I’d really like to buy some real estate this winter if the price gets right, but it’s a nervous time since prices appear to be on the way down for at least another several months and as I see it could fall or stay low for the next few years, even indefinitely if global tensions and US spending continue at the current levels. This article suggests some really good deals in housing, though I think I’ll stick to the local market I know a lot better than these.
Richard Branson, in this Forbes article, does a fine job of articulating how and why entrepreneurial capitalism and social responsibility can work together in vibrant ways. Branson recently pledged to give *all profits* from his tranportation companies to projects that are working to alleviate global warming. Although I’d rather see the money go to global health initiatives it’s admirable and exciting to see how socially proactive the “super rich” like Branson, Gates, and Buffett have become. In fact it almost seems to be “infectious” which bodes well for a world desparately in need of innovative thinking combined with big money to fund clever projects.
I’d like to see a study of what may be a natural tension when Governments do a “really good job” at eliminating significant problems because it puts bureaucrats out of work and shrinks budgets. Could this help explain why governments often seem to spend so much and accomplish so little when it comes to solving significant problems?
Thanks Overstock.com ! I wanted to get my parents a memory foam mattress topper and Overstock continues to have great prices – $79 for 2″ foam. This is about half the (otherwise good) Costco price for similar stuff. Surfing around for more items I bumped into a 1G mem card for my Treo 650 at $26, also about half the going “good” price. Free shipping made it a no brainer but then I realized “hey, there might be promo discounts” and a quick google search got me a link to an extra 15% off, which was very nicely tagged onto my existing shopping cart after visiting the (Overstock created?) coupon site.
There is a lot of blame going around the world these days. I think it would be helpful if people blaming others for a problem would first define the problem and then assign blame to all the parties involved, with the total blame equalling 100%. The conflicts in the Middle east come to mind as an area where this might be helpful. If a car bomb planted by insurgents kills 100 people how do you rationally allocate the responsibility? I see all the following parties as having at least a measure of responsibility:
The insurgent bombers themselves
The insurgency who helped the bombers
Iraqi govt security forces (for failing to protect)
USA Govt military (for helping to destabilize the region)
Foreign funders of insurgency
Iraq citizens who support insurgency
US Citizens (for funding the inital conflict)
A reasonable list goes on for some time, though I wonder if you could simplify things by grouping political allies and adversaries? At first this excercise seems somewhat futile, but I think it forces people to address issues that are usually left off the table such as “how much responsibility does an individual have for their direct violent actions?”. I’d suggest that however you allocate responsibility you cannot rationally say the total is greater than 100%.
My working assumption is that people generally fall into two camps on this – one that says individuals have a lot of control over themselves and therefore bear most of the responsibility for their actions. The other group suggests people’s actions are best viewed as the product of complicated forces that are usually out of the individual’s control. These folks look at individual behavior more forgivingly and see societies as responsible for problems far more than individuals.
In the USA, and even internationally I think, individual accountability people tend to be politically conservative while society accountability people tend to be liberal.
I didn’t realize how specialized glasses had become. There are computer glasses for people who spend a lot of time at the computer, which appear to be a form of progressive bifocal like the ones I have now. The anti reflective coating on these ise delaminating and it’s driving me nuts but I have not had time to take them in. I didn’t realize what it was at first, thinking it was paint or some other residue stuck on the lens. But it’s a coating that is degenerating, causing fuzzy spots on the lens.
I think it’s time to try the computer lenses since I’m at the box 8 or so hours per day.
Today there is a great article in the online edition of Time magazine about how irrationally we process risks in our daily lives. I just wish they’d also point out that the extension of this mathematical ignorance, combined with religious intolerance, can account for most if not virtually all of the most pressing global problems.
We are stupid beings. The recognition of that fact brings us much closer to a measure of salvation and solutions.
