Reading List, 52 books in 52 weeks!

3/01/10

1. We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - Philip K Dick

Collection of writings by Philip K Dick, colourfully rendered, graphic, colorful characters, all in a backdrop of odd worlds.

Battlestar Galactica

Voices of the Hybrid

Hybrids control their Battlestars, they speak nonsensical phrases interspresed with what seems like reaction to sensory inputs about their environment - they  seem to experience some form of euphoria as they execute an FTL jump.
http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/battlestar/

Season 4
 

4.02 Six of One

TC 07:51

"...the excited state decays by vibrational relaxation into the first excited singlet state yes yes and merrily we go reduce atmospheric nitrogen by 0.03% it is not much consolation that society will pick up the bits leaving us at eight modern where punishment rather than interdiction is paramount please cut the fuse they will not harm their own end of line. Limiting diffusions to two dimensions increases the number of evolutionary jumps within the species rise and measure the temple of the Five transformation is the goal they will not harm their own data/font synchronization complete..."

4.06 Faith

TC 22:55

"... All these things at once and many more not because it wishes harm but because it likes violent vibrations to change constantly then shall the maidens rejoice at the dance structural integrity of node seven restored repressurizing the children of the one reborn shall find their own country the intruders swarmed like flame like the whirlwind hopes soaring to slaughter all their best against our hulls ..."

TC 22:23

"... Replace internal control accumulators 4 through 19 they'll start going ripe on us pretty soon compartmentalize integrity conflicts with the obligation to provide access FTL sync fault uncorrected no ceremonies are necessary ..."

TC 25:36

"... then shall the maidens rejoice at the dance structural integrity of node seven restored repressurizing the children of the one reborn shall find their own country. End of line, reset. Track mode monitor malfunction traced recharge compressors increase the output to 50% assume the relaxation length of photons transfers contact is inevitable leading to information bleed FTL sync fault stands uncorrected no ceremonies are necessary..."

TC 26:09
"... Centrifugal force reacts to the rotating frame of reference the obstinate toy soldier becomes pliant the city devours the land.."

TC 26:28

" ... Assume the relaxation length of photons in the sample atmosphere is constant the intruders swarmed like flame like the whirlwind hopes soaring to slaughter all their best against our hulls..."

TC 27:04

"...All these things at once and many more not because it wishes harm but because it likes violent vibrations to change constantly then shall the ..."

TC 27:17

"...Reset.."


TC 27:22

"... But you are a spark of God's fire core update complete..."

TC 27:30

"... Threat detection matrix enabled dendritic response bypassed the received dose is altered by the delayed gamma burst going active execute the children of the one reborn shall find their own country, end of line."

TC 28:31

"...Thus will it come to pass the Dying Leader will know the truth of the Opera House the missing Three will give you the Five who have come from the home of the Thirteenth you are the harbinger of death Kara Thrace you will lead them all to their end."

TC 29:49

"End of line."

The Plan

TC 14:12

"Progress reports arriving,

the farms of airelon are burning,

the beachnes of canceron are burning,

the planes of leonus are burning,

the jungles of scorpia are burning,

the pastures of toran are burning,

the harbours of picon are burning,

the cities of caprica are burning,

the oceans of aquaria are burning,

the courthouses of libran are burning,

the forests of virgon are burning,

the colonies are of man lie trampled at our feet"

Simple Building Blocks

I am helping my friend who is moving his business because the old building is meeting the wrecking ball soon.  It is an audio shop, selling amplifiers, speakers, mixers, anything audio on a large scale.  My friend has inherited the business and managing everything that goes on now.

The business has operated out of the same place for around 20 years, and moving it is quite a task.  Most of the problem is deciding what to take away and what to keep.  While looking through some of the old broken stuff, I got a view of the inside's of one.  At first sight it looked like a jumble of wires, but on a closer look, I could see the love and dedication that was put in to each of the devices.

Each massive device was made up of smaller blocks, each of the smaller blocks was an array of yet more simpler blocks, and each of those blocks was made out of OTS (off the shelf) parts - resisters, capacitors, transformers, ... all of this stuff was beautifully put together, by their bare hands.  I could see the solder joints, and could imagine the hours that went into making those complicated pieces of machinery.

Beautiful things take dedication and love, beautiful things are simple and are made of out yet more simpler things.

I was inspired (enough to blog about it).

Surregacy

The Birth

I first saw this idea in the movie 'Surrogate'.   It shows a kind of dystopia - a world where people perform actions and interact with each other through a robot operated remotely (the operator operates a surrogate).

