Also, to people who have studied linguistics, is there a name for that "it is" idiomatic construct?

This reminds me of that old LISP joke: "State-of-the-universe-p?" "Yes, the universe has a state"...]]> http://blog.dachte.org/pound/blog/dachte/entries/entry1210447781.html Deeper Desire for the Pen Pat Gunn 2008-05-10T19:29:41Z As I mentioned on a poll on the LJ side of my blog (maybe I should add poll support to pound?), I don't mind editing out parts of songs that I don't like, from surrounding bits to entire interludes. If I don't like a drum solo, and can manage to remove it while having the music still flow, then I will, although that's tricky. I understand the argument for artistic integrity, having had that discussion many years ago when I was dating an artist, but understanding the position doesn't mean agreeing with it. This morning I woke up and realised, after putting on music that I've been listening to a lot in my head recently, how much I want to be able to add in the "missing voices" and other elaborations that happen to songs that I keep in my head. Apart from simple additions (that I could theoretically do by mixing in my playing of the "missing bits" on accordion and making a new ogg), what would it take to do more sophisticated editing of music? What would amazingly sophisticated software need to be able to do smoothly to allow this? A few tricky bits:

1. Auditory scene analysis - Software would need to be able to split a mixed audio stream perfectly and cleanly into a stream for each instrument type. More ideally, it could handle multiples of each instrument (e.g. human voice) and split them as well, interpolating when interference destroys information. There are all sorts of nice little clues that could be used to do this better. I wonder if in the end it could be done better if instruments were first recognised with a classifier and then used premade custom classifiers for common classifiers - distinguishing two people singing in a band would use different cues than two trombones (if sound quality is fantastic, imperfections in the tuning and shapes of instruments could be used on the latter... and the former would be a bad approach for when artists like Dokaka mix themselves in repeatedly..) I wonder if it would be doable to try to have the machine understand what's normally done with separate parts in a composition to aid in this process - I'm sure humans do it partly that way (although the "handing off" of the lead voice in songs like Bach's Double Violin Concerto might confuse this)
2. Understanding when voices have the lead voice, and when not how close they are in a kind of "accompaniment space" to it - the further they are the more flexibility there is in reworking them to accomodate the addition of other voices for embellishment. I have vague, handwavy ideas on how this might be done, although I suspect to really do a good job, one would either need to see this as a quantity that changes fluidly over time for each instrument or would vary as per the structure of the music (which would thus need to be recognised).
3. Understanding how accompaniment works and automatically generating suitable accompaniment. I've heard there's a Japanese piece of software that manages this task and produces a "band" to "play around" a single player. Has anyone tried this? How well does it work?

It almost might be easier to imagine trying to extract audio from someone constructing/remembering/improvising the music in their mind.

Yesterday's rain was glorious.]]> http://blog.dachte.org/pound/blog/dachte/entries/entry1210624922.html Warm Breeze Pat Gunn 2008-05-12T20:42:02Z An offer letter is on its way. If the salary/benefit details are appropriate, I'll have a job in SB soon. I'm a bit surprised that they didn't want me to do an in-person first (as they said they wanted when I first started talking with them). I suddenly have a lot to arrange. They want me there in 2 or 3 weeks, which will be a bit of an adventure to arrange (especially apartment-wise).

Moving details that's uninteresting unless you can give me advice on doing it better: I just got an estimate from PODS on moving costs if I go with them - it's about $6000, which is more than I'd like to spend (plus I'd need a permit in SB for the dropoff). I'll need to see if I can get a better deal by renting from U-Haul and driving there (any other moving advice is welcome).

