Our Robot Overlords

This is absolutely creeping me out:



I had no idea robotics had advanced to the point where a machine could do something like this. This thing - Big Dog, it's called - is amazing. It's easy to make a four-legged machine that just plods along in the direction you point it. There are plenty of toys that do that, so long as they don't bump into anything. But to navigate over a pile of bricks? Recover from being kicked? Get up after slipping on ice? That's uncanny.

What's unsettling is that the production models this may lead to will be, basically, delivery devices. But what will be delivered, and to where? In our military we already use drone aircraft, not just to spy but to attack targets. What might be done with drone ground troops? Imagine tens of thousands of these things, heavily armored and bristling with weapons, trudging into a city to take it. Terrifying, and the potential basis of a cool thriller sci-fi movie where we of course overcome the robots and win in the end. This movie may have already been made, even. But when they're on our side? Each one remotely directed by a US soldier from perfect safety?

That becomes profoundly disturbing. Throughout human history it has never been possible to wage a war without suffering SOME human casualties. If a war can be waged by drone air, sea, and land forces, without risking a single American life, won't it become terribly attractive?

I'm In Love with TED

No, A and I aren't splitting up. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and it's the name of a conference held annually at Monterey Bay since 1984. It draws together over a thousand of the top people in a wide range of fields to meet, give presentations, talk, have a ball, and figure out how to save the world. What do I mean by top? I mean people like Bill Clinton, Paul Simon, Bill Gates, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bono. James Hong, co-founder of the website Hot or Not describes it this way: "It's brain candy on steroids." You've probably seen clips from TED on the news, since this is where Microsoft and Apple debut their latest big breakthroughs; the original Apple Macintosh was presented to the world here.

I wish I could go. Unfortunately, it's by invitation only, and even then the price of admission is $6,000. However, and very fortunately, they have a website that offers over 200 edited clips of presentations on an incredible range of subjects, like "Is There A God?", "How the Mind Works", and "What's Next in Tech." They're available to view for free, and I'm probably going to spend the next six months watching all of them.

They encourage bloggers to embed their favorite clips in their blogs. Here's the first one I saw. Watch to the end, about five minutes, cause you won't believe what that octopus does:



Then there's these guys. (About 15 minutes.)



That's from Ted.com. Worth a visit.

PULL!

Or, how to keep a dachshund amused for hours and hours and hours...

David Paterson of New york

I'm fascinated by how David Paterson is going to do as the new governor of New York. I had never heard of the guy before the Spitzer governorship exploded, and I find that not only will he be only the third black governor since Reconstruction nationwide, but the first blind person in such a high office.

I think I'm a bit more interested in blind issues than most sighted people. My mother (hi, Mom!) was a teacher at a state run school for blind adults, teaching them the skills to live independently, among other things. She taught cooking, and a kitchen is a classic example of something which is easy for the sighted and a daunting obstacle for the blind. Since you can't read labels, your shelves and refrigerator had damn well better be organized. And a hot stove is a scary thing.

Paterson is not totally blind. He has enough vision in one eye to get about without a cane or a dog, and can recognize people close up. He also says he can read somewhat, obviously with magnification equipment. And he has a lovely sense of humor, evidenced in the New York Times's coverage of his first press conference as governor-to-be:

And when asked whether he, like Mr. Spitzer, had ever patronized a prostitute, Mr. Paterson could not suppress his trademark dagger wit.

He paused, gave a sly smile, and answered, “Only the lobbyists.”

Then there is this piece in the Times. The author, who like Paterson is functionally but not totally blind, writes about how blind people compensate for their disability. You have to develop a sharp and detailed memory, you have to get very good at "reading" the character of the people you talk to, and you have to be very, very patient. Also, I think, you tend to get underestimated, as people tend to think unconsciously that anyone who needs a little help just to get around in the world can't be all that bright.

A governor with these qualities is nobody to take lightly. Watch out, Albany.

We're Addicts. Or Cats.

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, about how addictive browsing the web can be. The word "addictive" may be closer to the reality than is comfortable.

Research suggests that humans get pleasurable feedback from encountering and processing new situations and new information, possibly even through the release of natural opioids in the brain. This makes sense. If our monkey curiosity is the key to our evolutionary success, and to our nature as humans, then it's logical that using that curiosity would be pleasing. Evolution rewards success, and sometimes directly in the now.

