Monthly Archive for July, 2003

I don’t think we’re done talking about the ideas in Prime Intellect just yet. Vernor Vinge told us in 1993 that “[w]ithin thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” I guess it’s time to read his paper. And eventually I’m gonna be able to get together all the thoughs that have been swirling through my mind for the last week about Vinge’s amazing novel A Deepness In the Sky. I’ve just finished it, and started it again, and it has caused me no end of mental anguish. Now, to get all that into words, it will be no mean feat.

The Singularity is a seperate issue, but hey, science fiction isn’t something I’ve been doing enough thinking about recently, so it’s all a bit of a jumble at the moment.

Went to Irvine Park today. You may remember that the last park I visited had a damn built by the Army Corps of Engineers some time ago. Well, this one was much more exciting. I washed my hands at a sink that bore a plaque on which was written, “Improved by the Work Progress Administration 1935-36″. Now that is cool. Other coolness: the smell of the trees, the squirrels that ran across my path as I biked along, the bird that flew beside me for a few seconds as I sped along the path, and the peacock whose parking space I stole. That was a nice, nice way to spend a morning.

They are still afraid of the dishwasher, says the New York Times, but that will change:

Mr. Edow dreams of owning an auto-repair shop someday. He wants to shed his old life, just as snakes shed their skins. But at night, he still returns, in his dreams, to the violence in Somalia. Like Mr. Yarrow, he saw his father executed. The killer, he said, used a hammer and nails. He buries his head in his hands at the memory.

“We want to move forward,” he said. “We want to forget the past.”

The State Department is offering these Somali refugees a new start, and it is a beautiful example of what America can be. (via Kevin)

Robert Scheer’s excellent column lauds the BBC for being independent and impartial during times of incredible pressure for patriotism. Unlike the US news networks that just roll over to politicians, the BBC has consistantly broke sensational stories that have proved to be completely true.

Politicians here (and it Britain) frequently call the BBC “biased” for the other side of whatever issue they are on. The BBC isn’t biased, they just aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions. They don’t let politicians get away with saying whatever they want. They fight and yell and won’t take no. They don’t let the “official” version of events get in the way of a real investigation. In short, the BBC is everything American news should be, says it is, but cannot be.

Blair last week told the U.S. Congress that he and Bush were right to invade Iraq even if no weapons of mass destruction are ever found. Left unmentioned is that it was the coalition that chased U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq, claiming they weren’t doing their job and that the Iraq threat was growing. Clearly the immediacy of the threat from Hussein was a phony claim that Blair and Bush should have known full well was not backed up by any substantial evidence.

What’s left is the idea that we are in Iraq to build a democracy there by force. Yet the people on both sides of the Atlantic were adamantly opposed to this sort of nation-building, smacking as it does of past disasters, from the collapse of the British Empire to the U.S. war in Vietnam. In essence, we are now told to be happy with a rationale for war that we didn’t find convincing before the war started.

Scheer is right. When they write the histories, it won’t be Bush and Blair that they are lauding, it will be the British Broadcasting Corporation. Go figure.

The LA City Council reached a compromise yesterday in a somewhat contentious funding dispute. Apparently a very high number, well over 90% of burglar alarms are false alarms. The police already treats such alarms as a low-priority call and take on average an hour to respond. Because of budgetary concerns, the police was asking to be able to ignore all burglar alarms. The council decided on a policy where people are allowed two false alarms and then the police can choose not to respond.

Me: As soon as someone gets killed, they’re gonna rush to repeal this.
Dad: When would people get killed?
Me: There’ll be a home invasion robbery and someone will die and then everyone will get upset.
Dad: It’s a burglar alarm, not a home invasion alarm.

Followed by some bickering and then him telling me to stop arguing and listen to the radio. Well, I didn’t say I liked the idea, just that it’s something I’d expect. As soon as they cut funding for, say, traffic lights, someone gets killed at some corner, and they restore the funding. Unless this policy only applies to business alarms, I can see where in the next few years there will be some incident.

I was also thinking its easier to break into buildings now. Just trip the alarm twice, and your third attempt is free!