eSuburbs

2012-02-13T09:26:00.000+10:00

Adam blogs the trip to Newnes here: http://atherapyforpain.com/.

I'll try to put together my own post when I get my legs back.

2012-02-07T17:33:00.003+10:00

Plato's kitchen-garden feast.

Most things can't be pretended
away;
Not even things that were imagined
here.
Can't divide both sides by x to solve
for y;
Nor take the root to complete
the square.
One person can imagine a war,
The wishes of a billion people, for naught.
A billion more can love so far
from a lonely home that they forgot.
And one person can imagine they love another.
Like a toy, no, like a god, a mother.
That love to live between sky and ground.
A durable ghost, a blob, a mound
Of idea emotion plucked,
Noble savage, naked beast,
From a bristling vacuum sucked.
Take in what you have, the majesty imaginal. You have it. Give of yourself that kingly grace, that knightly space, damsel dream, the dragon's teeth.
My advice is strong:
A crusade a day.
Inhabit your station.
Your title, your way.
Say what you imagine, to be true.
As surgical as much the fool.
Bake brilliant your bread
As swords and coats
To be in soups and juices soaked.
Around this table, with words and fables
Bring forward to see that next garden tree
One so forbidden so as to be hidden
Behind fare apples of the naked Eve.

2012-02-05T10:39:00.002+10:00

The old Push and Shove, from clay is made.

Let's list what's not delicate:

Electricity

Fire

Rocks

Water

What is?

You

Whatever is ventured between.

China plate or fine.

But throw and slab and coil we must.

And when it breaks?

Get it wet again.

Score it.

Pinch it gently, to knit.

A bit more water. Smooth it.

And again we become delicate, but useful.

2012-02-02T08:19:00.003+10:00

Two Standard Deviations

The vast sinusoidal wave.
Living the averaging process, on the boil.
Two tails. One in the fire, one in the freezer.
Do the math, the many selections.
Find that drifting centre in a sea of time.
We lap, we sup, at opposite shores of average.
So special. So shining. So bright, translucent.

"10 to 15 minutes of noontime sun a day is recommended.
The alpha wavicles break a molecular bond to make vitamin D, which heals." It's one thing we need.

Another little something, and another, is something else.
A playful shove. Aw Shucks. I pulled your pigtails. Oh gee.
And those smallest of jokes hold the key to the core of your soul.

With the cups of my hands I whisper it into a corner, like an armpit, or a nape. And in pours unlocking, unfolding notes, downletting hair, and all in the sun for day to see we play the noise. Those outliers in the data. That which gets trimmed.

Curling hand over hand to plait the unruly. Washing shit off walls. Eating the dog's breakfast left on the table when the kids are in the bath. "I see Jesus on my toast." "Those clouds look like elephants." "Well done, painting a picture using error bars." (Artful in your own slop.) "..that's where you'll
find me. "

2012-01-02T21:35:00.003+10:00

Going 10 rounds with devotional poetry
or
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī vs. God

The greedy conversation
Grappling in that erotic way
Feverish and outstanding
Trading fours
Giving as good as you get
Two poets, boxers punching themselves hard in the nose
Until they're just a little dead
That's strange action at a distance
Making love the real thing, not dreams
Leave the lights on
Heck, put a mirror up in a corner

Write Me a little something on that mirror before you go.
or on paper
Write Me a little something.
fold it
Write Me a little something.
drop it in a fountain, or a pocket
Write Me a little something, please today.

2011-12-08T08:59:00.001+10:00

laamsha.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/december/

so I walk downhill, follow off the ridge
walking only on this soft young death

looking up is ever green

as expected, walking down and looking up, I fall
into the cold water of the swimming hole

a real hand pulls me out
the headache now is from the icy water
I think; "this water followed me here
through the body of dead leaves and spines of fallen branches"

a small victory, I steam in found sunlight
not any place new
as some body new

2011-12-07T20:59:00.001+10:00

If I were the coach of a rugby team, this is what I’d tell them at halftime if we were losing:

Make things great by being sure they are.
In your hand everymoment's bread, hew hollows
With Nigella's thumbs in, prise a steaming loaf gently.
Spread in there dollops of intention and your difference.
Toast to taste.
Then hamfistedly wrench the moment apart. Rend it.
At the risk of your own fingers, using all of your Neanderthal blood (we have it.), 
take the moment corporeally in your teeth. 
Do that thing to it. Eat that moment out. 
What runs down your chin, taste with your neck. 
What sounds you make make you who you are.
 We are all positive of a couple things when we eat loudly: 
              hungry comes before dead.
              eating is great.

2011-11-11T23:24:00.000+10:00

Doctrine of Well Ordered Chaos

Give me a fact.

A tautology in fact.

A topology that tells me a geometry. (Riemann*)

Lead me around a surface elastic

smooth, smooth, (Hamilton*)

don't pinch or fold or twist.

poke no holes in me, please.(Perelman*)

I, this series of knotted giblets,

cannot have a conformal space rotated around me. (Gordon*)

"We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams", holding it all together (O'Shaughnessy).

Untie us, together, let our fictions free

to drift unopposed by forces

to accelerate

Untie us, together, send our forces free

in all directions, to Truth.

“He who studies but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not study is in great danger.” (Lunyu 2.15) Confucius

or "Study without thought is labour lost; thought without study is dangerous." (C.T.M.A.T.M. 135) Confucius

* Yes, currently readin "The Shape of Inner Space" Sing-Tung Yau and Steve Nadis

2011-11-04T17:08:00.003+10:00

It's best if you don't write anything down.
If the world roundly says your poem, it's best.

It's best if there's no math about it, no recipe. If it's just one ingredient, it's best.

And what's better is when it's hot. There's a sizzle, smacking great pops. And what's better is when there's no time. It's like right now, again.

And yet. Off the map. Never did happen. Cold as forever space, that statue has only the flaw that it won't happen again.

2011-10-24T23:33:00.001+10:00

I have a Dipping Bird on my desk which I point to now-and-again as a sort of Out of Office Assistant. Full credit to Matt Groening's Homer Simpson for showing me the full utility of employing a drinking bird in this way. Up until I saw the King-Size Homer episode, I hadn't imagined just how handy it could be as a "knowledge worker" to keep one of these guys around.

But at some point I realised that the bird is only made useful when I am not. So there's some 60% more utility I could be getting from this bird if I could figure out a job for it while I am attending to my key boards and mice clinking.

With my new drill-press, light on in the workshop, and just short of 10 minutes work I modified the birdfeet as seen in the pictures above. Now bird holds phone. 100% employment. 100% utility. Innovation is alive in the world. I believe this could be a $100,000 idea, but instead of patenting it, I share it here with the world. Copy! This informaiton wants to be free!

2011-09-28T23:37:00.000+10:00

What did Andrew Bolt do?

He lied about facts, and then generated an opinion about those lies. Some excerpts from the 470 paragraph judgement:

"One of the positions that Mr Bolt claimed Ms Heiss had won as a “plum job” was a voluntary unpaid position. The other two positions were not reserved for Aboriginal people but were positions for which Aboriginal people were encouraged to apply. "

"The facts in question have not been proven to be true. To the contrary, in relation to most of the individuals concerned, the facts asserted in the Newspaper Articles that the people dealt with chose to identify as Aboriginal have been substantially proven to be untrue. Nine of the eighteen individuals named in the Newspaper Articles gave evidence. Each of them had been raised to identify as Aboriginal and had identified as such since childhood. None of them made a conscious or deliberate choice to identify as Aboriginal. "

"The deficiencies to which I have referred to so far, are material and constitute a significant distortion of the facts upon which a central part of the offensive imputations were based. On the basis of those deficiencies, I am satisfied that the offensive imputation was not a fair comment and that s 18D(c)(ii) is not available to exempt the offensive conduct from being rendered unlawful. "

"Mr Bolt wrote that Ms Cole was raised by her “English-Jewish” or “English” mother (1A-2; 2A-24). That statement is factually inaccurate because Ms Cole’s Aboriginal grandmother also raised Ms Cole and was highly influential in Ms Cole’s identification as an Aboriginal. He wrote that Ms Cole “rarely saw her part-Aboriginal father” (1A-3). That statement is factually incorrect. Ms Cole’s father was Aboriginal and had been a part of her life until she was six years old. Ms Cole later lived with her father for a year whilst growing up. "

"The documentary source upon which Mr Bolt relied for his statement that Ms Eatock only started to identify as Aboriginal “when she was 19 after attending a political rally” (1A-27), was in evidence. That source made an incorrect assertion as to when Ms Eatock began “publicly” identifying as Aboriginal. Mr Bolt repeated the error as to age (for which no complaint is made) but left out “publicly”. The absence of that word created the false impression that Ms Eatock had not identified as an Aboriginal person before she was 19 years old and only upon attending a political meeting. In his evidence, Mr Bolt was unimpressively dismissive of the significance of that omission. "

"As I have found, each of the nine individuals who gave evidence have either always identified as Aboriginal or have done so since their childhood. They all had a cultural upbringing which raised them to identify as Aboriginal. The fact that this is not disclosed to the reader of the Newspaper Articles in any meaningful way creates a distorted view of the circumstance in which the individuals exemplified in those articles identify as Aboriginal. "

"In my view, Mr Bolt was intent on arguing a case. He sought to do so persuasively. It would have been highly inconvenient to the case for which Mr Bolt was arguing for him to have set out facts demonstrating that the individuals whom he wrote about had been raised with an Aboriginal identity and enculturated as Aboriginal people. Those facts would have substantially undermined both the assertion that the individuals had made a choice to identify as Aboriginal and that they were not sufficiently Aboriginal to be genuinely so identifying. The way in which the Newspaper Articles emphasised the non-Aboriginal ancestry of each person serves to confirm my view. That view is further confirmed by factual errors made which served to belittle the Aboriginal connection of a number of the individuals dealt with, in circumstances where Mr Bolt failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for the error in question. "

So then no less than opposition leader Mr. Abbott comes out to defend Bolt, and criticize the judiciary. This not two weeks after he, and his ilk, were scathing in their comments against the Prime Minister for doing what? Criticizing the judiciary for the judgement on the Immigration Act. Now, I'm not saying that a. we shouldn't be allowed to criticize the judiciary or b. that the judgement on the Immigration Act was in any way flawed. I'm saying it's a bit rich to only allow criticism of the judiciary when they go against you.

Gillard (and by extension Abbott and Howard) are on the wrong side of the law with their immigration policy. The whole discussion is has been a race to the bottom since Tampa. And Abbott now finds himself on the wrong side again in defending Bolt. I don't understand where this man's numbers come from, unless of course most Australians actually do side with Bolt's "we should all just be colour-blind" straw man.

Interestingly on last night's Gruen Nation you can get an insight to Liberal Party hack attitudes towards the blue-collar aspirational voters they've been so good at gathering under their right-wing (and I think this could easily be extended to the Republican party as well). Toby Ralph (whose client short-list topped by: Liberal Party and British American Tobacco - 'nuff said?) said something to the effect of: VB was shortened to VB because the people who drink it weren't able to spell Victoria Bitter. (old joke) But my reading is that he couched this statement in a more broad sentiment, which was consistent in its disrespect for a "class" of person.

I think this is where Ron Paul is cutting through. I think he's genuine in embracing the aspirational right. I don't think he's correct in his economics, but I think his genuine respect for sub-middle class America is both what's winning him votes and winning him bile from the status quo Republican Party. And ironically, this is where Malcolm Turnbull is so easily undone in Australia. He doesn't read as someone the sub-middle class could engage with. Aspirational tradies can engage with Abbott because he's uncomplicated, direct, dare I say simple. Turnbull comes off as toffee and private school, but I think he has more scope for the sort of economic skill required to lift all boats. Crazy world.

2011-08-24T22:22:00.000+10:00

Written while sitting very still.

Everything in me runs:
the fawn looking back,
to both hunter's eyes on the front of his face,
the river above then below the ground,
and wind through rushes,
time through running odds
in elegant living play with flight.

Eventually the hunter fells.
Or the fawn will escape.
Seeds will blow on running wind.
And the river tills its single furrow
flooding wild ruin twice per year.

So, some things do happen.
Some parts do stop.
But always there are strides
of light-like fire in all directions,
licking wind, muscle waves, lolling tongue, padding feet,
sponging lungs,
none symbols, none metaphors,
all directly painful and real and now.

Over all these distractions, over cold cease and desist,
above the ground between strides,
I run.

2011-08-22T20:04:00.006+10:00

Run Journal 2011

The City2Surf just happened last week, or the week before. I don't know, I didn't run it (this year). I'm working on running it next year - 5 years after I ran it last time (2007). In 2007 I cracked 60minutes. In 2002 I came in at around 61minutes. The difference? In 2007 I worked to get a preferred starting position. So, that's what I'm doing now.

I've lined up a couple races - there's one in Oct, and then one in Nov. For the Oct. race I need to run under 40min/10km to qualify for a preferred starting position in the Nov. race - and in that race I'd need to run a 34:59 to get in the really good group in the 2012 City2Surf. I have serious doubts about that happening, but something like a 48:00 or a 46:00 will get me in the next-best group, so whatever.

Today I did a negative-split session: 6km @ 4:30, down to 3:58. Eye opener. Taxing. Not impossible. But the goal (6 weeks from now) is to do 10KMs, all at 3:58. That's looking difficult. And a further month beyond that to chop it down to 3:29 - verging on biologically impossible. I'm not young.

I know I'm about 5kg above where I was for the City2Surf in 2002/2007, so assuming it's "easy" to drop those 5kg, I see some figures on the web like: "4.9 sec per kg per mile". Let's say 5 seconds, over 6 miles = just over half a minute off the total time. That's like saying I need to run a 35:30 10km right now. So weight-loss is not getting me from 3:58/km to 3:29/km, but it's not hurting. I think I'll also need to shave or grease something...(seems like that's always the sporting answer. Oh, and ice. Lot's of ice.)

I'm really enjoying running. It's something I did a lot for many years, and it's nice to get back to it. It's so much harder than riding. I'm amazed at how much harder it is. I doubt the body will allow me to do much more than train for these two 10k races before it starts breaking down. I don't plan on keeping it up straight through next year. I'll pick up again probably four or five months out from the City2Surf, train up for that, race, and then let it go for another 5 years.

Many other things I should be doing. I'm so easily distracted.
But one of the reasons I wanted to write this post, to document the effort, is that I can't find much in the way of records pre-internet of 10k times. I know I have some ribbons and t-shirts, but I don't have any hard data. What was my PB 10km back in the day? I don't know. I'm guessing somewhere around 36min, but I'm also guessing that time was from the Firecracker 10k - one of my favorite Santa Cruz races, but a very bad course to peg a PB to. It's just a giant hill-climb followed by a descent. What were my times on the Turkey Trots in the mid-80s? Don't know. Oops, probably should have written something down.

Update post Oct 10k:
I got in the top 20 with in 38min 37sec. That's about 3:45 per k. Happy with that, but it's a long long way from sub 35. So I'm leaving that alone for the time being.

2011-08-18T10:17:00.006+10:00

I don't know if this is funny, or informative, or just real, but it would take so much set-up to explain that I might as well just point you to the paper. I've been reading this paper "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity" by Scott Aaronson, and it struck me at one point that he provided a wonderful equation (that even I can read - given that I'd read all of the previous bits of the paper) that sort-of explains things like racial profiling, and general human discriminatory behaviour (and I don't mean only racial discrimination, I mean the act of creating groups upon which we then make generalizations). Anyway, read the paper. I got through it, and I probably don't have to say it again, but I didn't do me much math book learnin at school:

Wouldn't expect the above to mean much if you haven't read the paper. I'm just including it here so that I can find it again.

2011-08-02T21:10:00.000+10:00

3 minute fiction: Aug1 : the Cube

The Rubik's Cube can be very frustrating and may seem next to impossible to restore to its original configuration. However, once you know a few algorithms, it is very easy to solve. This has been a basic premise of science and mathematics as developed over the preceding several thousand years. But clear limitations have been revealed which suggest a new method may be required to attain a more full understanding of the world around us.

In this paper we will not suggest the form this method will take. Instead, we will chronicle a series of connections that we maintain are meaningful, but poorly developed by science. We will also propose a method of breeder reaction to further populate the solution-set of phenomenology which is not accounted for by current science.

Process:
The general family of the series is characterized by unquantifiability, intractability and /or unrecognizability. The core group who have traditionally plumbed these depths are known as "artists". We will employ the product of this group, "art", in order to provoke internal reactions. We will then register those reactions by creating our own “art” and feeding this back to the artist cohort. Thereby we hope to create a chain reaction which, when it transcends a certain threshold (critical mash) will become self sustaining, if not "runaway". We hope to contain the reaction by the use of attenuating walls in a breeder chamber (i.e. art gallery) and the concomitant noise of fuzzy logic provided by critics.

We have made several experiments outside of breeder chambers. That these experiments have gone unobserved by critics, they remain in an indeterminate super-state of being neither nothing, nor something. We will continue to monitor the progress of these “wild” experiments to determine if a sufficient reaction can be obtained to warrant further saturation. However, the observational determinism provided by the gallery provides enough value to maintain this as the focus of our efforts.

Ethics:
Through this process it is hoped new truths will be revealed. But we must also admit the considerable risks posed by this effort. Foremost is the hazard of "bad art", being that we are not currently qualified artists, the probability is high that what we create will be terrible and in need of safe disposal. We are currently finalizing arrangements with large hotel chains to safely display these pieces in safe “non-locations”.

The prospect of "good art" being created brings the hazard that one or many of us will become "artists" ourselves. We consider this a statistical outlier and a mere "moral hazard" at worst, risks we will leave to our parents and children to assume.

By far the least likely, but most considerable risk is that of a runaway reaction. We will leave the reader to consider the possible meaning of what we call “total art”. Initial calculations have revealed a startling relationship. We have accurately calculated that the probability of a “total art” reaction is exactly the same as the calculated probability of the existence of life. We use this result more as a high watermark of improbability than as any indication of a relationship. With the probability of “total art” being that low, we find it unnecessary to take further precautions, or pursue further discovery along this course.

2011-07-24T21:27:00.006+10:00

3minutefiction July24

Dear Cousin Jane,
From your letter you asked hows work I already told you, I don't "work". I just stand at the front of the shop and look pretty. That's what Grampa Frank always says too. So in my last letter I told you about the shop job and my smelly boss. But it's gotten better.

Smelly boss hired a boy named Adam to stock the shelves. Now it's not as boring at work anymore because we get to talk and stuff. He's pretty nice. He's a little bit cute, but I'm not going to marry him or anything.

It was really fun having you to visit early this summer. I hope we get to do that again next one. Or maybe I can come there. But Mom says it all depends on if they close the mine. Mom says if they close the mine then we might just come to live with you forever. I think that would be great. Don't you? But Mom says it wouldn't be great.

Our littlest cat Mr. Grumbles had kittens the other day. Grampa Frank says it's pretty exceptional that any Mr anything could have kittens. But we just named her before we knew she was a girl was all.

And then a funny thing happened. Well it was a little sad. Most of the kittens lived, so I think there are six. But one day an owl just swooped down out of nowhere and picked up one and just flew away. We were all sitting there and saw it and it gave us all a fright. We laughed on account of how quick it happened. And then Dad said "and then there were five. " Peter thought that was wicked, so now he keeps on saying that. Brothers are annoying. You're so lucky you don't have any. When I said to Peter that it was annoying because he keeps on saying that he said he was going to blow up one of the other kittens with and M80 and the he'd say "and then there were four. " But Dad heard him say that and hit him so hard with his work shovel that he fell down. And then at church the Pastor did a sirmen on how we should never just hurt things for fun. And he was looking right at Peter the whole time so Mom or Aunty Patty must have told.

Anyway that's about all from here. I can't wait to hear more about your acting job on a TV show. How did you even get it? But I guess it's easier to get one if you live near Hollywood anyway. So write back soon.

Love,
Mae

P.S. Thanks for sending those earings. They're beautiful. We had a meeting with Pastor and Mom was able to convince him that it was a good idea to pierce my ears and so he let us. It hurt a little, but Mom said "get used to it".

P.p.s. Peter is totally in love with you still. I caught him in my room smelling your last letter. Creep.

Take care. God Bless (I know you don't do that, but we do. So...)

2011-07-19T23:06:00.004+10:00

Trees Fly Kites at Night

Full moon rounding shadows on frosted field.
The stolen kites of summer's children branches wield.
Higher winter winds drive phantom midnight flying.
This captured delight, this silhouetted fun pulls my eye in.

Leafless branches raised to the air,
toking and teasing loops a dragon, threadbare.
Joyful arms silently begging a turn at the string.
Of a shadow play of play by the parents of puppets' wood I sing.

The last years' children, the next years' parents.
The trees of every year, stand
to capture when the string of youth's hope will break
and lessons of old will come to be the understanding
of those they teach.

2011-07-14T11:34:00.000+10:00

Silverwater Loop

I'm not all writing and thinking. Have a look at these numbers taken on the same loop, same time of day:

June, 2010 :
15.29km
29.8 km/h average
41 km/h max best pace
159avg h.r.
180peak h.r.

Yesterday :
15.28km
30.5avg km/h
46.5 km/h max best pace
154avg h.r.
166peak h.r.

How to read these numbers:
Yesterday I managed over 30km/h average pace without going over 170bpm heartrate. To add to that, yesterday I was alone (no drafting), and on a much heavier bike with bigger tyres than in 2010. So, there's some real fitness gain being measured there.

I'm trying to get through winter at 100km/week. I'm on track for two weeks in a row. The measuring keeps it alive. Without the measuring, I'm pretty sure I'd get more bored and feel the cold more. Picking up the occasional "Cat6" race keeps things ticking as well. Cat6 six is when commuters fall into informal competition on their way to/from work. (see google: Cat6 +bikesnob )

2011-07-13T20:35:00.000+10:00

July 13 3minute fiction

Within days, the engagement was off. But who knows? The future is a
rock. It's dense and almost impenetrable. But we're put here with
tools, and we bash away at it. We get through it. And then, in the
midst of a bunch of dirt, a jewel will be uncovered. That's the way it
works.

We don't have a word for the work that happens at the coalface, the
present. Right now there's some entity working to parse vast amounts
of "hasn't happened yet" into piles of "just did" and "never will".
It's a huge job, and yet it happens effortlessly, constantly and
fluidly. There's never a hitch, never a hold-up. It doesn't tick. It
flows.

There is a word in !Kx'a, a language of the Khoisan, that resembles
the English word for procrastination, but with an important
difference. In English, there's almost no way to frame procrastinating
in a positive light. But often times in life, if we’re just patient
and calm, the work we thought we'd need to do resolves itself. This is
the meaning captured in the Kx'a language. Unfortunately it's totally
unpronounceable to English speakers, comprising an elaborate and
subtle combination of clicks and tongue rolls.

The Khoisan have a fable about this word which is beautifully told in
!Kx’a. It’s about two cheetah brothers. One is very calm and patient.
The other is very active and curious. It had been several days between
feeds and the active one keeps going out hunting, but coming back
having not caught anything. Angry with his brother, he calls him lazy
for not going out hunting. But the calm cheetah explains to his
brother that sometimes no amount of work will fill your stomach. The
only thing to do is to wait for the time to be right. At this point
the busy brother hears a sound in the grass, and immediately goes
hunting for the animal making the sound. But that animal is cobra. It
bites the cheetah and he dies. At that very moment, a baby impala
springs through the long grass, stumbles and breaks its leg, landing
within breath of the resting brother cheetah. In !Kx’a the name of the
calm brother cheetah is this special word.

Anthony made his way uptown to the 151st St. jeweller he'd bought the
ring from. He was buzzed in through several layers of security doors,
and landed in a seat opposite an elderly Jewish man.

"I'd like to return this, if I could." He placed the ring on a tray on
the table between them.
The jeweller picked it up and gave it a good looking over with his loop.
"What happened?"
"She called it off."
"What will you do?"
"I don't know."
"Would you like to know? Are you looking for something?"
"Well, I hadn't really, thought...ya, I guess. You mean like a job?"
"You seem like an honest boy. I'd like to keep you busy, keep you out
of trouble. I need someone to courier some diamonds from the
Democratic Republic. You'd travel business class, all expenses paid.
You go, you get the product and you bring it back. Do you have a valid
passport?"
"Ya, ya, I got a passport. We got them because we were planning to go
to Italy for our honeymoon."
"Of course we'll also pay you. There's a standard fee. It's generous.
More than this ring is worth. So?”
"Sure. When do I go?"
"Tomorrow, if we can get the paperwork in place."
"And Democratic Republic? What's that? Where's that?"
"Congo".

2011-07-05T23:47:00.000+10:00

July 4 3minute fiction:

(probably best read in a sort of Monty Python'esq voice.)

Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi. (What Jove may do, is not permitted to a cow.) It is not permitted for a cow to play the piano. It is not permitted for the cow to tinker in the shop. The cow must not go to sleep before 9pm. All of these things Jove may do with impunity.

The cow must not copulate with abandon. The cow will only be done as the cow will have done by Jove, by Jove. All of these things to Jove only, are permitted.

The cow may be expected to work quietly at normal things. The cow may live in a box. The cow, upon getting too fat to fit in the box, will be put down. These things are permitted the cow. Jove allows these things.

The cow upon attempting to play the piano, will be put down.
The cow upon attempting to tinker, will be put down.
The cow upon attempting to stay thin and escape the box, will be put down.
These things are allowed by Jove, by Jove.

