Quote for the Day (Descent into mediocrity) The main motive for the development of the doctrines of polylogism, historicism, and irrationalism was to provide a justification for disregarding the teachings of economics in the determination of economic policies. The socialists, racists, nationalists, and etatists failed in their endeavors to refute the theories of the economists and to demonstrate the correctness of their own spurious doctrines. It was precisely this frustration that prompted them to negate the logical and epistemological principles upon which all human reasoning both in mundane activities and in scientific research is founded. - Ludwig Von Mises
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:13:47 -0500
I need a job.
Anyone not hiring should not read this post.
I'm an entry level mechanical engineer seeking a job in Houston or Anchorage. My EIT certificate should be in the mail. It has been my dream since childhood (a year ago) to work for a MEP design company. I'd also do artificial intelligence, robotics (which I have experience building and programming), or design-build or perhaps something in the energy industry. At this point, I'd cheerfully make aerospace parts, boring and existentially useless though that may be.
I have an IQ high enough that it hasn't been measured, and I achieved enlightenment last year. My skills include, in a format totally inappropriate for any other venue of job-seeking, *AutoCAD *AutoLISP *SolidWorks *MatLab *Assorted mathematics programs *Programming Common Lisp, C++, Java, Javascript, XHTML & CSS, a few proprietary robotics languages, qbasic, DOS batch, etc. *Artificial intelligence algorithms, particularly genetic algorithms *MS Access *MS Quickbooks *Double entry bookkeeping *the Critical Path Method *lean thinking *painstakingly decoding Japanese *oral and written communication skills better than yours *National Guard Petroleum Supply Specialist (until next month) *Auto repair and stereo installation *1100 chess rating *assorted practical martial arts *lifting heavy objects *dogs love me
I've made ROVs, hovercraft, cartesian robot workspaces, wireframe polyhedrons and biological experimental apparati, genetic algorithms to automatically specify Rankine cycles and reheat stages for thorium salt reactors, GAs to evolve other GAs, Critical Path charts, BOMs, functional decompositions, CFD algorithms, web sites and a remix of Ice Ice baby.
My hobbies include reading the autobiographies of entrepreneurs and tycoons, rapping, writing fiction, manga-style drawing, enlightenment philosophy, and acquiring new skills only to abandon them as my interest flags. I'm a hard worker, but I follow lean principles. Ever noticed how people latch onto an idea and want to pursue it because it "needs to be done," regardless of the fact that limited resources must be allocated wisely? I don't do that. Zengineering.
For what it's worth, I'm better at everything than 99% of my graduating class.
My email address is maniac[deletethis part]provost[at]gmail[dot]com. Normally I'd use a more professional one, but let's maintain a pretense of anonymity.
Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:59:44 -0500
Incidentally
Besides philosophical contemplation and political analysis, I also spit hardcore gangsta rap. Here's one I finished today after many technical difficulties.
I had to read that several times. He will what? He will try to change the interpretation of the law? He won't sign a bill, or propose an amendment to the constitution. He will try to overturn the ruling, presumably by packing the supreme court. Incredible.
Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:43:20 -0500
Weighing the options
If McCain wins in November, it'll be hilarious until about mid-February. If Obama wins, it'll be funny for four years.
On the other hand, McCain will delay the collapse of the USA by two or three years. Depending on how long I live, that could be vital.
So the question is, do I vote for Barr or stay home?
Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:10:59 -0500
*Endless, 1984esque war and threats of imminent economic collapse.
*Russia declares "peacekeepers" will stay in the provinces it reconquered this weekend.
*Nancy Pelosi says, "You don't just roll your tanks and airplanes into another country and expect people to sit back and say, 'that's okay'."
*China digitally remasters the olympics, makes some cute kid lip sync for some [less cute] kid, and explains thus: "The audience will understand that it's in the national interest." CNN's coverage of the story used the cute kid for its picture, thus making the identical editorial decision as the Chicoms.
That last one pushes the week's events into farce.
I figured I'd explain it for old people and normies.
1) Makes fun of McCain, actually funny, unlike humor produced by political commentators.
2) Gins up more press coverage for Paris's hype-driven empire.
3) Supports the Republican plan in a way that makes it seem a compromise and appeals to the congenitally retarded youth that support Obama. Most of them will forget to vote anyway, but every little bit counts.
4) I would honestly support Paris Hilton for president, but she's too young.
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:10:42 -0500
I don't usually link to philosophical meanderings, because they're of little immediate import. As a flaming capitalist, I doubt that we can predict the future more than one step ahead. That's the whole purpose of capitalism: the greedy migration of hordes of ignorant chattel produces better results than the rule of a philosopher-king like myself. We may find that rule by ruthless syndicates is the best way.