Strategy:

• OMG I need a cat friendly-apartment in SB right now. @#$#@%$#%@
• Ship everything by media mail that I possibly can, as thanks to the Postal Service, it is very cheap
• Van/Truck trip for other things
• I am unsure if I should keep my Pgh apartment for a bit and fly back to finish moving/cleaning later or not.
• Moving the cats is another difficult matter - as far as I know, I cannot ship them (if anyone knows of a service that does this and makes sure they are fed and use litter and are otherwise taken care of during the journey, please let me know - note that were it not for the liability, this would be an interesting business idea), but they would also probably not handle well a van/truck ride across the entire country.
• It may be possible that I should combine the last two points, leaving the cats here (and finding a catsitter) for a week or two and then flying back to finish cleaning and taking them on a plane ride to SB.
• wonder if books weigh as much as a log by unit-volume

• Books: Media-mail. DVDs: Media-mail. Videocasettes: consider discarding. Can I download mpegs of everything I have on videocasette? If so, I don't need to bring the VCR/DVD-R.
• Foldup-futon: Leave or bring? I'll have to see if I can disassemble it. If not, LA (ugh) has an IKEA.
• Computers: It's time to get rid of the old stuff I don't use anymore. This leaves ideally my Linux laptop, my Windows laptop, my OLPC, my "TV" linux tower, the "TV", and some accessories. I might bring an older tower with me to get data off of some old hard drives. Maybe.
• Paintings, Microscope is delicate and will be schlepped with me
• Filing cabinets: ship or schlepp. I can replace the door that combines with them to make my desk there.
• Other furniture: Not sure if it's worth bringing or not - if so, schlepp.
• Snowboard: Not sure.
• Bike: Presently inclined to leave it and get a new one out there. If I'm going to bike to work, a hybrid would make more sense than a mountain bike. I plan to bike to work if humanly possible because I don't want to buy a car.
• That constitutes the bulk of my stuff - I have other stuff (like legos, stationary, gaming systems, etc) but nothing particularly hard to move or give away.

• Getting a reasonable cat-friendly apartment on short notice
• Getting this apartment ready to return to the landlord
• Strange taxes and fees that I've heard rumours about wrt living in California
• Cats
• Are there really no National City (bank) branches in Santa Barbara?

My cats sometimes try to guess my passwords when I am away. I am thus convinced that cats would make very good information security employees - their passwords, at the very least, are fantastic.]]> http://blog.dachte.org/pound/blog/dachte/entries/entry1210757126.html Translation Layers and Feminism Pat Gunn 2008-05-14T09:25:26Z A long time ago, as an undergrad, I took a variety of courses that exposed me to ideas that I've rejected-as-presented, some more-or-less entirely, some having acquired nuance enough that they no longer closely resemble what was taught. Highlight today: A set of ideas that I had the most careful exposure to in Philosophy of Art and one of the Women's Studies classes I took (both of which I quite enjoyed) but also heard a fair bit about during discussions with various groups on campus. The set of ideas: Feminist Science (and related topics).

The most bare intuition is that modern science, maths, and history are based on a perspective that is tied to male gender roles and certain ways of thinking that are traditionally tied to that. These means emphasise power, a singular notion of being right, certain ideas of progress, and a means of finding truth suitable towards singular study. The idea posed by the particular branch of feminism that explored this framework was that we needed to restart the building/sorting of knowledge to purge from it these western, masculinist ideas, from reworking our standards of epistemology to emphasise consensus and mutual respect to changing how academia works as a whole to be less competitive and more communal, with more of an outreach towards traditional, disadvantaged cultures (note that there are some branches of feminism that branch heavily enough into being anti-modern that they're as alien to enlightenment liberalism as they are to most forms of conservativism).