Jove may at will, do so many things not permitted the cow. Of these a list will follow which should not be considered complete:

Tinker
Invent
Vote
Live at liberty (forever) without fear of being put down.

Play:
Piano (as already mentioned)
Dominos
Hard to get
Rough
Act
D&D (forever) without fear of being put down.
Make:
Phone Calls
Pottery
Hay whilst the sun shines
Fun of others
Love
Perform:
Live shows
At a substandard level (forever) without fear of being put down
Acts of kindness and antipathy
CPR

All of these things, and things of their like should be considered forbidden the cow, but permitted Jove.

The cow should also expect to pay of their daily work a tax equal to half of the remaining amount left after tithing 10% to Jove. Jove shall be forgiven all tax.

The eternal life of Jove will be celebrated forever plus one day. The cow’s life shall be celebrated annually until death. At which time the cow is consumed, bodily. A loud belch should suffice to signal the final celebration of the cow’s life. Beyond that, some comments may be made in honor of the cow – such as, but not limited to:

What a nice cow.
A solid cow, that.
Great cow to have around for a while.
Wasn’t that a tasty steak, what?
If only every cow were as that one.
And the like…

Appropriate ways to celebrate Jove should be known as, but not limited to:

Parties in which someone ends up naked, covered in cake.
A burning of an unpopular tree.
The sacrifice of large amounts of money to a hopeless cause.
Hanging of images of Jove in inappropriate places. (e.g. planking)
Feast of a baked cow stuffed with a pig, stuffed with a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken, to be known as :The Feast of Cigurucken.”

It is, of course, traditional to combine all of these fetes annually on Jove’s The Feast of Cigurucken day. What marks this day as special for so many is the exchanging of unwanted gifts. In recent times it has become fashionable to make gifts which at first appear to be desirable, but soon prove to be highly undesirable (such as, possibly a necklace with a beautiful silver locket. But the locket is impossible to open and contains a small prawn which over time achieves a hideous smell.) Lol.

These are, in short, that which is allowed Jove, but refused the cow.

2011-07-04T20:53:00.001+10:00

Your Business

Turn it way down,
a little bit off the station.
Take it right down.
Let the universe hiss its om at you.
       You

Listen to your own gnashing nerves,
spike and alert.     Register

Take it right down,
slump out of your shell, slug.
Leave a trail.
       Perform

Right down there on the ground
E x i s t - exhale. 
Inhale.
       Only

2011-06-29T21:52:00.001+10:00

Cuddle with me again.

Huny, funny, huny bear,
cuddle me warm funny bear.
Plenty of huny, plenty of warm.
Pleasant and soft, no fear of harm.
Swarms of bees, flowers and trees.
Cuddles and fun and plenty.

Now, times change, and you
a little less cuddle, a little less plenty.
A few fewer bees, no huny in trees.
A bear, claws and teeth, is hunting.

No longer a bear of that kind,
Times have changed, things have changed,
in my animal mind.
Fir around your muzzle stained,
blood, gristle and meat painted.
Times have changed, things have changed,
in my animal mind.

Huny, funny, huny bear,
cuddle me warm funny bear?
Plenty of huny, plenty of warm?
Pleasant and soft, no fear of harm?
Swarms of bees, flowers and trees?
Cuddles and fun and plenty?

2011-06-28T22:02:00.001+10:00

More 3minutefictions

“Really we are more like musicians or dancers, performing to order.” was the thought that went through Anthony’s head just before it hit the curb. He’d been out on a big night with the boys. Drank way too much. Mouth far too open. Words way too poorly chosen. The bottle that struck him in the jaw was full of beer. So now he tasted teeth. and blood and beer all mixed together with shards of glass, followed very quickly by nothing much.

The curb had cured him of all that had preceded it. It had cured mostly everyone, as Anthony had been a prick all night, even before the grog saturated his personality, making him a Technicolor dickhead.

He not only fancied himself a secret poet, but he was actually poetical. I mean, to have a genuine moment near the very face of death, to have only that moment to consider everything and to come out with something like “dancers, performing to order.” Who does that? Not normal people. Not his people.

The very last thing he saw were car headlights. They were turning sideways. Dazzling. Then he had a very clear image of the gutter. There were two candy wrappers in the gutter. One was a Mounds. One was an Almond Joy. There was a sheen of water in the gutter. And a very little tuft of grass growing in the expansion joint in the cement.

Then he heard that hollow sound of a coconut hitting concrete. It was the sound that pulled him back from thinking about his place in life, the existential machinations of fate. He was just starting to think something along the lines of “ouch, that’s gonna hurt.” when he totally lost consciousness.

For the next three days he was dead to the world. The doctors kept him in an induced coma, waiting for the swelling to subside. On day four he sort-of woke up.

But there were several unusual things about his re-awakening:

1: He was convinced that he was being held against his will on a cruise boat. He was also accompanied by a talking file cabinet.
2. Lucky for him the file cabinet could understand both German and English because Anthony could no longer speak or understand English. He could only speak and understand German.

This unusual set of symptoms garnered him some extraordinary attention from specialists. There was no name for it, well, no name for the file cabinet thing. Apparently there are a small number of people who acquire language or accents as a result of brain injury. It's called Dysprosody, or in the German: Überanderungendesprachcharaktersalsbegleiterscheinungaphasicherstörungen.

As time went on Anthony and Gunter( the name of the file cabinet, as it turned out) became good friends and even entered into a sexual relationship. Come to find out, a third articulation of his accident was that Anthony’s sexual orientation had also changed to something called file-cabinet-ophilia, or in the German: Aktenschrankliebe. As near as I can tell, German is the only language which has a word for this.

Anthony learned to be discrete with his disorder and landed himself a job at Office Works. He topped sales that year and became Sales-Staff Of The Year 2011. He'd managed an annual sales of office furniture that topped all other sales-staff combined in his region. What Office Works didn't know was that he'd had his friends come in to purchase furniture for him. He had been funnelling most of his earnings into buying a collection of file cabinets. They were quickly filling up the rooms, hallways, attic and basement of his house.

Gunter feigned non-jealousy (there is a word for feigned non-jealousy in German, but I don't know it.) But secretly , he was planning his revenge.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
another
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Rodrigo Rosenberg knew that he was about to die. He'd spent the previous day in a far corner of the garden. It was his favourite spot to settle in these later years. Not too much sun. Green. Ferns all around. Peace, tranquillity. It was a place to while away, to consider thoughtfully. Sparkles of flying insects tracing blurry arcs through the air. Down the garden was a place where a gentleman of a certain age could linger with bits of food on his chin, scratch himself periodically, belch, and fart to an appreciative audience. You could do all of this down the garden and retain your dignity. But as evening came, so came the cold. And with the cold some pain which Mr. Rosenberg wore just over his eyes. In the furrow of his brow.

We helped him back inside that night. We all knew what was going on. We knew where his head was at. And, what's more, he knew we knew. That night for dinner Mr. Rosenberg was treated to the finest grill of ground beef he could chew. He had a specially prepared dish of chocolate mousse for dessert and, oddly enough, some beer. He'd never been much for drink, but on this occasion, when offered, he was tempted toward a tipple.

It’s hard to measure or know what his life had meant. I’m not sure this is the type of thing he thought about down the garden, or in his chair. There was a wisdom in his eyes. It seems to me that there was a lot going on back there. There were things we never knew about – well, he never told us anyway. Where was he during the war? What were things like before he was adopted? Who were his great loves? He wasn’t the sort to portray that asking would yield much, so we never asked. He never volunteered. And so we’ll lose all that. And something of this old soul he’ll take to the grave. We’ll never know.

Stubborn? Recalcitrant? Sure. And somewhat messy, smelly, grumpy, forgetful too. But at the same time, selfless, affectionate and downright cuddly, the big galoof. It’s going to be a world with the gauzy filter off when he goes. Just the crisp lines of light, and the brittle reality of a house full of mildly neurotic post-moderns. With the passing of Mr. Rosenberg we’ll lose something of the time when barrels were made by hand, of oak, and rings of iron heated over a fire. And those barrels were filled with brandy. And that brandy was used to warm hearts and dislodge frozen people from their little caves of snow.

The next morning Mr. Rosenberg wandered out the back door slowly. He went down the garden and Mr. Rosenberg lay down amongst the ferns and died. He was as simple and elegant as his death. He was our faithful companion. He was a St. Bernard of the highest character. And he will be surely and painfully missed.

2011-06-20T10:51:00.000+10:00

I'll have a poem published in Anatomy & Etymology in September. Keep an eye out.

2011-06-07T23:06:00.002+10:00

A concept and a play idea (you saw it here first)

I've been wondering for a while, something like mad libs, if there's a way to write a sort of story in superposition. So if you read the whole thing, the result is certain, but if you read only half of the words it implies one result, but the other half of the words, another result. You'd use something like a paper grate to mask half the words.

The other one is a play. First you go to a bunch of plays with a directional (parabolic) microphone and you tape all of those common settling-in conversations that people have when arriving as the audience. Then you transcribe the best of them into the bulk of the script. Then, on the day of the play, the stage is made to look exactly like the audience. You have a cast of several actors who are continually "arriving" settling and having a conversation - most of these conversations are from the script. But you also tape some of the settling-in conversations on the day. You select the best right before the play starts, quickly transcribe and feed the lines to the actors as they are walking down to their seats. So, some of the conversations are actual dialogue from the day, some are from previous plays, and maybe some are totally fictional. I think this would be very unsettling and entertaining for the audience. It might be illegal.

2011-06-06T21:48:00.000+10:00

This was 3 minute fiction gone out of control. I let it bleed on an extra three or four hundred words. Should have been 600 words, but this ended up around 900. Oops. But I like what I ended up with, and there's some quoted poetry in there that aren't my words. And the sort of "polite" tone just requires more words to get the oldness right.

-=================================================-

"Well, Esther, how do you feel this week?" Margaret quipped sarcastically.

"Don't fuck with me deary. You know damn well I'm in hell." This reply was scratched out in death's own voice. "Oh, darling we'll be landing soon enough."

"Not soon enough. I'm dying here. My skin is crawling. I ache all over. Look at me! I'm dripping sweat! and I'm freezing! Soon enough was six hours ago! This is inhumane!" This short rant followed an arc of crescendo which traced out the emotions anger, then despair, then anguish. Esther was clearly starting to suffer from the long-haul flight. A sort of miscalculation had been made.

Both Esther and Margaret were long-time supplicants of a variously combined list of controlled substances, primarily opiates. And by "long-time" I mean close to half a century. Not junkies as such, but more veterinary assistants with a key to the cupboard.

They'd planned this trip to Australia for some time. Part of that plan was a scaling back of dependence. A measured and controlled ween of weeks which should have given them just the span they needed to complete the journey. With all questions of supply to be answered on the other side by some contacts obtained on the internet - the learning of which was a not uncomplicated bow to necessity.

But Esther had somewhat failed to curtail her dose in just that last week before departure, thereby giving up any and all benefit obtained in the hard work of the previous weeks. Lucky for her, Margaret had taken notice, and had by thrift and cunning, secreted a certain amount of grace on the plane (which she will now reveal to her dear friend.)

"Esther, I can't help but notice you're feeling poorly." She said in her usual falling tone of empathy. "I believe you may need to take your diabetes-medication." With this "diabetes medication" code-word said out loud Esther's demeanour took a noticeable turn. The colour returned to her cheeks. Awareness and presence returned to her eyes. Even her posture straightened, to the degree to which it was allowed by age.

"Why, I believe it was time for that some hours back dear." is what she said out loud. Left unsaid was a string of Anglo-Saxon profanities brandishing exclamation marks like pitchforks.

"But do note the altitude darling. Please follow the directions on the box." Margaret was concerned for her friend because they had a strict process for these things which they would need to deviate from on this day. You see, the pharmaceutical mixture in any given week was derived from a combination of x-ines and y-adrines made available in only the small amounts they could pilfer from the cupboards. On most occasions these mixtures left them thoroughly alive. But on a very few occasions an unfortunate confluence of events would see one or the other of them without a heartbeat.

Being that both of them were thoroughly versed in the medical treatment of all sorts of animals, human CPR wasn't a mystery. And a good result had been obtained on all previous events. But the airline toilets would not accommodate the both of them. So Esther would have to go it alone. This was a concern as Esther was seriously in debt, and the potential effect of altitude was entirely unclear to them.

Esther was, with some considerable jostling of shawls and seatbelts and pillows, out in the aisle. She had made herself available to what Margaret would provide. And Margaret did provide. She provided along with the traditional nod to Lord Byron - Don Juan Canto the first, and I quote: "

The sun, no doubt, is the prevailing reason;

But whatsoe'er the cause is, one may say,

And stand convicted of more truth than treason,"

This Margaret would usually say to Esther in close quarter, and to this Esther would reply. But Esther, had already turned and staggered her way toward the lavatory. Margaret completed the couplet under her breath, faltering and tailing off before the end.

Esther locked herself in the tiny room. She proceeded through her ceremony. She used that reason which only becomes available to the pathologically desperate to talk herself into just a very few millilitres extra - to tide her over until later. She also knew she'd need to dispose of any unused substance, as neither of them was up to lying to customs. The diabetes cover only goes so far.

With the deft confidence of years, she gave herself what she'd deemed she needed, and let slip from her mouth that answer which Margaret would never hear again:

"That there are months which nature grows more merry in,—

March has its hares, and May must have its heroine."

Esther slumped off into unconsciousness. The altitude and the dose had proven a bit too much.

A pronounced bit of turbulence and an accidental prick of the needle to nose from her lifeless hand brought her back. It took her a few moments to collect her thoughts and belongings into the order which she would present to the world. She made her way back to her seat, and was in a considerably better position to finish out the flight.

It wasn't until she'd settled that certain facts of life became clear to her. Margaret had passed, quietly and natural as a baby is born. Esther allowed herself this moment to remember: "

'T was on a summer's day—the sixth of June:—

I like to be particular in dates,

Not only of the age, and year, but moon;

They are a sort of post-house, where the Fates

Change horses, making history change its tune,

Then spur away o'er empires and o'er states,

Leaving at last not much besides chronology,

Excepting the post-obits of theology. "

and to this she added her own:

"with no cantos left to give me

alone I travel on to Sydney."

2011-05-04T08:55:00.005+10:00

more 3 minute fiction

====================
There was a pause in the very breathing of the clerks. The normally sedate and painfully civilized murmur of shoppers had been shattered. A normal day would see racks of clothes absorbing the middle-class monologues, attenuating their anxieties and warming the tone of their purchasing considerations. But this wouldn't be a normal day.
The monolith of department store peace had been brought crumbling to the ground by a mad man. Recently cracked, I confess it was me. I’ve broken with my rank and file. I’ve ranted and raved. I have come to grief at the hands of quiet sanity, and finally come to the terrifying conclusion that greener fields are found o'er there, in yonder turbulent washing machine of unbridled mind.

What sleuth braved my labyrinth and led me to undoing? What brave key threaded my pins and rolled my bolt back with a clank? What wind blew that door open? I think you'd be surprised to know. I think I have you now. The game is mine, lain out before you, the wonder of odds and chance. But more, I think, of art.

The humble dipping bird. I have one. Well, these days I think it more has me. Let me explain. The dipping bird is portrayed (gravely misconstrued) as a novelty toy. Made of blown glass, balanced in the middle, a bulb on either end, filled with a liquid. The dipping bird can be "brought to life", simply. Wet the furry head, which cools it, draws the liquid up into the head, pushing the balance, affecting the eponymous bow.

This dipping bird is the key to everything. It balances in the middle of our world. Science, art, comedy, tragedy, farce, chance, meaning and meaninglessness, the very Buddha alive and acting in the now. By the one, let me unpack my meaning.

Science: By some simple artefacts of science, the dipping bird is (on the inside) made to work. It is predictable - to a degree.

Art: The action of overbalance is in no way intrinsic to a bird, per say. But applying the image of a bird to the action gives it relevance. And then, a name, as in a pet, or maybe a position, as in; "Oh I always consult the bird when making big decisions" as is my wont.

Comedy: The top hat? A bird in a top hat? Lol.

Tragedy: As alive in action as the bird appears, there is the business of the soul. There is none. Passion. None. Purpose. Also none. We only can give this, like a god would our own.

Farce: This purposeful professional goes round and round in earnest, reliable action, a perfect mirror of my life.

Meaning: That true inspiration is an open palm. That the applause of one hand our rich reward.

Meaninglessness: That in every bow of prayer this bird pays holy tribute to a higher power. No. The bird, like me, only moves, or doesn't. Only bows, or stands waiting in endless time and eather.

For all of this, I protest atop a vacuum-cleaner display, loudly and unrehearsed to the most unwilling ears I could find. And for my trouble, a group of recent immigrants from the Pacific Islands, now subcontracted to the Westfield Corporation for the purposes of security, have lain hands and are treating me to their firm embrace.

Folded warmly in their care, progressing somewhat horizontally towards the door, I consider more how sailing on endless seas, from island to island these people's ancestors made great progress, but never discovered or invented a dipping bird - as far as I know. ===============

================
Meant to be 600 words in 60 minutes, this one goes a little long. I wanted to write a fable and I'm happy with how this turned out.
The way I see it, it's sort of a cargo cult explanation. Or on the flip-side it's an honest criticism of the idea of a "simple" origin story. ( turtles all the way down )
==============

Once before a time, a photon told this story to a Higgs-Boson. The laughter and tears inspired by this tale caused our universe. And because no time ever passes for a photon, I saw him recently and he was still smiling as if he had just uttered a joke.

The story of spin.

In a place with fewer dimensions than we know, the daughter of a great Boson went to work in the fields to increase their strength. A passing lepton noticed this girl, flushed and beautiful in the light. He fell in love. But it was a love that was not to be. As a common lepton, the boy was not fit to marry such a high-born Boson. So, the boy was made to suffer.

One day a remedy to the boy's suffering was suggested. He could fight in the great-field and show his strength in the wars. In battle he might make for himself a name and gain influence and force.

Upon the great-field he strongly threw himself into battle. There were all sorts of energetic particles there, the massive hadrons dominating the fields, photons danced lightly above the fray, and all other possible combinations.

The boy stood in high probability of total annihilation as there were an abundance of anti-particles present as well. Against the highest odds, he prevailed. This left him, understandably I think, in a substantial energy state. So high, that he became quite great in mass and import to the universe.

But with his new size came attraction to more menacing and serious a challenge than he had ever known. On his way from the great-field, our hero had become entrained to the draw of a super-massive black-hole, the inexorable gravity of which no escape was certain.

For beyond eternity the boy spread the heat of anguish in a uniform, spherical membrane about the horizon. It was only by the advice of a grand old helium atom that he was able to negotiate a release from that wallowing maw of blackness. But there was a price. He would give up his acquired mass, information and memory. In return, he could be released a googolplex years in the past.

So freed, but without all that he had fought to gain, and with only one memory (that of his only love, which he had secreted in the hem of his pant leg) the boy began his journey to she whom held his heart.

In all that is out of time, the suffering and devotion of this boy had become legend. Every interaction he found now was met with excitement, with every particle imparting to him their very utmost, conveying him within mere days to speeds approaching that of light. When he, with great excitement, landed upon the steps of the house of his intended, he was met by her father.

Knowing the story of this boy, and now seeing the magnitude of his devotion, a great pain came over his face. And the father said to the boy; "Before you let spill your intentions to me, let me tell you this. My daughter is not well, and it is almost without uncertainty that she will die. There is a choice I'll ask you to make on her behalf today. Are you prepared to give all that you have, or at least one half? " The boy answered that without hesitation he would give any fraction required. To which the girl's father replied; "Without half of your spin, she will surely cease to exist. But know now that while you can give this fraction easily, once given you will no longer be able to perceive her. Your worlds will forever be divided – she of her type, you of yours. Forever existing, forever apart."

Without a moment's hesitation the boy gave exactly half of his spin to save his most certain love, and with that prevented himself from ever seeing her again.

And that is why to this day all bosons have an integer spin, while every lepton has only a fractional spin.

Take One Now

2011-04-20T08:29:00.000+10:00

Of bows for your perfection
Of deep heartfelt sweeping bows for your beauty
Of that breathless elastic ecstatic sort of bow
To the adulation of your believers, your fans, those entrained in the turbulent currents and influences your past describes
Unless you are The One True Clown
I say you have not taken enough.
Take one now.
First stand tall with your eyes out to us.
Smile.
One hand up. Then the other.
Tuck your chin to your chest
And then as graceful as that landing of a swan
That landing which could in its impossible magesty
Set the spell on Leda
Cast your arms over us, and to the ground
Fold yourself. Hide your face from us. Make us want you back. And then return your light to our faces.

How many bows have you taken?
Take one now.
This tree and that tree in the storm, they bow until they fail.
So many bison and cow and horse with every bite. At the end of their every act. Without fear. Without pride.
Take one now.
There is no encore. Take one now.

Bow to the vacuum. You are the One audience and cast. Can you balance on that ball? Can you bear it all? Take one now.

2011-04-04T23:48:00.000+10:00

JR's amzaing work seen from Google Maps (space)

http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=9071622969563440607&q=JR&dtab=0&ie=UTF8&ll=-1.313089,36.782393&spn=0,0&t=h&z=19

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JR_(artist)

http://www.jr-art.net/

http://www.ted.com/talks/jr_s_ted_prize_wish_use_art_to_turn_the_world_inside_out.html

2011-03-25T21:09:00.002+10:00

You are big.

Irrigate your days of fire.
Grow verdant, deep and green.
Let leviathan to churn the gyre
in seasons' storms to cleave.

We glow, we beam!
(a shimmer on a violent sea)
and laugh and cry.
This is the amazing thing.

Tears well hot enough to fall
In water cool and stream
Mix easily and complete
Their temperature to mean.

Dissembled signals of our woe
On accounting for this heat
Water, salt, the seeds which grow
(Added to the stream and flow)
Commingle and complete.

Return in kind the light which gave
What we were borne to bear.
All the gifts of sun to grave,
nails, skin, bone, and hair.

Who owns and cleans that body through what courses
all the blood of time?
Look! You stand to make the world more wet and strain
To see how fair, how fine
Outstretched before you this surface wash,
pushing waves behind.
Delicate and thin, this bare skin that we describe
continues floating, coursing, foaming,
carried on this tide.

An ocean of you! So much might!
Truly large and high!
But we dilute together,
and elegant time resembles
embers floating from a pyre.

2011-03-13T21:46:00.004+10:00

I'm in a writer's group. We use a "seed" every week. Write 600 words in an hour and publish to each other. Here are four of mine. I'll bold the seeds.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Asif Azhar ul Husnain had been working in these fields for five of his nine years. He could remember two things his father would say; "Cutting is one thing -- building for the future another." and the second is almost considered a greeting in this part of the world; "Insha'Alah" - if it be God's will. And with these two sides of the coin of life, Asif was minted.

Today he cut. Tomorrow he scraped. The third day he'd roll out measured kilos of resin. The fourth day he'd walk to market. The fifth day, sell. The sixth day walk back home. The seventh day rest. Every day punctuated by five stops for prayers. And for many weeks of the warmer months, this measure of seven over five beats would sing Asif's life, a traditional folk song.

At just nine years old he was able to carry, strip down, build up, load, aim and fire both a Kalashnikov and an M16; the former a common skill among his peers, the latter something a bit more exotic. Asif's father had been a fairly good speaker of English, and had managed to teach Asif enough to make him valuable to American soldiers.

One of his favourite pastimes with soldiers was to try to convince them that the AK-47 was a better gun than the M16. And when they challenged him, he'd suggest a race. He'd put some money on it, and bet he could strip down and build up his AK faster than they could their M16. Sometimes he'd even pool-shark the naive young soldiers, sandbagging to lose. And then go for best two out of three, double-or-nothing. And then in a bid to maybe show he was up for an even fight, he'd offer them to race with two M16s. Soldiers feeling like they were on their own home turf, fell right into this one. But they were no match for the smaller, more nimble hands of this nine year old boy. These guns were his gameboy.

But too much mixing with the invaders was inevitably problematic. He was tending the same fields the Americans had come to clear. And it was today, while he cut, when they arrived, that he made his decisions on just how he would build for his future. In all of the years before he was born his father had been working this land. He'd been working this land with this crop. Poppies grew well here in the southwest, and the market was mature and reasonably stable.

A command had been given the week before. A plan had been drawn up. The Americans had come to execute the plan, to change the lives of everyone in his province. The plan was to change the crop. The plan was to get rid of the poppies. The execution of this plan was performed in a simple, single step. The crop was gotten rid of. The music of Asif's life lurched atonally from seven-over-five to a straight five beats of his heart to the measure. Everything became uncertain, everything but his resolve to find God's will, to know.

Asif with little more than some food and his Kalashnikov took to the greater country, in search of his father.

=-=-==-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

=-=-=-=-=-=-= On Self-Reliance ==-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-==

"Listen to this claptrap, Pete; "Up to 80,000 people marched to the

Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison last Saturday as part of an
ongoing protest against newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s
attempt to not just badger the state’s public employee

unions, but to break them.” Bloody commies. March 'em right in to the
lake, the lot of 'em."

Edward "Pete-o" Frampton, sat reading a week-old paper, blown in by
the winds, stuck to the fence, talking only to his dog and a
box of hammers. I say "box of hammers", someone can be said to be
"smart as a box of hammers" in the proverbial, but Pete-o
was sitting with his actual hammers. Pete-o is a troglodite. People
also use that word in the proverbial. Similar meaning. But no,
Pete-o lived alone in the ground, in a hole of his own digging:
Coober Pedy, SA 29°01'S, 134°43'E.