The link is interesting, though. How to shift the perception of risk and reward away from violence and toward peaceful production? That's the underlying question that must be answered by all anarchist theory. One way is to increase the ability to accurately perceive risk and reward. The other way is to alter the risk and reward quantities.
My main concern with Molyneux's analysis is that a stateless society is not a concrete unit. Germany doesn't have too invade, conquer, and repress the hypothetical statelss France all at once. It can take a mile or two of border, extend its existing power structure, and gradually swallow the country. What would be the response? I tend to think in terms of a near-future, immature anarchy, say, two hundred years from now. Some people might decide that Germany is now open for counterattack via a wave of profitable crime. Most would shrug and ignore the repression. The defense organizations might launch fearsome retaliation or try to cover up the incidents at first.
One thing to point out is that an anarchy would be just as capable of supporting a massive standing army as a nation-state. It would just be less likely to do so.
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:43:47 -0500
Of course
you shouldn't buy said DVDs. You should pirate them online. One might ask where the pirated versions would come from if there were no DVDs, but that would be unanswerable.
Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:31:33 -0500
Socially Responsible Business
I don't see how people can buy from a company like Apple that exploits the poor by creating luxury products that (1) are too expensive for them to ever purchase, and (2) constitute the conspicuous consumption of society's resources.
You should support businesses like Wal-Mart that create menial jobs and provide food, clothing, and $5 DVDs to the less fortunate.
Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:30:43 -0500
Apologies
While on vacation, I let my erudite facade slip and wrote something along the lines of "Fight the Future, Bitches," which is more like what I would rap if, hypothetically, I made absurd political/gangsta rap as a hobby.
Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:51:50 -0500
I find this hilarious, but then, I'm generally upbeat lately. Been offline for a bit, but I'll be back in a couple of weeks.
The story is about a bunch of teen girls in MA that intentionally got pregnant. School officials are flummoxed. I was a little irritated, though not surprised, that the school considers it their business. I thought we had entered an era of sexual and reproductive freedom/irresponsibility. But, of course, they crave the power to control the lives of those weaker than themselves.
Granted, this will all end badly, but we have to create the next generation somehow. I'm at a loss for words. Eto, eto.... it's like, society's all "Live in a state of perpetual youth and consume these PepsiCo products" and they're all like, "mmmm, I wanna baby."
lol.
Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:18:01 -0500
Anarchy by dictat
The existence of a global society with weapons of mass destruction lead Einstein to the conclusion that there would be a world government. Inevitably, it would be formed by joint agreement or by the military victory of one empire. He preferred the first.
So much I cribbed from Andrew Sullivan.
But democracies, nuclear powers, and especially nuclear powered democracies tend not to attack each other. If, as we honorary neocons suspect, a New World Order composed solely of peaceful G8ish societies is developed, then they would live in a state of anarchy amongst themselves.
If enlightened self interest can create a lawless, yet peaceful, society of individuals, then it should also be able to do so for rational states.
Dictatorships tend to be as irrational as the dictator.
Let's suppose this New World Order arises eventually, as history seems to suggest it will. Won't the states tend to compete for resources and try to increase their productive output? Won't this gradually, painfully slowly, lead to deregulation? The example of an anarchist virtual world government will be there for everyone to see.
Of course there are many countervailing tendencies- I hardly place my hopes in logic and enlightenment- but history has been creeping toward increased organisation and decreased centralization of what organisation exists. Chaos is controlled by brute force and slowly evolves into an orderly, emergent system.
Unless we run out of energy. Then all bets are off.
Sun, 11 May 2008 18:41:18 -0500
It hit me when I got out of the shower. A portable keychain-type thing with a 128 bit hardcoded random sequence and a 128 bit flash sequence that could be reset. You pop it into a USB slot and use it for encryption. The algorithm would be hardcoded into the chip.
My sister was like, yeah, then I can download whatever I want at work, put it on my USB drive, and they won't know what it is.
And I'm like... yeah. but maybe a female connector so you can put your USB drive in one end and stick the other end in the computer and it automatically encrypts and decrypts whatever goes through it?
And then I'm like, maybe a USB stick with preloaded encryption software would be better. The chip would be cooler, but I can't design ICs and the speed bonus and cost aren't really worth it.
So now I'm making it.
Sun, 11 May 2008 19:07:31 -0500
Shilo's drooling corpse reclined in an office chair, festooned with wrist straps and contacts and cables. Every few minutes it kicked, stiffly, as if struggling to rise from its sleep and feast on the living.
Half of a human head leered at something unseen in the southwest corner of the room.