This is done via what they called the 'Stem Chair', which looks like a barbers chair, very similar to that shown in the 'Matrix'.  But instead of the being hooked up via a probe that directly plugs into the nerve stem, the stem chair is able to read brain waves without direct connection.  Optical glasses are worn through which the surrogates vision is redirected to the operator.

This is somewhat plausible, the idealogy and various consequences presented do have a lot of holes.  Since all Input/Output is transferred through a link, I can imagine it can just be played back - to create a sort of semi interactive video experience.  Also, when operators are purely interacting with each other (rather than the world - which requires a real surrogate to modify the world around them), why don't they just spend time in a virtual environment?

Is it really Sci-Fi?

What if we are all surrogates? What if when you look at someone you are really looking at a surrogate and deep within is the real operator?

This idea isn't really that strange, this is well understood (Ghost in the machine).

The Hindu ideology exemplifies this concept through re-incarnation.  Each living organism is a vessel, when a soul is good by performing good deeds, they will be transferred to a creature of higher regard, where as if the soul is bad / evil they will be transfered to a creature of a lower status.

I think we are all surrogates in the sense in that we are all just various forms of the same global consciousness.  That is also to say, no single person is really an individual, they are an agent (surrogate) that acts within the confines of a set of possible actions.  The operator is someone who adapts some set of beliefs.

100th post + xmonad + gnome

using simple xmonad with gnome

sudo apt-get install xmonad

mkdir ~/.xmonad
vim ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs

add the following, into the file, save and exit
---

import XMonad
import XMonad.Config.Gnome

main = xmonad gnomeConfig
---

Finally set the window manager using gconf:
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager -t string xmonad


restart X and you have xmonad + gnome; I also use vimperator combined all of these are extremely efficient!




unfortuntaly i need gnome, it has some nice tools like network manager and power manager for my laptop, so i cannot dispense of the general gnome environment.

Ron Paul's Free Market

I've been watching a lot of Ron Paul Debates and Interviews.  At first sight he seems almost anarchical.

I've also watched the Zeitgeist and Zeitgeist Addendum, so it seems revolutionary to hear a congressman speaking about the same kinds of things, for e.g. The fraud that is the federal reserve.  He doesn't go as far as Jacque Fresco in proposing that money is the problem and that it should be abolished in favour of a resource based economy.




RP is a strong believer in the free market and believes everything will take care of itself in a free market without the need for big government to do anything.

I wrote an article last year on the free market:

Free Market Principles applied to the Insurance Industry

It turned out the Insurance industry is heavily regulated, my argument was (on the pretense that it wasn't regulated) was that if insurance contracts were treated more as an open market - then only the providers who do the right things (calculating the right premiums, providing good customer services) will survive.

RP proposes that government stay out of all regulation, this would for example include the insurance industry, it means that the government can no longer pass rules and regulations dictating how they do business! but if this happens won't everyone just get ripped off? who protects the individual (in RP's terminology, there is only the individual and liberties for the individual alone)?

Well, if the market was truly free, then the individual is more empowered to choose the right thing, he/she will choose the provider with the most clearly defined rules that are favourable, or as I see it, instead of the government passing regulations, consumer groups will provide this function - they will form the link between the industry and the consumer.

It is slightly scary though, the private sector could make up any contract they like, and hire their own police force to enforce it.  RP believes that the government's function is only to see that the contract is met! It would be unlikely that the now empowered individual (that has to look out for him/her self because the government under RP will have removed safety nets) would not choose such a contract over others, because it is rather unfavourable to have your door kicked down because you missed a payment. Although I have heard of this happening (fucking repo).

Crime prevention could also be privatised (it is happening already in some rich neighbourhoods).  Organisation and individuals buy services, because there is competition the service would actually be any good (ever called the cops to a burglary in progress and measured the time to response?).  But I would rather it not, there must be a single authority that decides what is eventually right or wrong, based on either common sense, the constitutions, state laws and finally the contract between two individuals (whether one of them should be an organisation or not).  And as RP proposes this should be the function of the government.

All of this relies on keeping the market free, from monopolies, from regulations, from taxation and big government.

What about social stratification? What about the in-equality? It is simple enough to say there is always going to be in-equality so the best we can do is create incentives by removing social securities and socialist taxation policies?

In a truly free market, is anyone truly richer?

couchdb ramblings

curl -X POST $CDB/basic/_temp_view?startkey=5\&endkey=2\&descending=true -d '{"map" : "function(doc) { emit(1, null); emit(2, null); emit(3, null); emit(4, null); emit(5, null);}"}'

descending=true reverses the traversal of the key space, startkey and endkey now act in reverse (otherwise startkey=largest key and endkey=smallest key)