Pete-o'd been digging his opal mine for the past 26 years. He'd done
well enough to know that all one needs-do is work hard,
and rely on one’s self. He'd been in a union, the Demolitions,
Turners, Fitters and Cafeteria Workers Union of South Australia,
Local 444. That's where, as a young cafeteria worker (dish-pig) he'd
been indoctrinated into the magically, catastrophically,
chemically decomposing world of explosives. The opals were just an
ends to a mean.

Above-ground was nearing 43degC; whereas down in his hole it was an
easy 28. Pete-o was not looking
forward to going out, but he had a good feeling about today. He always
knew when he was on to something, because his dog (also called Pete)
would take an interest in the tailings (pissing on the big pile of
dirt). A dog learns that when they hit opal, everybody eats better.

The pair made their way to the surface with an armful of explosives,
fuse and detonator caps from the strong-box under
Pete-o's bed. It was rude out, bleak, and windless. The flies were up.
It probably took more time to start the ute than it
did to drive to the other hole on the claim. "The New Hole" had only
been going for the past 5 years. Pete-o had taken a few years
to notice Pete pissing on the same spot every day. It only took one
charge to pay back that day's work in opals, yielding
Pete a month's worth of wet-food. Happy days.

Today's schedule allowed forty-five minutes for Pete-o to set the
charge. This solemn task was executed with precision, to the
minute. For his part, Pete, in the ultimate expression of rugged
individualism, had caught a lizard and was bloody muzzled, lying
under the ute, gnawing on the wriggling tail. Exactly seven minutes
after the fuse was lit, the charge went off. Despite Pete-o's dish
-pig pedigree, stained coveralls and a generally grumpy disposition,
he was precise with his explosives. A true professional.

By sunset, the wheat had been separated from the chaff - in the
proverbial. The best of the day was loaded into the ute, leaving
the rest for a finer sieve, a cooler day. Before attempting to start
the ute for home, Pete-o sat with the door open, his boot hooked on
the sill, looking off into the distance. Pete jumped out over his lap,
cantered off to a familiar spot, and lifted his leg. He looked back at
the man in the ute. Pete-o, as if having just breathed some cool fresh
air, managed; "Well my friend, looks like we'll live to see another
day."

-=-=-=-=-==-=-=- as in Beer =-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-

(time yourself reading this - seriously, get out a timer and time this)

Free speech is great in theory. But is it worth the price? We've got people with very little idea, happily chugging away at keyboards, spewing barely cohesive thoughts, like contagion from their minds to ours. When speech is free you see a flood of words on the marketplace of ideas, crowding-out the true conduits to valuable, ordered thought. How to increase the speech of value, to amplify signal, to attenuate noise?

I say, not free speech, but speech at its fair market value. In fact, we should consider a user-pays option. That's right, I'm suggesting we make the bastards pay for every word. Watch how quickly the shorter forms return - tax law as haiku:

The summer wages
Measure the phase of the moon
Such percent is paid

What's this? Oh, the poor? Oh, the poor. You're right, they should have their say. We peg the cost of speech to your carbon footprint. We stop all carbon trading in hard currency, and shift it to words. Develop a speculators market and trading floor for speech. The poor can convert their unused subsidised word-wage into cash. Feed back a portion of the revenue to subsidize words for farmers, miners, and auto-workers, because they always seem to need... (a percentage perhaps determined by the the phase of the moon?)

Possible downsides:
Beware unscrupulous wordsmythes, tranching junk-words and selling them as beat poetry!
Resurgent mimes

But by far, far and away, the best knock-on effect would be the discovery of free silence. Sure, it's free right now. But it's one of the crowding-out victims of our current glut of free speech. People could once again discover the wonder in utterance abstinence.
Check this out: Stop your timer. We're at about 300 words right now. Sit in total silence for the duration of the next 300 words. See how nice that sounds, and you can call us even.

---------------------==============<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||(((((((((((((({{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{"Free speech is good in theory." I knew he was baiting me. Andy had been in this place for almost a week now. No belts, no shoe strings. I mean, how can you even begin to convince a paranoid psychotic that they're not being watched when they actually are? Then all of a sudden, as if my lapse into silence were a provocative contradiction, I was subjected to the most confident and strident case against free speech this side of the Berlin Wall.

After about seven minutes of fairly analytical reasoning we lifted off high into the air. At some point, I think it was around, oh, how did he put it? "Entropy needs Love, for what it dissembles to grow in- that's what I call the Jesus factor...." ( a directly recognisable rip-off of Burroughs I noted) at which point, with a gentle "ya" followed by a wavering "ya", a stream of tears. He'd walked himself right back into that corner where the love of Jesus, the death of Jesus on the cross, all that meaning became immense and personal. In his mind at that moment, he was the son of God.

And I have to say, it was an amazing moment. I could not help but get a real contact-high being around Andy when he was all ecstatic. I felt a bit guilty actually. Because I kinda felt like I enabled him to fly, whereas Mum and Dad would usually call for a nurse to up the dose to bring him back to ground (a bit lower actually). He cried, no, he sobbed for a full ten minutes. He collected himself a bit. He looked up at me. I think he'd forgotten, well, just about everything about everyone. And when his eyes met mine, he softened.

Andy then did something a little bit remarkable. He went to the little sink in the en-suite he shared with a guy named Emory. When Andy returned, he had a small bowl with warm water, and a wash-cloth. He knelt down just in front of me, and he said; "I'm going to wash your feet."

Now, I'm not a religious person. I know about this sort of thing, but I've never participated in nor would Andy have done any feet washing in life - other than our own. His earnest, ay, solemn posture got me over the hump of disbelief. And as if time stood still, I removed my shoes and socks and my brother, for the first time probably ever, in silence, washed my feet.

And I'll tell you, as weird as it was; it was also profound for me. No matter he was mad as a hatter. I'm not even sure it mattered that he was my brother. I mean, here was this human being, washing this other human being's feet, as a (for my part, totally godless) religious gesture. And it struck me, maybe he was right. Maybe free speech is overrated and maybe the Jesus Factor is undergrown.
=-=-=-====-===-=-=-==-=-==-=-=-=-=-==-=-==-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=

"Do they expect to die doing what they love?"
"I expect they do, my liege. But for want of any better curse I can think of none. For I know not a man for whom the object of love is old age. And on my life, I pray the Lord to take me only there-for the richness of my years. By this logic, I believe it impossible to die well at what one loves."
"I see no chance for me - more likely that I expire not near the end one of these soliloquy. Please, take my leave, and let it be yours."
"As you express, sire."
Young Sedgwick left his lord to ponder upon the parapet wall. The kindest name one could think to call this lord, his name, Sir Carl of Slough, was seldom called in truth. More often referred to as Sir Carl the Lame, or Sir Carl the Feckless, or Sir Carl of the Titted Bull. Such was his standing, perhaps undesserv'd.
Pondered from his vantage, the tournament of knights raged below. While invited in word, Sir Carl had not been expected. Carl of Slough struggled to fulfil his knightly duties for want of apt breeding. In body he was cherubic, his complexion a delicate, translucent alabaster. This pure aspect was offset by the deadness of small grey eyes and large mouth in such disarray, appeared as a freshly ploughed field of stone and mud.
It had been his life to meddle at a middle level, to collect tax here, to issue mandate there. He could this day see beyond honourable games, stalls of an emerging mercantile. Business trading in small things, many times over, was overtaking the promise of so many alchemists and wizards and knights. Sir Carl could see ends spell'd in duckets. Would it not come soon enough for him to see, and perchance, to catch?
As catch can, and soon enough, did our Sir Carl gather by favour and foul, ship, cart, a man or two with this commerce in mind. He wagered heavily on the base products of digging in the ground and gathering what would look like dirty earth, salt peter, limestone, et al.. For although he knew the alchemists and wizards be frauds, he also saw in their alchemy something afoot. About him, fellow brothers in arms spent down in tithe and campaign fortunes amounted by their fathers' conquest. Carl quietly gathered wealth anew.
A new campaign was announced to make new inroads toward routing the Moors. This crusade would see the Light of the Church bestow'd upon the know'n world.
Calling forth Sedgewick; "Listen to my intent boy, and know your instruction. In the camp beyond the games there are dealers in every thing. You can see them, yes?"
"Yes, my liege."
"Fair. Now with this campaign will come provisioning. And with this provisioning will come a scarcity. Whatever potato the King does not commandeer will have the value of its weight in gold this winter. But for the next hours we'll know whatever price to be slight in compare. Have our man, in full discretion, down to the market to purchase in bulk. And have him make in haste his haul to ship. And with the wind our short sail make investment around some foggy islands - I care not to know the details - only to return after such days as it takes a Grail Quest to be undertaken by fools-errant. In this way our own alchemy will turn a potato to gold. On this I wager my title! which may become you much the more."
"Sire, I take your instruction, and will not trouble to take the wager, as I know there's nothing in it for me. As from this business it's doubtless we'll be wealthy and headless the both. But with discretion sire, as you express so it shall be done."

2011-03-06T21:49:00.000+10:00

Note to self

If there is one hook I hang my hat on, one clear opinion I can take, which explains what I believe to be "the meaning of life" it's that we're here to decompose. We are pointed in the same direction as every other process in the universe. We can all agree that time ticks "forward". But I would extend this to say that space-time also moves in a single direction; towards a minimal energy state. How to make one-million-dollars from this idea?

Start a consulting firm which measures the cognitive abilities of large manufacturing businesses. By "cognitive abilities" I don't mean total employee IQ divided by the number of employees. I'm talking about the company itself as a cognitive unit. So my measure would be something more like energy consumption divided by profit, or calculations per profit ( or a mixture of those). The idea is to compare an information number with an outcome. The benchmark would be a kilo-to-kilo comparison with the sun and a human body (as the two ends of the scale) - with the human body being a measure of high cognition/efficient entropy creation - and the sun being on the low end in the efficiency stakes (see previous post)

2011-03-02T19:53:00.000+10:00

On Entropy as the purpose of life:

From Brian Cox's "Why does E=mc^2?", the book I'm currently reading (much enjoy):

"So ponderous is the conversion of protons into neutrons that, "kilogram for kilogram," the sun is several thousand times less efficient than the human body at converting mass to energy. One kilogram of the sun generates only 1/5,000 of a watt of power on average, whereas the human body typically generates somewhat more than 1 watt per kilogram."

I'd always assumed that stars were maximal entropy machines - and well, I suppose they are for massive bodies made primarily of hydrogen and helium - but it takes all of the complex atoms that stars create as a byproduct to produce a maximal entropy machine which is thousands of times more efficient.

2011-02-23T21:15:00.001+10:00

How I buy "free" bikes every other year

Firstly I don't actually buy a bike every other year. Well, I don't plan to. Sometimes it just happens that way.

But here's the math. The best price I can get on an annual train ticket is $1920 - that's a Multi-pass (allows for travel on train, bus, ferry). You already see where I'm going with this. All I need to do is commute on the bike for an equivalent value "$1920" to offset that cost. In my case this takes a year. So, if I rode to work every work day I'd be ahead maybe $1500 (because you have to discount for the extra utility of the annual MyMulti on weekends for daytrips, etc. ). If there were no "problems" I would be able to justify a new $1500 bike every year.

Problem 1: I don't ride every day.

I'm on schedule for an annual "daily" fare offset of $960 and it's mid-summer.

Problem 2 : Winter

The time is about to change. It'll get dark. It'll get cold. I'll take the train.

Problem 3 : Other

There are other problems.

So, with these problems in mind, I'll never actually make my $960 offset for the year. I'll maybe make $700. So, two years = $1400.

Now, I can either pocket that $1400 as "savings", OR I can "claim" my $1400 back as a bike. Clearly a person doesn't need to buy a new bike every other year. Clearly. Clearly. Rationally.

~~I'm pretty sure this is an "every other" year now~~. Sorry, did my math wrong. Next year is an "every other" year. I wonder if it will be a rational year.

2011-02-17T20:37:00.001+10:00

I'm well. How are you?

"You can see the stars in the daytime"
from the bottom of an empty well
I'll tell you it's not true at all.

I'm sitting here now.
I see the sky is blue,
hear the sounds of the world,
smell the dark earth and that's all.

The well is dry.
And that's all it is, a dry well,
not a way to see the stars in the light of day at all.

2011-02-02T20:56:00.001+10:00

Kiss of the Cabarita, a rare marsupial unicorn.

No aspiration goes unrendered in this suburb.
With time the urns and coffins and mausoleums of the architects will be covered too.
It smells of ivory.
It's recently been cleaned. (not that it needed it)
This neighbourhood exists only in the dreams of thousands of sleeping future cleaners in developing nations
and yet, here I pedal past monumental reality with hollow doors and aluminium windows.
But travel too slowly through this neighbourhood and watch out!
The grinding trowel of the tradesman will find you.
Passing as lawn art, the slow, the weak, the amazed
now stand forever pouring water into features with goldfish
only to be saved by the kiss of the Cabarita
(allegedly hunted to extinction for their ivory, for drawer pulls).

2011-02-01T21:51:00.002+10:00

Concerning Donuts, Just when you think you know everything, Villarceau circles.

This is my book. Feel free to purchase one. I think it's $US4.95 these days. It's a perfect Father's Day gift, or if you're strong and maybe a little scary, a Valentine's Day gift.
Click the "Buy This Book" link to go to the Blurb bookstore for the book.

I'm pretty sure there's still stock at the Disrupt Sydney store on Elizabeth St. in Surry Hills.

2011-01-16T22:49:00.001+10:00

What I'm reading: Jan 2011 edition

I've made it half-way through Lewis Hyde's "Common as Air". This is a book about "copyright". Specifically it's a book which tries to define the origin, limits and purpose of copyright through the lens of the "Founding Fathers" of American culture.

It's a good book. It's an interesting book. And it's plenty factual. But it seems to me that it's only relevant to anti-Tea Party internet forum trolls. I'm just not sure how relevant "Founding Fathers" are to "the rest of the world" (in what I see to be an America-on-the-decline era). It reads a little bit like someone starting out with a conclusion, and then hunting down a few quotes to back it up. And the conclusion itself reads a bit like a university term paper.

I've all but given up on this book because:
a. I don't live in the US at this point in time.
b. It only serves to highlight for me the wrong-direction copyright law, corporate law (see The Corporation), etc. have taken in the US - and this tends to cause me much anxiety. It's like seeing a good friend of yours lose their job and drift into psychosis (all the while knowing that they have a family to support and a huge cache of WMDs in the garage).

So I've turned to Steve Nadis & Shing-Tung Yau for some light escapism in "The Shape of Inner Space - Sting Theory and the Geometry of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions". Now, I've got some real problems with String Theory itself, but this book really isn't about that. It's about geometry. It's about the hodge-podge of geometrical constraints that is a Calabi-Yau space.

I've been reading about cosmology for a good long while, and there are a few basic terms I see quite a bit: Hilbert space, Hamilonitan, Bekenstein-Hawking radiation, Schwarzschild-radius, Minkowski space, de Sitter space. Mostly I don't understand these in any rigorous way (because that would require quite a bit of math I don't have). But one can develop a cargo-cult definition of these sorts of things. And that definition can be stitched up against the next closest scrap of learning to ultimately come together as a patchwork quilt of understanding.

Yau/Nadi take care here to nut out the details of Calabi-Yau in almost purely laymen’s terms. The writing itself is not great, but the content more than makes up for that for my money. I'm only half-way through and I've had at least two Eureka moments.

The funny thing about this book, and Penrose's "The Road to Reality", and I say this from a very low altitude, is that they make me wonder if physics hasn't just found a deep local minimum. Has physics just taken a turn towards embracing an attractive tautology? There's a sort of feeling in string theory that "It's so beautiful. It must be true." And there's no hint of the sentiment that should follow: "And if it's true, we can prove it by performing experiment X, because the theory predicts Y." String theory, as near as I can tell, does not predict much. And what it does predict, cannot be tested by any known or suggested experiment.

But these are the problems for greater minds than mine. So what's in it for me? I'm interested here on two fronts. Firstly I've seen art both lead and follow science. I've seen culture mirror the tone of science/art. Post-modernism was mostly just a response to Miami Vice, but it was also a response to Einstein's relativity. Imagine trying to put to air Seinfeld's "show about nothing", or worse Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" in the late 1950's. To be "funny", that particular brand of humour requires the general public to have an intuitive understanding of relativity, uncertainty, chaos, etc..

Secondly, what sort of comedy/art can we distil from a philosophy of science which not only allows the totally anti-intuitive results of quantum theory, but goes even further in requiring a massive leap of faith, a total redefinition of science on the fly? It's not without energy or strain that culture was able to embrace relativity and chaos in an artful and organic way (the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's each carried their own revolutions). I'm interested to look at the bleeding edge of both art and physics* to see where we might be going. Or more likely, to be able to make sense of things when we get there.

*physics, more than any other field of science, attempts to describe that which determines everything else. All other sciences work on top of physics.

2011-01-12T22:00:00.008+10:00

about chaos in my life

(update Jan 28 2011 - got another glass puncture yesterday riding on the side of the road. And I'm not riding tiny tyres. I'm on 700c x 40 Marathon Plus - these are rough-and-ready proper tyres. Frustrated)

The City of Sydney recently spent a lot of money on new cycle lanes. That's great. But here's a problem I've got: glass.

Don't know who designed these cycle lanes, but they've designed an effective glass-gravity-well.

There are two issues here:

1. Bogans who throw glass on the ground
  a. they've been doing this since roads or glass was created (not sure which came first)
  b. a designated "cycle lane" gives them a target with a specific focus against a demographic
    i. It's common for "car drivers" in Sydney to "hate" cyclists
    ii. It's common for people who've had their car driving licences revoked to become what they hate
2. Raised curbs around the bike lanes
  a. they're a hazard to riders because of the way they're built (won't get into that now, as it's not glass-related)
  b. they effectively trap broken glass in the bike lane!

Solution 1, and my current solution:

Ride in the street where I used to ride before the bike lanes were built. Now, I admit there are several problems with this solution. But the alternative (riding in the bike lane itself) causes me to not ride at all, due to punctures.

Now, why chaos is cool

Ever wonder why bike riders like to ride in the lane as opposed to on the shoulder ("where they f$ck!ng belong, damn-it. They don't pay registration fees! They shouldn’t be allowed on my road!" - no, I'm totally serious, this is a commonly held opinion) There is no glass in the lanes of car traffic. But there's heaps of glass on the side of the road. Why is that? Because of the coolness of chaos. (And if you look closely here you might just see the an indication of the spontaneous origins of life.)

Scenario: Empty bottle of V falls out the back of a ute. It breaks in the middle of the road. Let's follow the path of one shard of this broken glass. It sits tight, until a car runs it over. Car tyre picks it up, throws it out again in the direction of travel. But the glass hits the ground with considerable velocity and continues to bounce. If we exclude the primary force vector in the direction of car-travel, we'll see that with each bounce on the ground, the glass deflects in one direction or another. The glass is left in one of two states:

State 1: On the side of the road where no more cars will pick it up and throw it around again.
State 2. Still in the middle of the road, awaiting another pick up.

If you know the frequency of glass breaking in a given area, and the number of cars per hour (for any given stretch of road), you can calculate the probability of finding glass in the middle of the road. I can't calculate it, because I'm functionally innumerate, but someone could.

But you'd really only need to know the frequency of glass breaking in a given area to know that there is glass on the side of the road there. Because once it's there, it doesn't go anywhere. It's not water-soluble or susceptible to degradation due to sunlight. It's heavy and does not float, so it takes quite a bit of rain to move it. It does undergo changes due to impact or abrasion (sea-glass), but it'd be safe to say that a piece of glass capable of puncturing a tyre has a very long half-life.

Example of what digaram might look like if someone came up with it:

or maybe:

That's one reason why I like to ride in the lane instead of in the gutter, the shoulder, or even the specifically designated and much designed Sydney Bike Lanes. (I think it also makes for a tidy little example of organisation from chaos)

2010-12-07T23:07:00.005+10:00

WikiLeaks: the whole world is watching

Let's get a few things straight before we move in to the core of the matter. WikiLeaks is an organisation. Its figurehead is a fairly unlikable creature. Being a prick is not illegal. WikiLeaks approached the US government, requesting that they assist them to redact the information they were going to release. The US government refused. They then approached experienced, established media outlets, who did assist them. Nobody has been show to have died from what's been released so far. A lot of people who are used to being in control have been embarrassed. Mr. Assange stands charged in Sweden for something which is not recognised as a crime in any country I've ever visited. And that's "charged", not "convicted". He's been refused bail as "a flight risk" even though he's turned himself in. Several public figures have called for his assasination (which is illegal). Within the leaked documents is information that shows illegal, immoral, and risky behaviour inside the US government which far outstrips anything that WikiLeaks has perpetrated. Mr. Assange is not a US citizen, so not subject to any US laws. Also, "International Law" pertains to "state actors", not non-state actors such as Mr. Assange. It has not been shown or suggested that Mr. Assange has actually transgressed any existing laws. Mr. Manning (the leak), has likely broken some pretty heavy laws, and is rightfully locked away in an oubliette somewhere awaiting due process.

So, what is at the heart of the matter? Information. It is very difficult to separate the particulars of this situation from the generalities, because the particulars are so emotive. Was it irresponsible of WikiLeaks to release all this info? Is Julian a rampant rapist of Swedish maidens? Should all world citizens be held to US laws? If we just let them publish anything, won't the terrorists win? If we don't let them publish anything, haven't the terrorists won?

One of the things we can do to separate the emotion and nationalism from the situation is to address the nature of "information". My favorite definition of information is "a difference which makes a difference". This is sort of a Shannon definition, or a thermodynamic definition of information, but I think it applies here. I don't think the released cables have yet made much of a difference. The ability to disseminate any data is the difference which makes a difference here. And what we're seeing done to Mr. Assange is an organized response designed to cool that hot channel of communication (a free and neutral internet). Mr. Assange is being made a scapegoat for an idea - that non-state actors can disseminate vast quantities of any data.

I would also like to take a moment to point out the poor step-cousin of information, data. A lot of what was released by WikiLeaks was more like "data" than "information". While the leaks are taken as genuine diplomatic cables, the veracity, the intention, the providence of those cables has not been nailed down. These leaks are raw data - inforamtion without context. The leaks are in need of good investigative journalists to stitch them together into coherent stories with actual sources, with outcomes, with history and present. The leaks are easy/meaningless, the journalism which will come from them is the difficult/valuable work. The "information" will come in the form of well researched and sourced journalism augmented or inspired by the content of the leaks.

So, while I'm not a "fan" of Mr. Assange personally, I believe he's entitled to the due process of law. I have grave fears that he's not going to be afforded that luxury. I don't believe that publishing the truth is worthy of prosecution. I believe a great deal of the theatre around Mr. Assange is designed to draw attention away from two things which I'd like to highlight here:
1. The lack of actual investigative journalism going on related to leaked information (the story is "play the man")
2. The government's own liability in collecting and storing this type of information ( they stuffed up royally in the security dept.)

Just a quick "for instance"

One of the leaks clearly shows what we all knew about Saudi Arabia. They fund terrorism. I, for one, believe there's not only a story here, but an entire Plan for a New American Century. From my great distance it seems beyond comprehension that the American public is so resistant to a non-petrol-burning future. I think I mentioned this before the second Gulf war, and I'm sure I mentioned this during the first Gulf War, but the most patriotic thing America could do is to move to fuel alternatives which could be derived inside US borders. That this idea hasn't caught fire, I believe, is due to the malaise of the middle classes.

Are non-petroleum based fuels viable right now? No, but neither was a trip to the moon in the 1960's. America made that happen. Make this happen. Make something happen. There's really not a lot of money left in an America which continues along the status quo. New things, new ways, make money. Anybody can copy doing old things in the old ways. This currently describes half of China's newfound success. The other half resides in China's ability to innovate. If the US does not lead...

Instead of the Saudi/Terrorist story walking on its own legs, it's been mentioned, but eclipsed by the Assange story. America trundles on, not leading into new industries or economies, but borrowing upon the futures of its children. The American story has traditionally been one of liberty, innovation, self reliance. Have a look in the news these days and tell me how much of this you see. I see a paranoid empire on the wane, attempting to use force to bully its way on the world stage. There's a real feeling going around that the US has lost its way (I think this is Palin's catch-call), but I've heard nobody willing to point the finger at the American people or the American system. It always seems to be somebody else's fault (the terrorists, the immigrants, the Chinese, the bankers, the guv'mint).

Be warned that America will be judged by how it treats WikiLeaks. As the balance of power drains away from the US, that judgment will go a long way towards how America is treated (by China and others). I would also predict that the degree to which America is able to abide by its core values (truth, justice, the American Way) in the face of the challenge posed by the likes of Assange/WikiLeaks, will determine the trajectory of the American experiment. The more the US deviates from "rule of law", "due process", etc. the quicker will be the decline. Think long and hard about the difference between the US and China. How much faith can you muster in your ideals? How much security are you willing to wager on freedom? To the person, that will prove America's future.

2010-10-14T00:01:00.004+10:00

What is the collective noun for a group of memories?

Contained by mountainous bones thrust up through a continent or two, 
the high steppe, 
a liquid sea of mud, 
above which floats a skin of woven roots and flowering grasses
in the warmer months. 

At the foot of every yak is planted everything they will ever eat. 
Pushed down the seeds just enough by hooves made heavy just enough
to push them down just enough,
forever and anon.

