of the idle population). But our incredulity is now such that we no longer expect salvation to rise from these inconsistencies, as did Marx.

Still, the postmodern condition is as much a stranger to disenchantment as it is to the blind positivist of delegitimation. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside? The operativity criterion is technological; it has no relevance for judging what is true or just. Is legitimacy to be found in consensus obtained through discussion, as Jurgen Habermas thinks? Such consensus does violence to the heterogeneity of language games. And invention is always born of dissension. Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology, but the inventor's paralogy.

Here is the question: is a legitimation of the social bond, a just society, feasible in terms of a paradox analogous to that of scientific activity? What would such a paradox be?

The text that follows is an occasional one. It is a report on knowledge in the most highly developed societies and was presented to the Conseil des Universities of the government of Quebec at the request of its president. I would like to thank him for his kindness in allowing its publication.

It remains to be raid that the author of the report is a philosopher, not an expert. The latter knows what he knows and what he does not know: the former does not. One concludes, the other questions -two very different language games. I combine them here with the result that neither quite succeeds.

The philosopher at least can console himself with the thought that the formal and pragmatic analysis of certain philosophical and ethico-political discourses of legitimation, which underlies the report, will subsequently see the light of day. The report will have served to introduce that analysis from a somewhat sociologizing slant, one that truncates but at the same time situates it.

Such as it is, I dedicate this report to the Institut Polytechnique de Philosophie of the Universite de Paris VIII (Vincennes)--at this very postmodern moment that finds the University nearing what may be its end, while the Institute may just be beginning.

Also see http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/pm/

Poetry - I Am Sure

I am not going to make any comment, but ... ... ... read this stuff

Slow Wave - http://www.slowwave.com/index.php

I was pointed to this strip by Scott Adams - it is really weird (as he says - http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/slow_wave/) - sort of useless and innocuous when you first read it, but then strangely compelling when you read through a bunch of them at a time.  Fascinating having an insight into people's innermost cogitations - and a fascinating social meme to spread.

http://www.slowwave.com/index.php

See Around Corners

That is so much a wonderful difficult philosophical question - what happens if we walk right past the meaning of our life because we can't see it - for so many reasons? Do we ever really know what is the real meaning for us, ever, whenever anything may happen? Is it all just plain guess work, that whatever choice we make at any point in time can be completely invalidated by the next moment in time? Do we just keep going, on the obviously invalid assumption that what our life is to be and what we need in life is just around the corner, on the assumption that we pretend that we can see around corners?

This leads to both good and bad conclusions (of course, there are no such things as good or bad conclusions - only the perception and appreciation of conclusions from our own perspective). But, it certainly also just leads to life leading on to more life.

Risk? What Risk?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp

 

---

March 29, 2008

Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More

By DENNIS OVERBYE

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead.

The lawsuit, filed March 21 in Federal District Court, in Honolulu, seeks a temporary restraining order prohibiting CERN from proceeding with the accelerator until it has produced a safety report and an environmental assessment. It names the federal Department of Energy, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Science Foundation and CERN as defendants.

According to a spokesman for the Justice Department, which is representing the Department of Energy, a scheduling meeting has been set for June 16.

Why should CERN, an organization of European nations based in Switzerland, even show up in a Hawaiian courtroom?

In an interview, Mr. Wagner said, “I don’t know if they’re going to show up.” CERN would have to voluntarily submit to the court’s jurisdiction, he said, adding that he and Mr. Sancho could have sued in France or Switzerland, but to save expenses they had added CERN to the docket here. He claimed that a restraining order on Fermilab and the Energy Department, which helps to supply and maintain the accelerator’s massive superconducting magnets, would shut down the project anyway.

James Gillies, head of communications at CERN, said the laboratory as of yet had no comment on the suit. “It’s hard to see how a district court in Hawaii has jurisdiction over an intergovernmental organization in Europe,” Mr. Gillies said.

“There is nothing new to suggest that the L.H.C. is unsafe,” he said, adding that its safety had been confirmed by two reports, with a third on the way, and would be the subject of a discussion during an open house at the lab on April 6.

“Scientifically, we’re not hiding away,” he said.

But Mr. Wagner is not mollified. “They’ve got a lot of propaganda saying it’s safe,” he said in an interview, “but basically it’s propaganda.”