Hey Matt, I think I’m becoming a WordPress Blog Evangelist. I’m telling everybody with anything to say to get a WP blog going ASAP. Oddly (or not?) they all want their hand held while setting it up rather than just logging on and following the excellent directions and support here (there?) at WordPress.
The good news is that while blogging in many technology sectors is going strong now, in travel (in fact in almost all of the non-tech sectors) I think blogging has not even reached that powerful upward inflection point.
Thus my dream of creating a huge, unstructured global travel blogging network is still attainable. In fact wouldn’t it be neat if people started getting specific travel advice from local bloggers who they’d then take out to dinner to say “thanks!”. Friendships would blossom, tourism would bring prosperity to every corner of the globe, and we’d have world peace through blogging. (insert violin holiday music here)
This note from the China Venture News:
… nearly 75 percent of Chinese employees would prefer to work for wholly-owned foreign companies rather than joint ventures companies and wholly-owned Chinese companies according to Manpower research.
Lenin is often quoted as suggesting that capitalists would sell to communists the rope the communists would use to hang them. Sorry Vladimir but you had it pretty much backwards. Communism in both Russia and China is in the process of evolving into a new form of capitalism, and the workers of the world are uniting with … us (aka the capitalists), preferring the stability of US capitalism to the challenges of neo-capitalist communism.
There goes the neighborhood Mr. Lenin dude!
This is Jabberwacky, winner of the top Artificial Intelligence award.
More artificial intelligence bots are at this AI link, showcasing several programs that are designed to communicate as a human would communicate.
While Jabberwacky makes extensive use of user input to create it’s answers, most of those at the other link are based on A.L.I.C.E., a remarkable chatbot program that often fares well in Turing Test competitions, though no computer has yet to pass the Turing Test which suggests that a skilled judge’s inability to distinguish an artificial intelligence from a human one will be a key milestone in computing. I’d guess this is only a few years away, though computer consciousness appears a more elusive goal with most experts estimating the date of that milestone to be around 2020.
Ian notes the limitations of these ALICE bots in the comments below, and at his blog suggests a Googley alternative that would take Google query info and embed it in a conversational style to pass Turing.
The Las Vegas to Minnesota to home trip had two big “educational” highlights. The first was the Tropicana’s Bodies Exhibition in Las Vegas which showcases human bodies preserved using an advanced technique of injection and plastination. A similar exhibit called “Body Worlds” is touring many major cities and I’ve since learned that Body Worlds is actually the first such exhibit, with other copycat (or CopyHuman) exhibitions like the one I saw in Vegas. Nonetheless it was a fantastic exhibit, gazing as you did into dozens of hearts, brains, and bodies of amazingly preserved human cadavers.
The circulation system, injected and illuminated in all it’s full body glory, was the most stunning of the exhibits for me. Like a giant plant the arteries and veins extended throughout the body.
However in terms of intrigue I simply can’t get the little 3 pound brain exhibit out of my head. Or maybe I should say it’s so clear that you really CAN separate the 3 pound brain from the rest of the body. It would not work for long without the bodies supportive mechanisms but it’s reasonable to assert that it’s that little 3 pound organic computing mechanism where we find so much of the stuff that makes it fun to be a human.
Coming as I had from an Internet conference and very computerized sensibilities, it struck me how this little blob held all the answers to science’s elusive and exciting goal of conscious computing, or the creation of an artificial intellect that is aware of it’s own existence.
I’m using my own conscious computing mechanism to suggest that the debate over differences between our own brain and mechanized intelligences will eventually prove to be almost irrelevant to the issue of “consciousness”.
Clearly our organic computing mechanism, the brain, brings a lot more to the table than the current crop of silicon bretheren, but equally clearly the silicon versions have surpassed us in many respects such as mathematical computation, chess, etc, etc. In fact it’s hard to think of highly structured “intellectual” activity where computers can’t outshine humans. I’d predict that this superiority will increasingly move into the realms of arts, literature, and other abstract endeavors.
Joe Duck 