We find our family of yak this 40th spring
growing on their backs tomorrow's dowry fabrics,
between their ribs a wedding banquet,
in those udders the resultant children's milk for tea.
In the life of a yak, it will:
chew, mill, plant, fertilize, sit, stand, root, rut, play.
These, and more, are their "behaviours".
Not much more we can say?

Our herder, high above and far away sits still.
He owns the providence of every head.
The fine and the lame. Every one his intimate memory.
He could tell you the very blades of grass each bull had planted
(although he'd be wrong).

But this year, now, he sees one thing down there.
Only one thing.
Those distinct hulks mulling below have become blurred.
That each individual memory of them has melted too,
and become a warm mud.
One thing floats just above.

Our herder takes the spear of grass from between his teeth.
He strips the seeds between the nails of this forefinger and thumb.
He pushes them down into the earth between his feet.

2010-08-24T23:01:00.000+10:00

Let me explain the universe to you.

In 1977 I was just short of seven.

I can remember standing in front of our tract house

explaining the extreme boundries of the universe to a girl:

"Firstly you go up into the sky and then there is no air. That's space.

Then you keep going for a long time until you get past the stars.

Then there is a brick wall.

On the other side of the brick wall it's just white light. That's called "the whites".

There's nothing past that."

In the subsequent years I've learned some things about the universe.

Boy, was I wrong.

Man, how could I have been so wrong?

The wall is not made of brick.

2010-08-10T23:23:00.003+10:00

The shell of a man

Disasters of my youth in decline,
the follies of the "father of the man" retreat.
I look back to this boy clawing at earth, having stepped on one too many mines,
torn in half,
reasoning with me on the ground,
telling me all I can be,
telling me to leave him behind.

Now cleaving the -individual- I am from who I was,
leaving me the utleast I can be. Another sort of shell.
I would ask you to fill it.
I would ask you to arm me.
And one day soon I will ask you to bury me,
hiding to surprise
and rend that andropause hagspawn from the man.

Thereon all that is left for me, is to walk with a stick
to smell the breath of the Sphinx,
grasp with both hands to prize open that maw
and put my head inside.

2010-07-15T16:23:00.007+10:00

To be blunt, I've got a birthday on the approach. If you want to purchase me a gift, there are many options and avenues. But just so you know, what I want the most is "nothing at all". Seriously, don't get me anything. Dog-ear a page in a book, tie an extra bow in your shoe-lace, change your sheets, or blow a bubble in my name. That would be the best. But if your tradition insists:

Urrville, the book, I've been wanting. But there are many more to choose from behind the link.

I also want the big aluminium knob that does anything. I've always wanted it, and I still want it.

And casting a much broader net here, my links library, limited by "shopping".

2010-07-11T23:47:00.003+10:00

Basket of Life

Oh gibbous laundry basket,
the tide of the floor,
you race the phases of the moon.
colours are in Scorpio today.
whites just ahead in Libra.

wash, wash, wash away
the growing dirt.
spin, spin, spin away the day.
baptise our adornments
in a divine gyre machine.

bless them:
"Give us this day our clean clothes
deliver us from stains
cover our temptations
colour our plain living
make us (at least) look good."

amen, spin, repeat.

our lives are in the tidal zone,
sometimes submerged,
sometimes drying.
always filling the basket
with small stories.

you could be forgiven
for not being convinced
more is being done.

2010-07-07T23:40:00.004+10:00

the name of man, an inventory:

swashbuckler, salesman, tradesman, don,
brother, priest, king, god
schlep, schlemiel, schnook, schmo,
chump,

father, sir, sahib, dweeb, soul,
yeoman, clod, cretin, geek, goon,

jerk, swain, fellow, beau, dolt,
chap, cock, pig, dog, colt,

stallion, stud, gelding, dick, boar,
stag, buck, prick, lout, bore,

ox, ninny, nitwit, numskull, sap,
sucker, duffer, knob, stooge, twerp,

debaucher, bozo, yokel, ape,
reprobate, satyr, buffoon, rake,

beefcake, libertine, fancy Dan,
dandy, bumpkin, brute, barbarian

bruiser, gigolo, meat-axe, scoundrel,
rascal, ham-fist, jock-strap, Lothario,

Prince Charming, playboy, roué,
twit

oaf,
lunkhead,
skirt chaser, sissy,
wuss, wimp, gorilla,
hooligan, hood,turkey, gigolo,
brave, hunk, thug, rube, coward,
sissy, lecher, lady-killer, salaryman.

(Note: this list needs an edit. how to do that?)

2010-07-07T21:46:00.000+10:00

Wearable Proverbs

In all of pain and suffering
You will see a light.
In all of hope and kindness
You will see a devil.
In your left shoe
Your left foot.
In your right shoe
Your right foot.
This “pair” hiding the true
differences.
The dexterous, the sinister.
The lamb’s wool on the lamb.
The lamb’s wool of your gloves.
That heat is held, is same.
None of what makes you shine
Escapes to any laws or constants.
Hold your horizon close.
Press it to mine.
Take your shoes off. Stay a while.
Unwind that yarn. Knit a muff.
Let our hands mingle therein.

2010-07-04T23:00:00.001+10:00

Walking through Martin Place at 6pm on a Thursday night I wonder:

"At what price freedom?" (waiting for the end of financial year sales)

lest we forget
go shopping
lest we forget
buy something
lest we forget
consume it
lest we forget
renew it
lest we forget
download for free
lest we forget
record your favourite show
lest we forget

This better place of freedom is filling with the waste of it.
Just to find a place to put it all, we bury the soldiers in coffins lined with old circuit boards, their heads lay on pillows stuffed with the last years' phones. We wrap them in their own Danoz-direct-snuggie-blanket-jackets, bought off the TV by their mothers, waiting, awake at 1am, to be given them on their return from duty.

Before one more soldier dies for our freedom:
learn something new,
concern yourself,
protest,
argue,
write,
publish,
decry. Know the depth and breadth of what has been earned. Know that bronze statues are heavy. They are not shopped for, bought, or free, and they are never replaced.

2010-06-30T11:14:00.002+10:00

Above, the wind moves the water to wave
and we call them waves.
Below, the mantle moves the land
we call mountains.
And this is our curse, to cut stone.
Give every thing a name in every language,
to read the Word through every facet of that diamond.

Get thee to a road-cut.
Press your face against the conglomerate.
Listen to these tightly friended stones
at the face, telling you of their family deep inside, still.
Feel their bodies heating in the sun, heating again, a baptism for stone.
Then ask yourself what one is.

Break a rock in half, you have two rocks.
Break a watch in half, you have two rocks.

What is two?

And thirdly, there is you.
What have you to ask?
What do you have to ask?
What do you halve to ask?

2010-06-24T09:35:00.000+10:00

But who's counting?

She asks, openly: "Out for a morning run?
("fair question", I think, with the obvious running and the full track-suit.)
His reply, apologetic; "Ugh, not exactly? I have this fear of stabbing? Ya, I've been stabbed nine times?"

2010-06-23T23:46:00.000+10:00

Citizen Id (Journal entry June 23 2010)

I don't need another coffee
, don't need to buy a new phone,
a good book, to watch TV,
a hug, a root, some drugs,
to chuck a sickie, take a nap,
talk to a therapist. I don't.

I need a will,
a passport, taxes,
a vote.

2010-06-23T10:47:00.001+10:00

On learning

We packed seven of us in the Oldsmobile
we drove from Santa Cruz
to Gilman St., Berkeley
to see Bad Religion
two hours worth of diesel burned
Sold Out too.
And denied at the door.

(here again the young brains feel again the sting of another poorly conceived plan, again)

Defeated, all but one of us go for late night donuts.

(it's as if donut shops know they are a panacea to the pain of these lessons, and know to stay open for the newly arrived to the mistakes made at night)

Who was the one? Ethan.
How did he get in?
Walked in backwards.
It was a religious moment of ecstasy,
like watching the Dalai Lama eat a kebab.

When I think a valid place
in the landscape of every problem
is the possibility that the solution is to
walk in backwards, I taste donuts.

2010-06-21T23:54:00.002+10:00

The allegory of rainbows cast on the wall of a cave

I'm closing my eyes slowly
because I'm tired of what I look for,
petty things, in the hope
that I will dream of things to see
which make their light from
heat, physical colours.

So closed,
drops appear at the corners, like a magic medicine.
Blinking wicks them along my lashes
I see rainbows
and nothing sharp.
These aren't sleepy eyes. Tired of what I look for, small things,
they silently protest.

When eyes bow out, and we leave seeing
to the maps we've drawn before,
and add all we can imagine
And your ears curtsey cutely,
allowing hearing to make its own sounds
Feeling surrenders its arms, leaving you uneventful,
then, then the full life of sleep sweeps you along the vespertine vines.
This torpid slumping bag of skin belies diamonds of wonder
past words.

Come the morning, if we can
see the warbling rainbows of your light through this lattice,
if we can keep even just that. It'll be worth the day.

2010-06-18T10:05:00.001+10:00

An atheist's answer to the spam

This stuff lands daily, with subject lines:

Want to be a God?! Of course you do.
or
Getting no satisfaction with the size of your deity?
or
Bigger heaven! Longer eternity!
or
Not touching the sides of hell?
or
Scare the devil out of your partner with your really big idol!
or
Unveil a longer scripture, satisfy longer.

Question: "are you satisfied with the size of my deity, with the duration of my acts of piety, with the length of eternity?"

Answer: (A knowing smile, a wink, a nod) "I have nothing. I have the empty hand of the Buddha, applauding me. I have something without length or any dimension, without holes, without question."

2010-06-17T23:09:00.001+10:00

nostalgia, the disease,

affects beautiful, thoughtful people.
The treatment is slow immersion in a warm bath
of pictures and stories, which lead slowly towards
a clear image of today. Care should be taken
not to ignore the lesser senses of smell, taste, and touch,
in sating the libido for reverie.

The cedar chest I used to crawl inside, the one full of blankets and a sewing kit:
That smell combined with the heavy dark closed lid.

Those porcelain geisha dolls in the black lacquer-framed glass boxes:
A tickle in my palms that I'd like to reach inside, to touch her Kimono ( I never did. Good boy. Too late now.)

The ottomans' leather saddles and sinew strapping:
They made the creaking noise of a ship at sea when pushed.
And the thin hollow sound of the brass cups on the horns, they made your hands smell earthy.

The smell of burnt popcorn:
how an unusually curly black wig framed her bright blue eyes.

Lucky for me I am somewhat immune.

2010-06-16T21:07:00.002+10:00

/dev/null

My sufic love,
Contortionist!
all One body curled in
furls of smoke,
reflections.
This image of You is so romantic.

But daily, really, You are my exact twin;
You the worker, which
having done Your day in Your cube,
we, the world, cannot know the difference.
You, the Father, can only be continually kissing goodbye.
You, the Son, are far far away.
You, the Lover, are never Known.

My Faith, total as Your absence. Complete.
Locked. Free to bend with You, to breath the smoke, to never ever
know Your eternity. You with everything, I give all to You, to un-mix, un-spin, decompose.

And when time comes, there will be no change. I will kiss goodbye, I will go to work, far away, unknown.

2010-06-07T11:19:00.000+10:00

After reading the comments in the article:

"news.discovery.com/space/primordial-dust-free-monsters-lurk-at-the-edge-of-the-universe.html"

Dr. Ian mentions in the comments that these astronomers are "looking at" light from objects which existed prior to what we know as "stars". And then he says "Wow!" Sure, I agree. Wow.

But Dr. Ian also mentions in the comments that primordial super massive black holes and quasi-stellar-objects may just be leftover remnants of the hi-NRG state of the early universe. Now that's where I would put the "Wow!"

I'm a subscriber to a combination of cosmological models. One is Andre Linde's "ekpyrotic theory" a.ka. "Eternally Existing Self-Reproducing Chaotic Inflationary Universe" a.k.a. Nonsingular Regenerating Inflationary Universe. Pictures and papers here: www.stanford.edu/~alinde/

And then there's the image via Neil Turok of colliding branes:

www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/ngt1000/branes_max.gif

If you take that image as a reference point, or a starting point, it's easy enough to see how a wavy membrane impacting another wavy membrane would distribute energy in a wavy way. So, we're talking about peaks and troughs here - with the peaks maybe representing a great deal of energy and troughs representing something of the vacuum of space. Thereby we get the highly uniform, but somewhat lumpy distribution of matter in space.

But what Dr. Ian is saying in his comment is that there could have been a circumstance where the universe sort-of flat-lined. That there could have places of equilibrium around which the Newtonian physics of our common experience have never existed. In effect, we're "orbiting" around these portions of non-universe, these places of pre-universe. Now, whether I'm reading too much into the comment or misinterpreting it, I don't much care. The idea is as sound as many (eg: universe rides on the back of a turtle, etc.) and to me anyway, it's a compelling image. It's a window. Wow!

This 2004 SciAm article doesn't look to be available anymore - too bad. Good for reference though. You (and by "you", I mean "I") could probably dig this up in a library somewhere.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-myth-of-the-beginning-2004-05&page=6

2010-06-03T08:55:00.001+10:00

The things I notice before I have my morning coffee

we were all out on this cold morning
clogging the footpaths
junkies hunting
too thin Asian girls wearing denim from head to toe
unkempt wannabe djs
school girls hopping on legs of nervous gulls
not one human beauty
clots
coagulated sunlight
scabs on the nick of time

what one of us is that great spirit?
what one of us is more?

could not Jesus just have said; "tag, you're it" at the very end?

And I looked off into the sky
The clouds clearing
And there, looking up, into simple light
I could see it.
"More" I whispered to myself.

2010-06-01T23:55:00.001+10:00

bamboo

we, arched like rocks, kept close to the ground
tending, digging deep in earth
weaving sinuous roots into strong cloth
spending our efforts on the bast fibres
which armour the capillary flow of life
to the top.
they, swaying high in the winds
tilting quixotically to the sun
a brief dripping blossom
promises everything
again.

2010-06-01T23:10:00.006+10:00

I've been thinking of falling again.

It didn't all start with, but it is pointed to by cutting 19 tails of unicorns from a single sheet of paper.
You see, you can only get 19 tails of a certain size if they're spooning (tessellating tails they were).
While cutting one tail I realized, "I'm actually cutting another". Alice in Wonderland moment, I wondered.
It's as if while writing this sentence, I could also be writing; "It's as if while writing this sentence, I could also be writing". (a subject well covered in Hofstadter's "GEB") and then I go straight to the infamous E8 Lie group. Explore that here ( deferentialgeometry.org/epe/ )
Marvel at the pointy dots and the dance they do. It'll do your head in.

I've got this sneaky feeling (and I think Roger Penrose and Ed Witten have it too), that when you start talking about "space" and "time" as derived artifacts of mass and energy, you've got a few cognitive knobs (rusted on knobs) that need to be turned.

It's got to be.

This all goes to the argument about language. It goes down to a very core argument about thought. If we take for gospel that language and thought are at least related, what can we say about this relationship? Do we say that they're inextricably bound? Or can we see language as the tower of Babel, itself leading us to a world of thought free of language? And having transcended "language-thought" would there be anything we could bring back? Is there any "use" in it?

Well that's the funny little puzzle, isn't it? Being "useful" isn't necessarily the universe's thing. It may be that the "universe" is "made of" a stuff that is only/best understood without words, without "rational thought", without use. This set we designate as "universe" couldn't give a rat's ass whether we can explain it in words or numbers. The words and the numbers may be of this universe, but it's certainly not a given that these are the fundamental method of it. There could very well be a fundamental method of the universe available to us, but which does not intersect with the sets of language or mathematics - or it may contain them wholly or in parts.

The point is, we're not able to discount the possibility that we're on our way to abandoning the ground of rational thought towards a flight of something more. It has happened before. There was a fall at some point. We fell into consciousness, self consciousness - differentiation. There has never been any indication, having fallen once, that it can't happen again. In fact, having fallen once, it proves that there is a "there" we came from, and a "to" we've arrived at. A beyond is almost certain.

2010-05-09T17:29:00.001+10:00

Or are we like clouds, which in passing resemble termite mounds?

When you travel in Australia
you realize that there is not only a
termite mound that looks just like you.
But that there is a mound for everyone
you were and everyone you will be.
They stand in the bush. Out there.
Some wait for you to become. Some
consider what you have been.
They are there, still.
They are so many.

(written on the iphone on a bus just outside of Purnululu National Park, WA)

2010-04-19T11:23:00.001+10:00

2010 BRW Supersprint Tri

Did the annual race for 2010 on Sunday. swim 0:05:29 bike 0:16:16 run 0:10:04 total 0:31:48.98 for 135th place out of about 4500 people. Officially 400m swim, 8k bike, 4k run. But if you do the math, those distances are doubtful. But compared to last year on the same course, 2 minute improvement! Very happy with that.

Looking for sub-30min next year.

2010-04-10T09:12:00.004+10:00

Last night's set list

This includes almost everything, in almost the right order, with the exception of the vinyl. Two tracks off of Black Heat "No Time To Burn" and three tracks off of "Best of Blondie".

I want to thank the woman who issued the challenge to play something on the theme of "infinity" late in the night, which gave me an excuse to play the last track on this list "Sunny In Splodges" at full volume. ( eyebrows were raised)

Who's Gonna Save My Soul	Gnarls Barkley	The Odd Couple
a_Forbidden Island	Martin Denny	Breakfast of Champions (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture)
La Vida Es Llena de Cables	Señor Coconut	Around the World
ZapMammawithBlackThought	LuakaBop	zero accidents on the job
VijayaAnand_AatavuChanda	LuakaBop	zero accidents on the job
Tumbanga	Orlando "Cachaito" López	Cachaito
treasures	ThieveryCorp	mirrorconspriacy
Track 12		NABC 1 Carnival Fondue
Track 12	OutOfSight	rabbitProofFence
Track 11		NABC 1 Carnival Fondue
Track 09		NABC 10a
Track 09		NABC 1 Carnival Fondue
Track 09	OutOfSight	rabbitProofFence
Track 06		NABC 1 Carnival Fondue
Track 03		NABC 1 Carnival Fondue
Track 01		NABC 10a
Track 01		NABC 1 Carnival Fondue
TonZe_Umoheumah	LuakaBop	zero accidents on the job
Redencion	Orlando "Cachaito" López	Cachaito
perfume	bajofonda	tangoclub
mi corazon	bajofonda	tangoclub
MartinhoDavila_Claustrofobia	LuakaBop	zero accidents on the job
maroma	bajofonda	tangoclub
louise attaque_du nord ausud	Cuisine non-stop	non-stop
CQMD_horses	Cuisine non-stop	non-stop
lenine_hojeEuQueroSairSo	LuakaBop	zero accidents on the job
la tordue_rene bouteille	Cuisine non-stop	non-stop
java_au banquet de chasseurs	Cuisine non-stop	non-stop
tetes raides- un p'tit air	Cuisine non-stop	non-stop
latordue_les lolos	Cuisine non-stop	non-stop
lojo-baji larabat	Cuisine non-stop	non-stop
sambatranquille	ThieveryCorp	mirrorconspriacy
Mis Dos Pequeñas	Orlando "Cachaito" López	Cachaito
showroom
Sweet Dreams	Señor Coconut	Around the World
LosVanVan_llegue	LuakaBop	zero accidents on the job
Green Onions	The Dexters	Hip to the Tip (Live At the Orbit Room)
Michael Jackson, Wanna Be Starting Something
Tainted_love	Tainted_love
Spin_me_around	Spin_me_around
Don't You Want Me	The Human League	The Very Best of the Human League
Break_my_stride	Break_my_stride
Electric_avenue	Electric_avenue
Mickey	Mickey
Madonna, Holiday
Copacabana	Barry Manilow	Greatest Hits Volume II
Culture Club, Karma Chameleon
Love_cats	Love_cats
Blister In The Sun	Violent Femmes	Violent Femmes
Dexy's Midnight Runners, Come on Eileen
Musical Youth, Pass the Dutchie
Groove Is In the Heart	Deee-Lite	World Clique
Superstition	Stevie Wonder	Stevie Wonder: The Definitive Collection
Respect	Aretha Franklin	Respect - The Very Best of Aretha Franklin
z_Nickel Bags	z_Digable Planets	Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time & Space)
Sir Duke	Stevie Wonder	Number Ones
Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)	Parliament	The Best of Parliament - Give Up the Funk
Flashlight	Parliament	The Best of Parliament - Give Up the Funk
Shove On	George Clinton's Family Series Volume 2	P Is the Funk
Rhythm Is a Dancer (Original 12")	Snap!	Attack - The Remixes, Vol. 2
LowRider	Fingazz	East Side Mix Tape
Baby when the light (with Steve Angelo ft Cozi)	David Guetta	Pop Life
Melting Pot	Booker T. & The MG's	The Very Best of Booker T. & The MG's
Filthy/Gorgeous	Scissor Sisters	Scissor Sisters
Hi Friend!	Deadmau5 & MC Flipside	For Lack of a Better Name (Bonus Track Version)
Intergalactic_db_remix		Dave_mix
Vocal Chords	Claude Von Stroke	Bird Brain
ultimate	biftek	2020
Alicia	Mala
Thomas_D		Dave_mix
say human michael franti	SallyCmix	CD_for me
Franti & Spearhead	Groundwork	Hunger Mix
Music for My Mother (Instrumental) [45 Version]	Funkadelic	Funkadelic
Pacifics (From the Soundtrack to the Motion Picture 'N.Y. Is Red Hot')	Digable Planets	Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time & Space)
In the Cabin of My Uncle Jam	George Clinton's Family Series Volume 2	P Is the Funk
Hollywood Squares (Funk Attack)	Bootsy Collins	Bootsy? Player of the Year
Where I'm From	Digable Planets	Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time & Space)
Dancing_Queen	Dancing_Queen
On_and_on_and_on	On_and_on_and_on
Madonna, Who's That Girl
Safety_dance	Safety_dance
gettin in the way	Jill Scott	whoisjjillscott
a long walk	Jill Scott	whoisjjillscott
hey young world part 2	Macy Gray	the id
Sunny In Splodges	Kyu	New Weird Australia, Volume One.

2010-04-07T19:01:00.003+10:00

Eventually

Daughter, build your sandcastle here
I smoothed a spot for you.
I'll be right here, building a wall
to hold back the sea.

And just one more to be safe.
Maybe one last wall while you place
shells and stones of great significance.

And when I ask; "do you think the sea will wash it away?" You answer casually and with pride;"ya, but it doesn't matter."
Of course, you're right.

2010-04-06T16:48:00.002+10:00

On being of the ground, not in it

You, song, the one that gets sung for years.
You, seed, the one with a smiling flower at the sun.
You, me, the one from which I see and hear and feel
the songs, the sun, the grass gone to seed (a weed? around?).

Seeds and songs from that selfsame cradle-grave
the earth, ascend from a place underneath
and proudly expose their genitals to the world.
Reproduction by display. Sing this song,
get it into you, sing it on, busy bee.

And of me, the busy bee, spreading weeds as well as
flowers. Lifting life and taking it around. Well, we make
a living earth, around us. The lattice of a paper world
filled with honey, a nursery for singers. Never high
enough off the ground to escape a grave, but suspended,
an insulation, a perspective, a view of all that grows towards you.

2010-03-25T22:46:00.003+10:00

On Human Achievement Day - Sat March 27 2010

two Canadians taught me a game in Mexico:
put your hands in the fire
pluck out a red-hot coal
juggle it in your hands
(looking as relaxed as possible = winner)
then hand it off to the next person around the fire.

was-when-we-were Pagans
we knew fire. Who would make the fire?
We would do it. Again and again, we would do it.
And always, there was fire.

But now what good missionaries we are.
We have lights. We turn them out.
When we turn them on, they don't actually burn, brightly.
They just shine. Light with no heat.

The children have quenched the fire to embers.
On occasion I can smell the smoke,
but I'm not sure how to rekindle
that heat I remember.

Prometheus asks:
Where is the wood? No wood.
Where is the fire? Not in my house.
Who knows anymore? Not me.

Prometheus forsaken, hell, entire Pantheons forgotten.
gods lay dead at our feet, strewn across ocean floors and
injecting drugs under blue lights out the back doors of museums.
Legion are unemployed gods, watching daytime TV
and stalking you on myFace, human achievement is so great.

Right now, r i g h t n o w, reach under the horizon of your ribcage,
grab at the hottest embers, those nearest your heart. cup them like birds
breathe your life to them. give us this day our light again, from heat.

2010-03-08T10:49:00.000+10:00

How to get Greece out of the $hit.

Greece is the bassinet of western civilization. The Greeks have, in years past, given us nothing less than democracy, Pi, Pi-r-squared, philosophy, the Pythagorean theorem, the concept of the atom, the Hippocratic oath, etc. But these days the Greeks don't seem to be as forthcoming with innovation. They're in a spot of bother. How can we help?

Tongue firmly in cheek, I suggest we write little bits of code into every and any software program which uses any of the algorithms or ideas of Greek origin. The code would send notification of micro-payment to be made by the country of the licence holder. Countries could aggregate these micropayments into a flat tax applied to their population. So to the degree that a country uses Greek ideas/inventions to get ahead, that country pays Greece.

However unworkable the idea in reality, I think it would be interesting to monetize culture's idea-products. There would be heaps of unexpected/unintended consequences as markets formed.
I also think it's a bit funny how this "toy" idea mirrors IP. For some reason the discoveries of the Pythagoreans is terra nullius, but anything Metallica thinks up is "property".