The question is whether this capacity can be overloaded by technology that evolution could not prepare us for. Could the flood of new data that the toobz feeds us be turning that pleasurable feedback into a permanent "on" rather than an occasional reward? Is this why people find it so hard to tear themselves away from the blogs, even when it harms their normal "meatspace" life? The article compares to a cat chasing the red dot from a laser pointer. It's natural hunt-and-kill instinct is overwhelmed by a stimulus outside its evolutionary experience. It can't help but keep chasing, even when there's no prey to catch.

Maybe what we all need is an internal SWAT team that will occasionally show up with serious firepower to say, "SIR! BACK AWAY FROM THE LAPTOP! NOW, SIR!!"

I mean, look at me. I read this article and what did I do? Blogged about it.

Spitzer: Isn't this what porn's for?

Oh, jeez, here we go again. Another high-flying politician, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, with presidential ambitions yet, a crusader for right and justice, the scourge of sleaze and crime, gets caught bumping a pricey hooker when he's out of town away from his wife. Worse, he actually imported her into DC for a little fun between daytime business. (Google the "Mann Act" please.) The only novelty is that for a change he's a Democrat.

This stuff is so unnecessary. It's not uncommon for middle aged men to desire some exciting sexual variety after years of marriage, even in a happy marriage. No, scratch "not uncommon." It's damn near universal. The question is what you do about it.

Cummon, despite its disrepute, this is where porn does a lot of good. If a guy can look at what turns him on in private when he can scratch that itch but good, it may not be quite as fucktastic as banging in person what you're looking at, male, female, or in between. But it can take the edge off, make the urge for in-person banging less urgent, more manageable, and has probably kept a lot of marriages sailing smoothly on an even keel. And okay, yes, me too. Been there, done that, cleaned up afterwards.

But Spitzer? No. It wasn't because he was horny. Anyone can take care of horny in five minutes in the bathroom. This is about arrogance, and entitlement, and an ego that thinks he's climbed so high nothing can bring him down. One blogger, the Rude Pundit, consulted a hooker friend of his about why anyone would pay so much for a hooker, up to $5,500. She said, "The same reason people buy ugly paintings by famous artists or stay in penthouse hotel rooms for a night. Because they can. Status, you know."

Status. I think Spitzer's lost a lot of that in the past 48 hours. I think he's lost all that he had.

Another [yawn] Election

OK, this time it's Mississippi, just next door. It looks like Obama's winning this one too, which is fine with me.

But the relentless, nonstop, breathless coverage is getting damn exhausting, especially as it's covering what is more and more a non-story. ("This just in! Dog bites man, Obama wins primary. Film at eleven.")

The New Yorker ran a cartoon last week showing a team of these newsstars sitting behind their mockup desk, saying to the camera: "And now for three hours of meaningless speculation about a race we've already acknowledged is too close to call."

Damn straight. And getting so tiresome. HOW many months left to go??

Got a complaint? Sing!!!

Oh man, this is wonderful.



In Finnish, there is an expression, "valituskuoro," which literally means "complaint choir." When a lot of people are griping about something, that's a complaint choir.

Then a few years ago a pair of performance artists, Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, thought, what if you took that phrase literally? So they began pitching the idea, community chorus performances with texts comprised completely of what local people were bitching about.

It was a slow start, but after a group in Birmingham, England, got excited about it the concept took off. (They had reason, and much to complain about, with Birmingham sometimes called the "arsehole of England".) After their performance, the concept has spread. And why not?



I think this is awesome, and the link to the main website is this: http://www.complaintschoir.org/ They offer many resources to help you in forming a complaint choir of your own, and so many have enthusiastially responded that, well, they've hit on something.

Their site has a lot of videos of complaint choirs all around the world. Go there and see, and maybe form your own. You know you want to.

We Are Lost

Oh, shit. When these two guys start teaming up, you know we're in trouble.

At least we know who his running mate will be.

Super Fat Tuesday

Well here in New Orleans it's not Super Tuesday, and all those elections are not even a blip on the screen. It's what you see above. Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras, ya know. Our primary will be Saturday, and I'll be a poll worker. It's likely to be a minuscule turnout, as the primary is unlikely to make much of a difference. Louisiana is one of those states who get to sit and watch every four years as other states decide who the nominees will be.

Democrats and independents can vote in the Democratic race, but the Republican race is Republicans only. The interesting twist is that in addition to the primary, the Republican party held a series of caucuses also about a month ago and didn't tell anybody. Even the paper just noticed it today. Those caucuses selected delegates who are not bound to vote for the candidate they promised to vote for, and the final delegate count may or may not be bound by the results of the Saturday primary. Those clever little Republicans, they're so cute when they get this way.

