DgtizeD

On my train ride to work today, I witnessed a mother bringing one of her two children to tears by continuing to tie little plastic beret’s into the little girl’s hair. The little girl couldn’t have been older then two and a half. Yet she was shrieking, crying and pounding on her mother’s legs as her mother kept adding berets to the small amount of hair on her head. The tears kept welling up in her eye’s and the mother would barely shush her, but kept reaching for more little plastic flowers to twist into her hair.

Lady – your child is not a doll. Your child is a person, with wants, needs and desires. Not an object to be dressed up and manipulated like the Barbie doll you played with when you were a child. When you child is older, and you wonder where your sweet little baby went, know this, as much as you enjoyed that period, that little girl felt defenseless and powerless. When she can defend herself she will. That little girl you treated like a doll will be lost, and she will have reason to distrust you.

Further back in the train two woman watched on with fascinated disapproval. We exchanged eye contact during one of more noticeable shrieks from the little girl, and acknowledged our shared distaste for what was happening. We exited at the same station and I commented that the mother should not treat her child like a doll.

I regret not reminding the mother.

I frequently have trouble using Emacs under screen because sometimes erase and backspace get switched, resulting in emacs believing every backspace is a Control-h for help. For some reason I always forget the command to fix this. For now and future reference, the fix is: M-x normal-erase-is-backspace-mode.

I highly recommend upgrading to Emacs CVS-HEAD as it now includes multi-tty emacs. Multi-tty allows console or graphical frames to attach to an existing emacs server on the system, regardless of the graphics mode. What this means is that I can start a server using (server-start) in an emacs session under my screen session. I can then connect to this instance of emacs using emacsclient from both another console, or from a graphical frame. Since all of the buffers are shared between instances I no longer need to worry if I remembered to save changes to a buffer of another instance running on the same computer.

It does have a few bugs that remain to be fixed. If I forget and invoke screen -DAr from another console that forceably disconnects both the screen on the other terminal, as well as the other terminal. If that terminal is also hosting the graphical emacsclient it seems to kill both the emacs client and the hosting emacs server. I’m sure this issue will be corrected prior to the next official release.

Given that RMS has just stepped down as the maintainer for GNU Emacs¹, perhaps a new release is forthcoming sooner rather then the more usual later. Moving away from CVS to a more distributed SCM may also assist in this venture.

I have returned to using Ctrl-z as the prefix code for screen commands. Despite it’s obvious shortcomings by overriding normal process suspension, it does not impair XON/XOFF terminal status in the way Ctrl-q did. As a side effect this would also break creation of new screen-shells in screen, as they would not forward key events back to the main screen session. This prevents screen switching until the newly created screen-shell is terminated. The Ctrl-a code despite being the default screen prefix is not suitable as it overrides emacs/bash keybindings for beginning of line. Finally, Ctrl-z still allows for process suspend using Ctrl-z z. Ctrl-z is a bit cramped, but as a bonus it does make it easier to eat or drink and monitor several screen-shells at the same time.

¹ RMS relinquishes status as GNU Emacs maintainer

Here are a few more entertaining shorts that I have tracked down or encountered in the process of tracking down these animations:

• The Cathedral—A pilgrim on a distant world visits a cathedral.
• Das Rad—Two rocks on a hill comment on the progress of humanity.
• Creature Comforts—Aardman Entertainment animates interviews with the animals in the zoo.
• Halluci—One of the better M.C. Escher themed animations I have seen in a while.
• Balance—I’ve seen this one years ago but I don’t remember where.

Apparently Creature Comforts has evolved into a general series:

• Creature Comforts USA – Art (quite good)
• Creature Comforts – What it all Means (alright)
• Creature Comforts – Pet Shop (eh)

Das Rad and The Cathedral were both nominated for the 2003 academy awards. Neither of them won but they were quite good. I also tracked down one of the live action shorts from that set that was quite entertaining:

• Gridlock

Enjoy.

This year I watched three films at the festival. I had hoped to get the chance to see four, but unfortunately it was a busy week. So without further ado, the films:

Crossroads / Jujiro: A restored print of a 1928 silent Japanese film. The sets and costumes were very expressionistic. The thing that most struck me about the film was how much the cultural language of film has progressed. While it is easy at times to question the speed and pacing of modern films, it’s also very interesting to note how much faster a plot concept can be conveyed in modern films. Much of that speed is knowing how quickly the audience will have sufficient plot information in order to proceed.