At the time, I found the idea really interesting, but wanted to see some substance to know both whether it was internally consistent and viable as a way to understand the world (nevermind that consistency is one of the values they said was overvalued). I had ideas of my own back then of purging science of the insufficiently logical/mathematical (relativism had not yet struck me, and I was within the Platonist spectrum - funny how that fell from me at the same time as philosophical Libertarianism), and seeing a radically different perspective calling for a similarly targeted purge piqued my interest. One of the examples they brought up as an example was Encyclopædia - looking through old encyclopædia, particularly those written before modern ideas of objectivity (any encyclopedia written before the 1920s should do - the 1911 Encyclopædia Brittanica, being now public domain, is a fine example), is typically racist, condemning of "sexual deviance", friendly towards colonisation, and visibly a product of an upper-class British sensibilities), shows a very heavy perspective embodied in the work. This is extended into modern times both by teaching how to deconstruct language in modern works to understand what perspectives hide beneath "objectivity" and by suggesting that objectivity itself is a problematic notion. The first, I thought then and still believe, is an invaluable skill, as language often unavoidably embeds a perspective. On the second, I am sympathetic to the idea they raised that objectivity in modern journalism and writing is "just a style", but I am not certain I can entirely agree - it seems that accompanying that style is a certain "gravity towards some perspectives" that, depending on the specific "objective writing", one is more likely to adopt, and that someone who is particularly skilled (I am not saying this skill is necessarily a good thing in this case) would thus be funnelled away from positions they might otherwise adopt. Beyond this, the application of these ideas is tricky when applied to some concepts. Math is its own field (and the meaning of maths has been debated for many years - Platonists have not yet been wiped out partly because some people arrive at positions in that spectrum with little or no urging from an organised intellectual current or works and partly because what maths "is" is not a simple matter) which would be challenging to re-base in the way they describe without destroying its function (although I believe radically different mathematical foundations that would be functional are possible). We might wonder what the harm is in having a system of maths that suggests a right answer, or methods that don't involve consensus-gathering every time we would use math. Applied to more directly empirical fields, this might take two directions - either we seek new consensus every time we are to use a framework of understanding or we are to seek a dialogue with all large civilisations to find a mutually acceptable framework that recognises the way different cultures have done things in the past. The first is not entirely out of line with the way academia works now - occasionally parts of academia spend some time existing the foundations of knowledge that current accepted theories operate "on top of". - presumably doing this more often is what they're calling for (I am being charitable here). Again being charitable, the latter suggests reconciling different approaches to knowledge among cultures that presumably have tackled the field/areas in question, and trying to learn from each. The problem with both of these is the nuance - my interpretations are too charitable in that the former would go against the idea of building systematic knowledge and make academia too cumbersome to be workable as a societal institution, while the latter suggests more than interdisciplinary, inter-framework inspiration - it suggests that other cultures are to be respected as an equal partner, regardless of the qualities of their approaches by any measures. From the perspective of someone interested in pursuit of knowledge, placing cultural respect ahead of evaluation by functional aspects is problematic.

Moving a bit further, I think some fields are more ripe than others for what this branch of feminism suggests. Fields like Economics deserve very close scrutiny for the values they suggest/have embedded in them (Marxists and Feminists are not the only group that have suggested this), and History is practically an empty field without some kind of perspective to organise the array of facts. Are the harder sciences the same? To a certain extent, yes, although the degree to which this framework is correct suggests more to me a disclaimer and philosophical awareness about the foundations of science than an alternate approach - presumably it would be enough to have educated people understand that science as a disipline makes certain choices in both its operational methods and goals, and that it makes many of these methods because they have chosen to work to bring about results, and that in theory it may lose out on understanding some things because of some foundational attitudes (like those laid out in Occam's Razor, or the bias against supernaturalism). Many of these foundations resemble the axioms in a system of maths for good reason, with the justifications for those axiomlike entities being arbitrary, more pragmatic than provable, or at least one among many possible ways to lay out a system. A position I'd like to put forth (but would have a tough time arguing for without trumpeting my value system and realising that others could argue from theirs just as effectively if they're careful and clever) is that intercultural respect is not a good foundation for epistemology, at least partly because it bridges two very different intellectual realms and also at least partly because it makes a system of epistemology much weaker at one of its primary goals - being able to support statements and frameworks that effectively cleave possibility so that they either are predictive or not predictive (there are other goals for a metatheory of epistemology, of course - more on that in a moment).