In an e-mail message, Mr. Wagner called the CERN safety review “fundamentally flawed” and said it had been initiated too late. The review process violates the European Commission’s standards for adhering to the “Precautionary Principle,” he wrote, “and has not been done by ‘arms length’ scientists.”

Physicists in and out of CERN say a variety of studies, including an official CERN report in 2003, have concluded there is no problem. But just to be sure, last year the anonymous Safety Assessment Group was set up to do the review again.

“The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a threat to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots,” said Michelangelo Mangano, a CERN theorist who said he was part of the group. The others prefer to remain anonymous, Mr. Mangano said, for various reasons. Their report was due in January.

This is not the first time around for Mr. Wagner. He filed similar suits in 1999 and 2000 to prevent the Brookhaven National Laboratory from operating the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. That suit was dismissed in 2001. The collider, which smashes together gold ions in the hopes of creating what is called a “quark-gluon plasma,” has been operating without incident since 2000.

Mr. Wagner, who lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, studied physics and did cosmic ray research at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a doctorate in law from what is now known as the University of Northern California in Sacramento. He subsequently worked as a radiation safety officer for the Veterans Administration.

Mr. Sancho, who describes himself as an author and researcher on time theory, lives in Spain, probably in Barcelona, Mr. Wagner said.

Doomsday fears have a long, if not distinguished, pedigree in the history of physics. At Los Alamos before the first nuclear bomb was tested, Emil Konopinski was given the job of calculating whether or not the explosion would set the atmosphere on fire.

The Large Hadron Collider is designed to fire up protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts before banging them together. Nothing, indeed, will happen in the CERN collider that does not happen 100,000 times a day from cosmic rays in the atmosphere, said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

What is different, physicists admit, is that the fragments from cosmic rays will go shooting harmlessly through the Earth at nearly the speed of light, but anything created when the beams meet head-on in the collider will be born at rest relative to the laboratory and so will stick around and thus could create havoc.

The new worries are about black holes, which, according to some variants of string theory, could appear at the collider. That possibility, though a long shot, has been widely ballyhooed in many papers and popular articles in the last few years, but would they be dangerous?

According to a paper by the cosmologist Stephen Hawking in 1974, they would rapidly evaporate in a poof of radiation and elementary particles, and thus pose no threat. No one, though, has seen a black hole evaporate.

As a result, Mr. Wagner and Mr. Sancho contend in their complaint, black holes could really be stable, and a micro black hole created by the collider could grow, eventually swallowing the Earth.

But William Unruh, of the University of British Columbia, whose paper exploring the limits of Dr. Hawking’s radiation process was referenced on Mr. Wagner’s Web site, said they had missed his point. “Maybe physics really is so weird as to not have black holes evaporate,” he said. “But it would really, really have to be weird.”

Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist whose work helped fuel the speculation about black holes at the collider, pointed out in a paper last year that black holes would probably not be produced at the collider after all, although other effects of so-called quantum gravity might appear.

As part of the safety assessment report, Dr. Mangano and Steve Giddings of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have been working intensely for the last few months on a paper exploring all the possibilities of these fearsome black holes. They think there are no problems but are reluctant to talk about their findings until they have been peer reviewed, Dr. Mangano said.

Dr. Arkani-Hamed said concerning worries about the death of the Earth or universe, “Neither has any merit.” He pointed out that because of the dice-throwing nature of quantum physics, there was some probability of almost anything happening. There is some minuscule probability, he said, “the Large Hadron Collider might make dragons that might eat us up.”

 

Incompetence

Pretty interesting - and pretty much accords with my experience:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL

 

Sweding Tron

Great piece of lo-tech amateur animation - homage

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/03/trons-classic-l.html

Boomtown 2050

 

The Australian Bureau of Statistics projects that the current population of Perth, Western Australia (1,497,480 as at 2006) will double by 2050.  This not only means that 651,078 new homes will need to be built but also the entire infrastructure of the city will have to double.  What was built in 178 years will need to be reproduced in 43.  This is daunting, and yet no one is talking about it.  Everyone is too busy - the city is booming!

 

As part of an Australian Research Council Discovery grant regarding suburbia, ecology and design, Professor Richard Weller (Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Visual Arts, University Of Western Australia) is heading a team that is developing various growth scenarios for the city so that the public can have a more informed debate about the future of Perth.  They state "We are not making utopias; we are projecting a range of options that are all relatively feasible."