2010-03-04T12:44:00.002+10:00

To date, I've posted 311 posts to this blog over the years. I think that probably works out to 41 posts for every person who's visited.

2010-02-28T21:26:00.001+10:00

Lucky is the believed in God, I don’t think.
All this time I spend not knowing,
God’s children are always in sight.
All their Jerry Springer moments go seen. All their deaths foreknown.
Even the favourites.

But I, father on the ground, father at work, father at arms,
Leave my children again and again,
In rooms filled with slings and arrows,
In streets paved with gold.
Every cliché free to introduce itself
Every opportunity knocking them around.

I am lucky.
Where Gods can have no hope for knowing, I know it only.

2010-02-25T22:21:00.001+10:00

Redwood forests make their own weather
they churn fog from the air like butter from milk
it is their fog
the breath of trees
and it's impossible
when inside that forest
not to get that.
you breath in it.

I miss, miss, miss that fog
which empties the world of sound
and pours instead its scent.

the wild company of giants
shared by bobcats and lions, jays and deer.
a living place.

the parallax of shadows
when the sun is given a peek
inside.

Put yourself in a ray of light
get on your knees and put your eyes
down. Look. You've never seen anything
so fine and rare as the sun touching the floor
of a redwood forest.

2010-02-25T22:01:00.000+10:00

Waiting for Gödel

let's measure it.
     let us
measure up
     round down
a measure of certainy
     fitness
fit for purpose
     measure it again.
difference? Delta.
     measure it again. 
trend.
     let them measure us.
we'll measure them.
     how busy we are.
measure that.
     how often do we measure?
note that.
     what is it?
I don't know. I thought you knew.
     Who are they? 
Didn't think to ask,
too busy sizing them up.
     Back to it then.
Again.

2010-02-25T13:25:00.002+10:00

written June 2009, but never posted, have a look at www.hsx.com/:

Idea: entertainment futures

to solve the problem of posthumous income.

A futures market for entertainers and investors. As an artist, I sell posthumous income futures. So, no matter what happens, I'm dead, no worries.

Artists could buy other artists futures, or trade (hedge) futures. i.e. Paul McCartney’s billions should be equally distributed amongst all of his peer group band members that didn't make millions - it's a standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants scheme.

This could be the new music industry model. Music companies not as distributors, but as brokers.

So artists get paid today on what they reckon they'll make after they're dead - or what they reckon their piers will make after they're dead.

It's more a retirement plan than a sure income, as unless your stocks rise, you wouldn't be able to split (and be over capitalised). And out the other end, when the future ripens(?) the investor gets their dividend if any.

So say I bought one share of 100 artists. If only one hits the "big time" I've probably made my money, and may, if I sit on it, make more.

It's sorta like a reverse mortgage for entertainers.

As a "knowledge worker" my income earning is over well before I pass away. But the question of "why should I make music if I can't make any money, or why should I write a book if I'll only hit after I'm dead? needs to be answered.

2010-02-18T11:01:00.002+10:00

Beg, borrow, steal. Web 2.1 business model:

All these things (Google wave,buzz) are as useful as wires. Wires are great, but they require a lot of meta-configuration to become useful. Google is being good about chucking all the wires in the ring. They're asking us to crowdsource the reason for their being. And if one of the billion finds a reason with a business plan behind it, they're off and running. If not, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I still believe that the XMPP underlying these bits has potential (untapped) see: http://jasonkolb.com/ - whether you can say that something as complex as XMPP can go up against something as beautifully simple as HTML/tcp/ip/ftp (i.e. the original olde skool interwebs) , I have my doubts. I think the democracy of HTML is what made the web blow up. These other protocols are comparably more elitist. Oh, and "you know you're in trouble when" all the conversations on your web tool are about that web tool. (Buzz and Wave are infamous for this - email, IM, twitter, not so much)

I'm
a. not saying anything new and
b. not talking out of my a$$. I had a conversation with a Wave developer at a party. She said they don't know why they're making Wave. They're hoping we'll tell them.

She was also pretty clear that there are two paths or predicted uses of Wave.
1. Chat-like wiki.(not a lot of potential, but zero dev time to implement - i.e. it's how all the prols are using it now)
2. Application-based stuff ( a lot of potential here, but no visibility over the horizon of where the money will come from, long development time (i.e. nobody has ever done whatever-"it"-is before, but we believe there's an "it" to be done).

2010-02-11T22:24:00.003+10:00

Update: Economists have it 20 both ways in England

As debate rages at Marginal Revolution over whether economics can be called a science, I read me some Stuart Kauffman over at his NPR blog. I now have doubts of my own. Can we rely on the classical definition of "Science" to get us "much further". The classical definition of "Science" per Popper requires repeatable experiments which produce consistent results (i.e. predictive power). This is "classical" in the sense that it's a pre-Einstein definition.

I think Kauffman, without naming it, is considering a way of doing business which is science-like, but lacks some of the constraints of a classical definition of science. I would hope it may lead us back to science in the same way that quantum mechanics leads to classical mechanics (also keep in mind that the quantum => classical model is not complete.)

So Kauffman steps boldly out into the wild, a place where you find tarot cards, black magic, phrenology and their like. A dangerous place to go for anyone looking for progress. The question is loudly begged (by any reputable scientist), can anything good come of this?!

Whether good can come of it or not, there's a market for it. Climate science is in this space. And people all over the world are gagging for fresh climate science. But for all intents and purposes, climate science, isn't. There is no way of testing a climate. There is no experiment which proves anything, which provides true predictive power. (Listen to this TED talk by david_deutsch - towards the end)

Much like economics, climate science is far better at proposing possible explanations for past events than predicting future events. In fact, climate science cannot and will never predict what's going to happen to the climate. It merely deals in probabilities. The main problem climate science will identify is that the horizon of a sort of laminar flow of climate is coming closer. What lies beyond that horizon is surely turbulence, but for how long, to what end, we won't know until after the fact. At which point climate scientists will say "we told you so" without ever actually saying what would happen - only predicting that "things would likely happen". But that's little more than coin-flipping compared to true predictive science. With enough opinions in the room, certainly some important climate scientists will be "right". But we could say the same for conspiracy theorists. There has to be a difference between the two. Or does there?

Kauffman is hinting towards a field of discovery which admits "ideas" and "perspectives". The difference between Kauffman's idea and anarchy (the kind of useless anarchy feared by scientists), is that ideas are to be lightly held. Hold all and any ideas of the adjacent possible. Then use attributes of the group of adjacent possible to define directions of understanding which might fall outside the lockstep of science. This is currently a well received way-of-working in the art world, but it's anathema to science.

Kauffman invokes a bit of Gödel to make his point. I'll extend a bit on that. In brief, Gödel "....proved that from the axioms of arithmetic, there could exist mathematical statements which, if true, were not derivable by deduction from the axioms of arithmetic. These are called formally undecidable statements. And Gödel showed that if you added such undecidable statements as new axioms of an enriched axiom set, new undecidable statements would arise - ad infinitum. In short, mathematics has the property that, given an axiom set, not all the true statements given that set are deducible from that axiom set." Kauffman calls into question whether rational decisions can be made based on this revelation of incompleteness. I would like to propose the question: Is "completeness" a universal axiom? Or rephrased; does the concept of "complete" have anything to do with the relationship mathematics has with the universe? Science relies heavily on mathematics as a rational base. And "the rational" saves us from a series of pitfalls that come with "the non-rational". But by what basis can we be certain that "the rational" is the sole explainer of the world around us? Are we using training wheels to interrogate the universe? Can we take them off? What would that look like?

I don't propose that the universe can be better explained by "the irrational". I propose that we may have created a false duality when we separated the world into either "rational" or "irrational". It's quite possible that the universe is more analogue and less digital than that.

The most common retort to this type of idea is; "look at this computer you're typing into/ reading from. It's here due to modern science. Every step of your developed-country-middle-class existence has been propped up by modern science. This is the basis by which we can confidently, if not certainly, rely on "the rational" to explain the world around us." While I do agree the methods of modern science have been productive and illuminating, what I'm wondering is whether we're not becoming victims of our own success, being lured towards a, albeit comfortable, local minimum.

Is it a mistake to combine the tenants of Gödel and Popper to form a statement: "Carry on doing what's worked in the past. We know it's incomplete, but it's the best we have. Only madness and ruin can be found outside." Should we not consider the combination of Gödel and Popper might form the statement: "We've been working with an incomplete model, maybe that's a hint that it's the wrong model. Should we keep pushing the same buttons harder, or should we change the rules to get a view above the field of play?

The sort of step I'm suggesting is a natural progression from what I call "Einstein’s breaking of the ruler". Prior to the common acceptance of the theories of relativity, it was commonly accepted that there was one universal clock, and one universal ruler. "Frame of reference" didn't come into the picture. Einstein changed that by making frame of reference primary to measurement. This changed everything. Kauffman is telegraphing a similar shift. I don't think he's quite nailed it yet, and he isn't the first to come up with the idea (clearly), but I think we're on the cusp of a paradigm shift just as challenging to rational thinkers as relativity was in the early 1900's.

String theory, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan for all the reasons found in Peter Woit's book and blog "Not even wrong"- summarized as: "string theory has not provided predictive experimental results commensurate with its profile". It's just not yet what we might call "good science". A lot of work and money have been sunk into string theory, not a lot of results have come from it. Unlike relativity, a series of amazing inventions have not condensed from the revelations of string theory. And, until now, I've taken all of this as an indication that string theorists have gone down the rabbit hole (i.e. pure math). But my resolve is starting to waiver.

Kauffman is talking about a post-classical science. I'm agreeing with him. String theory is probably an example of the transition towards this post-classical science, along with climate science and economics. These disciplines are taking into consideration phenomenon beyond classical description. While climate science and economics continue to hammer away using classical methods, string theory is forging ahead into the wilderness. They're finding solutions to problems we don't have. They're discovering a fabric on their way to describing the garment. This isn't to say that string theorists have it quite cooked and ready to come out of the oven. But I'm starting to see a space for the rule-breaking that's going on.

So what governance model can we apply to a post-classical science to prevent results which read like post-modernist-science-fiction-poetry? I think we have to name it. Then I think it's important to declare (using the defined name) when, as a scientist, you're going beyond commonly accepted classical bounds of science. In the spirit of the "Gedankenexperiment" I've taken the opportunity to name post-classical science in German "Topf Rissbildung" or pot cracking (wink, wink). (see "backreaction" to Woit here) Named and claimed, the author then leaves the ideas to the market to decide their worth. And it would be up to scientists who partake in Topf Rissbildung to build credibility in the practice. It would also be up to the scientific community to allow/build a cultural space for the practice of Topf Rissbildung.

At the moment there is very very little patience in the scientific world for the publishing of any creative results or conjectures. This sort of writing is left to science fiction authors and bloggers (?!). And I agree that that's for good reason. But I also maintain that given proper governance, a productive arm of science could be built to encompass free-thinking and association (Cosmology ?). And I don't think "it's worth a shot", I think it's happening - unattended, unwanted, undefined, unconstrained. It's a future of science which will make today's scientists very uncomfortable, but which will provide the future of science a class of results unobtainable to the current discipline. May we watch and see.

2010-02-10T10:44:00.002+10:00

Marginal Revolution blog has a pointer to a James Buchanan paper "Economists Have No Clothes", calling into question the viability of economics as a "science".

I think Buchanan and everybody arguing the explainability/predictability of large complex systems are missing the point. If "the economy" were explainable and predictable, it would cease to function. If a group of people cracked the nut of economics, giving them the ability to accurately predict the future movement of the market, you'd be a fool to try to compete in a market against them. That economists continue to hammer away at the intractable is not a waste of time. That they are unable to resolve all of the problems of economics actually shores up the power of the market by continually proving, again and again, that nobody owns this game.

(above is the comment I posted on Marginal Revolution - click through on the link to see the rest of the comments - always great comments on MR - just wanted to have the sentiment here for keeps)

2010-01-24T22:40:00.000+10:00

The selfishness of having an inside.

mine is the beauty of the Tawney Frogmouth, unexpected funk. "It's just there, can't you see it? It's just there."
mine is the arrogance of sandstone. "Hardly stone" says granite firmly. "Exactly!" I say, "Very hard stone. We stone have to stick together, lest the sand..."
mine is the hubris of the very worst thing, an arbitrary young god. "Eenie, meenie, miney, moe"

I'm so sorry to everyone for my perfections, the bits of me that will not waiver.
I promise to share them.
I apologise in advance for not being you.

2010-01-23T11:34:00.000+10:00

H. L. Mencken quotes:

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.

In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull.

It'd be easy to dismiss Mencken as a racist or anti-Semite, given some erratic and specific opinions he held. But I think further investigation is worthwhile. There is an honesty to his criticisms (which were widely distributed. No particular group was spared), which simply holds any given culture responsible for its identity. I believe, if you came to the attention of Mencken, you were doing something right. But having come to his attention, his closer scrutiny would suggest a further direction to go. i.e. you've become a victim of his observation: "A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know."

2010-01-19T23:08:00.000+10:00

The joys loom tall as redwoods,
casting cool dense shadows.
In their shade a footprint of clover,
a ring of muscaria, a humus of last year's life.

the joys. the joys.
they run into the millions.
the weight of the joys
bends light around them.

my bow of light fractures
and reveals the colours
of my fourteen thousand days,
and twice again
as many dreams,
standing like trees,
my path made through them.

Even as my light moves on
the next people bend me into them
into their joys, their numbered days.

My path ends in the best of all possible ways.
I've told you what direction it was going.
That's enough. I go off piste, follow the game trails.
That most natural thing is most likely.
The joys are there.

2010-01-15T22:25:00.003+10:00

I've got something to say about executive pay, China, Google, the GFC and Economics.

I recommend a read of "Against the Gods, The Remarkable Story of Risk" to get a good idea of what risk is and how it's been manipulated to form value over the ages. It's a boring book, but a fairly quick way of getting your head around the issues. Then read the paper: The “Other” Imbalance and the Financial CrisisRicardo J. Caballero1December 14, 2009. You could also follow this link to a simple classroom experiment showing the generation of wealth in a market.

Caballero reapportions blame away from "sub prime", lending/saving imbalance, putting the blame towards the demand for "safe" investment assets. It might seem a clever bit of hand-waving, but adding this dimension does bring some predictive power that the commonly held position didn't.

Firstly, let's talk about what the GFC wasn't/isn't caused by. The GFC isn't caused by big pay checks and bonuses for "fat cats" at the "big end of town". The GFC wasn't about boguns borrowing more than they could afford. The GFC wasn't caused by poor legislation or lazy regulation. All of these were factors in establishing the environment for the GFC, but were any of these the cause (in isolation, or combined), we'd have seen a GFC long long ago, and it would be constantly ongoing. None of these factors have substantially changed in the recent past.

Secondly, let's mention what should have happened according to standard economic theory: meltdown. There should have been a massive, comprehensive and paralysing cessation in credit from the big creditors (China) to the big borrowers (USA). This didn't happen. That this didn't happen is telling. There is something else at play. The market demand for AAA investments increased through the crisis. There was a "flight to quality" which artificially inflated the value of land (artificially buoying the AAA rating of some tranched products, enhancing the sub-prime problems). This counter-intuitive bubble in property is also symptomatic of the problem of a massive market imbalance caused by risk aversion in the big lending economies. The core idea is that there's a huge market demand for safe (AAA) investments, and not enough supply. The complex and ethically suspect tranched "sub-prime" products are a symptom of the market attempting to innovate towards satisfying the demand. There are plenty more financial products which we could point to which hid risk in complexity, but the sub-prime example is easy to use because it's so emotionally loaded. Executive pay and fat-cat bonuses are similar dog-whistles for the GFC. But neither adds up to a tipping point.

China is rapidly developing into a functioning engine for the world economy. The Chinese people are saving vast amounts of money. Chinese sovereign funds are being used conservatively around the world. But internal to China, where are the AAA assets? Why did the Chinese monies "flight to quality" go towards US AAA products, and not into Chinese AAA investments? It's telling that China's market, when things get titchy, doesn't circle the wagons. It flocks to get the wealth outside of China. After all the growth, with all the pride, all the protectionist advantages, why this flight?

Right down at the very bottom of this pile of dog's breakfast is uncertainty. Where "risk" is measurable, uncertainty is not (Knightian uncertainty). The degree to which uncertainty can be converted to risk determines the degree to which risk can be responsibly assumed. AAA ratings are determined by measuring risk. These measurements are based on any number of "constants" and common "units". "Constants" and "units" require economic history, consistency, and transparency. China has the luxury of none of these attributes. There is no market history, no regulatory consistency, and certainly no transparency.

China is attempting the experiment of retaining a "command economy of ideas" while granting a higher degree of control of the money economy to the market. Where the founding fathers of western capitalist economies joined ideas like free press and freedom of association with the free market, China keeps them divorced. This is not a proven path. It has never been done on this scale. In my opinion it's akin to giving the kids the keys to the car, but not allowing them to learn to drive first. And now we're on the road with them, all one billion.

Until China develops and publishes their business API, the interface by which outsiders can do business in China, there will be few AAA assets developed in or by China. Until China is able to produce AAA assets in numbers roughly equal to their demand for them, there will be a great imbalance. Another path, even less likely, is Chinese capitalists assuming greater risk (higher risk asset). But this would require a broad cultural change. I don't see that in the offing.

The blame usually falls on western countries for providing the, obviously in hindsight, overly complex and poorly engineered AAA assets. But those organizations were trying to feed a demand. Had they not attempted to feed that demand the inequity would have shown up sooner. And that may have been subtly worse. Had the well run dry for China 5 or 10 years earlier, we may have seen their growth halt before they really had enough momentum to bridge the gap themselves.

It's almost impossible to tell "what could have been". But it's important to get beyond the simple populist explanations for the GFC, to dig a bit deeper, to include ideas beyond greed, money and regulations. This crisis has shown the vital role ideas like freedom and liberty play in a functioning economy. Freedom and liberty are the minders of Rule of Law, allowing for the frank and open discussions required to refine the laws. And without effective Rule of Law in China we'll continue to suffer from the hollowing effects of their apparent growth. Very risky times ahead. It's scary seeing the direction things are headed with so little we can do to change it.

2009-12-31T11:55:00.001+10:00

This morning on my ride to work I noticed some fine young gentlemen volunteering their time to wash graffiti from the walls of our city. What a fine service to the community? What’s that? You don’t think they’re volunteering at all? Fine young criminals serving court ordered community service? Maybe you’re right. But if we let taggers wash the tags off, doesn’t that just mean we’re showing them clean surfaces to come back to tag later?

Further to my previous post withdrawing my fatwā on all taggers, I’d like to take a quick look at the role of punishment in the cycle of this publish art form. I assume the vast majority of taggers are pop culturists (i.e. not true anarchists, not hippies, not communists). They may not consider tagging a crime, much as normals don’t consider billboards and street advertising a crime. And they certainly rely on “rule of law” whilst driving or working, just like you and me. For taggers or any public guerrilla artist, the legal context in which they do their work is integral to the honesty of the work. Indeed every public artist is asking for “judgement”. But from whom? And why?

For most taggers the judgement most coveted is that of the peer group. But that judgement lies within the wider pool of community/society. In effect, the approval of the peer group relies on the inherited disapproval of the parent group of wider society. Within public art there is a special dispensation for stuff put up with permission “legal :A graffiti piece or production that is made with permission. “ Pretty intuitive.

But it’s important to consider how this word is considered within the audience of graffiti artists. It’s a complicated relationship and has little in common with what the general public would understand.

Speaking of the general public, we, the law abiding citizens, obviously have the majority voice. And interestingly, we, the public, are the targets of all public art. That there is “legal” public art is great. But the judges of “legal” public art are usually art critics. Neither their praise nor scorn carries a jail sentence. And importantly legal public art is judged piece by piece, as opposed to as a group. Illegal public art is pre-judged, wholesale. Any non-sanctioned public art carries the threat of punishment more real than what the art critics are allowed to mete out. As I mentioned before, this threat is actually incorporated in the positive judgment of the peer group. It’s almost necessary.

But I’m interested in the idea that public art is so seldom “attractive” to the wider public that it becomes punishable by law. Part of this idea is definitely a furfy (i.e. tagging isn’t illegal because it’s ugly, it’s illegal because it’s done without permission), but there is another part of the idea that says; if public art were generally attractive, would we see a trend towards softer laws? If the conversation of public artist became concerned with quality of image, composition, arty-ness, etc., could public artists win over the general public to a point of approval? Self-governance of the sort we see in the art world at large (debatable)? And what prevents that from happening?

It’s interesting to consider the ideas of peer review (as in science), and the market (as in art) in relation to illegal public art. There is no market in illegal public art. There is no market because the property is not allocated for the art. The art has no vehicle to market. It’s essentially two dimensional and unowned. Without a path to market, none of the levers of the market can be worked on illegal public artists. Thereby the general public (as participants in the market) have little influence on illegal public art outside the legal system (cops and courts). As a quick aside, were we to endorse public art and provide the creatives the space to declare their identity and ability in public, we might could give them a path to market (i.e. make graphic artists out of them or whatever). This would both discharge the “criminality=credibility” dynamic and allow application of market forces to public art. I think this would lift the art by way of more widely public competition. It would possibly also kill the art because the peer review dynamic effectively dies.

But all of this is merely a screen upon which shadows of the meaning of the art are projected. The meaning of illegal public art is almost always tied to groups outside of the “wider public”. And, I don’t have numbers on this, but I believe the majority of the art is committed by single young males. The art constitutes an attempt at a conversation. If you accept my assumptions, the response to this attempt is so clearly wrong. We normalize the criminal justice system, we do the opposite of affirming value in youth, we criminalize the victims of a culture which finds “them” outside the group “general public”.

As I started to think about why these kids were washing tags off walls I thought it’d be interesting to think of the consequences of law (punishment) as a form of art criticism. But after thinking about it while, it became a bit more involved and that idea seemed too simple, too dismissive.

Read more about graff here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti

2009-12-28T13:06:00.005+10:00

Avatar 3D

Start review:
We saw it at IMAX in 3D. It was good. You should see it too. /End review.

Now let’s talk Singularity and Gaia theory, extreme Darwinism, and entropy. H8trs roll your eyes. For definitions, see your preferred encyclopaedic knowledge base. But in brief, Singularity: when technology is smarter than meat. Extreme Darwinism: evolution of more than just meat (ideas, memes, systems, cultures, etc.). Gaia: recognition of a single planet-sized homeostatic (living) system. Entropy: things fall apart.

Firstly, any consideration of the convergence of these four concepts is, at best, armchair philosophy. At worst, it’s some sort of new age religion. The difference between the two, the saving from pure hunch and faith, is some adherence to Science according to Popper: repeatable experiments which provide evidence. So, let me start pretty far away from anything I want to talk about to consider for a moment the current discipline of philosophy, Bateson’s concept of “Error of Logical Type” ("eating the menu instead of the dinner.").

Joshua Knobe and Eduoard Machery have developed some fascinating little scenarios in an attempt to nut out the stuff of human intention. Read the transcript or listen to the program to get an idea of where modern-day philosophy is headed. It’s very easy to see the convergence of related disciplines of Cog Sci, Behavioural Psyc, Evolutionary Psyc, etc. on a certain area of thinking. Even from my layman perspective, I can see a turf war coming. It seems to me that these disciplines are flowing over their previously well-defined boundaries. They’re converging on an area of logical type which is not yet comprehensively mapped. I take this convergence as a sure sign that there’s something here of value. We’re on to something.

Avatar in 3-D was a sensory feast. A whole lot of information was effortlessly absorbed by the audience. This is a typical experience which we all accept without any amazement. But within the film we’re presented with a similar idea which does affect amazement. The Na'vi have a sensory organ which allows them to link with other beings. This seems amazing to people, but to a large degree we can do this too. (see above research by Eduoard Machery re people with Asperger's syndrome – people whom, for the most part lack the ability to “read minds” which most people take for granted – think “empathy” – look up “mirror neurons” ). But the novel presentation in Avatar of a certain networkability of living beings (cross-species/cross-kingdom) gives us pause.

The two things to note here are: 1. We already do this, just in a different format. 2. That we have an established pathway to empathy (typically through the eyes), does not preclude using an empathy-organ via a different pathway (think dreams).

So, technically, where are we? We have near-commercial applications which allow typing and mouse movement via thought. Typing both via selecting letters on a screen and (and this is important) via merely thinking about a letter. To pull this a bit towards the ground, we’re able to get as far as the menu. We’re not yet able to eat the dinner. But there’s been no technical, mathematical, reasonable argument given as to why we shouldn’t be able to get to the meal – where the meal is a true two-way communication via thought between computer agents and human agents, which will eventually assist human/human, or human/other thought communication. The maps aren’t there yet, and this is where the turf war is converging – mapping the concepts deep in consciousness or cognition.

Imagine this scenario available with current technology (although not currently implemented): An individual is somatically contained inside a shell or a suit. This layer provides a filter between the outside world and the individual’s experience of the outside world. The filter is highly configurable (think of the ways you can change the look and feel of the computer operating system you’re using now – colours, fonts, backgrounds, sounds – commonly referred to as Theme). The filter is applied to everything you see. Some things it changes to conform to your preference, other things it leaves the same. Maybe you don’t like the colour blue, so it changes everything blue to red. Maybe you don’t like to see “ugly” people, so the filter modifies their appearance to make them more symmetrical, or it makes all people look like supermodels. Then suppose you could network this filter, share it to your friends and/or co-workers. Siblings could share a view of devil-horns on their parents. Co-workers could share a view of their boss in lederhosen. The entire non-fictional fabric of reality could be altered. And from these very crude baby-steps of manipulation would emerge a culture, or several cultures, of what would at first be differentiated as “reality modification” or “augmented reality”. But eventually, as a majority of people bought-in at one level or another, would become the “inside” where reality is happening, where the common shared experience exists.

