Wisdom and justice

Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are very funny men. It is a tribute that they are able to comment so watchably on the same events night after night. I have a theory that their jokes mine slightly different veins.

I think Jon Stewart speaks the judgments of Wisdom, and condemns foolishness - short-sightedness, self-interestedness and the casual ineptitude of elected leaders, and how they keep getting elected thanks to the uh wisdom of the American people.

Stephen Colbert makes judgments more often about justice and mercy. He is primarily interested in the categories of right and wrong.

JS sets em up, talking about the follies and venalities; SC knocks em down showing the wrongness of the wrong.

He who is slack in his work (JS's subjects) is brother to him who destroys (SC makes the connections.)

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Fun Sightscreen

My next furniture project is (subject to spousal approval) a sightscreen for our over-curious 2 month old so he can get some sleep.

The plan is simple.
2 x 800 x 2050 interior door panels joined with hinges, sitting up on castors, and with bench brackets at top and bottom to keep it in a range of 45 - 135 degrees (so it will be difficult to knock over).
Then paint the whole thing with IdeaPaint.  That way we can write little notes like 'last fed: ', 'sleep began: ' and when he's a little bigger, he can draw on it.

The Bench II

Here are some photos after a quick coat of poly.

I am quite pleased with the proportions.  Probably should have used a waterbased poly though - the transfers look a little damaged. Hopefully a couple more coats will cover the unevenness that has shown up.

Free Live Free

Gene Wolfe's 'Free Live Free' is, to me, one of his frustrating misses.  It's a story of four beaten-down (American?) city dwellers, who respond to an advertisement headlined Free Live Free.  Old Ben Free invites anyone to come live in his house for nothing to prevent it being demolished for a freeway.

The title is wonderful, the first chapter is in keeping, and then there follow chapter upon chapter of fussing and negotiating, diversions into storylessness. It's all very attentively written, and conversations with the elderly Mrs Baker are pretty funny - she can't get an expression right:

"You remember when they tore down Mr Free's front?  A little after that.  After work but not quiet dinner time, not but that all my times aren't quiet now that I don't work no longer and Mr Baker's gone."

"We can talk while we have our cooco, Mr Barnes. I'll eat my cornflakes too, if you don't observe."  She spooned cocoa powder into the cups. "The valiant flee to eat their breakfasts on the lip of the line, as the Bible teaches us.  That means that if you're brave you ought to run fast to get your breakfast, if there's just a little while to eat in."

While this is enjoyably and expertly rendered, as is the magic, as is the salesmanship, as is the detective work and the prostitution, the jeopardy seems lightweight.  The protagonists are hungry and homeless, but they somehow bump along all right; the lowest point is the defeat in the beginning.  The story is odd and shapeless, though the high concept and conclusion are typically rich in meaning. It's a book I read for the promise.

Rails

Have I already shared this? There ought to be picture, power and data railings for DIY installation.

People want to add power circuits and data circuits to existing houses and buildings - and with solar power networks coming online, maybe the electronic parts of your electrical load could be fed with DC, instead of inverting and re-rectifying it all.

If you could embed these in an attractive bit of wall furniture like picture railing or skirting board, sell various lengths, port plates and corner pieces, provide small ranges of variations in colour and pattern, I think people would thank you and wire their houses anew.

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Miracles and Probability

PartiallyExaminedLife.com has posted a question about the refutation of Hume's argument against miracles - that people are easily mistaken and events can be very surprising just within the range of nature. This is a fine approach for rejecting any particular miracle, and having rejected enough Hume may feel justified rejecting the rest without as close an examination - this is the balance of probabilities he talks about. But common sense is pretty much the mindset of reporters of miracles - they know virgins don't get pregnant by themselves; they know people can't walk on water. That's why events were perceived as miracles in the first place.

I think this 'balance of probabilities' question needs to refer to the statistical measure of 'confidence.' Confidence measures how sufficient the evidence base is. In engineering (my area) we use confidence math to derive a safe life from a few very accurate but hideously expensive tests. We know fatigue is cumulative damage following a log-normal distribution (or certain weibull distributions), but we can only afford a handful of test articles. If we use the test result directly, it might turn out that the test article was unexpectedly at the high-strength end of the distribution, just from the normal variation of materials and machining. This would be a problem.

Confidence calculations come to the rescue by asking what the probability is that the test cases are at odds with the real population. The more test cases, the more likely it is that the sample statistics are representative of the population statistics... A common practice is to assume that by bad luck, we selected a sample that is better. How unlucky? 20:1 are reasonable odds - 95% confidence means your evidence set was a one in twenty oddball. 50% confidence means it could have been higher or lower - 50% is the best guess. 95% is a conservative judgement.