Too clever by half. The paper says the La. Republican party did this in a rather desperate bid to get a piece of the action before Super Tuesday. But their pitiful inability to publicize the caucuses to either the public or the candidates made it a wasted effort. Of course, if the candidates slug it out to the point of a brokered Republican Convention, all those uncommitted Louisiana delegates could find themselves very popular.

And how am I spending my Mardi Gras? At home, nursing a cold. Boo. [Photo is from 2002.]

New Orleans Business Model

This is the way we do things here. [click to enlarge]



Note: This was taken on Saturday of the weekend of the BCS college football national championship game. LSU -- the home team -- vs. Ohio State. There were LOTS of tourists in town, eager to spend money and have a good time. The store was closed.

Damn

This is so depressing.

Heath Ledger [left], whose chiseled good looks made him a heartthrob to millions and who won movie fame for playing a tragic homosexual cowboy, was found dead in a Manhattan apartment today, police said.

The body of the Australian actor, who won an Academy Award nomination for the 2005 movie "Brokeback Mountain," was found hours after this year's Oscar picks were announced.

Ledger, 28, was found unconscious at 3:26 p.m. and pronounced dead minutes later by emergency medical personnel, said Det. Madelyne Galindo, a spokeswoman for the New York Police Department.

The loss of a promising young talent is always tragic. Some of us feel even more pained because of the role he'll now always be known by, even though he should have grown and been known by even greater achievements. That is Ennis Del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain" for which he got an Oscar nomination.

Gays have had a tough time in how we're shown in the movies. (Read "The Celluloid Closet" by Vito Russo. Better yet, see the documentary made of it.) We bounce from monsters to freaks to tormented artists to comic relief to flighty faggots to psycho killers to whatever. After AIDS shook up popular perception, we became noble sufferers, the secondary character who would lead the star and main character from sneering scorn to grudging respect and finally admiring acceptance. Then the AIDS guy tidily dies off. See "Philadelphia Story." Most recently, the vogue has been for the affirmation of gay guys as full, if quirky, members of society, unless we want to get married or join the Marines. We've all seen the movies. We're here! We're queer! We're running for Congress!

"Brokeback Mountain" hit a nerve because it didn't fit the mold. Two cowboys out on the range tending their herds, icons of American masculinity, fall in love. Intense, passionate, sexual love, and no doubt about it.

But the point of movie is not the first part, where Jack and Ennis fall in love. It's not that these two cowboy lovers fuck each other, it's that they almost never can. They're too scared, and only dare risk getting together for the occasional "fishing trip," once a year or so. Of Ledger, Andrew Sullivan said, "his performance in Brokeback Mountain was a gut-wrenchingly under-stated evocation of the terror and pain of the closet."

I am fortunate that, mostly because of when I was born, I escaped much of that terror and pain. Not all, though. I went through all the usual terrified agonies of gay teenage self-discovery, but got through.

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall gave two powerful performances of men who would never have the chance to get through what I got through, never get a chance to find themselves and a place for their love. It was a painful, tragic, agonizing -- yet wonderful -- love story, one that may have led a lot of people to rethink some assumptions.

That's an admirable achievement for the late Heath Ledger. There should have been more.

That Tears It

One of the more ridiculous little memes of this election is the one about Hillary Clinton's tears. You know the story. During a campaign stop at a coffee shop in Portsmouth, N.H., she got a little emotional after being asked why she was running and how she stood the pressure. She got a catch in her voice as she told how very personal it was to her, how strongly she felt about moving the nation forward.

The reactions were predictable. In Maureen Dowd's widely criticized op-ed she quoted her male colleagues saying snarky things like, "Is this how she’ll talk to Kim Jong-il?” or "That crying really seemed genuine. I’ll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand."

Back and forth it went. “If she is breaking down now, before winning her party’s nomination, then how would she act under pressure as president?” “[This is] the oldest, dumbest canard about women: they’re too emotional to hold power.”

Isn't a huge point being missed here? Just look at that photo, for one thing. She was in a coffee shop, surrounded by women who were either committed supporters or sympathetic. It was "safe" emotionally, as much as any public appearance could be. I think something inside her knew that, and knew that if there was ever going to be a time and place to let a little out, this was it.

Note that I am not saying that this was all planned and calculated. How could it be? She didn't know she would be asked that question. What I'm saying is that emotions have multiple components, including what we feel inside and how much of it we let show openly. Every person with a normal emotional intelligence knows how to regulate the second part, knows from the moment and the context, from where you are and who you're talking to, how much of your feelings you can let show. It's not something you calculate, you know it instinctively.

