The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Scott H:

David T. Bilek @ #56:

Have you been a moderator of a community with many thousands of active members?

I'm generally staying out of this debate but, as a data point, yes. She has.

I'm actually more worried about the public policy implications of natural language processing. Historically the degree to which privacy can be invaded has always been implicitly constrainted by technical limitations. You always had to have a human listening in on the other end of the bug. I don't think that's a safe bet anymore.

These days it's relatively convenient to turn spoken words into ASCII. Warrantless wiretapping doesn't appear to be going away anytime soon. I personally think that natural language comprehension--some degree thereof, anyway--really is inevitable, probably sooner rather than later. What happens when it's technically possible to mechanically monitor every conversation everywhere always?

I'd argue that decisions on surveillance policy made by the next few governments are going to have some very far reaching implications. I've got my doubts that someone who doesn't know how to use email will be able to grasp all the ramifications.

Remember how all the zombies in I Am Legend ('07) came from a cure for cancer and the zombies in 28 Days Later came from trying to cure rage? I totally think it would be cool if in trying to cure oil addiction we got Water Zombies.

Jim, I'm still waiting for what to do when the inevitable zombie uprising occurs. The Max Brooks book sucked.

In reference to the particle "At Last, The Long-Rumored Whitey Tape."

Duuuuuuuuuuuude. [ Sad shake of head ] I never would have expected this from you.

Here's the definitive guide to the sub-species. In case it's not immediately clear from the title, the book is satire. I didn't actually wet myself from laughing when I read it, but it was close.

There's also a web site.

I just love it that the only remaining argument is over whether Bush is the worst president of all time or just the worst president in living memory.

Sten @ 71:

One might argue that your ability to compare eight years of Bush to a decision about what to have for lunch indicates a certain amount of ivory tower detachment in your world view. Clearly you've spent a good bit of time considering your rights--perhaps you might take a few moments to meditate on what responsibilities you might have towards your fellow diners.

He’s got some interesting ideas, but I’m not sure that I agree with
the basic premise, which I’d paraphrase as “As the tools for engaging
in productive leisure time activities become more conveniently
available, we should expect to see the number of people engaging in
productive leisure time activities rise proportionally.â€

Yes, we’ve seen a rise in both the quantity and quality of
collaborative projects as a direct result of recent advances in
communications technology. The internet gave a lot of lonely geeks in
basements previously unavailable tools for constructing peer groups.
When they came together, many of them built cool things. However, my
feeling is that the speaker was overlooking a key fact: even provided
with superior tools, the vast majority of people will never attempt to
build anything. His statement:

“And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S.
alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's
2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television.â€

Presumes, I think wrongly, that the other 1,999 units of cognitive
surplus are qualitatively equal to the one that put Linux together. I’m
not saying there won’t be more stunningly cool collaborative efforts
emerging, but I doubt that there will be as many as Mr. Ellis seems to
think. For a small minority, the internet was a tool for identifying
and coming together with other people who were bored to tears with
Gilligan’s Island. For the vast majority, it’s just a better way to get
porn.

The Boys From Brazil didn't have Lynda Carter.

Abi@ 72: Any suggestions for an incantation of banishment?

Dampen your fingers and stroke the side of his neck as you speak.

You know what I think would be funny? Say that Xoph
someone is working on their Rot-13 to English dictionary, sounding out
the words in hopes of identifying a viable pronunciation.

This someone is working alone in their apartment, possibly with
candles and/or incense. It happens to be the full moon. Upon completion
of a big, long, nigh-unpronouncable passage there's a big cloud of
brimstone smoke behind our orator. Something Lovecrafty appears.

"Who dares to summon the great vqrn abg bevtvany gb zr, ohg zrzbel snvyf. Fgvyy shaal gub?" it says.

R.M. Koske @ 188:

I'm in Atlanta and I didn't even know there was a tornado until Saturday a.m. However, I think Fragano teaches downtown (GSU?) which is much closer to the drama. Fragano? You out there?

Open-thready:

I went and saw Doomsday last night and it was so good it made my naughty bits tingle. If your favorite things list includes Aliens, Escape From New York or The Road Warrior / MMII then I recommend it unreservedly. The main bad guy (Sol), in particular, is jaw-droppingly great. Also, I had a lot of fun playing spot the homage[1]. It's not for the squeamish though.



[1] "Hey, isn't that John Carpenter's title font?"

Tangential question for Terry Karney @ 174:

How did you get the cyrillic in? That was kewl.

Abi @ 27:

Wow. That was really well said.

Brooks Moses @ #19: What is it, other than the fact that -- like Everest -- the possibilty of archiving these conversations is there, that makes also solved the halting problem.it worth saving them?

Well, I see your point in that nothing particularly exciting springs to mind. But if the archived conversations are available to be sifted, some hypothetical future genius might come up with some clever use that isn't obvious to either of us.