 

More information can be obtained from the following link:

 

 http://www.alva.uwa.edu.au/boomtown

 

 

FIDIMPLICITARY

I had to send this other word with examples of impugnment in it:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-fid1.htm

FIDIMPLICITARY /ˌfɪdimˈplɪcitəry/

Putting one's faith in someone else's views.

It rather looks like the sort of word somebody has forged in a fit of misplaced inventiveness. It was created by Sir Thomas Urquhart in 1652 in a book with a Greek title I won't try to reproduce but which has the subtitle The Discovery of a Most Exquisite Jewel. He took it from the church Latin fides implicita, implicit faith.

He used it as a scathing epithet for academic types, gown-men, who were very happy to believe the assertions of their predecessors and were prepared to take all things literally on trust and without examination. So far as anybody knows, Sir Thomas was the only person who ever used it. It did appear in an issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1817, but in a caricature of Sir Thomas that had him refer to "those shallow and fidimplicitary coxcombs, who fill our too credulous ears with their quisquiliary deblaterations".

Those are a nice pair of knock-down words, as Humpty Dumpty might have said to Alice. Quisquiliary is Urquhart's variation on quisquilian, meaning worthless or trivial; deblateration comes from the Latin deblaterare, to prate or blab out.

These old-timers certainly knew how to insult people. We've largely lost the art of elaborate epithetical impugnment, relying more on crude invective these days. Polysyllabic scurrility should be our watchword!

Urban Planning Scott Adams Style

See: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/02/ultimate-one-st.html

Someone asked about the ultimate city plan. I have that too, conceptually.

The biggest problem with any city is all the traffic. And much of that traffic can be avoided if the city is designed right. I imagine homes above ground, connected by a network of underground bike and robot paths.

The bike paths would allow weather-free, flat paths, and parking, from anywhere to anywhere in the city. No cars to contend with, and wide enough for senior citizens to putter around in their trikes while kids zip around in the fast lane.

The robots would be like larger versions of the Roomba vacuum cleaning robot, but designed to pick up and deliver merchandise and food from one place to another. Every home would have an elevator to the underground area where the robots would deliver goods and wait for you to unload.

Imagine ordering anything you want over the Internet, and your cell phone alerts you when the delivery robot is waiting beneath your house to be unloaded. It can wait all day, because there are plenty of robots to go around. The robots would have their own dedicated paths, separate from the bikes, and accessible only by service technicians.

Commuting would be unnecessary if your co-workers and most customers also lived in the city. Each home would be equipped with a home office (or two) that provides the ultimate telecommuter setup. Just insert your earpiece and have your avatars hold online virtual meetings. If you need to courier documents or prototypes, the underground robots do it in minutes.

Homes would be built in clusters around comprehensive health club facilities, like the one near me, www.ClubSports.com. It has everything from spa facilities to yoga to tennis to rock climbing to dancing. Membership would be included in city taxes, and would pay for itself in reduced healthcare.

When you needed to travel beyond your block, but within the city, taxis and public transit would do most of that job.

That’s the basic outline of the ultimate future city. It still needs work.

 

 

The professional urban planners amongst us might have a quiet chuckle to themselves, but it is an area that many people, from many walks of life (so to speak) are rather interested in - anything that they now perceive directly affects their amenity of life.

 

Remind me one day to post my extended ideas on urban planning (and comments on this post).

 

step over

longitudinal follow up date of several million people- happiness is U shaped- with the nadir at 50 - peaks at 17 and late 80s
it correlates inversely with self discovery, fundamental changes - and dreaming intensity -
and so -
we dream ...

Historical Social Networking

This whole Web2.0 social networking thing is quite interesting - I love getting invites from people on LinkedIn and on Facebook (the two main ones where invites come from). It has this interesting effect of not only connecting to people that you know now and people that you have known in the past, but also provides an element of an historical timeline for one's life, a sort of personal archeological dig. It is an important part of one's present and future to be informed of one's past - informed from a variety of aspects - facets which reflect different elements of one's psyche and behaviour.

Friendship

Old friends, we have sought out a place to meet,
Now we chat by the window until
The candles burn out.
Talking and laughing together,
Our faces are happy
And our hearts serene.
This friendship is as pure as water;
We jot down our poems
With strong brushwork.

- Monchu (1739-1829)

Music

Have I listened to anything that has changed my life? Where do I start? As in, so many things, I would never get through them all if I stayed writing this until midnight – a week from now!!