We can never know how many times Hillary has felt strong emotions during this campaign and kept them in check. I doubt that anyone knows, not even Bill. But in this place, at a relatively low pressure event surrounded by sympathetic women, she could let a little show. She knew it instinctively. It wouldn't surprise me if she needed to let a little steam off -- I would, in her position -- but she didn't do it until she was in a place safe to do so. I think we can take it for granted that if she HAD been facing down Kim Jong-Il she would have been quite a bit different, pure Ice Queen, as she should be.

What this event says to me is not that she has no control over her emotions, but that she does. Perfectly.

Suicide by Faith

OK, it wasn't really suicide, as she didn't intend to die. It was an unintentional death, and tragic. What raises it to bizarre is that so many who loved and cared for her were forced to collude in her death. The reason: her faith.

New Orleans had a cold snap last week with overnight temperatures dropping into the 20s. On Thursday the body of a woman was found in a park on the West Bank, across the Mississippi from the main city. According to the report she was a homeless woman who had been sleeping on a bench there for two weeks. Cause of death: hypothermia.

The mind easily fills in the rest. Homeless, probably mentally ill, abandoned. No money, no friends, no family, probably barely knew where she was. Sad, yeah, but it happens, buddy.

But it wasn't so. Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis deBerry wrote an article about her today, giving the name he knew her by at their church on Sundays, Lovie Collins. He knew she had been on that spot not for two weeks, but for at least six months, and he sometimes would drive by on his way home from work just to see her. The church members saw her as one of their own and were deeply concerned for her, offering her food, shelter, clothing, blankets, medicine. She was not diagnosed as mentally ill, because for that you have to see a doctor, and she wouldn't. Her family, far from being distant and oblivious, was on the spot, and as the cold was moving in two of Lovie's sisters had come to beg her to please come indoors, just for a few nights.

Except for the food, she refused everything. God had told her to.

She believed that the ministry God had called her to was to live unprotected out in the elements. I suppose that it was a demonstration of faith, based on one or the other of those Bible verses that say "God will provide." She also was convinced she was physically safe because God had told her she would be raptured into heaven on the Day of Judgment, so she couldn't die before then. She told deBerry all this when he spoke to her to see if she needed anything and, he wrote, "I knew not to argue with her."

So she froze to death alone in a park, with good people all around the city safe in their homes, worried sick about whether Lovie would make it. Reading deBerry's piece, what struck me was how these things happen because our whole society and legal system has decided not to argue with Lovie. If the convictions or beliefs or fantasies that kept her out there had been more ... secular ... social services surely could have intervened at her family's request, as she had certainly become a danger to herself by refusing even blankets as the temp dropped below freezing.

Stay out in the cold in the name of Jesus, however, and society raises its hands and backs slowly away. Stand on a street corner downtown and berate strangers, and you're arrested as a public nuisance. Do it with a Bible in your hand, and the cops look the other way. That the leading Republican presidential candidate can say he doesn't believe in evolution and not get laughed off the stage is just another example of America deciding not to argue with Lovie.

Look where it got Lovie.

Gay Side of Jon Stewart

Gosh, I've been quiet.

I can't resist sharing this, though. AfterElton is a pro blog produced by the gay cable channel Logo covering gay and bi men in entertainment and the media. They just did a terrific piece featuring clips from "The Daily Show" called "A Look Back at Jon Stewart's Greatest Gay Moments." Gay topics can be a great source for humor, especially pieces on "family values" conservatives getting caught - literally - with their pants down. But what comes through is how Jon Stewart, a straight guy, clearly feels a deeply personal sense of outrage at anti-gay policies and practices. Sometimes he drops the humor entirely and just lets his anger through.

The whole series is worth seeing, but I cannot resist sharing this particular clip. In November 2003 there were news reports of rumors that at some point in the past, one of Prince Charles's male personal aides had been rendering services a little too, umm, personal.

Because of strict English slander laws, we over here were actually getting more information than the British. So Stewart dispatched Stephen Colbert, who had not yet spun off his own show and was still a Daily Show reporter, to see how things looked from over there. The resulting segment, the legendary "Banana episode," was pretty damn funny, if salacious. It also offers the rare pleasure of seeing two consummate television professionals, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, totally losing it.

The Shoggoth Party

Hmm. I think I've found my political home.

