Just got back from A Table For Olympia, a chance to share time, food, and conversation with folks, potluck style. 'Twas nice, and I hope we have more in the future.
The Olympia Free Choir, singing.
The man who set it up: Mathias Eichler, proprietor of ein mal eins, Twitter guru, and all around good guy.
From one of the many photographic vantage points near the Rim Visitor Center.
Lingering snow + pesky mosquitoes = Picnic Hell.
A dead tree helpfully points to a cinder cone called Wizard Island.
Afternoon rain.
Hypnotic and meditative and multifaceted, there is no blue quite like the blue of Crater Lake.
The following is written by guest blogger T. Richard "Rich" O'Dynia, a licensed scalp exorcist. Names have been removed to preserve privacy.
He entered my office sullenly and slumped in the chair. A young man of about twenty, he wore a black leather jacket and a Yankees cap pulled low. At first I thought it was to hide his eyes--as if to say, "I know I am wearing a Yankees cap, and am ashamed"--but then I saw the telltale tufts around his ears, the tiny flakes on his shoulders. Signs of a man with scalp trouble.
Demonic scalp trouble, it turned out.
He had been flirting with the occult--more specifically, a cute clerk at a game store called Wizards of Wisconsin. She lured him into a den of role-playing demonic influences, and within weeks, the formerly goldy-locked, confident college student was a wreck, a dandruff-ridden, balding chump.
He tried specialty shampoos and scalp treatments to no avail. He might have been lost forever to the darkness, but, by coincidence--divine coincidence, you can be sure--he saw my business card in the win-a-free-lunch jar of the Applebee's where he worked.
Before I continue his tale of possession and redemption, let me share a word about spiritual warfare. You have to understand that malevolent spirits, or demons, try constantly to crack the defenses of the soul. Sometimes they use the direct approach, assaulting the mind while it slumbers. For instance, last week I counseled a young woman who dreamed that Ashton Kutcher was able to travel in time and attempt to undo the mistakes of the past, ironically only making them worse, something to do with chaos theory or somesuch. It was an horrific nightmare, and I am still shaking from merely recounting it here secondhand.
In other cases, when the direct approach fails, demons assault the body, hoping to destroy one's dignity. Scalp demons are like this: demons of dandruff, demons of dermatitis, demons of head lice, demons of the combover.
No Hair Club for Men can stop scalp demons. No shampoo or medical treatment can blunt their spiritual attack. Instead, the victim must visit a professionally trained and spiritually ordained scalp exorcist, a person who is prepared and licensed through Vatican correspondence courses and a lengthy internship.
So, what became of our demon-haunted lad? After five arduous hours of exorcism and a weeklong fast, I am happy to report that the spirits were banished, and his scalp returned to its former glow. Gone are the tufts and flakes of tragedy and failure, replaced with the golden locks of God's grace.
But every day I continue to pray for him. He still roots for the Yankees.
[164th in a series]
Memristors, a fairly recent discovery that I've blogged about twice previously, get the long form treatment in NewScientist.
To Chua, this all points to a home truth. Despite years of effort, attempts to build an electronic intelligence that can mimic the awesome power of a brain have seen little success. And that might be simply because we were lacking the crucial electronic components - memristors.You'll have to read the article to figure out how slime molds fit in--and then judge for yourself whether this new technology will lead to a breakthrough in artificial intelligence.
So now we've found them, might a new era in artificial intelligence be at hand? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency certainly thinks so. DARPA is a US Department of Defense outfit with a strong record in backing high-risk, high-pay-off projects - things like the internet. In April last year, it announced the Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics Program, SyNAPSE for short, to create "electronic neuromorphic machine technology that is scalable to biological levels".
Williams's team from Hewlett-Packard is heavily involved. Late last year, in an obscure US Department of Energy publication called SciDAC Review, his colleague Greg Snider set out how a memristor-based chip might be wired up to test more complex models of synapses. He points out that in the human cortex synapses are packed at a density of about 1010 per square centimetre, whereas today's microprocessors only manage densities 10 times less. "That is one important reason intelligent machines are not yet walking around on the street," he says.
Lava Butte, part of the Newberry National Volcanic Monument, is accessible only with a special half-hour parking permit attained at the Lava Lands Visitor Center registration booth, where one is adjured to watch the 15-minute introductory video before departing for the butte. (Did you know that geology is an ongoing process? Crazy!)
The view from the top, looking down into the landscaping rock collection bowl.
Looking back from the trail, wistfully.
A foolish, foolish tree.