In no particular order, but ...

In 1973, I heard/bought an album called Cyborg by Klaus Schulze – absolutely mind-blowing. German electronic music. The original and the best. An early Schulze work - an amazing concept. Then followed his best albums – Mirage and Body Love (and then Body Love II). I still listen to these albums, transported into another universe (that old cliche - tried and true).

And everything, but everything, that David Bowie has ever done. Once again, I listen to his music all the time - on constant rotation on my MP3 player.

And Brian Eno – all his early stuff. "Before And After Science" is an absolute classic. And his work with Bowie was phenomenal.

Then there is Patti Smith – the rock-punk singer (not the now unknown disco artist). Patti is the greatest poet that is alive today – all set to the greatest music. The passion that she embeds and engenders in her music is uplifting (to say the least).

And J. S. Bach – everything he has done, but, particularly, for instance, the Christmas Oratorio (the most joyous life affirming music you could ever hear in your life) and his Violin Concertos (BWV 1041, 1042 and 1043). I recently heard Bach’s Easter Oratorio again, and the Aria for Mary Jacobi (Soprano) and Violin is the most sublime piece of music you could hear. The performance by the solo violin is gorgeous.

Damn, there are so many more. Loreena McKennit for instance. Her albums “The Mask & Mirror” and “The Book of Secrets” are so listenable, so deep and complex. One must listen to them again and again.

For your performance background music – listen to the Bach Violin Concertos. There are movements in there that have fabulous rhythm and great melodies.

And I recently downloaded a “album” called “100 Chansons Francaises de Legende Volume 5” – which, as the name implies is full of French Songs – original classics. I subscribe to www.emusic.com which gives me 90 songs to download each month for a small fee. There is some fabulous stuff on there. For instance, I recently got albums by a band called Calexico, out of Arizona – a combination of Latino and Indie music – very very good. I just love these little surprises I discover on there. In fact, I look forward to the anticipation of the new - of finding some wonderful band, a great new piece of music.

And then there is the music by Jacques Brel.

He is another that has been life-changing for me. I listen to “Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In Paris” all the time – it is also part of the main rotation on my MP3 player. He wrote some absolute classic pieces. Inventive and fantastical lyrics. Great tunes. The guy was a genius.

For the classical, some pieces by Debussy, such as “Preludes - Livre I - Les sons et les parfums tournrnt dans l'air du soir” is achingly beautiful.

Then there is Beethoven – that guy is a monster. Get anything by Beethoven.

Or Mendelssohn – his Scottish Symphony, or his Italian Symphony, are both fabulous. And "From The Hebrides" is wonderful - so memorable.

Don’t get me started on Wagner – a bit of an acquired taste, but once you are bitten – god help you. The final aria from Tristan und Isolde where Isolde sings of her love and dies is soul destroying and life affirming all at the same time.

In fact, all of this is barely encompassing the extent of the eclectic taste in music that I have cultivated over the years - a cultivation of joy, growing in appreciation and wonder at how glorious humanity is, what it is capable of in its most sublime expression.

"Try to reason about Love... and you will lose your reason" (French Proverb)

"Try to reason about Love... and you will lose your reason" (French Proverb)

The Scientists

Last night I went to see The Scientists with my nephew, at the Perth International Arts Festival. They are an original punk-indie band from the 1980’s in Perth that influenced the likes of Kurt Cobain from Nirvana etc.

I went with my nephew because nobody else would go with me – poor poor ol’ me – but he enjoyed going to a way-out indie event. The Scientists were average to start and the mixing was a bit awful but they got better as the night went along.

Sorry

An historic moment for Australian history. The Prime Minister apologising to the indigenous peoples of Australia, saying sorry for the injustices of the past. Apoligising for what happened, seeking reconciliation and moving to create a new future, a better future, all working together for the good of all in Australia. Extremely moving, very emotional. Much more so than ever expected. An important moment for the nation, and for the individual - for this individual, as it is for all other individuals.

Achievement and Satisfaction

Work has been funny. Not too difficult nor stressed nor pressurised.

But, at the same time, rather unsatisfying. Regardless of the actual progress made (I have actually setup a bunch of stuff and have put together some rather good ideas), it all seems like little bits and bobs. All disconnected pieces of work, which I flit from one to another. No extended attention span. Which may or may not be my problem, as opposed to the work (except for the fact that it is indeed related to the work - that is the element of how activity affects psychology quite inextricably).