More to the point, an official bid for the presidency has been declared by Fred Thompson, the former actor/senator, if there's a difference. Now here's an interesting exercise. Go to Frederick of Hollywood's campaign website, http://www.fred08.com/. Read his official biography, what he wants you to know about him and his career. While reading, keep this question in your mind: When has this guy ever been the boss?

Manager of someone else's political campaign doesn't count, as the boss is the candidate. Lobbyist doesn't count, as the boss is the client. Actor certainly doesn't count. Even if you're the star, which he never has been, the boss of the set is the director. His private practice as a lawyer? Can't tell, as he doesn't say whether he was boss of his own firm or just a junior partner in someone else's. (Actually, if he'd had his own firm, you'd think he'd say so, wouldn't you?) Senator? OK, he was a committee chairman, so he could certainly boss the committee staff around. But when policy was decided it was decided by the whole Senate, not by Fred Thompson, alone in his office with the burden of history on his shoulders. Only when he was running for office himself has he ever really been the boss, and the record shows that winning the race was all he really cared about. Doing the job of Senator he found a bit of a bore.

So when has this guy, who wants to lead the United States, ever sat behind a desk with a sign on it saying "The Buck Stops Here"? As far as I can tell, never.

Haven't we had enough of amateurs trying to wing it?

Video: "Jesse"

"Jesse" is the first major American song & video release by gay Israeli singer Ivri Lider. He's highly popular there.

I think it's lovely, winsome, and very sweet.

Perspective on the 35W

So many outsiders were continuing to talk about the flooding of New Orleans as if it were an unavoidable weather event that I began using an analogy that I hoped would help them see it as the engineering failure it was.

You expect bridges to hold up when you drive across them, don't you? Well, the faith you put in those concrete and steel structures is the same faith New Orleanians put into the concrete and steel the federal government erected and promised would keep the water out.

To say that we should have known better, that we should have expected to drown, is like saying that motorists who want to get from one side of a body of water to the other are reckless.

Wednesday evening, a Mississippi River bridge in Minnesota fell down during the Minneapolis-St. Paul rush hour. It was unknown Thursday afternoon how many people had died.

What is known is this: They shouldn't have died.

-- Columnist Jarvis DeBerry, New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 3, 2007

Ol' Glowing-Red-Eyes Is Back

I had no idea we had such a talented Vice-President.

It Just Gets Worse

"The odds of us still having a republic in anything but name only by January 2009 grows more remote every day."

That's Nightshift at Shakesville, writing about this peachy new executive order released by the White House last week. Like him, I can't understand why the news media aren't calling more attention to this, unless it's simply fear. Nightshift's analysis is better than anything I could do, so let me quote it:

Under this order, the Executive Branch can ’starve out’ a person by completely freezing their [economic] assets, without trial, without the need to present evidence, and without appeal. The Treasury Secretary has sole discretion to determine who is in violation of this order, in ‘consultation’ with the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State. That last part is verbiage; Treasury has the power per this order. Even better, the Secretary of Treasury has the explicit authority to delegate this decision to any flunky or flunkies of his choice per Sec. 6. This order applies to all persons within the United States. If Treasury declares that a person is a ‘SIGNIFICANT RISK’ to commit violence in Iraq, or a ‘SIGNIFICANT RISK’ to support violence in Iraq in any way, or to have assisted in any way a person who is a ‘SIGNIFICANT RISK’ to do so, all their assets are to be immediately frozen.

It is a further violation of the order to make a donation to such a person whose assets have been frozen. (I was being literal when I said ’starve’ them. Such a person would have no legal means of acquiring food, clothing, or shelter. They couldn’t buy it with frozen assets, nor accept it as a gift, and stealing is already illegal.)

Furthermore, those assets can be frozen with no warning, after no judicial proceeding, if someone in Treasury is of the opinion that it should be done. There's nothing like a habeaus corpus provision requiring them to show any cause for this action, much less prove their case. Technically they're just freezing your assets, not seizing them, so they're not bound by the requirement to justify their action or compensate you for your loss. Of course, if you cannot use your assets, you might as well not have them.

So Bush has given himself the power to declare any person or organization an economic unperson any time he wants to, for any or no reason. I suppose he could decide that merely disagreeing with his Iraq policies might constitute "undermining efforts to promote ... political reform in Iraq," so there's no reason Treasury couldn't take action against me for writing this post. Depending on how draconian they're feeling that day, as an unperson I could not receive so much as a sawbuck from my dad to buy a meal without making him and the restaurant into unpersons too. And in case you think this is a spoof or a joke, here's the link to the official announcement by the White House.

Now doesn't that make you feel all comfortable and secure?