I spent this year's Fourth of July with some of my favorite people at one of my favorite places, Oregon's Fort Rock. From our campsite at La Pine State Park, in two cars, eight family members rode roughly fifty miles in late morning sunshine, ready for a hike in the heat at the geological oddity that rises out of the desert like a... fort. As you can see.
While I was scouting a route up the right side--and not finding one amenable to the less daring / foolish members of the group--others hiked around the base. 
A pocket gopher makes a rare appearance atop the formation.
The lizard asked if I was going to blog the photo, and I said not if he didn't want to, and he shrugged and said no biggie.
Triumph.
If you're into the easy way, when you start up the trail to the interior, head left toward the path you can see snaking up the side. If you're into the hard way, good on you. You're gonna love Fort Rock.
I just spent five days camping in Oregon, casting aside the blog and email and Twitter, embracing nature and family and hours of driving. Beside photos, which will arrive soon, I have memories, a farmer's tan, and assorted mosquito bites.
I came back to civilization to learn that the Mariners traded (trod?) water, Sarah Palin resigned (?!), and Steve McNair and Karl Malden passed on. And that, mostly, the world without me is still the world.
Shh. Taking a little break. Back soon.
(Not sure what to do? Look right. Archives. Links. So much time to waste, and so many ways to waste it.)
Son: "Daddy's home!"
Mom: "Thank goodness. I thought he had died at work again."
During the past few weeks, two feline scrappers have been battling for control of our apartment complex. One, a skittish orange cat, skulks in the bushes near the doorway. Its rival, a charcoal stray, apparently bested it in combat this morning, by the color of the tufts remaining on our welcome mat.
I have been attempting to teach the cats nonviolent communication techniques, to limited effect.
Dear Lacey Timberland Library,
This morning I was sad to see that you've taken away the biggest nerd-magnet in the library, the New Non-Fiction Shelf, and replaced it with... nothing. As a reference librarian somewhat wistfully explained to me, new nonfiction is now shelved among the old, and marked with a tiny orange sticker, so if you're wondering what's fresh in the Dewey decimals, you have to take a largely random stroll through countless stacks. That's inefficient, inelegant, and inconvenient.
But I'm not going to complain without offering a solution. If the old way is forever gone, at least offer an easy access point, in the library and on the website, to new materials. One easily found link--"What's New in Your Library!"--connected to data particularized for a preferred location, and, most important, on the front page, not buried three nonintuitive clicks in. (The RSS-enabled "new nonfiction" list is a step in the right direction, but isn't sortable by library.)
And how about a low-tech supplement: print a list of new books every month, and place it near the nonfiction shelves.
I'll stop there. Free advice is best given in small doses, right?
Your long-time, otherwise satisfied patron,
Jim
Nick Bostrom's "simulation argument" just got a little more plausible.
The computing power that is now available makes it feasible to simulate physical processes from the smallest scale upwards, rather than trying to approximate their overall effect.Click through and watch the video to see the improved physics in action.
For example, when computer scientist Jonathan Kaldor at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, wanted to create virtual fabrics better those that had gone before he did something unthinkable just a few years ago. "We decided to start from the [individual] yarns. It sounds crazy but it actually works."
Knitting garments like socks and scarves from virtual wool modelled on real-world yarn gives results that stretch and deform realistically no matter how close up the view. The results could also be used with a haptic interface to provide the feel of fabric.
To add further realism, the team now plans to simulate the fuzz on the surface of each piece of yarn that adds friction between threads.
Second in a series of previews of the potential LD resolutions for 2009-2010.
It's nice to see science getting some play in the world of LD, which is why I hope the immunization resolution gets selected for next season.
Resolved: Public health concerns justify compulsory immunization .Scientists and public health officials get frustrated, even angry, by vaccine dissenters, a small, but increasingly vocal minority. After all, the argument runs, vaccinations have undoubtedly saved millions of lives since their inception. The risks are minimal; the benefits massive. Besides, without compulsion--without the greatest possible protection of the population--those benefits aren't seen.
John Stuart Mill in On Liberty wrote that “The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.” This thesis has become known as the harm principle. The Immunization Advisory Committee endorsed the harm principle and interpreted it to mean that vaccine mandates are justifiable when without them:The crucial thing about communicable disease is that it requires no agency on the part of its victims. Innocents are vectors, too.
• An individual’s decision could place others health in jeopardy
• The state’s economic interests could be threatened by the costs of care for vaccine preventable illness, related disability or death and for the cost of managing vaccine preventable disease outbreaks
• The state’s duty of educating children could be compromised
The digital era has finally arrived--for debate judges. Jeffrey Miller of Georgia Forensics throws down the gauntlet:
When Brandon & I started this website two years ago we had one main goal, we were set on building community and supporting free, open knowledge. I’m taking this one step farther by challenging the judging community across the nation, not just in Georgia, to become better teachers and more responsible judges.So far, three other judges have signed on.