The claim that they make knowledge difficult or impossible is probably the best pragmatic argument against this branch of feminism, interpreted non-charitably - they have not produced anything noteworthy because their notion of what it means to gather knowledge is unworkable (or at least very cumbersome). Some of their ideas and tools (e.g. deconstruction, although it's a borrowed term) may bear examination for inspiration, but even beyond the value questions tied to mutual respect, they fail (so far, at least) the pragmatic test of being able to build something new if they should manage to tear down the old order.

While gathering my thoughts on this topic, I stumbled across someone else having bumped into those talking about feminist math. This reminded me of the importance of "translation layers" between different philosophies. I believe that while we may define for ourselves what ideas such as justice mean, we should still be able to talk sensibly with others who use the terms in radically different ways, attaching to the word as we use/hear it a reminder to reshape its meaning according to the nuances causing such terms to differ from our own notion of it. For some things there might not even be a native concept - in my Weltanschauung, for example, there is no notion of "sin", with the nearest concepts (maybe "harmful to the general public", "something one happens to feel shame for having done", and "betraying a trust) all being distant enough from each other and from what it means in many conceptions of Christianity that it doesn't directly translate, even though I may be able to act as a "translator"/facilitator between two people who have notions of sin that are suitably close to be made comprehensible with translation. In a sense, the more we get used to this concept, the more we realise that we're living in different intellectual worlds that are like Britain and America, "separated by a common language". We might likewise hear someone say "it is best to do X", and while we might cringe to hear an unqualified statement of the sort with its implications towards value absolutism (that is, neglecting to say "if we want to optimise values Y and Z, it is best to do X"), we could translate it by adding that qualifier. Is it proper to do so? It aids in understanding what others "would mean" if they really "got relativism" and had a proper understanding of how value frameworks (sometimes relativists would use this phrasing too though, either out of sloppiness or because it's assumed). It also avoids detouring a conversation into epistemology whenever something like this comes up. I wonder though if it's better to mention how one translates what they say into one's own phrasing with people one would become close with, both because it reveals more about one's own patterns of thought and because it may clear up some misunderstandings (which it might as easily cause though...). Returning to that blog, perhaps one can suggest to those suggesting feminism that they adopt a "translation routine" whereby they can understand answers to be impressions and that they are being asked for impressions that are build through a particular process taught in class and not their personal ones.

Note that this idea of translations has a troublesome relationship with an idea stressed by many branches of feminism that I like - not letting others solely controlling the framing/language of the discussion. Studying foreign languages helps loosen the tie between concept and phrasing, and restating arguments a few times often makes rhetoric fall apart if it lacks a strong inner consistency. If one is very good at this, is fairly skeptical, and is also good at translation of concepts, one doesn't need to worry too much about being pushed around in a discussion through use of terms (and one should, I think, get good at all of these as part of becoming well-educated). For public discourse/debate, at least given that most people do not carefully dissect incoming arguments, one needs to do better than understand how a concept translates into one's own mental environment - one must be able to take charge of the use of terms and framing of issues to create arguments and suggest ways of looking at issues that suggest one's conclusions (and this may even meet most standards of journalistic/writing neutrality, as would opposing well-written works). When to shift the terms and when to accept another person's terms for discussion is not always a simple choice.

My apologies for any spelling mistakes/poor grammar/poor style - this happened to pop into my head while I was going to bed.]]> http://blog.dachte.org/pound/blog/dachte/entries/entry1210792300.html Hobbits! Pat Gunn 2008-05-14T19:11:40Z Panicky search for a cat-friendly apartment in Santa Barbara turned up some amusing things, like an "apartment" that's very clearly a garage with a rug on the floor (sheesh!) and ... a "Hobbit House". I am very sad that the hobbit house is $5000/month and not in the right area to bike to work, but .. text and pictures saved for posterity/amusement:

Imaginative and multi-storied, this unique property is truly a “work of art”. Fondly referred to as “The Whale” or “The Hobbit House” it features 2 bedrooms and 2 ½ baths on several levels in the main house and a separate 1 bedroom loft with its own bath adjacent a large room that could be used in a variety of ways. A central elevator offers an alternative to the interior stairways. Custom fireplaces, a spa, and built-in couch are only a few of the additional features in this home. Completely secluded and surrounded by undulating walls, there is a lap pool and inner courtyard, in addition to the front entry patio. The home is available now for $5,000 per month, and includes pool service, elevator service and gardening. For more information about this unique property please contact REDACTED.