Not like working on a project, on an assignment, where there is something serious to be done, and where I have to really focus and apply to get it done. On something that is both important and interesting at the same time (not something that may be important to somebody else – or so they think, or the rules say so – but is utterly deadly boring – of which there is so much involved in the work environment).

Not that I necessarily want to get overloaded and pressurised with doing some stuff, but I do think that I really need a full-on project to work on for a period of time, that I can really dedicate myself to. It then feels like something is achieved, that I am doing something worthwhile.

It can be virtually anything, and it certainly can be something that I have created for myself. But it needs to be fairly dedicated, almost full-time work. I think one of the problems here is that I don’t have the luxury of dedicating myself solely to something that I really want to do (because there is this other work that is necessary – earnings wise) and so I end up flitting from one thing to another (simply because there is absolutely so much that needs to be done, personally and professionally) and not really being satisfied with any of the things done.

Not all the time, mind you, since some of the activities actually produce or result in something good and worthwhile, and progress towards the ultimate goal (if there is such a thing – wouldn’t it be nice to know it), and some days (many days) I feel good about the situation – but, other days, honestly, it is rather disheartening and stultifying. One just, then, feels like doing nothing. And maybe that is probably a reasonable solution, in some instances for some circumstances – stop the headlong rush and breathe quietly for a minute – then resume.

Books Books Books

Sometimes it is wonderful to unexpectedly stumble upon (internet pun intended) someone writing about something that you feel, something that you occasionally talk about, but never verbalised in such a precise manner, something which completely sums up an attitude and an obsession (if one can go that far in calling such behaviour this). In this vein, I reference the following ... http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003024.php

« TRANSLATIONS ON THE MARKET. | Main

February 07, 2008

A QUOTE ON BIBLIOMANIA.

In cleaning off my desk just now I found a quote I'd copied down back in 2002, which went as follows:

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity… we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance.

It seemed to be attributed to the bibliophile A. E. Newton (1863-1940), but I thought I'd better google it to be sure. What I found was confusion.

In the first place, many sources had, after the word "acquired," the phrase "(by passionate devotion to them)"—with or without parentheses—which certainly reads better. But to find what the correct form was, an accurate citation was needed, and there was none to be had. Eventually I turned up page 78 of Newton's A Magnificent Farce: And Other Diversions of a Book-collector (1921), which has: "...it is my pleasure to buy more books than I can read. Who was it who said, 'I hold the buying of more books than one can peradventure read, as nothing less than the soul's reaching towards infinity; which is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish'? Whoever it was, I agree with him..." So there we have a portion of the original quote (in slightly different form), but attributed to the mysterious "Who was it." This could, of course, be a coy way of quoting oneself. But what about the rest?

Next the quest brought me to The Anatomy of Bibliomania by Holbrook Jackson (1874-1948), which seems to be a collection of quotes on the pleasures of books and book-collecting, italicized and footnoted (good man!), stitched together with Jackson's own commentary in roman type. On page 183 (continuing onto page 184) we find:

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired by passionate devotion to them produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity, and that this passion is the only thing that raises us above the beasts that perish,¹ an argument which some have used in defence of the giddy raptures invoked by wine.

The footnote refers us to "A.E. Newton, A Magnificent Farce, 78," which we have already visited. So far, so good; the italicized bits are from Newton, the rest is from Jackson, and the whole thing at some point got attributed to the former.

But what about the last part, "we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance"? The internet holds hundreds of instances of it, always attached to the previous quote by ellipses, but Google Books can't find it at all. Is it from some work of Newton's not yet digitized? Was it tacked on by some anonymous compiler of Meaningful Quotations who thought it would suit the context? Alas, it is not in The Yale Book of Quotations, nor The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, nor Bartlett's, so I can only speculate, and ponder for the thousandth time the difficulty of pinning down "famous quotations."

Posted by languagehat at February 7, 2008 01:05 PM

On Climbing the Highest Peak of Stone Gate

On Climbing the Highest Peak of Stone Gate

At dawn with staff in hand I climbed the crags,
At dusk I made my camp among the mountains.
Only a few peaks rise as high as this house,
Facing the crags, it overlooks winding streams.
In front of its gates a vast forest stretches.
While boulders are heaped round its very steps.
Hemmed in by mountains, there seems no way out,
The track gets lost among the thick bamboos.
Deep in meditation, how can I part from Truth?
I cherish the Way and never will swerve from it

-- Xie Lingyun (385–433)

Wiki and Clouds

Got a new wiki going (Dokuwiki), which will be experimented with for requirements gathering and management.