Now this seemingly science fiction flight of fancy is, in many ways, what we all enjoy daily as our current reality. The shell of culture informs our emotional and “rational” response to everything we experience. Depending on the culture in which we operate, we can have variously negative or positive responses to identical stimuli. The internal plumbing for this type of reality-altering/filtering is old and well used. The missing-link is the development of a new input/output(I/O) device to hook into the existing system. That development is no simple task, or so we expect. I think we’ll find there are a few external forces at work here which may-should help us along.

Up until the age of eight all humans have an extraordinary ability to pick up languages. After the age of eight (roughly) something closes off in the brain, new languages acquired are processed in a different part of the brain, and for the most part are not acquired to a level we consider as “native speaker”. It’s pretty safe to say that nearly all computer languages are acquired after eight years of age. There are only a very few computer languages written specifically for primary school children (Logo), and they don’t come close to the power of commonly used languages such as C, or English. But if we step away from the I/O we typically associate with language (writing/speaking), we can see that the requirements for language do not require writing or speaking. The requirements are only communication, syntax, grammar, and vocabulary. Importantly “communication” can take many forms.

We are currently one generation away from a “thought” language, where the medium of communication is thought. We have a great deal of experience developing syntax, grammar, and vocabulary. And we have a fair amount of experience developing novel media of communication. But cracking the ability of thoughts to be used to communicate to machines is forming a very powerful bridge to a future of native machine speakers/thinkers. Any culture with a semi-ubiquitous thought-interface will, over the course of 30 years, develop along similar lines to the evolution of computer languages; from low-level to high-level languages. This is to say from very specific number-theory based executable instruction, to highly metaphorical interpreted and compiled languages. And in this distinction you should be seeing the parallel with Dennett’s levels of Intentional Systems.

As alien and perverse as it sounds today to hook babies up to an augmented reality interface from year-2, it would have seemed just as perverted to put little ones in front of today’s TV just 100 years ago. But as benefit illustrated via historical competition (i.e. kids who learn early prove to have a hyper-competitive advantage) and as ubiquity and transparency of augmented interface increase, the mores will change. The new show will be on. And this is where both Singularity and Gaia come to the fore.

With native speakers of human thought languages (and there will be many) growing to adulthood, the Phd studies and experiments in cross species or direct human-human thought communication will start rolling in. It’ll be another 30 years, but these should result in reliable extensions in ability. I can’t see any facility for direct human-human thought communication without some sort of technological implement involved. I don’t suppose anything like that could be developed in anything short of geological time, but the transparency of the technological implement should evolve to a point to where it’s invisible for practical purposes (i.e. it’s a device powered from body-heat energy or bacterial processes, either worn, implanted, tooth filling or swallowed as a pill – .)

From this point of departure, the only current theories I can find to describe the state-of-play are Singularity and Gaia. I believe they’re two sides of the same coin. If they are valid considerations, they exist already in one form or another. They are made of the same stuff. They are meant to describe a phase-change in our consideration of reality. I’m in no position to suppose how a massively multi-player somatically networked biota would act. Similarly the “Singularity” is meant to evoke an event horizon, outside which no understanding can be supposed. What I can say about this game-changing technology is that it’ll put the ideas of “technology”, “other” and “nature” to bed. And without a valid understanding of those concepts, the arguments of the day will evaporate (or condense). We will lift out of our current local minimum, just a slight levitation past the walls we all take for granted. The search will be on for the global minimum again (I’m holding that goal is to maximize the progress towards heat-death, so increase sustained entropy – the burn rate of energy free to do work/the destructuring of information. Where “information” is defined as : difference which makes a difference -Bateson).

I’ve attempted to keep this flight of fancy at a ground level. I’ve made some extensions on currently available technologies based roughly on Moore’s Law and a general trajectory of progress. I’ve assumed quite a bit about what children under 8 could do based on existing knowledge and research. I’ve projected with these nuts-n-bolts onto a far wall and come up with the silhouette of a possible future. I hope I’ve avoided catastrophe, conspiracy, and religion. There are many sophisticated arguments against key points of my projection. What is key here is not to examine too closely the connections and moving parts of the specific machine I’ve constructed. Instead look at the shape and purpose of levers employed. Don’t look at how the nut is cracked, look to see that value is gained if the nut is cracked. If that value is found (in theory), it represents a level of free energy/information. If the equation of how much energy is spent cracking the nut compares favourably to the energy freed, it’s worth pursuit. As I’ve said elsewhere, the imperative is not ours to choose. We’ve got to take what we can find, because if we can find it, so could something/someone else. Evolutionarily speaking, victori spolia.

Further reading, evidence, related inventions and unrelated links.

Unrelated, but I can't get this quote out of my head: Philosophy and The Wealth of Nations, PJ O'Rourke:
"I'm a conservative personally because I believe in what William F. Buckley called 'giving the dead a vote', that society's come up with ways of coping with things and we change those ways that they cope with things at our peril, sometimes for the good, sometimes definitely for the good, but always at our peril. So that we have to be careful. So that makes me to the right. Economically, I just believe that like Smith, economists should realise that their role is to figure out how things work, not figure out how things should work."
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2009/2759571.htm#transcript

Coming close to relating the unrelated link above with the idea of reality-filtering:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427370.500-how-our-brains-build-social-worlds.html?full=true

From Wired Magazine: This dovetails with Dennett's Intentional Stance ideas very well (I think). The main idea being that real problem solving happens when people are forced to speak in metaphor:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_accept_defeat/all/1

Read D. Dennett here:
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/intentionalsystems.pdf

Parasite which modifies behaviour of host. Think of this as a direct link into the thought system. This parasite helps get rats/mice inside of cats.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sapolsky09/sapolsky09_index.html

Better batteries are on the way. And I mean really a lot better. This is one of many articles on progress towards better energy storage:
http://www.physorg.com/news180704455.html

Better memory is on the way. And I mean really a lot better. This is one of many articles on progress towards better information storage. We're talking storage density of 1.1 terabytes per cubic centimetre:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22673

Dipping our toes in augmented reality:
http://mashable.com/2009/12/26/augmented-reality-marketing

Take this real-time chat translator with you everywhere you go. It's like having a babelfish in your ear without the gross-factor.
babelwith.me runs off of Google translator. Google translator is (importantly) crowsourcing better translations.
http://babelwith.me/

Towards the controversial idea of teaching kids uncommon, unexpected, unorthodox? languages. This man taught his son Klingon. See the comments for the fear and loathing this brings. But study your Chomsky/Pinker and feel much better about it:
http://scifiwire.com/2009/11/man-taught-his-son-klingo.php

Sound-design is an under-appreciated lever on our consciousness - so under-appreciated it might be considered a lever on our sub-consciousness. Either way, this is an interesting glimpse into very early augmented reality (Disneyland style):
http://dustincurtis.com/how-mr-q-manufactured-emotion.html

What would you do with a thought interface with computers? Find your YouTube videos faster? Write your emails without chipping your nail polish? Or would you create a hyper-fast short trading application that rides the market like a wave?
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-fastest-guns-in-the-market-20091105-i0au.html

Speaking of Wave:
http://jasonkolb.com/weblog/2009/09/why-google-wave-is-the-coolest-thing-since-sliced-bread.html

Speaking of making business into games:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218225/Internet-game-awards-points-people-spotting-crimes-CCTV-cameras-branded-snoopers-paradise.html

Article on existing thought interface with computer. We're at 8 characters per minute in 2009:
http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/neuro/thought-alone-mind-over-keyboard
http://hplusmagazine.com/print/1043

Using MRI to read your mind:
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/mri_vision

Commercially available thought controller for computer:
http://www.emotiv.com/index.html

Trends in augmented reality:
http://www.thinkartificial.org/

2009-12-23T15:55:00.004+10:00

"Eye witness claims China hobbled the talks" , not sure how I feel about this. Sure, I'm not a fan of China. I believe they do kill political prisoners. I believe they do harvest organs and collagen for commercial purposes from executed prisoners. I believe both of these behaviours are emblematic of a broader something I don't agree with. But in this case, I say "Good on you China! Go you developing nation you!" They out-flanked everybody. They did the diplomatic and politically expedient thing they wanted to do. I think western "developed" countries probably misunderestimated them, and they got theirs (or should I say, we go ours.). While I don't agree with any of what China is about, and I'm not pro-China, I admire and respect the skilful manipulation of what amounts to the entire world. I think it's time some leaders stop taking their own desires, abilities, cultures for granted. There's a new power in the room, and they have a different way of doing things. Adapt or fail.

2009-12-08T20:14:00.003+10:00

Henry Rollins is a Woman

Do all you can man.
You're not a boy.
Cut off your balls, man
we're done with your toys.

Rip out your eyes, man.
You're done with girls.
Do all you can, man of the world.

Don't start fires or work with your hands,
raise your voice or make demands.

Put your little suit on right.
Now dance!
Look at you!, boss
what a sight.

Shut up, stud. Earn baby, earn.
Then die
fulfilled.

2009-12-06T21:17:00.001+10:00

Can motivation for intentional actions have names? OR, how I answer my 4yr old's questions "If there are no people, like if they all died, everyone in the world, would Santa still be alive?" and "What was before the first dinosaur?"

I'm interested in two things here. One of them is not linguistics. The two things are applying Daniel Dennett's "intentional stance" or "intentional systems" at an atomic level to re-image the way we consider calculations of things like physics and chemistry. The second thing is then assembling clusters of intentional systems to attain something of a self catalysing homeostatic system (i.e. life). I put the origin of life at the primordial sea-floor vents, so I'm making assumptions of the required chemistry, physics, etc. based on those conditions.

A caveat I'd like to make, when using the word "atomic" I'm more interested in the "essential" meaning of the word than the typical physics it implies. It's unfortunate that atomic has come to mean radioactive, when at its basis it just means "the smallest or most elemental form of something that can still be considered something". It's also unfortunate that the idea of an atom having a definite boundary or solid shell is so popularly held. I don't want you or anybody to put walls around your atoms. Instead, think of atoms as a localized increased probability of energetic reactions.

Just this consideration of the word "atom" shows that the human race has reached a certain impasse with regards to the pop/folk world-view. We stand straddling Newton's classical view (for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction) and Einstein's relativism ( all measurement depends upon the frame of reference). On the one hand we expect the world to act something like a computer, and we expect it to be computable. On the other hand we know there are aspects of life which are bound to the frame of reference or point of view.

Some clear examples of the conflict come in climate modelling, economic modelling and evolutionary theory. None of these sciences provide classical answers, and there's a reason for that. All three of these sciences deal with highly complex systems. You can think of "complexity" as being a problem with many variables. The simple truth about complex problems is that they are not reasonably "computable". They are described as NP-complete. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-complete

Any complex problem put to computational models is typically simplified in some/many way(s) to make it conform to the limits of computation. But this begs the question: if these problems could be solved in a non-complex way, why weren't they. In other words: The essence of solving complex problems is in their very complexity.

The natural world solves complex problems continuously and consistently. The chaotic white-water of a wave breaking on the shore, the turbulence you feel when flying near a storm, the simple moment a mountainside transitions from serene to avalanche, are all examples of highly complex interactions being resolved en mass at a nearly atomic level. There's no evident calculation time. There's no measurable communication of any historical or future intention. The entire problem is resolved continuously in the very nick of time.

One might then reason that there's obviously some very economical process of calculation at work here. Apply Occam's Razor to the idea and you come back to Newton. In the breaking wave we're seeing nothing more than very many individual equal and opposite reactions taking place. If we had enough information about initial conditions, we'd be able to calculate the position and vector of each molecule of salt-water indefinitely into the future. But when this turns out to not be true, we're left looking for the next most simple answer. Calculating turbulence can be done, but not predicatively. The precision of the calculation fails the classical test of "is/isn't", and quickly becomes a probability. Similarly the weather prediction for tomorrow is more accurate than the one for 5-days-from-now. Have a look at the Travelling Salesman Problem, or any of the many other NP-complete problems for more.

What could that next most simple explanation be? And why is it not a linguistic problem?

So having somewhat disposed of classical computation (the ability of arithmetic to solve all problems), where does that leave us? It does not leave us where the ancient Greeks left off. But in excluding the power of math from our tool belt, our situation does share quite a bit with that of the Greeks. We're left without any agreed language, process, framework, or tools to specifically make sense of the world. We're left back at the doorstep of philosophy.

Did philosophy predict mathematics? No, because at the time of first invention there was either no separation between the two, or no relation drawn. (That's how our situation differs from the ancient Greeks; we've drawn some lines in the sand) Can philosophy be expected to bring forward the next step beyond math? As much as any other discipline. But surely math is different to philosophy because math is not "linguistic", math is "real" - that there are two apples and two oranges are linguistic distinctions of class and object. But that the two apples and two oranges share a thing that is "two-ness" is "real", right? Mathematicians would have you think so. But as Albert Einstein said: "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." There is a space between math and reality. It's in that space that philosophy plays.

I feel it's important to highlight the linguistic (read: anthropocentric) nature of math, the philosophical underpinnings of math, and the limitations of math because the phrase "intentional stance" seems to impart some sort of language to the things to which it is applied. In most people's minds, there's no problem with calling something the "second orange" or measuring "40 degrees". There seems to be something more "real" about attributing a number to an orange than attributing an aspiration to an orange. But I'm interested in fleshing out the subtle distinction between "intentional stance" at a base level, and "reason" or "physics". I'm interested in both pointing out the degree of anthropocentricity of attributing a number value to an object, as well as opening the box on attributing a non-anthropocentric, non-number value to an object.

The idea of attributing a desire to an atom causes an immediate giggle. Atoms can't want. They can't think. They have no will. I'm happy to agree with that reaction. I'm happy to reserve "will" for thinking animals. But I'm asking for words that we can combine like Lego blocks to eventuate in living animal desire. The idea is to impart an elemental "will" which, much as the elemental atom, combines to form molecules of will, and eventually comes somewhat alive as a group of organized intention.

Now let me split arguments into two camps. One camps says that this elemental quality must be an attribute already accounted for, like charge. The other camp would claim that it's an as-yet-unobserved attribute. To either of these contentions I'd nominate units of entropy, or a relationship with units of entropy. I have a hunch that this is where the value resides. A hunch is not very scientific, but then I am not a scientist. At least there is a measurable (Joules per Kelvin) amount of something to hang 'yer hat on there. But as hinted, a relationship with units of entropy might need to give the amount an orientation or some other dimension in order to further distinguish "want" in a valuable way (in a way that would give predictive abilities).

I don't want to be the one pushing for adding extra dimensions to a problem just for the sake of the convenience of making it solvable, just as I don't enjoy seeing people remove complexity from a problem in an attempt to make it solvable. But I don't think we can ignore the clear gap that remains between what exists and what's been explained.

Scientists have looked at individual nodes of DNA (primary structure). They expected to find all the answers, but what they found was that the secondary structure, the double-helix could not be ignored. And then a very clever team found clear indication that the tertiary structure was being used by some animals, inside the light receptors in the eye, to amplify light. This is to say that the folded shape of the double helix was different inside these cells in such a way that was advantageous to the total animal. How was that "want" communicated down? You could quite correctly argue variously that a signal is required and that a signal is not required. And depending on your classification system, you can either see that signal or not.

Where does this emergence live? When does randomly clicking Lego blocks together become a model of a house? If we can agree that Lego blocks form a group "they". And if we can finally agree that Lego blocks want to be clicked together (design stance), we could also agree that they want to make two classes of things; one class is things which have a clear utility, the other class is things for which a use is not clear. If we then observe a "user", one (or many) who then employs the utility of a made Lego structure, and thereby allows it to persist, we can start to see how the underpinnings of life may have started in the deep blue sea.

At a chemical level, no distinction is made between a primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, etc. structure. Distinctions are made based on difference without regard to class. Whereas class distinction has served a purpose in the progress of human understanding, these borders also serve to limit our ability to understand the dimensions left undefined. A great deal of value does reside in the individual objects which we define, but there is clearly more. One of the uses of employing Dennett's "Intentional stance" is to establish conditional relationships. To define a relationship is to interrogate that space between defined objects. Having defined many objects, it's up to us to define the parameters of the possible relationships.

I'm not suggesting that we're missing some essential "soul" dimension of these relationships. But I'm not convinced we're done considering the currently defined attributes absent the typical constraints demanded by the individual disciplines (physics, biology, chemistry). It's worth remembering that those specific disciplines exist as much as Santa Claus. If we stop believing in them, they cease to exist. I agree the demarcating borders of these disciplines have been valuable. But I think it's also very important re-draw the lines to include the newly possible.

I don't see a groundswell of support for the "intentional stance" in the sciences (not as much as memes anyway). This doesn't make it a bad idea. And this does not make it wrong. In the language of memes I think it just makes it dormant. And to my mind it's a sleeping giant.

In summary, before the dinosaurs there was goop which fell into catalytic relationships driven by the potential energy present at hot water vents in the deep primordial seas. And if there were not people Santa would not "die" because he is magically sustained by our belief ( a powerful self-reinforcing meme which lives in the relationship with parents' desire to see their children happy), but would instead merely cease to exist.

2009-12-01T14:06:00.000+10:00

Eggo, OJ, Boo, Fly, Mung

I, quite deliberately, was given a name that didn't lend itself to being shortened; not Peter, not Arthur.
But just as deliberately was given, well...
the nicknames I've gotten:
Baby idiot (1976-1981)
Pig (1979-1982)
Piglet (1979-1980)
Scumbag (1980-1982)
Faggot (1975)

What a sad and ugly five pointed list begotten. Rotten luck, time forgotten? Well, "if you have to ask"... But that is mine. Other people have lists of worse or better: Eggo, OJ, Boo, Fly, Mung, but mine's only spoken by a fiery tongue.

That is what I remember first, a lot. Such emphasis and focus on nailing me down. Again and again. In and out of years. Years. Dropping those in a coke bottle with a cork in a hole in an orchard is confusing. The years, the names, the nails, pick any two, forget.

Now I've written it down, to share. Sure, visit anger, visit the past, but why live there? Well, "if you have to ask"... Read it. Know me and see just that, or not. It's always there. Just one. Mine, ours. The only past. The only chance to make one. It's The Rock, carved. The Door, best left closed.

It is inscribed on something eternal which we shoulder up stairs, confused and unawares. Is someone helping that to bear? That would be divine. Does absolution work? Well, "if you have to ask"... then none for me, none for mine.

2009-11-12T08:29:00.001+10:00

Not surfing

that smell of the ocean's lives
the ins and outs
all of life all of death

terrifying glimpses of fish with teeth
that very middle of our brain what tells us only 2 things
being the whole of theirs

being washed over by waves of anticipation
pulling back the sheet, clearing the mind to the task
awareness is increased, any light is enough

what will happen now over this bed?
swelling waves coupled in pairs of
peak and trough heave through

that most potential you
the many could be yous
your possible future histories
the stories you'll remember
pass you by

and with each wave of guilt not taken
a trough of remorse followed by a bigger
wave of terror and exhaustion
totally depleted and laying flat

what follows is as delicious as it is absent
a lull
you're noplace notime afloat adrift
something is over
it's heat death
outside yourself, ecstasy

and with accounts roughly balanced
with the little satisfaction you can take
from just having been there then
a quiet understanding swims away.

2009-11-11T23:41:00.000+10:00

fortunate mouthful of teeth
like marbles
frumulent and glistening

hair bushing over
shoulders set
legs apart
fists clenched

I set out to work
I think of butterflies
then I think of butter
then of flys
mmmm, butter.

How different would life really be as a caveman?

2009-11-11T22:43:00.000+10:00

Position change: taggers

Previously in this space, I pilloried "taggers" as little more than wee dogs pissing on posts. In my own self righteous and growed-up way, I stated firmly that respect for private property surely trumped any culturally inspired compulsion to tag. I'm about to reverse that decision.

Why?

Because I take the train. I take the train and am therein surrounded daily by tags, graffiti, paste-ups, throw-ups, stencil art, all that. I see it a lot. And I judge it. Not like "right" vs. "wrong", but more like "art" vs. "noise" or "succeed" vs. "fail". For a long time I was happy to put tags en-mass in the "noise" bin. And on occasion in the "fail" bin. But mostly noise getting in the way of art/expression.

But today on the train I had a bit of a moment. It was one of those moments where you don't know what you're looking at, and it makes you look again, think again. There's a MASSIVE tag at Strathfield station that I believe says "stops owa". It's probably 4 or 5 meters tall, and 5 or 6 meters up the side of a big windowless building wall. It looks as if it was painted using some sort of hose or maybe a paintball gun. It's really ugly, but it's way bigger than any of the other stuff done down at human scale. So, why?

At first I thought:"hippies". Because it doesn't look like typical tagging, I thought OWA must be a union or something. And this must be protest graff. But then further along the line I saw an OWA tag. That's when it hit me: "branding". These people, all people in the city, are bombarded daily with brands on billboards, busses, inside trains, train stations, buildings, bus stops, TV, bathrooms, almost everywhere. So why wouldn't it become a natural conclusion that an individual should also broadcast a brand - their brand, a tag? If brands are valued, valuable, why don't I have one? Why not create one?

Once the brand is created, the thing to do with it is to get it "out there". The question of "why" sort of answers itself at some point - "because everything of worth has a brand, look at me, I am worthy of a brand". It is a dog pissing on a tree, but it's also a birdsong, a loin's roar, a beaver dam.

Identity in the world, in a very specific social structure, the risk and ritual of establishing that identity, provides value, security, pecking-order, etc.. The writing is an artefact of the a process that answers questions for a portion of the population for whom no useful answers are being provided. It's worth the time looking deeply at these messages, to read what they say about the people writing them. Because what they are writing, although usually only one word, forms a class of the most profound and economical poetry ever written. In one word they're saying: "I am here" over and over and over again.

2009-11-05T21:50:00.001+10:00

One example of why you want to control your online presence: When negotiating with an "agent" - real estate, mortgage, whatever, either buying or selling, that agent will look you up on google. If you happen to be in a metaphorical game of poker with this agent, the more they know about you, the more advantage they have.

If you've ever played real poker, you'll know it's important to retain your privacy. You never want to be forced to reveal if you bluff, when you bluff, how and why you bluff. Once your opponent knows your tell, the game is fairly well up (unless they don't know that you know that they know, in which case you could fake your tell...once).

There are many types of situations in real life which map tightly to game theory. Negotiation situations typically map well to poker in that they require two parties to "bid" against a mix of perceived and measured chance. The party with the most chance piled in the "measured" bucket has an advantage (think of card-counters at the blackjack table). This is a situation in which information is power. This is an example of a class of situations in which your online presence can come to work against you.

The trick, if you have an online presence, is to attempt to ensure that it works for you in equal measure. That's a difficult balance to strike.

2009-10-28T23:30:00.000+10:00

I am a khipu

Looking not to unravel today
instead to undulate my tongue to say
words tied together, not neatly, a tangle
,a promise worn like a bangle.

In the high cordillera of central Peru,
to keep their story true
they tie string in knots to keep accounts
of a life of promise in varied amounts
to hold the mistakes measured through

But with care and with time, the accounting takes a shape
the unmistakable shape of art tumbles in
Tied knots. They record
Twice as long as half as much,
many more to go
adding 'til the final say
a khipu left to show.

I am a khipu

2009-10-23T12:50:00.003+10:00

I love this. Here's a quick grab of today's "Most Popular" headlines on ABC News.net :

Ice-skating bear kills circus director
Town cancels rabbit-throwing comp
Women evolving to be shorter, chubbier
Worms linked to coeliac relief

My mashup:

"town coeliac evolves circus of chubby rabbit-throwers."

As likely as anything else really.

2009-10-23T06:13:00.001+10:00

Something to make you cry. It's difficult to hear, but the jist is "what the heck do you think we were fighting for?!"

2009-10-22T23:12:00.005+10:00

Once again, Tim Brown jangles my head around and out pops ideas. The Ideo CEO's "Design Thinking" comes close to Clay Shirkey's "crowdsourcing" to my mind. From Tim Brown's "Design Thinking" idea (TED talk), and from some new music I heard last night (band: Kyu. The song: Sunny In Splodges - hint: look on mySpace not iTunes) I got a subtly different idea.

The design-space of music has been intensely interrogated for the last 50 years. Traditional forms have fallen in authority and novelty has come to the fore. A lot, and I mean a whole lot, of energy has been put into this exploration. I mean energy both as in "electricity" and as in "human endeavour" (not to mention the lawyers). Where the traditional market has relied on "talent scouts" and critics to determine "popular" music; the current model relies on the plebs clicking. The traditional market put a wide talent pool through a narrow bottleneck, which then spewed forth a narrow stream of piss-weak music onto the masses, ok, and some good stuff too. The current model takes the wide pool and fills it with a mash of producer/consumers and everybody. In this new way, bright lights shine through a spectrum of genres and new genres are created. The old model looked like daytime: one star burning down on us all, for a day. The new model like the night sky: brilliant, cool, mysterious, varied, and deep.