The Method: A spanish film about 7 executives vying for a particular position in a shared interview. As the movie progresses the candidates eliminate each other in a series of psychological situations. The film almost entirely takes place in the office used for the shared interview, but is set to the backdrop of the IMF / World Bank protests occurring outside of the building in Madrid. In some rather biting social commentary, the applicants break for lunch, and comment that they are unable to see what is happening in the street, that the building they are in is too tall to see the protest.

The last film I saw in the festival was a collection of dark or satirical animated shorts. I tracked down a few of them online. Here they are for your computer viewing pleasure:

• 458nm
• Rabbit
• Le Marche des Sans-Nom

I had seen Rabbit before, and I quite enjoyed 458nm, but Le Marche des Sans-Nom really impressed me.

Related video’s on Youtube for Le Marche des Sans-Nom also gave this interesting little piece of animation: The end. I’m also really looking forward to Killer Bean Forever to come out. For those of you haven’t seen the original Killer Bean 2, I highly recommend it. It features John Woo style shootouts between a collection of computer generated beans. Killer Bean 2 came out sometime in 1999, and landed the animator a job doing CG for Matrix Revolutions. He then quit and has since been working on his first feature film, Killer Bean Forever.

Enjoy.

This quote from the cnn article Where have all the viewers gone? is a wonderful example of corporate hope for consumer dependency.

“We let them get out of the habit of watching television a little bit, and it’s going to take some time to get these people back in front of their television sets,” said David Poltrack, chief researcher for CBS (owned by CBS Corp.).

I love it when corporate management describes their product as if it’s a living necessity, when it’s merely a form of entertainment. Companies that are building a market come across as hopeful, yet they carry an implicit understanding that the market’s existence, and thus their own, has no guarantee. Companies in established markets come to view the market as a given, and are utterly confused whenever anything changes the conditions. They are so focused on the battle for their share of the market that they forget that the market itself could just disappear. The record companies in particular seem to have a hard time realizing this potential, but they are certainly not the first or last to face such a change.

Mr. Poltrack seems to be describing television as a learned dependency the television companies have taught consumers. A learned dependency that he expects they can continue to teach. Television was originally marketed as a device to assist in education, as well as for providing entertainment. The television companies have done a wonderful job of keeping their word, it educates people in all manner of topics. It teaches people what they should buy, what they should be afraid of, who they should hate, what they should believe, and best of all, it teaches people to continue watching their televisions. Lifelong learning at it’s very best.

I recently remembered my fondness for a set of short stories written by James Thurber. Some might even describe them as parables. Most traditional parables, such as Aesop’s Fables, seem inclined to suggest a behavior. Thurber’s parables tend towards sarcastic commentary on human nature.

Besides his parables, Thurber was a writer and cartoonist for the New Yorker. I would also suggest some of his longer short stories such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which tells the tale of a henpecked husband who daydreams himself into a variety of more entertaining situations then the errands he is actually performing, as well as Thurber’s children’s story The Thirteen Clocks.

Apparently for a variety of reasons many of the more interesting short stories have been transcribed on the internet, and I decided to copy a few of them and place them here so others might enjoy them.

• The Owl Who Was God
• The Rabbits Who Caused All the Trouble
• The Bear Who Let It Alone
• The Moth and the Star
• The Very Proper Gander
• The Unicorn in the Garden
• The Shrike and the Chipmunks

I believe these were all originally printed in James Thurber, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated (New York, 1940).

Enjoy.

To think that people actually get paid to make relationship webs: Sex in High School Involves Long Chains of Relations

Of course actually knowing exactly how intimate the connections on the web were was the subject of heated discussion. Bringing facts into the matter, or even attempting to bring them in might have resulted in problems.

I am curious why the “A girl is loath to date her old boyfriend’s new girlfriend’s old boyfriend” rule seems to end after high school. Or at least according to the researchers data. Perhaps it appears necessary when the scene or pool of people is too small? It makes sense, but I am curious what makes it trigger, and what removes it.

Reminds me of research I once saw into the resiliency of graphs. The paper was discussing how many random nodes from a graph would need be removed before the graph “shattered.” It was interesting because the researcher was actually from the physics department and had some neat experiment about that that he wanted to model in physics and as a side jaunt decided to test the resiliency of the internet. If I remember correctly he created a metric to describe how interconnected a graph was, and then tested how easy it was to shatter a graph at each degree of interconnectivity. He determined that while the ARPA design for the internet was supposed to include the potential for nuclear strike, the resulting resiliency was not so much due to the design, but that it was simply a property of graphs of that type. Amusingly, the strongest graph that he had data for was a graph of sexual contact in a group of ~1000 adults.