Hooray for eccentric house design. If only we could warp time and space to get this fountain nearby...]]> http://blog.dachte.org/pound/blog/dachte/entries/entry1210822531.html Dictionaryless Compression Pat Gunn 2008-05-15T03:35:31Z Morse code spells out every letter in a communication. It is possible to "play the odds" and win in English to make dictionaries or resolution trees (from Markov chains, for example) for compression - predictive mode in cellphones is an example of this (odd to think of it as compression for some people, but worth making that mental leap). Problem: both ease of decoding and universality of decoding - could we make either a nearly-universally useful compression dictionary for english (phonemes?) or have useful compression without a dictionary, operating under the extent that people be able to productively communicate with it with an hour or less of training/adaptation? An hour is not unreasonable given what people take to get good at predictive text entry, shorthand a slightly harder example. Can we do better than a syllabary-ish compression? (I've spent hours doodling on scratch paper ideas of a kana-like writing system that would be intuitive to people used to the english alphabet). I am convinced that a good way to live intellectual life is to leave behind piles of scribbles that leave people trying to understand them in alternating states of "wow", "wtf?", "I can't read this", and "ugh". I hope that someday someone will do that for me.

Second attempt at eating Med. Grill failed - again arrived when it was closing. It worked out ok though - ate at Aladdin's instead with some new company after forcing myself not to be shy. I still must have some sleek soon.

Much moreso than Columbus, I think I will miss Pittsburgh - apart from the cold, it's a wonderful town (even if takes some time and boldness to see the good parts), and if I ever find myself back here to start a family, I would not be disappointed. Boston and various parts of Europe are other possibilities. I doubt I'm settling down for good in Santa Barbara, but we'll see - if I decide to go to grad school or manage to establish a "life partner" relationship with someone are the most likely things that will next change my course in life. I think Squirrel Hill will hold a special place in my heart either way.

Starting to wrap up things here: saying goodbyes to people and places. Hopefully I can get my other hat before I go. Last meals and hangings out.. sigh. One goodbye today was accompanied by a hug, which practically reduced me to tears. Not sure if this means I don't get enough hugs or that it was unwise to get one. Human contact is .. a difficult issue for shy, reserved people, but I guess it's good to have more of it given how much of a longing for it I've had.

Moving preparations: renting a U-Haul for a long drive to SB is affordable. I am considering simply bringing the cats with me and trying to figure out how to make that work - flying them via petmoving services is ungodly-expensive (more expensive than flying back here to get them and flying them to SB), and they should be ok with a few days of travel. I hope. Packing goes ok. I need boxes. The plastic containers used to hold large amounts of cat litter are quite awesome for things that will fit in them though - they're indestructable, have nice handles, and stack well. It's sad to think how many probably end up in landfills.

I need someone willing to assume my lease in Pittsburgh. $500/month (does not include utilities), 1 bedroom, 1 living room, 1 kitchen, one bathroom, lower floor of a house with only a shared entryway, laundry in the basement with lots of storage down there, parking in back. Outside lighting is good, the windows are fairly large. It's right by the intersection of Bartlett and Murdoch, a reasonably short walk to campus or to the 61 buslines and a very quick walk to Schenley Park. Anyone interested? Beginning date is fairly flexible.