There is a nice example at the very end of Contact by Carl Sagan. A scientist seeks evidence that the universe is a product of mind, and finds that billions of billions of places into pi is a sequence of bits that plots a circle. Is that a miracle, in the sense of evidence for a particular hypothesis? Pi is transcendental, so anything might be in there somewhere - the evidence is what it is; the interpretation requires you to make a judgment of the acceptable confidence level. How likely is it that the evidence before you is badly skewed away from the reality you are going to judge from it? The empiricist answer is 'my life is the life by which to judge reality, and i think it is probably a pretty good aim point' - which we might call 50% confidence.

Pascal's wager argues that this is more of an engineering decision, that some conservatism is required. My experience* is a kind of reverse of the wager - in a sense, I ruined my life irreparably, but somehow lived on, and unless there is something in this talk of resurrection, i find the universe is a total loss at which I had best sneer. I played the first 95% and found it (myself) absolutely empty of meaning and hope, but able to universalise it. Pandora's box opens and hope comes out last because it is the last evil, the one that gets you up in the morning to suffer all the others.

So now, I'm playing the 5% probability - that the evidence is actually worse than the reality and 'it is better to give than to receive' actually, miraculously, works.

* My friends will laugh at this description, and point out that my experience is actually of pretty great health, excellent fortune in my friends, good upbringing, incredible cost-benefit ratios on my work commitments, and a good upper middle class life in a place more orderly than Switzerland and with better weather, with not a moral or physical effort to be seen from me from January to December. Fair enough.

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Reform school for tots

What would you guess the gender ratio is here at sleep school? Almost all the mums are women (boom boom). Apart from twins, the babies run about 75% boys.

Perhaps this is partly because of the genetic conflict between baby and mother: the baby, 100% related to itself and only 50% related to its potential brothers or sisters wants to strip the mother of the maximum of resources. The mother wants to give it only its share of her reproductive potential. This conflict has lead to certain genes in the mothers dna producing small, placid babies and certain genes in the fathers dna promoting large, active babies (actually identified only in rats or something so far: reasonable to expect it to be present in (some) humans).

If non-monogamous breeding is a significant presence, and if it favours dominant males (heads of major international financial institutions might be an example) then the pressure is on males to grow big, smart, important and strong (even if their mother goes into a terrible decline and gets osteoperosis).

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1,2,3, many

Without finishing Tanabe, I've started to pick at Hegel. Hegel makes me think I could have been a philosopher - he is wild. As Dr Who stories are often fun if the Dr helps history turn out as it in fact did, Hegel is fun because trying to make a philosophical cosmology that explains everything, including himself and his philosophy as the first breaking dawn of self-sonsciousness across the vast ocean of cognition in people. He does so in theological language very often, but with a turn JM Bernstein (bernsteintapes.com) describes as the major turn of continental philosophy - to show that the transcendent is actually immanent.

1,2,3, many is one of the most common levels of numerosity (facility with numbers) in nature, and if I recall correctly, is about what babies naturally have. (They also can discern ratios above ) This has become a little slogan for my understanding of the nature of the trinity and creation.

God (the father, or Pancreator in Gene Wolfe) has a self-image (the son, or Conciliator) and a relationship between the two (the spirit, or the Increate). With these three, God is complete in himself and for himself. But what about some independent other being(s), being only partly union and partly separateness? At which point - many! The universe boils into existence, condenses into particles, which condense and form the first stars, the morning stars sing together as they burn themselves up to create more complex elements and pretty soon, new minded beings are balancing around on two legs.

Then, at the far end of the universe, things have separate themselves - those things that have taken on enough of God's nature to obtain his power of being, remain, as new 'others' together. Those that are left are left forever boiling away in the destruction of the wicked.

The energy for this boiling is the fire of hell for those being consumed, but for us who are being saved it is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.

Is this new, I wonder? If it is, it is probably wrong. (Even if not, probably...)

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A Rest

I will probably not post much in the next little while, as we are in sleep school for babies who like to party too much.

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Community

I really like the show Community - brilliant stuff, and probably the most reflexively self-referential show I've ever seen.  Abed, a slightly autistic cinephile geek is revealed to be taping himself when in his dorm room.  He explains that its not as interesting as you might expect: mostly its video of him watching the dailies (the video collected the day before).

If I had to take a stab at how the self-referentiality fits with the Community, I think it is that Community is an end in itself, but an end to which Community is also the means.  The whole thing is bootstraps all the way down.