In the last 10 years we've seen a dramatic democratisation, even socialization of music. It's gone from being a clearly defined "music industry" to something more like a crowdsourced music mashup. And that, as a non-business-model, is important. Look at "songs" as the baseline commodity. "Performers" become synonymous with "producer/distributors". And the overarching governance-model is massively distributed. From this model, we've seen a huge blossoming of diversity on one side (the interwebs) and a contraction on the other (the music industry). That blossoming of a diverse solution to the question "what is music" is contained in a new type of garden. The garden in which the divergent solutions are sprouting from is a new-style non-market created of non-consumers, a sort of organic community garden. Tim Brown talks of the business of design designing for Consumers as being a dead-end. "Design Thinking" is the act of designing methods of employing design-participants. That's exactly the organic model we've seen emerge in music (put "define: mashup" in google).

(Note the number of hyphenated words in the preceding paragraphs. That's a clue that we're considering concepts which don't have words yet.)

My take:

In previous posts I've pronounced that "entropy" is the purpose of life. And in that model I suggested that something is needed to balance an increase of "consumption". And for any environmentalist, the idea of increasing consumption as an imperative is surely heresy. Sorry. But in my defence, I have suggested an aggressive sort of sustainability. This is to say a "closed cycle" consumption. And here I come to the ah-ha moment. I haven't been satisfied with my formulation of how we'll take consumption to the next level. The idea of "aggressive sustainability" is missing the sort of transformative step required to get us over the hump. But the idea we're living, the consumer-producer-distributor mashup model, the crowdsource model, a thousand points of light, whatever you want to call it - that model applied en mass to disassemble mass markets - that's the sort of transformative step I'm looking for.

To stitch things together a little bit, think about replicating (or recapitulating) the new music model to “everything else”. Reality TV is dipping its feet into this idea. Where 20 years ago we saw plebs on game shows, today the plebs are pushing into the star realm. Broadcasters are tapping the pool. ABC just calls it like it is, they have http://pool.org.au. TV, music, very similar ideas. They're information based, aesthetic, ephemeral. What about mining, farming, etc. ? Well, I think we're seeing the electricity grid start to crowdsource. Solar and wind are starting to make economic sense for individuals. Rapid prototyping machines are starting to be affordable enough for home desktop 3d printing. Some of these sorts of hard, engineering-type innovations are coming soon. Adoption rate is another matter, but arrows do seem to be pointing to a new low-energy solution for an explosion of artefacts/ design-space-solutions and idea-flows.

I totally understand if you haven't had the "ah-ha" yet. I doubt I've gotten to the point. The point is, with 6 billion consumers you have essentially 6 billion containers. Sure we can stuff ourselves with artefacts, but we all reach a limit. A world of 6 billion producers would be fundamentally different. Imagine it as a world of 6 billion pipes. And if we apply the economic idea of "velocity of currency" to these "container" vs. "pipe" models, it's easy to see that pipes will enhance the velocity of commodities. Consumers serve as a terminus for commodities. Producers serve as a conduit for commodities. (and if we look at the culture of music mashups, the commodities can never be determined to be "finished goods").

The new model that emerges is highly social, highly productive, highly democratic, and yet highly communal. The key to success of this model hinges on the throughput of the "pipes" and the connectivity of the pipes (see etsy.com - lots of yarn being died by individuals, sold to individuals, lots of knitted items being created by individuals, sold by individuals). Also see David Logan’s TED talk on the staged architecture of human Tribes. You will hear a similar sort of calling to connectivity and network theory.

What’s a big example of what I’m talking about? Beveridge’s evolution of the idea of a Welfare State is one example. Early on while enacting the idea of welfare, the word had no charged component. The idea of “welfare” seems, well, fair. But later in life, even Beveridge came to see the "Welfare State" as bad because the way it was implemented created welfare consumers. We need welfare participants - but this is not "work for the dole". See the group Participle’s rehash of William Beveridge’s idea. They call it: Beveridge 4.0

Have a look at hive systems used by ants and bees. No individual ant or bee has an overall understanding of what needs to get done, only a local "response to stimulus". The bees/ants form this sort of pipe through which commodities and information flow. They get stuff done. Trees arguably do the same. They form forests in which they all grow to their potential based on the balance of inputs and outputs around them. And trees are essentially a system of pipes. For that matter, people are actually tubes made of meat. But I'm more talking about the meta-layer of human society rather than the oesophageal architecture of bodies. At that meta-layer, it's very natural for people anyway, to work individually en mass, to feed each other their work ad infinitum; however this model hasn't been seen for a while. In the words of Parag Khanna "nature doesn't repeat, it rhymes" Perhaps this coming time of mass cottage industry, many-to-many markets, will rhyme with a certain medieval history, but it will certainly look very different.

One more big example which I’ve been wanting to find a reason to mention for a while is what’s going on in Egypt. For years and years Christians in Egypt have been the rubbish collectors. As rubbish collectors and as Christians in a Muslim country they are discriminated against (to put it lightly). This past year something else happened, swine flu. The Egyptian government (I believe in Cairo anyway, not sure about other cities) decided to kill all the pigs. Now, you need to understand that pigs aren’t well regarded in Muslim circles. All pigs are owned by Christians. So, politically, Christians being a vast minority, it was easy to get the go-ahead.

But what the government didn’t understand, the pigs were used by the Christians to eat the organic waste. The materials which could be recycled or re-used were picked up and sold on, but the rest was fed to the pigs. The pigs were then eaten by the Christians. So rubbish collecting in Cairo was fairly a crowdsourced activity. The Christians were not/are not paid to provide this service. But when the pigs were killed, the Christians stopped collecting the rubbish – there wasn’t enough in it for them. (Also note: there has not been a documented case where swine flu has crossed from pig to human. So, there was no technical need to kill the pigs)

In their place, the government contracted with private companies. The private companies put bins at selected locations around the city. But the population, being used to just dropping rubbish any old place, kept doing that and largely ignored the bins. Besides, handling rubbish is too low a task for them. The end result? Armpits deep in rubbish, Cairo is a stinking mess. Why? Because the government interrupted a perfectly functional network of Beveridge’s welfare participants. Why? An overactive imagination, spite, disregard for the value of non-paid services, lack of leadership, etc.

That's a very large example of missing the value. But in smaller and more varried ways, we do this daily because we have a cultural blind-spot to the value of unpaid work. I predict, as the value creeps into our awareness, this blind spot will start to abate.

2009-10-21T21:55:00.001+10:00

Looking forward to following the Hungry Beast's presentation of robots on the battlefield. So far the so-called "more gen-Y than Idol" show has come down hard on robots in war. I'm waiting/wanting them to talk about the almost immediate emotional attachment soldiers report developing with their mechanical helpers. Also waiting to hear the Beast table the idea that robots can take the charge out of a situation by lowering the stakes for all involved - thereby making the battlefield safer and making rule-of-law more likely to be enforced (rather than ignored in the name of self-preservation). For example, when going door-to-door in an urban sweep, a robot on point can give a soldier valuable seconds to judge a threat. When you have a soldier on point, you might find the judgements are made much more quickly in the name of self preservation (always in favour of the soldier). A robot with a camera can give soldiers the visibility to discern a child holding a baby from an “insurgent” holding an AK. This gives both the soldier peace of mind, and removes the ability for a true combatant to “take one out with you” by blowing yourself up. I’m counting on the beast, as the voice of the next generation, to move away from knee-jerk dualism. Please, please, please allow your view of the world to be as complex as the world is.

There is an interesting conversation to be had about robots on the battlefield. I think that conversation needs to be held in parallel with the one about women on the battlefield (as soldiers). The battlefield mono-culture of young men with guns desperately needs to be upset. We need to evolve warfare. The sooner women (and robots) are employed to moderate the testosterone culture, the better. And for that matter, I’m pretty sure a clever policy could be developed to see senior citizens more involved in war. No doubt it’d be problematic politically, but when it comes to the culture of “going to war” and the culture of the war as it develops on the ground, it’d be good to have the whole diversity of populations represented and representin’.

This of course begs the question of children and pregnant women. And yes, it does. The idea that only 18 year old boys have been going to war allows us to believe that only 18 year old boys are on the battlefield. In fact, there are pregnant women and children on the battlefield – just not “ours”. I don’t suggest we enforce the conscription of children and pregnant women. I do suggest we admit that there are a great many children and pregnant women “over there”. And I suggest we do everything we can to maintain a “culture of war” that somehow extends the greatest capacity for human rights to be afforded. I believe robots, women, and older persons in theatre are all avenues to maintaining this culture. (18 year old boys are only good at maintaining live cultures between their toes. To ask more of them is inappropriate, even dangerous.)

Postscript: I'm not "pro-war" , a hawk, a war monger, or anything like that. I do admit that wars happen. I regard war as the product of an abject failure of leadership. The business of prosecuting war is left to the military, an essential force. It's important that we recognize when they do real work to manage the fallout of the failures of our leaders. In the case of the US and Australian militaries, I maintain that they are very good at what they do, and deserve credit for that. I believe it is incumbent upon a society to support its military force, even if they don't support the uses to which they are put. This includes thinking rationally about the culture in which they operate (which is extra-ordinary and extreme).

(by the way, I assume it's an ABC thing, but I'm finding comments are very difficult to post to the Hungry Beast website. Not very Google Wave of them)

2009-10-19T22:07:00.002+10:00

HR

What follows is a fictional account of a possible email chain between a recently re-employed former-stay-at-home-dad with his HR rep. Any resemblance to actual communication that took place last week is purely coincidental.

It picks up in mid-conversation after having been pulled up on a spelling mistake in a performance review document:

============

To: HR
You’re right it was spelled wrong. I’m a tragic speller. I think it may have been a Freudian slip, “tragectory” being a combination of the words tragic and trajectory. I think the sentence takes on certain poetic pathos with those meanings combined. Maybe a foreshadowing of the process of taking a sharp stone and washing it in a riverbed of sand until it takes on that dull sheen of jade. Speaking of which, is there any chance I can get my previous years of service stitched together with my current years, to get my seniority back or whatever it’s called? Can that be done? Is it already done?

============

From: HR

can't be done... will discuss with you

==========

To: HR
The fish can hear the gentle click
Another facet has been removed
The rock is rounding
To its more pleasant shape
Of the moon in summer.

(not a formal 7-5-7 haiku, but you know what I’m getting at)

==============

To date, no reply, no discussion.

2009-09-27T17:11:00.002+10:00

Ok, this is a blog. But pretty much nobody reads it (online), so it’s primarily a place where I put things so that I can find them again. It’s been a while between drinks here, but I feel it’s time I revisit my Theory Of Everything (TOE). The little boy with his finger in the dike has been reading again, hence not paying attention to his gatekeeping duties, hence the flood of ideas is making its way over the tulip fields, metaphorically speaking (get used to that if you’re prepared to keep reading).

Ok, I agree the below will, if read, sound a bit serious, maybe even authoritative. But be assured, these are strong views lightly held. They’re just a bit too complex to lightly hold them all in my head at once, so I’ve put the “pen to paper” in an effort to actually articulate as much of the idea as I can. But I’m very well aware of my limitations as a non-god. So I’m sure what’s written isn’t 100% correct in any objective (or maybe even subjective) sort of way. In fact, should any of my conjectures come to be proven by actual science (or divine revelation, just as likely), I’d expect a new book of Mormon to be published and for myself to be beatified for receiving The Word direct. I hope you agree this scenario is unlikely. But, similar to lotto, you gotta play to win. So, I write these things down (and use very many words in doing so).

Keep in mind, the internet. I try not to use words like “qualia” by accident. They’re there to remind me to remember what they mean. They’re used to advertise their existence. There are probably quite a few opportunities for anybody (myself included) to look stuff up on google/Wikipedia. Remember if you put “define: (anyword) “ into google, it’ll give you a sample of possible definitions.

And as a last bit of preface, I’m searching. Have been for a long time. I enjoy not putting a fine point on my beliefs, but I’m also looking for some spiritual terra-firma. It might seem like a lot of words are a long way away from the “personal relationship” with some sort of creator, but I personally doubt we can have anything but a close relationship with the creator (albeit mine doesn’t wear a beard). To my mind, it all gets very personal very quickly whether it’s being talked about in abstract/scientific terms or limerent poetry. And I’m not afraid to mix those up a bit.

Title: One agnostic folk reason why

Firstly, let’s dissect the title to let you know where I’m coming from.

“One” is meant to convey a single point of view, not necessarily the only “reason why”.

“Agnostic” to suggest that I only allow any influence of gnosis in the design and initial “go-live” of creation. I don’t consider further involvement necessary (in fact I don’t consider any notion of “time” appropriate for any sort of “god”).

“Folk”, because I’m not an expert and don’t base anything I ever say on empirically derived evidence, because I don’t actually perform experiments. I just read some things sometimes, and given the % of credence I give to what I read, I make my own extensions. Lucky for me, most of what I read is based on repeatable experiments which empirically derive evidence which has gone through peer review (i.e. science).

“Reason why” is the real open-ended subject here. Must there be a “reason why”? It’s sort of a 19th century attribution. To oblige the universe at large to give a reason why, to expect us people to have a reason behind us almost requires a concept of God somewhere in there. But I’m only happy to put down a reason short of guessing the motivations of some divine creator (as I would hope anyone would be, because I’d guess second-guessing God would be difficult at best). But physically speaking, inside the realm of our shared qualia, why? (maybe “whence” is closer to the details I’m putting down, but who says “whence” anymore?)

After all that build-up, after all those qualifications and couchings, I can sum up my answer in one word: entropy. I believe, as a guiding principle of my life in fact, that the reason for everything is entropy. That’s to say, all of the organisation in the observable universe is in the service of dis-organisation. Now before I get into the definition of entropy (which I doubt I could do in a technically accurate way), we come to the next “why” in what any 5yr old would recognise as an infinitely entertaining exercise in futility. Why dis-organisation? Why not the other way around: “Any organisation at all demonstrates something akin to God’s triumph over the evil of dis-organisation (remember “cleanliness is next to godliness”)”. The answer to that, as I see it, is in the big picture, the end game.

Pseudo-folk-technically, I propose the second law of thermodynamics only holds in a closed system. And any sufficiently large system will eventually qualify as a closed system. While the planet Earth is not a sufficiently large system, the observable universe is (based on the speed of light, because we can observe beyond Earth, it’s causally connected to those things we can observe. For anything beyond the observable universe the causal connection becomes less as you approach the limits of our light cone. So for our intents and purposes, the system becomes closed at the horizon).

Now that I’ve bounded the system, I can invoke the second law – things fall apart. Why? Something to do with the advance of time and the expansion of the substrate of the universe. I believe it’s important to make the distinction that things aren’t “moving” away from one another as the universe expands. It’s the space itself which is expanding. This sort of expansion, as opposed to things flying away from each other (as in an explosion), has far-reaching effects on the largest as well as smallest scales.

On the largest scales, we see cooling. On the smallest scale, I expect it will be found, there are stresses put on sub-atomic particles which drive some sort of process (i.e. the “strong force” gets stronger the further apart the quarks get. As this distance expands with the universe, will it tend to change fundamental physics on a macro scale? (I’ve submitted the question to the “Ask a particle physicist” project. Response: that the forces on scales anything smaller than galactic clusters are negligible, but I have my doubts). Regardless of the reason for the genesis of the universe, the method employed brings with it some inherent vectors. Time’s arrow has a decided bias towards “forwards”, space (or some sort of substrate aether underlying what we know as space) expands and is probably accelerating in its expansion (and not for the first time). These two vectors then determine quite a bit about the way things come together, fly apart, evolve, etc..

The argument I’m putting forward is that these two vectors directly determine our purpose on Earth. There is only one process going on (a point of set theory), with every other process being inherited from that. I’m happy if you choose to call the superset-process God, but I don’t choose to. I put “God” further back, outside the frame (the image I choose is that of “unmoved mover” or “full void”). If you like, the DNA of all we see and know is in the superset-process. The individual sub-processes serve to make up the superset, so must compile to exactly resemble the superset. Necessarily the component parts must at some level, resemble the whole (in attribute and/or value i.e. while all the colours of the rainbow are different in value, their common attribute is that they are light).

The question then becomes, what is the nature of the “superset-process”. As it’s evolved over time, the universe has gone from a tight heavy bundle of very little entropy (little energy in differential, free to do work), to a sweet-spot where we now reside (pockets of intense energy/density surrounded by void, so lots of energy free to do work), on its way towards heat-death (effectively even energy distribution, little energy free to do work). This, along with time, even more than taxes, are the inevitable truths of the universal process (without respect to anything human. And probably on a time-scale which wouldn’t accommodate anything human-like anyway). But nestled inside this process, somewhere in the middle, now, are we. We are subject to the same superset process in our design, creation, execution as anything and everything else in the universe. We are of nature (where nature is not to be considered so much a verdant forest, as it is to be considered an expanding, cooling void with impossibly small points of significant energy density.) Sure our local nature does have forests. I don’t deny the importance of the forest-type-nature we experience locally. But I’m asking that we don’t over-estimate the local component of the design brief. By and large, we are designed as a highly organised system or tool for the purpose of demolition (not unlike the worms, bacteria and fungi which comprise the vast majority of DNA information in our bodies). Far from denying the importance of local nature to the design of humans, the local nature (forests, ecosystems, etc.) is the very inspiration which required a more effective demolition system than the “simpler” systems and organisms provide.

I hope I made it clear above that the direction of the entire universe is this “demolition”. And it’s not messing around. The end is being made to happen as quickly and efficiently as is physically possible (probably measurable in the tens of billions of years, so yes, the end is nigh if you measure “nigh” in billions of years). “Physically possible” is determined by physical laws/constants as the limiting factor. Any and all combinations of demolition systems are being employed. The most visible of these systems are hydrogen burners, stars, because the energy potential in the universe is highly biased to this simplest of elements. Hydrogen is the only thing in the universe with mass which could be classified as “abundant”. And it just so happens that hydrogen decomposes when a lot of it gets together. But there are by-products, the other 100 or so elements. That’s where our solution-space is born, the problem landscape of a plurality of elements. It’s worth observing that, although a direct product of stars, our local environment is much different to a star. It’s less homogenous, but no less energetic.

Devil’s advocate digression on a technical point:

But if the sun is going to expand in X-billion years and swallow the earth, doesn’t that subsume the need for these ever advancing systems of destruction? No, because “the problem” has no concept of the future. The economy of destruction doesn’t measure like a bank account, it measures like velocity-of-currency (how fast the money is moving, not how much we have in the bank signals the health of an economy). The fact is that the tension between potential energy and the vacuum of space exists now, and requires the best pressure-relief it can develop now. But it is an interesting question to ask: does the earth know its doomed to be swallowed by the sun? Did it know it before we did (see: Dennett “intentional systems)? Or did we act to reveal it to some larger qualia (see: Lovelock “Gaia”)?

When looking at our local environment, it’s so important to take into account the variation and amount of energy coming in, the turning of the planet, the procession on axis, sunspot cycles, every possible advantage of energy free to do work (oil, coal, natural gas, trees, solar, hills, water, etc.) – the differences which make a difference (Bateson), with all of this anomalous potential in a barren universe, an especially quirky and relentless solution was required to settle the account. That’s us. And that “account” is how we trump the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

There is an uncommon amount of energy in uncommonly diverse formats free to do work on the planet Earth. The liquid water, the various elements, and the variation of things like temperature, Ph, light around the joint make for a multi-dimensional cornucopia of attempts at solving the problem (remember, “the problem” is to decompose order, to even the account towards heat death). The variation of energy listed above provides for many (millions?) of jumps in various dimensional directions away from “local minimum”. One process of searching the landscape for the lowest (global) minimum is commonly referred to as Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The process of making mountains into sand is another (erosion), war is another.

You can think of any system which is “best” at doing what it’s designed to do as being at the local minimum. If there is a way to prove that it’s the best solution which can ever be found, it’s a global minimum. For many complex problems it’s impossible(?) to know if you’ve achieved a global minimum. So, it’s important to instead rely on a process of searching the landscape for solutions as your local minimum (i.e. humans are not an end result of evolution, but a product of an ongoing process. We may be the current best at destroying order, but there’s a meta-process in play constantly trying to find our replacement – whether that be the next-gen human or a form of fungus, or something A.I.’ish...)

Now, I don’t expect you to believe blindly, so I’ll provide a bibliography of related materials. Be warned that I’ve yet to find someone-with-letters-behind-their-name coming to a similar conclusion (I’ve looked – and having found a book on what I consider a more obscure hobby of mine “distributed cognition in large ERP systems”, I expect I would have found...) So, let’s assume I’ve got the “yoga” right. So what? What do we gain/lose by looking at ourselves as engines of destruction? I have this intuition that it might be a null response, or at least a zero sum game. But I’d like to toss around some SciFi’esq ideas to suppose a very different world-view than the one we’re commonly sold. And boy are we sold!

There was a time when people saw nature as a thing to be combed, tidied, conquered and tamed. I think, for the most part, that perspective has become unpopular. That shift in view has provided a great deal of “progress” technologically, socially, ecologically. Whole populations of people, whole geographies have been saved from poisoning themselves. Certainly the work to undo the excesses of the industrial revolution is not complete, but it’s well on its way. If you look at this from a personal perspective, the people in London have drinkable water and air they can breathe. Even developing nations like China and India are starting to address the pollution problem in the name of longevity and productivity.

On the large scale of our “purpose” in the universe, we’ve saved ourselves from languishing in a sub-optimal local minimum. The change in world-view required we put a great deal of energy into the system to rise above the local walls of our solution-landscape. You’re seeing this phenomenon in graphic detail right now with regards to energy formats. Petrol and coal are the old solutions. The change in world view has shown us that we’ve been neglecting a vital dimension in our value-chain,vis. sustainability. Upon inclusion of this dimension, some better solutions come flooding in (solar, wind, nuclear, etc.). I could come up with at least seven more scenarios where integrating a world-view more aligned to peer-reviewed-repeatable-results-of-well-designed-experiments (science) have lifted mankind out of poor solutions to the “the problem” (where you can take “the problem” to be the local problem facing the people, or the universal problem of maximising entropy).

So, if we again assume I’m on the right track with regards to our purpose in the universe, any alignment to that view would initially cause a bit of discomfort, require a bit more energy to lift us out of a poor local min., but in the end, it’d be a better solution (“Better solution” is defined as “requires less effort to complete the work of decomposition). But why should we optimise? We’re perfectly happy where we are. We consider the way we do things, the way people live, the way they consider their world, part of being human. To do something different would not conserve what we know as “human”. That’s where the universe has us over a barrel. Remember, as I said before, there are systems constantly at work, from deep-time in the past to deep-time the future, trying to solve the universal problem of optimising entropy, to settle the account. As good as people are at destroying, there’s every chance that a more virulent, sustainable and efficient system could be found in the landscape. Could be a squirrel, a fungus, a virus, an A.I., a seaweed, or some other unimagined conglomeration of energy and mass. The last thing we want is to find out what that more sustainable, efficient destroyer is. If it’s not us, we’re somewhat doomed. But that would be a long view indeed. I’m a little more concerned with what goes on in my kitchen in the morning than the ultimate destiny of mankind.

How about this, we’d know why we’re here. If ever there was an initiative to form a religion around the idea (see: Kali http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali Agni Purana and Garuda Purana) that our ultimate purpose is in alignment with some universal constant, that we’re allowed to destroy, that what’s considered our “fall” in western culture is actually our primary strength. I think these realizations would be powerful. I think a cultural alignment to this as a norm would take us to the next level. This isn’t to say that I’m thinking of starting a religion. I think if this is to be, it’ll come of its own power. But a cultural shift at the religion-level is something that will hit people in their homes. Say it’s a religion which doesn’t require faith, but manufactures faith from first principles, from physical laws and observable, repeatable observation. That could well be a meme more powerful than the Wizard-of-Oz-man-behind-the-curtain-construct that’s been shilled for the past couple millennia (what I consider the “fallen” religions, no longer internal, but externalized and presented almost as a dare). I’m an advocate of no curtain, no net, no actors, no fine-tuning-required-style-religion. Haven’t found one yet (certainly not string theory - Note: "fine tuning" is used here is a specifically cosmological sense. I advocate "tuning" in the next paragraph. Maybe a poor choice of words. Seems like I'm contradicting myself. Maybe I'm doing it on purpose, all good religious texts contradict themselves heavily in order to inspire conflict of interpretation...).

Another artefact which I think would precipitate from a massive entropy-centric-alignment in worldview would be a change to the idea of “saving”. Just as it’s commonly agreed that there is no “away” in which to throw things, there’s no moral component to saving or conserving. The moral imperative is actually to consume in a very specific way. Consumption (i.e. destruction/decomposition) should be done as quickly as possible taking into account the requirement that the rate of consumption grow AND be sustainable. This will sound a lot like market capitalism to some. It is, a lot, and for good reason. Market capitalism is a product of evolutionary economics. But with all due respect to Marx and Engels, I think they missed a few links on their socio-econmic evolutionary chain of being. They missed the bit where "crowdsourcing" gave all the I.P. to the people and stripped the power from the major (record) labels (read: Shirky - "Here Comes Everybody").

As with the fuel market, we’ve been neglecting a dimension to the equation. To add “sustainable” to “ravenous consumption” seems anathema. But it’s not. It’s just another constraint which tunes the parameters of the solution-space. Just as the magic of a sonnet, a haiku, the power-trio, F1 racing, and soccer are based on their constraints (i.e. must rhyme, must not use more than three chords in 2-minute song, must not touch ball with hands, etc.), the power of our system is driven through the constraints in the system. Tune the constraints and you can achieve results on an astounding scale (it’s just this sort of constraint landscape which has put Toyota on the top of the manufacturing heap for decades).