Another quizlike thing soon....]]> http://blog.dachte.org/pound/blog/dachte/entries/entry1210897358.html Universal Ambassadorship Pat Gunn 2008-05-16T00:22:38Z To be philosophically alone: easy to feel lost, lonely, even if one has a reasonably solid compass of one's own. Idea of community: some parts of community guard a set of posts that define a group, notion of heresy/wrong path allows notion of right path. Sometimes ingroup/outgroup needed - no "fellowship of people who eat food" as part of how we define ourselvess. These cultural guardians can take many forms and have varying levels of authority and topics they might mark as defining. Control over the name of a movement, especially those that are very old, is a difficult matter - because of the nature of gathering people around defining elements, variations on those elements spring up on theoretical matters just as much as variations on other community guidance matters spring up in the practical matter. This is as true for political or philosophical movements as it is for religious ones - just as the series of various Workers Internationals tended to form out of different practical or theoretical differences the workers movement took (the first International included Anarchists, Social Democrats, Marxist Communists, Christian Socialists, and various others, while later ones were more strongly dominated by varying strands of Communists, some violently opposed to each other. We can trace similar trends in Judaism, Christianity, and other faiths/philosophies/etc). In times past, the borders of a movement were guarded, to protect that definition and identity - a heretic can be more dangerous than an unbeliever because with both their overall alignment with the values of a community (she's a "good person, but...") and their claim to be a member of the community, they threaten the meanings the community gathers around with their areas of dissent. In times past, many people died for stepping over these bounds in ways the leaders of the community found threatening - those who fail to meet norms but still hold them may be hypocrates, but they don't threaten the ordering of society in ways that heretics do. "Thinking different", from this perspective, can be a much greater crime than "doing different" (perhaps Nietzsche would've been assasinated if he had made more headway during his life in the "writing new values on new tablets" he spoke of, and had not died so early - Nietzsche fell short of a death like Trotsky either through illness or having a difficult message for most people to digest).

Two tied trends I think are emerging with modern culture - illusionary consensus disintegrates, and all people are "ambassadors" for their group. It is not uncommon for people to overestimate the universality of values within their group (or, related but less problematic, for them to not consider other groups to be considered in the same group despite claims to the same name) - the "no true scotsman" idea is a silly definitional game, but, being a claimant to membership of both the spheres of liberalism and socialism, I can understand how it would be nice to disclaim a lot of movements and individuals in practice and have Liberal Socialism as an identity that would only include thise with positions I approve of (for example, I won't claim responsability for Stalin any more than a lot of Zionists would want to claim Deir Yassin or Americans today would claim slavery or the atrocities against the Amerindians in times past). How are things changing? As educational levels continue to improve, in many areas the value attached to "careful debate by scholars" lessens as casual debates take prominence - in some ways the results are unfortunate, sometimes fortunate. Rhetoric too easily takes the place of substance - having given some study to Islamic Jurisprudence, Rabbinic Responsa, and the American legal system has led me to be impressed with the very careful, structured thought present in each (standard disclaimer mostly for a certain person who shall remain nameless *wink*: I do not claim to be remotely expert in any of the three). Having this replaced by the rhetoric common in politics and common discourse would produce less learned, less consistent interpretations and other results. Once universal discourse becomes common enough, people grow used to discussing fundamentals of their faith and possibly being challenged in ways that will convince them to change, and in a pluralist society (for whatever field the value-identity in question covers - we could easily imagine a society pluralist in political ideology but not faith, or vice versa) they may find themselves "ambassadors" for their group if they regularly associate with people from other groups or ungrouped people. I have never been Christian, and never been meaningfully theist, and I've heard enough from Christians, Judaists, Buddhists, Muslims, and other groups over the years where they claim something is true for their entire group, where others were different and sometimes claimed as universal something different, whether claiming it as a defining aspect of thir group or not. I believe the increased prevalence of this, as well as discourse on values not commonly part of a system, will eventually loosen our feelings of common-value community - a simple question about who accepts intellectual property in a crowded rooms can, for example, be very surprising for everyone there. Do we need this consensus for emotional stability?