In other community news, there has been an exchange of comments on this very blog about Kierkegaard, on the post 'Right and Right' from the end of August, which if you are a Kierkegaard enthusiast with very low expectations, you might like to check out.

Building understanding

I was pointing things out to my 7.5 week old son yesterday (toes, feet, hands, nose, the aeroplanes in the mobile) when I realised that I had never explained what pointing was.  I used my right hand to point at my left hand pointing at the mobile and explained 'Pointing.  Pointing.'

It's a hard thing, to understand. Kant and Heidegger have it right.  You need faculties for interpreting the world, and then you need a lot of familiarity with the world.

A lovely thing

We received a gift of a mobile for the birth of our boy, and it is a lovely thing, airish and luminous like a Miyazaki film (I gave them a copy of Porco Rosso at the birth of their daughter).  My photography doesn't really do it justice, because it doesn't show the slow movements that accentuate the stillness and the balance.  Remarkably enjoyable, and the infant finds it fascinating too. It is from Flensted, a small company in Denmark, and comes in a flat pack for you to snap together.  I think some supergluing may help to produce the lovely rounded nacelles shown in the official photographs. Here is their website (and another photo).

Peter F Hamilton

So...  Peter F Hamilton.  He writes big SF books with lots of stuff in them.  I've only read the Night's Dawn series (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, The Naked God), which was pretty good, but not really to my taste.  The interesting thing is that he seems to know his bible because Josh Calvert (J.C.), passes through a nebula and makes a deal with 'the Naked God' (a black hole / singularity of waaaay superhuman power), which makes him say exactly what he wants it to do, how to wield its God-like powers, for all humanity.

Daniel 7:13-14 says:

In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14He was given authority, glory and sovereign power.

In the new testament, when Jesus calls himself ''son of man', he is probably citing this scene; and he cites it at his trial.

It's the nebula = clouds that struck me as a deliberate choice to create this likeness.  They traverse a nebula in their search and it seems otherwise quite unnecessary and lame, as I recall.

MythTV

Running the MythTV computer all the time uses some power, and generates a noticeable amount of heat.  It also provides data storage - it houses and shares my iTunes library and backups. I think this idea* of Microsoft's would** have potential, because most of the Cloud I want immediate access to - not mediated by patchy internet services.  I want it to be 'the Cloud' for occasions: accessing my data when I happen to be in France, or when my house burns down.  I don't want to have to talk to the US every time I clean out my email, or my iTunes library.  Would I be willing to store someone else's data on a reciprocal basis, and have the cloud in my home? Maybe***.


* Data Furnaces - 'Cloud' servers as the heat source for the hot water service and perhaps home heating.
** except power consumption / per electronic utility is on its way down and down.
*** THE LORD occupies his home (the Temple) by means of a Cloud - see 1 Kings 8:10 -

¹⁰And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the LORD, ¹¹so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.

Republicans and Government

The Republican party benefits when people are frustrated with the government of America, because they allegedly want to reduce the size (in practice, this belief of themselves means they don't ask whether they REALLY need a new super-fighter, aircraft carrier, subsidy program for their favourite voters, and often grow government's part in the US economy considerably. Of course they really need it - the party of small government can judge a REAL need when they see one.)

So in dark economic times like these, obstructing legislation, focussing on long term problems and seeking short term solutions (debt ceiling), pretending low taxes for the very rich create widespread demand and that any tax increase will be to blame for the further collapse of the economy substitutes very nicely for government - actually trying to rule over problems and end them.  Then they can say 'look at all the money you lose to government, and then honestly, nothing happens with it'.  Andrew Sullivan puts a couple of good quotes together here.

Their approach to government for, of and by the people parallels that of General Melchett on the important place of kindness.

The Tattooed Bench

I had an interestingly shaped offcut from the manufacture of the desktertainment unit - a long panel (say 1400mm x 280mm).  And I perceived a need to get a serviceable coffee table / piano stool for the lounge room.  (With only three rooms, furniture should all be multipurpose - the sofa is not a viable bed and long-term should be replaced with something dual purpose.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

My wife once received a thank-you note from a friend with a beautiful hand-drawn curlicue pattern.  I thought it was too good to waste on a disposable card, and resolved to find a way to use it as decoration.

The result I call 'The Supportive Friend Bench'. It needs some finishing with polyurethane (always use a roller to paint furniture, btw.  I found that out from the internet and it is Gold, Jerry, Gold, although some of the closeup paintwork on the frame might have you wondering.) This photo shows the pattern, and one of its repetitions.  The Bench's best feature is its overall proportions and simple elegance, which I don't have a photo of yet.  I will add it to this post when I can take one.