Jonas huddled over a tablet in the northeast corner of the room, wedged into the corner of the black couch.
"Man, I'm hungry. Jonas, you want some pizza?" "Ah, no, I'm fine." "Right. There, I ordered some. You can have some." "Is it safe to leave here yet?" "Sure."
Exactly four minutes later, pizza was delivered to a spacious private lounge. It was appointed in royal purple and red and had a new car smell. The lounge did- the pizza was yellow and smelled like cheese.
Black Alice was slightly frazzled, black haired and green eyed. "Concerning your associate's actions, I must ask: WTF, mate?" "Well, ya know, he's an African." "He's white." "There are white Africans. So, ya know, they're not steady state and all. They don't follow, uh, the Code." "If, by the code, you mean common sense, I thought that everyone follows it because it's the most rational system and if you deviate it costs you money." "Right, well, we follow it here. Don't initiate force, life liberty and property, so on and so forth. And you're right, it's purely rational self interest to follow it. But they're not rational. Say you kill someone and take their car, you'll be executed by their insurance company or RDI or something. Or some vigilante will kill you and take the car and no one will care, cuz you're a murderer. But in Africa, there's no network coverage, so how would you get caught? And if everyone's guilty, and no one follows the code, then any retaliation can result in a bloodbath. Rational decisions require perfect information, so rational societies can only exist where there's extensive information technology." "I'm not buying your propaganda, but ok, what's the point?" "So when I found him, he was fighting in Thailand. This was two years ago. I didn't want to hire him, but my boss wanted him and Tyson wanted to come to America." "What the fuck is America?" Jonas wiped sauce from his lip and said, "It's the continent we live on." "Uh, yeah, but more specifically it's this center region between the Gulf and the Great Lakes. People over there call it that because there used to be a nation state here." "What-" "Don't worry about it. Point is, Betty's trying to catch him, which is kinda funny." "It's hilarious." "No, but see, he has no hardware and she's all hardware. It's like, social commentary."
Wed, 07 May 2008 01:27:13 -0500
I wish
I wish I could see the world that people live in. The world where Columbine, 9/11, and Jeremiah Wright are surprising. Where you don't see these things coming a mile away. Where every new threat is existential and must be overreacted to immediately, just like the last one.
I remember in the 90s, the problem was landfills and soil pollution and acid rain. What happened to them? They're probably still a bigger problem than Global Warming.
How on Earth can you be surprised by 9/11? I heard someone say "they blew up the world trade center" and the first thought that popped into my head was "Again?" The second thought was "Frickin Bin Laden."
The third thought was that it could be some elaborate ploy by the Chinese Army. Probably not.
Flying planes into buildings? First of all, I had the same idea. The Columbine shooters considered it. It was mentioned in some crazy pamphlet McVeigh had. It's not original. 7 years later, people think it was an unforeseen event, and they still think it was horrible.
Do you realize the intention was to knock the tower over sideways? No evacuation time and goodbye to 4 blocks of lesser buildings. 50000 dead, at least, plus the white house. We got off easy thanks to American Engineering (TM) and cell phones made in Taiwan. Also, they didn't have the A380 available.
Fortunately, with reinforced cockpits, no one will be able to stop the next hijacker who tries it.
In what dimension is Hillary a genuine person who brings hope? I find it unfathomable.
Why haven't any of the successors to C++ been adopted? For bonus giggles, check out Intel's new whitepaper on parallelization.
Felicity: The American Girl Movie or somesuch. It has a glaring flick flub: secular humanism. Yes, that's what 18th century Americans relied on in times of struggle. Way to fail, Hollywood.
50 years from now, old people will be listening to the Top 40 crap from today. Avril Lavigne will be a classic. Dynamite Hack and MC Lars will be down the memory hole. Millions of Gwen Stefani fans have never heard of No Doubt.
People still can't make ends meet. I live like a frickin KING on less than the average poor schlub makes. At least, I think so. Hot water every day, as much as I want. All the groceries I can eat. Thousands of years of culture, at my fingertips. Music on demand. And people are starving, trying to borrow enough money from EZCash or whatever to get something to eat at Starbucks.
Gas is so expensive that it's hard to go see the NASCAR races with your family.
Scientists are 1) Studying evolution 2) Trying to save the Giant Panda 3) Making sheeple and humanzees in test tubes 4) Researching new drugs to save the infirm and stop that damned evolution
What I've noticed is that we're fragmented into a number of cultures and subcultures, but we generally get along by being totally oblivious to our surroundings. We just interpret everything we hear as though it were we who said it.