Best of all, to enshrine our purpose as consumers, destroyers, decomposers, would flip the Left/Right political divide in the world inside-out. The typical moral arguments of conservation vs. Conservative, of Liberal vs. Moral, all get conflated and the red vs. blue arguments turn into some sort of purple vs. Yellow or plaid vs. Paisley. A wonderful mulching of ideas, a compost of passions, will arise to become fertile new landscapes – leading the trend, not lagging it. I’m seeing a culture of fierce competition in the play-space of sustainability – as opposed to the sustainability-gurus of today going begging to governments for handouts. It’d be a different world to be sure.

Yes, I am talking about some grand sweeping cultural changes. The Sci-Fi component is where I provide specific examples of what “might be”. The non-fiction is the idea that grand sweeping changes will take place. They have for thousands of years, and they will continue to happen. The Sci-Fi component is when I talk about the specific recognition that will become the driving force behind this change. The non-fiction is the idea that the universe will reveal itself honestly. One example of this combination, happening right now, is the slang usage of “random”. If you’d told me when I was a kid that in twenty years time kids would be saying “random” instead of “radical!, or awesome!”, I’d’a thought “like, no way”. Way. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here to relate this particular usage of “random” to the pop-folk-assimilation achieved by Chaos Theory, fractals, and Quantum Theory in the last two decades. These currents in scientific thought have filtered through to pop, rock, poetry, Simpsons, etc.. And to put a time-frame around that – Quantum theory born ~1900, Chaos Theory and fractals born ~1970. So, it’s taking these memes 20-100 years to meld with culture. All I’m supposing is that this will continue to happen, and I’m putting the specific target on the importance of entropy. The details will work themselves out. The actual implementation of “entropcentricity” is up to time and context. I’m comfortable saying that much in the same way that the weatherman is happy to say “temperatures will trend towards cooler as winter takes hold”.

Reference:
“The Naked Brain” Richard Restak
"The Road to Reality" Roger Penrose
"Coincidences, Chaos, and all that Math Jazz" E B Burger & M Starbird
"At Home in the Universe" Stuart Kauffman
"Mindware: An introduction to the philosophy of cognitive science" Andy Clark
“Sync” Strogratz

2009-09-22T11:07:00.001+10:00

Old news that big pharma is hiring university cheerleaders as a sales force:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/28cheer.html

Related news, research shows that men’s ability to be “sold” increases in the presence of "pretty" women, and their aversion to risk decreases.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6132718/Men-lose-their-minds-speaking-to-pretty-women.html
http://www.stanforddaily.com/cgi-bin/?p=1028153

Also, “exotic dancers” in oestrus get more tips. How? Why? We don’t know:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626255.100-lap-dancers-in-heat-are-the-ones-to-watch.html

Also, Toxoplasma bacteria in rats makes them less risk-averse, so cats tend to be host vectors for Toxoplasma. The parasite does not get the cat sick. The cats give the parasite to their neighbouring rat/mice population which makes the rodents easier to hunt. But now research has shown that this same parasite affects human men and women differently. It influences women’s personalities to make them nice and outgoing. It influences men’s personalities to be nervous:
http://www.corante.com/loom/archives/2006/01/17/the_return_of_the_puppet_masters.php

Goes to show that men and women are different (if you had any doubt).
If I were a business consultant, purely based on the findings of this research, I’d suggest no cats and lots of dancers at every location. I believe this is an obvious conclusion. This advice would be difficult to implement for businesses specializing in cats. But maybe it's instructive to observe that there aren't many of those businesses. And it might also be enlightening to compare the prevalence of cat-specialized businesses to those employing various styles of dancers. I hazard to guess the weight of numbers falls in favour of the dancers.

2009-09-21T17:59:00.000+10:00

Currently reading Mindware: An introduction to the philosophy of cognitive science Andy Clark.

Executive Summary: Its a gud bewk. I liek it.

I’m on page, oh maybe 54, and here are two big ideas he’s already dropped in my head:

1. A great deal of what happens in our daily lives is based on “hopes” and “beliefs”. Follow the path of hopes through your day: I hope to get home for dinner on time. I take the train. The train driver hopes to keep his job. She gets me home on time. I pay for a ticket instead of free-riding because getting nicked by the transit cops would go against my hopes to get home on time (and of course my high moral standards). But in many ways, those high moral standards are based on hopes – hopes that other people will treat you as you treat them, hopes that high moral standards will make the world a better place, etc. When you follow the path of hope or belief in your daily life, you can see an interdependent web of intention that underpins the common physical movements we make and witness every day. “Culture” or “society” are recognized as the flavour of this web, but the structure is independent of either of these. The structure is common to humanity, and as Dennett argues (see #2) actually common to any “intentional system”.

2. Two technical points from Daniel Dennett on the derivation of “mind”, followed by the introduction of a generic class of “intentional system”. The two technical points I’ll summarise as “I don’t much care if there are different ways of “mind”. If it’s agreed between two minds that for example “it’s raining outside now, but it’ll probably be fine later”, then it’s somewhat irrelevant how that conclusion is come to. Much as with high-level programming languages, the importance of the individual low-level machine or assembly code of the processor become unimportant in most implementations (at the end user or at the result). 1+1=2 may be derived in several different ways computationally, but that 1+1=2 is a point of convergence in those methods gives us a meta-level of computation. In a similar way, we can come to a meta-level of mind.” Oooo, that was a long summary. But it’s haiku compared to the presentation in Mindware, which is also presented as a brief summary, so I’m sure I left something out.

The third, and most expanding point to me, which relates to 1. above, is Dennett’s posit of the relationship of “intentional systems” to “mind”. Dennett defines an intentional system as entities

`whose behaviour can be predicted by the method of attributing belief, desires and rational acumen'

. Without getting terribly wordy, you’ll have to believe me that “the car wants/needs some petrol”, “this plant wants more water”, “the computer doesn’t think you are who you say you are” are examples of intentional systems.

The extension of intentional systems comes when Dennett introduces different levels or grades. But the irreducible meta-component of mind becomes the first order intentional system in our physical brain. The higher levels of intentional systems get stacked on top of that. In this model, the basics of folk psychology (belief, hope, desire, etc.) are inherited from the physical level. The mystery of life and mind arrive as some sort of emergent phenomena based on these building blocks. So, it’s a way of getting to our complex folk psychology without making leaps of faith (other than that phrase “some sort of emergent phenomena”. But it’s important to note that the emergence is in the middle, not at the genisis or base level. The model gives hope of building up empirical evidence from below mind to find that point of emergence and hopefully explain it to a point from which we can make reliable predictions, i.e. go from Dennett’s Gedanken experiment to hard science )

Also see:
http://www.aiplayground.org/artikel/dennett/
http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~mjw/pubs/ker95/subsection3_2_1.html

Update: Most of the way through the book now. In the end, amazing and expanding mostly all the way through. Big recommend to anybody looking into Cog Sci or origins of consciousness/mind.

One big omission, God. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not a big God person myself. But I do know that the other 90+% of people -EVER- on the planet are/were big God believers. Ideas don't get that sort of penetration easily. They've gotta be "good" ideas, durable, reproductive, virulent even. So, why God?

I've noticed a big push in the last decade or two in Christian circles towards highlighting one's own personal relationship with God (usually Christ). It's presented as a sort of "footprints in the sand" relationship with your creator. Someone to talk to, someone to get guidance from, someone to trust. Dialogue is assumed. I believe it's this "spiritual" dialogue which is responsible for language, human consciousness, technology, etc..

Clark points to some sort of cyclic resonance with "wideware", a "dovetailing" with the physical world. Wideware is the combination of our "wetware" and the outside world (true hardware). The idea of wideware is cleverly presented in the book via the ideas of sketching before painting, experiments around dual-images (face/vase, rabbit/duck), and some interesting bartending tricks. All of these examples present graphic examples of people using durable tokens of ideas to cue further processing (the highball glass third in the queue reminds the bartender to make the gin&tonic third). Clark presents this as a dovetail of mind and context which humans are specifically good at.

However, in those examples, we're already "outside", or "fallen" in a biblical sense. Monkies, apes, birds, bears, all use tools. They too effectively dovetail and use wideware. But they do so un-self-conciously (for the most part). Humans are actually very good at using an inner voice as tokens. So, where did that step take place? What form did it take?

I know I'm not the first to say this. I think I've read it on edge.org, of all places. God. The voice of God. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have started out as a voice. It would have started out very much like the "footsteps in the sand" presence; a sort of figure looking over the shoulder (put in google "define: superego" http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/superego).

I'm going out on a limb here, but I can see reaching a critical threshold of mirror neurons being the genisis of the fall. I believe humans have more, or better employ, mirror neurons in social life. Mirror neurons allow us to internally respond to other individuals' experience as if they were our own. It's not too far from that sort of "imagination" to having an internal response to someone who isn't physically there (say in a dream, or a vivid memory). And from there, total fiction is just a short step.

But why then is God so shared? If we're free to make up any sort of total fiction, why does God take so few forms? Two triangulating and self-regulating reasons:

1. There's only one "religious feeling", as there's only one "anger", "fear", "pain", etc. - sure our individual response to all of these internal states are different, but the essential component seems to be shared. That's why we can all agree to use the same words to describe them.

2. The social component of organized religion goes to great efforts to allign the form of God within the group. Religion essentially puts a skin on the wireframe of God. Religion creates an API and a GUI to God. This allows end-users an intuitive look-and-feel. It allows the Admins and Programmers the ability to upgrade, manage security, do user administration, etc. Now, I won't take this Matrix'esq analogy too far, but it is apt.

As someone who doesn't subscribe to a pre-packaged religion, but instead chooses to define God on his own, I can tell you it's a lonely place to be. I could probably write a book the size of the bible myself to cover my theology. Borrrring (as you're already aware if you've read this far). And can you imagine 6 billion individual bibles? Mass-religion is a vastly more efficient yoke on the God-feeling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoke

So two more things:

1. What I'm supposing doesn't make the God-feeling any less important, just less "sacred", less mystical. I've found the mystical and sacred can take care of themselves. They retreat and expand with fractal beauty.

2. What I'm supposing doesn't divorce the belief in God from the God-feeling. The God-feeling is the God-feeling, it's important for what it is. God, however, trumps everything and anything. A God-feeling is within whatever image of God anyone can conjure, but so is everything else.

It's important to notice the structure of what I've written so far. Seven paragraphs digging in to the core idea. Six paragraphs digging out of essentially political holes. If the anthropological origin of consciousness is indeed entwined with any facet of God in current religion, it'll take a great deal of time to nut out and gain any traction.

Disclaimers asside, back to the core idea then. Where-from then this God-feeling? I'm much more comfortable calling it superego. Superego can be understood as your very own "Jiminy Cricket". It's that feeling in the back of your mind, when you're doing something "wrong", that your ancestors would not approve. To me, the idea of ancestors is very important. They're a disembodied component of Self. They are physically represented by your parents, but transcend your parents in authority and presence.

Superego requires a social component. Do apes have a superego. Chances are, yes. Do they have a feeling of the divine? Chances are, no. So although I'm more comfortable calling it superego, it doesn't seem to cover the same ground as the God-feeling. What's that extra bit that gets us over the line?

Although I believe any social animal is acted upon by a type of superego, I doubt it's externalized. Modern people, with the luxury of language, have thouroghly externalized their superegos. We've almost externalized ourselves completely (save for the Id).

How could pre-language humans attain any externalization without language? I touched on the function of mirror neurons earlier. They allow us to feel and react to things which happen to someone else. The organization language brings to mirror nuerons is the reason film, writing, even radio are such powerful media. (My heart rate increases when I watch a running race because I have powerful memories of running races...)

As with most of these evolutionary riddles, the "reason" is complex, the "cause" is multi-dimensional and the "period" is deep-time. But if we entertain a calculus of several happy accidents, maybe we can come to a cartoon of the events.

Let's bring in an opposable thumb. This adds dexterity to tool use, which drives further tool use and development (surely there were a lot of happy accidents in tool development).

Bring in generational knowledge of tools. The question: how to pass knowledge without words? Physical presense, shared experience. This emphasis on "shared experience" in passing down generational knowledge without language would have proffered immense importance on the mirror neuron function.

"Observational learning" would have been well developed prior to tools or language.

Let's bring in "the aquatic theory". This could take some time, or you could download/watch http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes.html . I'll assume you watched the video.

So, "breath control" is a factor. Elaine gives it a quick mention. I've got a bit more to say. Breath control is imporant to speech. But along with speech we need language, which I submit requires an inner voice already. But doesn't breath control connote breath holding and hyper-ventelating first? I've done a lot of both, and I can tell you that breah holding and hyperventelating bring with them an altered state of consciousness. And when it comes to looking for a bridge from monkey-mind to human-mind, breath control is the most unique and promising lead I can see.

Neither apes nor monkeys hyperventilate or hold their breath. There is no other primate which dives. We dive into that other world. This is a "difference that makes a difference", it's a pathway to information. I suggest that the physcoactive effects of diving took humans over the edge to see in Melvile's words "God's foot on the treadle of the loom". I think in the quiet of diving, alone, we heard ourselves think and came to the logical conclusion that someone else was there.

And from the water emerges a species with a great deal many tools more than when they went in. A conscious bipedal hairless primate with an albeit-pre-fall internal notion of God and language came out of the water. And with these new tools, was able to out-compete, in turns, every other organism on the planet.

2009-08-12T18:46:00.007+10:00

IP update Feb 2011 : The EFA released a report exposing some flaws in the AFACT paid research. I stand by my suggested model below.

 I recently read this PDF from Intellectual Property Awareness Australia. It's a group advocating for Intellectual Property
owners and against pirates. What follows is a mess of notes I've mated to a mess of quotes from the document above. Had I the time, were someone to ask me to, I'd formalize the thoughts into a coherent essay. Also, I tried to keep this short. Yes, I consider this a short opinion on the subject. There's a lot more to say.
Short time and motivation, we're stuck with this disjointed and somewhat clunky assemblage of thought. Welcome to my world.

Although I do not disagree with the basic premise that a property owner has rights (in this case copy rights), I was uninspired with their interpretation of the current reality and the resultant direction they offer. But who
am I, right? I don't own IP. I'm not licensed to distribute IP. I don't have a stake in this. But I do. I am the consumer. I am the target of their campaign. And I don't appreciate it. In fact, I find it a bit insulting. That's a
problem for IP Awareness. One problem is that I have an opinion on the subject that differs from theirs. The other problem is that I have an opinion at all.

Do consumers really have an opinion on the somewhat labyrinthine structures and strictures of IP Law? Without knowing it, yes. I've had several conversations in the last 10 years with the consumers in an evolving
culture. And in none of those conversations did I hear as blunt and un-nuanced message as IP Awareness is putting out. But surely there is a selection bias here. I am a blogger, a "knowledge worker", a university
graduate, etc. whatever. And surely I am not an expert either. All true. But I doubt either of those facts are relevant to the argument I'm prepared to make. The argument is something along the lines of "The customer is
always right".

There is a consumer revolution going on. IP legislation can pay attention to that revolution, or it can become irrelevant, damage business and fulfill a prophecy they tout in their published materials:

"Less local choice – fewer movies, TV shows and documentaries. 
• Higher costs and fewer locations to buy/see movies, as cinemas & DVD stores go out of business.

"
Advice on how to avoid the pirates:

"Don’t buy dodgy DVDs – enjoy the real, original DVD experience with all the trimmings (extras, Directors cuts etc). 
• Don’t download from illegal websites – go and see the original on the big screen in the cinema.
 • Don’t copy and burn DVDs to share with your mates – see it together at the cinema, or buy your own copy to support the production of more movies. "

I totally agree with these points. But it's unfortunate that this is where IP Awareness intends to end the conversation. It sounds a lot like the "Just say No" campaign in the War Against Drugs, or the Abstinence
campaign against teen sex. Neither campaign worked. Why do it again?

On Kenny: 

"when he found friends and family had freely admitted to watching or owning illegal copies of the film months before the official DVD was released. When asked by Jacobson why they did it, his friends replied: “Well, I went to the cinema and it did really well, so you got my dollar there so I thought it would be okay to burn it?” ...."If this is the case, how do you suppose movies can continue to be made? Investors will be less likely to invest in movies in the future if they lose their some of their return to piracy."

Again, IP Awareness assumes no value in the 26% they concede who do buy media legally after viewing illegal copies, much less the 72% of people who don't go on to make a legal purchase. But that entire group of
people who view a film, whether they purchase or not, form a word-of-mouth group that is worth having. If we learn anything from the proliferation of "product placement" in movies, we learn that eyes are worth money. A
soft-drink manufacturer can expect x$ return on a product placement in a Bond film, so will pay x$-1 to buy that placement.

Similarly, when a pirate sells a copy of a film, it's worth x$ to the IP owner in revenue future.
Calculating the differential is problematic, but it's not a 1-to-1 relationship. A problem with any black market is that they are largely opaque to the wider market. This opacity hides the loss as well as the gain.
A larger problem with black markets is that the money tends to find its way back to much darker things.

Neither of these problems are resolvable by asking people to "Just Say No". A black market arises because of a perceived (or real) gap between cost and value. The black market provides a commodity at a price that
better matches the customer's perceived value - perhaps at a further discount to lure the consumer over the ethical line. Problematically, this has the effect of showing consumers a false margin. We are taught to think
"if pirates can sell DVDs for $3, those nasty capitalist studios could surely do better than $30". The truth may lie somewhere in the middle. And it's important to get to the truth to prevent this "learning" taking place in
the first place.

Two ways to put the pirates out of business, off the back of a napkin:  
1. IP law reform 
2. Leaner distribution channels

1. IP law reform

 Create incentive for pirates to come in from the cold by acknowledging the value in the eyes they're serving.
Create a constrained quality/content format that's simple to participate in and free to would-be pirates: 
DVD sales restricted to content that is copied from screen to camera (so good quality copies would still be illegal) PAL or NTSC non-HD 
DVD sales restricted to the primary content (i.e. the film, not the extras) This would allow any mom-and-pop shop to copy from screen (TV or Film) onto a camera, but not record from DVD to DVD or from primary source.
No in-line sound either. The recording must be "ambient" in effect.
These recordings could be sold above board given the vendor is certified.
And certification would include some IP awareness education for vendors, a test, whatever, but no $$ from the vendor.  Vendors/market sets the price.
IP producers could offer their own low-quality version, under a different/shell brand, to relieve vendors of having to produce their own copies.

This would pretty-much kill the organized pirate gangs by saturating the market with law-abiding citizen-entrepreneurs and as a by-product brings the revenue into a taxable realm (hint: the tax should then be fed back
into the film industry thereby reaping ROI for the ever-generous Australian government). It also gives the vendors and consumers security. People, on balance, don't like to break the law.

2. Leaner distribution channels 

Totally abolish DVDs as a studio distribution vehicle. Leave it to the Mom-and-pops. Fibre-Optic-to-the-Door is coming in Australia. Establish an industry standard rental, lease, pay-per-use regime for content over the
net. Lead on this one, or suffer the same consequences as the former music industry. Film has had all of the music industry drama to learn from over the past 10 years. Have they? Pirates won't be to blame if the IP
people and the film people don't get the immerging business model right. Lead. Filmmakers and film investors pride themselves on their ability to take risks. Take this risk. Don't fool yourself into believing that the context in which you take risk is immutable. Lead the change or be left behind.

Where would this leave the message for IP Awareness? What message do I think they should push? Something along the lines of "buying from pirates gives money to violent criminal forces. They don't respect our property, do they respect yours? We're going to help you to cut off their income with this strategy...look for this icon at your local mom-and-pop (or website) video shop to know that they are legit". Something along those lines, "let us help you" instead of "we will hunt you, find you, and prosecute".

"Making a film isn’t simply a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job. It’s fueled by a passion and desire to bring a project to life for the audience. Many people spend years to get a movie made and with no guarantee of any financial return."

So, are we to suppose from this statement that film is only business? Using the word "film" implies "art" in my mind. Art does not then imply "profit" in my mind. I'm an advocate of divorcing the idea of profit from the
act of creation (even from the product of creation). I've oft heard in relation to most art careers "if think you can do anything else, do it" - which implies the corollary "Only people who can only be fulfilled doing this thing,
should attempt this thing" - and it applies equally to wide array of human occupations and endeavors soldiering, lexicography, writing novels, living off the grid, etc. Mostly none of these non-filmmaking efforts are as
loudly insistent in their right to exist and their importance to mankind. Film-making is only a noble cause to the degree to which films are "good". The relationship between profit and "good" is dubious, sadly.

"Research has told us that only 16% watch a  movie at the cinema after watching a pirated version of it on the internet or on DVD, and, only 26% of people would then buy an original DVD, movie or TV show after watching a pirated version of it; With a significant 72% of people don’t watch or buy it legally (at all) after doing so illegally."

80-20 rule writ large here. The 80-20 rule applies liberally to the human experience. It's found in nearly every economic interaction. The more interesting, and not-mentioned statistic is, of the 26% of the
people who do end up buying the IP, what % buy because of the pirate version? (i.e. piracy as advertising). How many consumers is piracy bringing to the market? As many as advertising? - remember licensed IP
vendors pay for advertising to promote and then are paid by advertisers to screen/play (think TV or radio advertising)? What value do the licensed IP vendors bring to the transaction that pirates don't? How to
amplify/leverage that value? What part of the download or car boot market experience can licensed IP vendors coopt (e.g. iTunes)?

From IP Awareness PDF:

" Poor quality – you’re ultimately robbing yourself of the best experience...why watch a movie or TV show that is sub-standard…the sound is distant and echoing, or there’s someone walking across the screen, or the colour is all faded?"

Put these two statements in context: "you’re ultimately robbing yourself of the best experience" and "there’s someone walking across the screen".  Ostensibly, they're suggesting that your pirate DVD might include someone getting in your way while watching the film. But that video is a record of this "best experience" - that person walking in front of the camera
was walking in front of a whole row full of theater goers too. And the sound, instead of "distant and echoing" might have been excruciatingly loud (as I often find in theaters).

Sure films are made to be shown on the big
screen, but the humble VCR showed us (in the 80's) that that "best experience" is a subjective measure. At Govinda's they believe the "best experience" includes having your shoes off and laying on the floor, others
can't get past the smelly feet and the prospect of bedbugs. IP owners and producers need to pay attention to this.

The current IP laws, mores, norms are being subsumed by a wave of new ways, interests, abilities. Will IP law be like the brittle tree, or bend in the wind like the spring grass? If this aspect of the discussion is not
taken into account in the advertising/awareness campaigns of IP advocates, and instead the they merely point a big finger with the words OBEY written on it, the future looks bleak for IP culture.  (How the music industry got it wrong)

" This is the size of the problem: In 2005, global independent research (LEK) found the cost of piracy to the Australian film industry to be $233 million dollars. That’s enough money to make roughly another 200 films with the budget of the much-loved “Kenny”. Globally the Motion Picture Association puts the losses on filmed entertainment worldwide as a result of piracy at US$18.2 billion1."

RIAA has been pushing similar numbers for a long time. It's important to remember that statistics are lies. There are a dozen ways to make these numbers dance. The simple calculus of "how much money would we
have made if all these pirate sales had been made to licensed vendors instead" does not hold legal water because of other economic effects.
I don't have the data and again I'm not an expert media data analyst, but I don't trust the analysis presented because of the way it's presented. I also don't trust it because I'm aware of the track record of other IP
bodies like RIAA. Give me a balanced picture, not an advocate’s didactic spin.

Also be aware that there are a lot of ways to read numbers. Example: What are the most downloaded/pirated movies? "Blockbusters". The name "Blockbuster" indicates that here is a film that made big money (accurate or not for individual movies, and even though it's a head-in-the-fire-feet-in-the-freezer scenario, the average for Blockbusters is well in the black). Correlate highest profit films with higheset download/pirated films and a narrow reading of the numbers suggests filmmakers should have a marketing campaign to get their films pirated and copied more. So, be careful with numbers.
More info:
slashdot.org/story/04/05/14/0051258/RIAA-Loss-Report-Contradicts-Nielsen-Sales-Record?art_pos=11 slashdot.org/tags/riaa 
www.azoz.com/music/features/0008.html

2009-06-28T23:46:00.000+10:00

Recommended pre-reading: equator/equation

A brief history of trying...

When meeting (in a chicken town,
In a theatre named after every chicken’s dream: The Phoenix)
in the company of friends
100lbs of sugar
A peck of cherries
2 gallons of coffee
Stir in light and the specific smell of post-teen angst
Who could help but loving everyone when we were so so so beautiful and full
Of equal parts sugar, cherries, coffee and light ourselves?

Then quietly sitting in tea-like times, where the heat of difference made no line-drying safe
A skilful border of affinity was built, not a bridge, nothing was crossed.
And this good fence was decorated with care, to lean on. Neighbour.
Our animals were domesticated, but their teeth remain sharp.
And with their lolling tongues, dripping life’s funk at our ankles
The cool tones of conversation are easy as a mountain temple brook
Ignoring the nearby torrent of melt it feeds.

And when the heavy red velvet curtain came down to fold on itself on the stage,
Pushing the pantomime’s peanut shells skritchily to the side
And we properly got more fulfilled in our other people’s lives
An actor, a former actor can look back on parts played.
A builder can look back on the fence now covered in time’s
Patina of ivy and moss. And I can take off some of that
Pretence of “actor” of “builder” and look at that you and
Just say it’s true, I care about you. I value you. I love you. I want the best for you.
I want my certain piece of you. You are my dear friend.

...to do the right thing