Also got the whole Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Solution (S3) exercise going – the ability to run your own computers without having any hardware at all – Amazon provides it all. A way of having your server solutions without the hassles of managing all that hardware etc.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flaw,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.

-- Wm. Shakespeare

When dreams do show thee me

All days are nights to see till I see thee,
And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

-- William Shakespeare, Sonnets

Australia Day

Today is Australia Day (Jan 26th) - where all celebrate our convict heritage and pretend to be all patriotic. Having a BBQ in the apartment (well, on our balcony) with heaps of people coming over. Tomorrow should be pretty quiet and Monday is a public holiday (for the Australia Day holiday). What to do - muck around with computer stuff - maybe do some writing. Or maybe sleep and waste my whole life away.

Love Surviving Anything

"I had thought when I adored him as tho he were a god that love could survive anything but I begin to think that there are certain insults to human dignity that one should not survive"

-- Margerie Lowry, personal journal, in University of British Columbia archives, as quoted in "Day of the Dead", by D. T. Max, page 80, The New Yorker, December 17, 2007

A Clear Breeze

Happy in the morning
I open my cottage door;
A clear breeze blowing
Comes straight in.
The first sun
Lights the leafy trees;
The shadows it casts
Are crystal clear.
Serene,
In accord with my heart,
Everything merges
In one harmony.
Gain and loss
Are not my concern;
This way is enough
To the end of my days.

-- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Novels Written on Cellphones

See this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html?_r=1&ex=1358485200&en=0b46d32f7c7d037c&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

The new ways to continue to create never cease to amaze me ...

Thumbs Race as Japan's Best Sellers Go Cellular

TOKYO — Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, "The Tale of Genji," a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it.

Links to Japanese Sites:

Book Uploading Site of Starts Publishing

Orion, a Cell Phone Novel Site for Goma Books

The Novel, "If You"

Mika's blog

Enlarge This Image

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Rin, 21, tapped out a novel on her cellphone that sold 400,000 copies in hardcover.

Of last year's 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging but containing little of the plotting or character development found in traditional novels. What is more, the top three spots were occupied by first-time cellphone novelists, touching off debates in the news media and blogosphere.

the BIG question

This one is rather interesting: http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html

The Edge Annual Question — 2008

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Science is based on evidence. What happens when the data change? How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?"

165 contributors; 112,600 words

Some rather interesting speculations skating across a superbly diverse range of disciplines and interests - very renaissance and worth some discussion.

Some versions containing everything in one document are located at http://www.bilyendi.com/misc (be careful - they are large files).

song lyrics

Now this is a good entry: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/write-a-hit-son.html

I especially like the lines Scott wrote:

"She had runaway eyes and marshmallow kittens.

My heart heard a dream like ten thousand gay mittens."

The concept of lyrically rhyming gibberish is great - David Bowie's cut-up concept - based on work by William S Burroughs and later copied by Kurt Cobain - but, I suppose, many others

And you would think it would be so easy - except you read the comments by the blog readers where they try to write their own two lines worth of lyrics and you realise that 95% of them totally suck (and I mean, really really suck big big time) and the ones where they don't totally suck you realise that they have just quoted a song or lyric already written (the "your latest trick" entry for example) or something very similar.

So, even though it is supposedly irrelevant, random and gibberish, producing a work of art is still surprisingly difficult.

Meditation or Distractive Disturbance

In any circumstance good or bad, abandon
All hope from Buddhas and give up
All fears of suffering in Samsara.
Recognize that hope and fear are the
Magical display of your own mind
Of Primordial Purity.
Remain in the state where there is neither
Perceiver nor object of perception.
Let go into the immaculate space
Of Great Perfection beyond
Meditation or distractive disturbance.

-- Tibetan Scroll

Manna

A weird little story but rather interesting take on how some things could transpire:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Bass

For some awful god-forsaken reason, I find this one of the funniest XKCDs that I have seen (http://xkcd.com/368/)

Next year?

The clouds of sunset
Gather in the western sky,
And over the silent silvery Han
Rises a white jade moon.
Not often does life
Bring such beauty.
Where shall I see the moon
Next year?

-- Su T’ung-Po (1037-1101)