Finding an audience for my film

As assiduous readers may recall, I am supposed to be partly a screenwriter.

One of the tests of a pitch is 'who is the audience for this movie?' - is it a kids movie, a married with children movie, a frustrated husband outlet piece or what...  You want to narrow in on a big chunk of audience and pander to them as hard as you can.

I picked up a thin book by Raymond Plant on Hegel (part of a series called 'The Great Philosophers'), and after finding this quote, I think I have further narrowed my audience, from astute sf readers with an appreciation of symbolism, to astute sf readers with an appreciation of symbolism and an intimate knowledge of Hegel. I am not sure who that would be, but as the entire audience for a film that probably would cost $10s-100s million, I need to warn them the ticket price may be a little higher than they are used to, unless they are willing to see it millions of times. The quote:

Singularity, as return into self, is certainly spirit, but as otherness to the exclusion of everything else, it is finite or human spirit[.] 

Exactly what that means, I am not sure yet.  But it certainly sounds on the money.

Do you have a Gold 2000 Honda Civic?

I listen to Pilar Alessandra's 'On the page' podcast, and enjoy it immensely.

She has been podcasting conversations every couple of months with the producers of 'Desperate Acts of Magic'.  The most recent podcast included the following story.

They have shot one or two days per month, on average, for a little over twelve months, aiming toward a total of 18-20 days.  They were using the car of one of the producers, but with a day of car located shots still lacking, it was wrecked in an accident.  So they needed a 2000 Honda Civic in Titanium Gold, with exactly the right trim, and they don't have enough money to buy another one from used car lots, or get one of the specialty car procurers that apparently operate in Hollywood to find it, and they are not available any more from car rental places.

Finally, they solved their problem by putting out a casting call notice for an actor or actress with almost any qualities or experience, who owned that exact car.  They got a lot of responses.  Actors would respond to an ad for their car, in exchange for a line of dialogue. Lots of actors with totally the wrong car  got in touch.

I wonder if the acting industry is a model for the singularity economy. Far too few people can do all the work needed, and everyone else is cutting each others throats for scraps.  I hope we can all be as good natured as the film making community seems to be.  I don't know where their living comes from, but somehow people are still cheerfully showing up.

Computer problems

Some computer problems only befall a certain kind of man.

A couple of weeks ago, after doing some cable reorganisation in a tidy up, the computer started hanging during boot.  I opened it up, suspecting some hardware fault - possibly something not cooling and overheating very quickly.  Nothing leapt to the eye, so I started dealing with the accumulated dust.  I eventually spotted that somehow the RAM DIMM was not properly latched at one end.  I think this was the cause.  But this is the MythTV computer, so it runs 24/7 and has done so for a year now, so I completed my spring clean.

The CPU, Heatsink and Fan were hard to clean, so I pulled unlatched the heatsink and tried to pull it free.  The CPU came with it, leaving the 'Zero Insertion Force' AM3 socket empty, but latched.

The CPU seemed pretty stuck to that cooler.  But the funny thing is, you can't put the CPU in the bracket with the heatsink attached. There is zero clearance between the body of the heat sink and the rim, so you can't press the lever to latch it in place after applying zero insertion force.

So my options:
1.  Can I bend the lever low enough to operate it from the side?  Answer:  No.

 What I can do is pop the white face off the mount and break it in two pieces.

You can make out the crack here.  It was a through crack - the pieces were separate, and somewhat distorted.  You can also see one idea on how to fix it.  Rest the body on chip and then just slide it into place.

2.  What if I repair the white face and replace it, and cut off the lever arm, then put the CPU in place and try to generate the same clamping action by forcing it?  (Note that forcing things is how we got into this mess.)

That didn't work either, but it did break the bond between the heatsink and the CPU.  Forcing things pays off!

From there, I just needed some heat conducting grease and to reassemble it as if nothing had ever happened.

SmarteCarte

Travelling with a small child necessitates luggage and a cart. The SmarteCarte's are dispensed from a vending machine and cost $4. I imagine $3.80 of that pays to maintain the vending machine and 20c the cart.

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Death of God Theology

The plausibility of Death of God Theology seems to rest on the apparently observable reality that God is not about.  Primo Levi gives one account.  I believe there was a hugely destructive earthquake in Spain in the 1600s which energised a certain critical spirit during the Enlightenment. (As always on this blog, more information will be welcomed).  These seem to be more the death of Man.  And I thought the bible was very clear in attributing this to the fall. This is the world without God.