But regardless of whether anything good comes of archiving conversations, there ARE going to be downsides. The presidential candidates of 2048 are going to spend a lot of time explaining the youthfully exuberant remarks they posted to LJ and the drunken debauchery photos on MySpace.

Did anyone ever put together links to examples of the first thirteen categories in the slushkiller thread? I'm particularly curious about "Functionally illiterate" and "neurochemical disorder."

Congratulations!

Also, thanks from your co-swimmers in the gene pool. The breed needs more Doctorow.

Has anyone told xkcd?

Lee @ 211: That said, I don't think that emulating them (as you did in the rest of your post, unless my sarcasm detector is on the blink again) is necessarily a smart idea.

Why not emulate them? Seriously. It's got to be better than waiting around for them to screw up so we can--maybe--get lucky for a term or two. Yeah, every so often the rank-and-file Republican gets disgusted enough to abstain from voting, but the threshold of revulsion gets viler every year. 2006 was not a turning point. We are not winning.

Just to clarify, there was a certain amount of sarcasm in my previous post. However, I actually do think that it's a good strategy. Possibly it's the only viable strategy--I certainly can't think of anything more effective. Rational discourse simply will not work with people who won't vote for Obama because they don't want a Muslim president.[1]

Conceivably at some point in the distant past it was possible to shape the electoral process with sober and intelligent argument. I'm reasonably sure that was what the founding fathers envisioned or at least hoped for. But that was before Madison Avenue. These days advertising is so effective that the vast majority of people really do believe exactly what they're told to believe. No amount of rational counterargument or factual rebuttal is ever going to be able to penetrate two decades of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. I've tried, as I'm sure you have. You might as well discuss calculus with your dog.

I think that we're getting our asses kicked because we refuse to recognize and exploit the average voter's ignorance, prejudice, religious zealotry, greed, sloth, superstition and lust. If we're going to get anything accomplished we need to identify a candidate with a gift for shoveling sleaze and hose him or her down with money. Right after the inauguration we can commission a nice statue commemorating the martyrdom of our new President's conscience somewhere on the Washington mall, and console ourselves with the knowledge that it's better than another Bush. Which it would be.



[1] I hear this a lot. Want others? I got em.

re: fidelo@178: People believe this because they've been told she is.

Yup.

One reason I've heard people cite for voting Republican is that feel the Democratic party is dominated by intellectuals who harbor a barely-disguised contempt for anyone who isn't adequately intellectual. While that's probably true, I think that the real problem is that the contempt doesn't go deep enough. If we persist in arguing with Republican voters as if they are capable of understanding abstract issues like the environment or corporate welfare, we will continue getting our asses handed to us every four years.

Anyone who isn't (at least) a millionaire but who nonetheless votes Republican is simply too dumb to know where their own best interest lies. Republicans have made efficient use of this fact for decades now, while Democrats (c.f. Kerry 2004) seem to have a real problem grasping the degree of dumb with which they are dealing. Subtle arguments about foreign policy simply are not going to penetrate.

In the current political climate, the surest--maybe the only--path to victory is to concoct some sort of hysterical slogan that one of these domesticated-animals-in-shoes can understand and repeat it until it begins to resonate with one of the more emotional prejudices. Actually, thinking up commercials that might accomplish this is kinda fun.

For 2004, my campaign was "Torture Bad," accompanied by some Abu Ghraib photos. Gradually superimpose a sad-looking Jesus gazing down at Lynndie England. Perhaps Our Saviour should also weep a bitter tear.

For 2008, I'd suggest opening with a close-up of a still image Christmas photo of some sparkly family with at least two button-cute kids. Then cut to another still photo, maybe of little Timmy's birthday party in the backyard of some tidy-but-modest suburban home. Then--plop--a tear falls on the photo. Pull back to reveal that the whole family is now living under a bridge. Next cut to an image of smiling G.I.s passing out toys and candy to suspiciously ethnic looking children in a far-off land. Caption: Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?

It is my sincere belief that by thusly exploting racism, economic terror, religious prejudice the Democratic party can reclaim the Presidency and lead America back to the moral high ground. God bless America.

In re: the Asia/Africa/MidEast internet outage cause, apparently, by an undersea cable failure.

I wonder....?

fidelio @ 63:

Tnx, and duly noted. So did they fix the number at 435 with each state keeping what they already had, or is there still occasional flux between states?

also, fixing an embedded-tag bobble by me in #61, paragraph 6:

So, despite the Democrats having won vastly more of the popular vote for the combined populations of the two states (recall democrats won with 99% in state X vs. a 1% margin of victory in state Y), the candidates have exactly the same number of electoral college votes. So, effectively, the national election was decided by a single typical American voter.

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