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:30:02 -0500
Betty made it to the corner of the Quadrangle at 2214. The Quadrangle was a system of streets that comprised the most expensive real estate in the city, though recent years had seen it drop to more reasonable levels. This corner was an intersection like so many others, 200 meters or so from the bridge between Plaza 43 and Plaza 44.
The span was a grey wisp in the night sky. Betty ran toward it, eyes fixed on a tiny inky droplet that depended from its keystone.
The keystone was a plastic facade. The droplet was Alpha Point local.
As she watched, a puff of whiteness and a piercing synthetic drumbeat broke the haiku that was the droplet's eternal equipoise. It oh-so-slowly... dripped.
Betty stumbled to a stop. Bemused onlookers turned from her sweaty, heaving bosom to find what she was looking at. More than one neck popped, unused to tilting up.
Slowly- only .6 G, and against a kilometer backdrop, the faceted spheroid office building dropped toward streetlevel.
"Oh shimatta." Wha- OH FU trailed off in a stream of noise and 2600 baud.
Stoplights turned red. Traffic halted. A few pedestrians, then a mad rush stampeded away from the point of impact.
Eighteen seconds was long enough for most to escape serious injury.
It hit like a bomb, or an earthquake. It sank into the hollowed out skin of the city and buckled concrete in two separate waves. It fractured ten thousand windows. A front of debris like a dust storm whipped down the canyon, throwing laggards from their feet. It nicked exposed flesh. The building screamed its last so loudly that it was as if the whole city groaned in steel.
She watched the wandering rows of glass facets crush, successively, under the weight of the next. A fountain of hydrogen gas ejected upward, popping, flaming, raining pure water through the greasy air. Droplets struck her face, her 200 meters away. Her silky red dress whipped up in the sudden gale, revealing a silky red rounded butt. A water main burst, but that sprinkle was lost in the hulking devastation that settled, finally, five stories high, embedded in a sinkhole and a skyscraper's front.
"Oh. Oh. Oh Shilo." That's what ... I like to hear ... I got nothin. wow.
The field marshal exited the stairwell onto an observation platform lost in the night sky. Smog was thinner here, so thin that the gleam of satellites and planets could be seen overhead. He looked up at the sky for a moment. His grip almost loosened.
Not quite. He followed the curve of the platform around the tower until it opened up into a wide span, bridging two great towers. Not that great, he thought. The Elevator in Ecuador is bigger.
In the light of streetlamps that luminated the grand catwalk, twenty men with carbines stood side by side. They formed a wall of flesh and shiny new military gear that believed itself unbreachable. More were stationed in the service tunnels and ventricles below.
Tyson stood alone in the center of the causeway, 10 meters from the enemy line, gripping his nagamaki overhand. The blade dripped to his right, at thigh level. "Put down your weapon." Tyson put his right foot forward and raised the point. "PUT YOUR WEAPON DOWN NOW!" The speaker carried a bullhorn and stood behind the rank of riflemen. He was rattled, first by the situation, and second by the complete uselessness of the weapon he was demanding surrendered. Why, in the name of all that was holy, did he have to try to capture this nut? "Surrender now and live," Tyson said. "What?" "Surrender now and live." "No, you surrender. The exits are blocked. We want to discuss this peacefully." In our interrogation cell you filthy bastard. Tyson sniffed. "You may also retreat." "SURRENDER NOW! DROP YOUR WEAPON!" If the enemy demands your surrender, you have no need to surrender, he thought contemptuously. He pondered the situation and twisted the butt of the nagamaki another notch. "Why should I?" "Why- because it's better than dying! What the hell kind of question is that? The longer this goes on, the more likely one of my men gets twitchy and shoots your dumb ass!" On cue, one of the riflemen collapsed in a heap of bloody foam from the nose. His nearest neighbors turned to look, and then they too fell to the nerve agent. Tyson dove back into the shadows. "Shoot him!" Several men tried to follow orders. One managed a spritz in Tyson's general direction. A few turned and ran- one made it, by some chance, to the far tower and safety.
The rest, including the lieutenant with the bullhorn, collapsed into bleeding, writhing balls of agony. They had all been exposed by the time the first symptoms appeared. It was a fast acting agent, dispersed by a highly pressurized aerosol delivery system.
Chemical weapons are one of the few area weapons that, like blades, are silent. Tyson had cut down twenty men without a sound.
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:29:20 -0500
Her feet rolled on the pavement like a Masai tribeswoman's, spraying dust and gravel when she turned the next corner. The deserted jetstream district with its 30 story zoning limit had changed into Uptown, with its incredible concrete canyons. People became more numerous - at ten, many were leaving home for the city nightlife.