Given the propensity for humanity to boast, hide, and gossip about sexual relations, I am very curious how accurate those datasets are. I suppose that is a different study for a different day.

... and they are driving like drunks.

The science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson has an interesting commentary about wearable computing. The story suggests that people who have an excess use of computers as a fashion statement are called gargoyles. It also describes the concept of their being a resulting cultural stigma for people who choose that path.

I think blue tooth cellphone headsets are first wave gargoylers, without any social stigma. Except I don’t understand why it doesn’t have a stigma. Let me explain why. The idea of the headset for the purpose of talking is a useful and good invention. Using it as a hands free system while driving a car does not reduce the level of distraction people face¹, but at least it’s unlikely to drop the phone. What really bothers me of late, is where it has become a fashion statement. Is anyone really so interconnected with the rest of the world with constant phone calls that it is necessary for them to wear a headset continuously as they walk down the street? No, they just want it for the implied social status of a) owning a headset, and b) implying they are that socially connected. So there are now a set of people wandering down the street with a glowing electronic communication device which is being used as an earing.

Now perhaps I have not researched this, and what is happening is that everyone is listening to mono music using a hands free headset that pauses the music for incoming calls. Which could actually be useful, provided you could deal without stereo. Somehow I think this is unlikely, however.

The nice side effect of wearable headsets is the pleasant manner in which it has reduced the stigma of people talking to themselves. I am curious as to what the long term effects of accepting people who actually talk to themselves will be as a result of the cell phone revolution.

¹ Cell phones as dangerous as drunk driving. Thankfully MADD doesn’t care though: Using a Cell Phone while Driving vs. Intoxicated Driving. Finally a link to one of the papers involved: A Comparison of the Cell Phone Driver and the Drunk Driver

After an extended argument about the potential for anarchy to exist as a system of government, I changed my view of what anarchy is. The way I generally thought of Anarchy was of the total lack of government. Which I believe can exist—however it quickly evolves (or devolves depending on point of view) into some form of state. It does this because at some point some sort of conflict occurs, which requires mediation, which results in the formation of a system of government.

The new perspective I developed last night is that anarchy always exists in society. In fact, it is the continuous state of all societies. However, at some point some form of mediation is required, and the existing state is called in. Or, the situation which is perhaps more troublesome are the cases where the existing state decides to preempt control by negating the state of anarchy that is present in day to day interactions.

So essentially we always live in anarchy, and we never live in anarchy. Meaning we always live in anarchy to the degree that people are capable of living together without governmental control structures. Yet since mediation is frequently required a state always exists, and depending on the state it forces itself more or less frequently on it’s people.

Governments are full of rules—but the idea of the “level of anarchy” is the degree to which the people choose to follow these rules. The existence of rules has little effect on if they are followed. Nor does the enforcement of laws, that only has effect insomuch as people believe in the enforcement. Really, the power of the state exists only to the extent that people believe in it. In times of calm, this requires little effort, in times of chaos, the effort of the state(s) involved must be stronger. Therefor, anarchy exists only as much as people believe in it. If they believe they live in a state, they live in a state. If they believe they do not, then so long as their belief does not result in a conflict with the beliefs of others, they live in a state of anarchy.

So in retrospect the kid I was arguing with was right—he lives in a state of anarchy. He lives in anarchy as much as he believes he lives in anarchy. At the same time, he does not live in anarchy as much as the rest of society does not believe he lives in anarchy.

Last evening while returning home from a party very early in the morning, a friend of mine and I found a purse lying next to a statue on the street. We searched through it finding a camera, some petty cash, credit card, and California state id. My friend suggested that we give it to the police officer who was sitting in his squad car snoozing across the street. He woke up as we approached the car. We explained that we had found the purse across the street and that it appeared to have id in it.

Whereupon, he requested my id to take down some contact information. This is where it got a bit odd. My id is still a Maine id despite living here for a while now, but given that I don’t drive I haven’t bothered to update it. He then asked for my local address and phone number, and finally asked me to verify my birth date. At this point I asked him as to why my birth date was of importance to him, and he responded it was just for gathering reference info for filling out the paperwork or something. I had been out drinking so I didn’t really feel my verbal capacity for discussing the reasons why I thought that was odd were up to the task. Then we walked off, but I really don’t understand why they needed that much information for turning in a lost item.

Can anyone shed any light on why he legitimately would need my birth date or why he might ask for it at all?