I challenge judges to use some type of website (wikispace, wordpress, blogspot, etc) and post a DETAILED ballot of every round you judge.
The idea was inspired by Michael Antonucci, Lexington & Georgetown Univ. debate coach, last year. He began a blogspot to record all of his ballots & decisions.
In about five minutes, the 45 will reach CHS, taking me downtown to Les Schwab, where the wife's Mazda is getting new tires and an alignment. Today I've spent four hours at the school, closing the book on spring '09, learning the last bits of trivia for my new job as Department Coordinator, and cleaning up the mountains of detritus in my classroom.
Summer is about three minutes from really, truly commencing.
Feels pretty good.
Update: Free wi-fi at the downtown Les Schwab. Car to be done at 3:30? Take your time, gents...
Brooke Greenberg is sixteen years old. In a way. Due to a yet-unknown series of genetic (and maybe epigenetic) factors, she is an infant; her development is, in a word, "disorganized." Andy Coghlan of NewScientist explains:
When Walker and his colleagues sequenced Brooke's DNA, they found that the genes associated with the premature-ageing diseases were normal, unlike the mutated versions in patients with Werner's Syndrome and progeria. "That was the first thing we looked at," he said.An incredible, existentially baffling case.
Nor does the analysis support the idea that Brooke is somehow "frozen-in-time", in perpetual infanthood. Instead, Walker and colleagues found that different parts of her body and anatomy are maturing at different rates.
"I think she has differential growth of her body," says Walker. "It's not growing like a unified organism, but in fragmented parts."
Her brain, for example, is scarcely more mature than that of a newborn infant. Although she can recognise her mother and make gestures and noises to articulate her wishes, she can't talk.
Yet her bones – although still abnormally short – are around 10 years old, as determined by the maturity of the cells and structures. And despite being a teenager, she still has her baby teeth, with an estimated developmental age of about eight years....
Walker thinks that Brooke is the first recorded case of what he describes as "developmental disorganization". His hypothesis is that the cause is disruption of an as-yet unidentified gene, or genes, that hold the key to ageing by orchestrating how an organism matures to adulthood, reproduces, then gradually ages and dies.
First in a series of previews of the potential LD resolutions for 2009-2010.
One of the potential LD resolutions for 2009-2010 offers a good balance of ethics, history, and international relations.
Resolved: It is just for highly indebted poor countries to repudiate their debt.What counts as a "highly indebted poor country?"* As the World Bank explains, an HIPC must face an
...unsustainable debt situation after the full application of the traditional debt relief mechanisms (such as the application of Naples terms under the Paris Club agreement). A country's debt level is considered unsustainable if debt-to-export levels are above a fixed ratio of 150 percent; or, where countries have very open economies where the exclusive reliance on external indicators may not adequately reflect the fiscal burden of external debt the debt-to-government revenues are above of 250 percent [sic].(The Paris Club's website offers an alternative summary and history of the program.) "Repudiating" debt means refusing to pay it off; in the larger sense, the term includes a wider connotation of a failure to recognize the rightness or truth of a situation.
3 a: to refuse to accept ; especially : to reject as unauthorized or as having no binding forceThus, the resolution requires the affirmative to argue that refusing to pay off one's international creditors is, in fact, just.b: to reject as untrue or unjust 4: to refuse to acknowledge or pay
It is precisely the drying up of future public credit that constitutes one of the main arguments for repudiation, for it means beneficially drying up a major channel for the wasteful destruction of the savings of the public. What we want is abundant savings and investment in private enterprises, and a lean, austere, low-budget, minimal government. The people and the economy can only wax fat and prosperous when their government is starved and puny.What arguments for repudiation are you considering? And what's an appropriate response for the Negative? Get your summer LD fix in the comments.
At least, the marriages allegedly arranged by a Northwest restaurateur.
The owner of a chain of popular Thai restaurants in the Seattle area has been indicted on charges she paid her workers tens of thousands of dollars to enter into sham marriages with her relatives, allowing them to stay in the U.S.Gerard Depardieu, what hast thou wrought?
Varee Bradford, who operates five Thai Ginger restaurants in Seattle, Redmond, Issaquah and Bellevue, was arrested Tuesday on charges of immigration fraud conspiracy and three counts of immigration document fraud. She was released on personal recognizance Tuesday afternoon after making an initial appearance in U.S. District Court.
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