They stared at the red and peach streak that covered decameters per second. Rocks and bits of bits embedded insensibly in her feet. The occasional red drops splatted from her shredded right hand.
A car's lights flashed over a bump- she leapt from the curb and kept running on the other side of the street.
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:43:15 -0500
In a black space that extended to infinity, a space with no real physical dimensions, a dozen constellations were under attack.
Shilo moved his fingers, fingers that he didn't really have, but it seemed futile. Eight golden rings surrounded him. Sigils spun through space of their own accord with every flicker of his eyes. They fixed flickering flowcharts as fast as the universe dissolved, but the swirling debris told a tale of vast destruction. Seventeen color codes represented the seventeen estimated opposition hackers. Streams of gibberish issued forth in seventeen- eighteen- colors to dash and deflect against logical constructs of sublime beauty. One font of bits, a lovely teal, was swallowed whole by the Riemann function.
Shilo's army was invincible. Twenty infuriated godlets surrounded him. Slowly, they had been gaining on the data streams that constituted supply lines. Slowly, they broke each new encoding faster than a new one could be implemented.
Then they stopped. At fourteen seconds, fifteen, his code stood. Subterfuge? No.
2 concussions, one ruined hand, and an old man dead of a heart attack. The survivors were marketers, schmoozers, up and comers who knew people who knew people. Their survival would be more destructive to the organization than their loss.
On the 301st floor, he destroyed a number of servers. Their databanks he carelessly released into the wild. They represented the entire codebreaking apparatus of the city's security forces. The lost business ran into 9 digits.
The server farm was dark, and now silent. Four large boxes lay torn and charred. The front door hissed open, spilling light. "I don't know, they all went offline five minutes ago! Yes." A man followed an older woman into the darkness. They paused, unbalanced when the lights failed to come on. "Could it be a power outage?" Tyson stepped out of the shadows to their rear and pierced the man's neck with his nagamaki. The blade's tip issued cleanly from the man's Adam's apple, like a lancet. It sliced its way out.
"Then find him and tell him to come back." I can't. "You can find anyone." I can correlate every sensor in the city and extract data. I can home in on the implants in your skull. But I can't find Tyson for one simple reason. We're breathless with anticipation. Shut up, Alice. It's because he doesn't have any electronics.He doesn't have so much as a filling. And he's like a cat. He can see the network blind spots. "How?" It's.. look, we know where he's going. That's not the problem. If you think you can physically stop him, please try. "Iku." Betty, no. Someone else try to stop him. "Try?" "Iku."
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:00:50 -0500
Tyson bailed out of an unmarked white van at a rear entrance to Plaza 43. Kelly closed the door remotely, concealing a pile of black and grey, and drove away bewildered.
Tyson didn't care. He popped open the exterior door with a crowbar- an elegant tool from a more civilized age- and tossed it in a dumpster. He entered a disused stairwell.
On the 300th floor, a white haired man was cracked across the back of the skull and fell unconscious. The office was empty now but for a back room. Five men watched a presentation of Alpha Point's new marketing campaign. Charts and figures hovered above the table they surrounded.
The door opened. Bryant turned to speak but found a black, varnished piece of wood in his solar plexus. Tyson spun the other end to smack the presenter's temple. Both men crumpled. Tyson lifted the meter of wood and brought it down "What are-" on the soft spot of a third skull. The two businessmen on the other side of the table glanced at each other. One began to draw a pistol, but Tyson swept the stick across the table and unleashed a 90 cm blade through the man's hand. He brought it back and grasped the handle like a staff. The blade sheened like oil. "Uh"
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:34:25 -0500
They sat, once again, in a circle around the office.
"I don't see how we can trust somebody who calls himself Maniac. Obsessive." Daniel said, "I agree. Look at the way he tried to kill off Tyson. He's a hack." Tyson was silent. His scars had gained another layer, but it was barely noticeable. Moe had called it 'distinguished.' The boss said, "Doesn't matter. We have no choice but to go along with him."
Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:56:39 -0500
WHAT did she say? The morlocks flinched under the sudden demand. It hit them all at once. "Uh, Central-" She said Tyson would counterattack? "Shy-kun, that's his job, to plan the coun-" You know that tiger tattoo on his back? "No" Why did we have to hire The stream ended abruptly. "Shilo? Shilo!" What? "You scared me." You should be scared, we've got a PTSD soldier running around the city. Moe started to shake in Daniel's arms. He wrinkled his nose and interjected, "So what's the problem?" I can't even explain it. He follows a different philosophy of life. Africa isn't like here. And these glorified mall cops that hit us are nothing NOTHING like the kids in Africa.
Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:26:21 -0500