I've already seen some interesting examples of this butting of heads with Christians, as not all hold the Nicene Creed, with routine condemnation of non-Zionist or anti-Zionist movements in Jewish culture, and with dialogue between Sunni and Shi'a led by members of the faith in religiously pluralist societies.

I wonder what the long-term effects of American and Canadian Islam will be, and what factors tend to create integrated faith as opposed to separatist faith - leaving aside the (still interesting) question of whether integration is inherently or tempting of heresy, comparison of various groups that have a similar divide that are similar may be enlightening, even though such a divide is not always binary - the Haredi, the Amish who have not turned their way of living into a circus attraction, various communes (some kibbutzim in Israel too). Management of identity, values/meaning, and how various kinds of pluralism challenge that will be increasingly important in times to come. For those of us with some sets of ideas ideas that we hold as philosophically universalist (that we would like to see everyone adopt), there are obvious conflicts with other sets of ideas that are universalist on the same topics and different in content. Some would call this arrogant, but just like those who use the term "fascist" to describe anything that falls outside of an interpretation of American political philosophy that is libertene, naïve, and idealised, it is in the nature of philosophies and other groupings of ideas to hold some to be universalist. It is natural that Muslims would prefer a Muslim world, Christians a Christian one, Philosophical Capitalists a Capitalist one, and Socialists a Socialist one, even if there is disagreement over acceptable paths towards any of these - as much as it irks me to hear Christians talk about missionary work and hoping to "plant their faith" everywhere, it makes sense that if they really hold to the christian notions of redemption and sin, it strongly follows from that that they would want that.

Is it more the technology or the social changes that lead to the increased difficulty with Kafir? How is modern Jurisprudence related?

In other news:

• For now, gays can marry again in California. How long this will last and how the upcoming US presidential election will be affected remains to be seen. It's too early to celebrate, I think.
• Lebanon is again not far from another possible civil war, as fighting has flared up between Hezbollah, Druze, and government forces. A rare confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran over each's objectives in the region involves both the ideas of form of government (Iran's present foreign policy supports Hezbollah in the hopes that if it wins, an Islamic Republic will be established, while Lebanon is presently a republic with some institutions reminiscent of the Ottoman Millet system, with reserved positions for various recognised minorities) and faith (as Hezbollah, with consistent support of Iran, has made Shiite Islam into a major force in Lebanon). Saudi Arabia's interests have usually followed from a more pragmatic, state-moderated model of culture, hence their strong support for most monarchies and other strong leaders instead of "puritan movements" (compare their relations with Egypt versus those with the Muslim Brotherhood, for example).
• Chávez seems to intent on rivalling BushJr in making stupid statements on the international stages, having recently called a former PM of Spain a Fascist (prompting the King of Spain to tell him to "shut up"), calling Chancellor Angela Merklel a political descendant of Hitler, and having recently crossed himself and talking about his Christian faith at a speech in a public event in Saudi Arabia (the last is more "not prudent" than disturbing, as the practice of other religions is a very sensitive matter in SA).
• For those of us interested in "new media"'s effects on politics, this discussion between Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart on how Stewart's show affects politics. For a discussion involving O'Reilly, it's pretty reasoned and non-shouty. Stewart still seems a little dodgy about the effects of his program on culture, but less so than in some of his other interviews on the topic. Is Stewart in fact an element (albeit in an unexpected form) of Al Gore's hoped-for liberal news network?
• McCain has both angered ostrich Republicans and liberals by talking about his plan for pollution credits to fight global warming. He might get a similar reception if he talked about "corruption credits" or "murder credits" to deal with crime - some folk (particularly the corrupt) would refuse to accept that corruption or murder even exist, while others (like myself) believe that taking big strides against both of them is important even while we recognise that enforcing anything has an interplay with a lot of other values. Money, we hold, is at best a poor measure for the general public good, and comprimises involving the environment should instead be made by a more careful, managerial approach that attempts to directly measure the public good and weigh it against the environmental good. I hold that Cato's products on the value of happiness as measured by the market is wrong-headed.
• Ivan Kristíc thinks the OLPC Foundation is messed up both in their current direction and their past one - he criticises both Negroponte's intent to ship Windows (in what will eventually likely be a fairly stock version) on future versions of it and members of the Free Software community for caring so much that it be as open as possible. I agree with the former - shipping Windows on the OLPC is giving up on the goals of the device - being a better learning tool. However, I don't agree with his criticism that the OS is unimportant - connecting education to the open source movement is actually a good connection for learning - our community is in fact based around openness, and as open a software stack as possible leads to systems that are more possible to learn/modify on the deepest levels (it is easier to understand X11 or the Linux kernel than the Windows GDI layer or Windows kernel architecture). The abiliy to have local experts on various topics and levels should not rely on a Microsoft presence in the area, and the more decentralised the software model (Linux's being highly decentralised, at least beneath the "Sugar" UI on the OLPC), the more easily expertise is attainable. Unfortunately, Sugar is not in many people's hands outside of OLPC developers - that needs to change somehow. (speaking of which, I upgraded my OLPC to the latest "joyride" snapshot (very bleeding-edge branch of the OS), and it's much improved.
• Slavoj Žižek had a fantastic interview with Democracy Now on large-scale politics. He's one of my favourite modern-day philosophers, and brings up a number of issues with the modern left here, asking it to reinvent itself, rehabilitate taboo ideas, and make a break with the multiculturalist liberals. Of political philosophers and figures around today, I probably identify most strongly with his positions (I will not claim the same about his ideas on philosophical areas outside of social theory/political philosophy, some of which I am not even sure I understand).

A bit more on that front, how long should we expect movies, as-is, to keep existing? I suspect that the software to produce hollywood special effects will eventually be in everyone's hands, and that indie films will destroy Hollywood as an institution (perhaps Lars Von Trier's efforts will be seen as "culturally futuristic"-but-retro by then). With the right enabling technologies (Youtube, Apple, possibly Amazon will be the first generation companies in-the-centre of this), creativity and storytelling will presumably be the core of what films are about.

Slight update on the moving thing:

• I need a LOT of boxes. If anyone knows where I might acquire them, I would be appreciative. My packing is now blocked by not having nearly enough boxes to put things in.
• I sent out emails to several landlords - hopefully that part will come together soon.
• Stress and sadness are both strong in me right now. There are a fair number of people and places I'm going to miss. Not taking classes might also suck terribly.

Thoughts drawn back to a quote from the opening of the last episode of the Britcom "Spaced" - "They say that the family of the 21st century is made up of friends, not relatives". Is that true? Rephrased: family structure loses prominence in close social ties, with innermost circles of friends both coming to resemble family in nuance and potentially being stronger than ties of blood. Why might this happen? Increased geographical mobility combined with the process of "reinventing oneself" at University (presumably away from kin) seem likely. Is this a good thing? : much harder question - ties of blood bring a kind of solidarity that is difficult to breach (the interplay between cultural and biological cues here is interesting), can circles of friends fill that role? Could we imagine good friends "doing anything for each other" in the way that nearby parts of families sometimes do? Would Mo-zi's society be as stable/doable as that of Confucius (either as a full-compliance or partial-led-by-a-movement)?

The concept of someone being "blood" to me has a certain amount of resonance, likewise-but-distinct, someone being "kin" - I'm not sure if this differs in practice from close friends - I have a feeling that in situations of need, I would offer a fair amount of asssistance to someone I didn't know who seemed to be a decent sort, more for acquaintences/light friends, and a lot to kin or friends (probably nothing special to blood who I did not consider kin, e.g. family I had not met or those I have made a break with for some reason). That's not the only kind of consideration people normally give through social ties though - solidarity in case of need may differ in strength from actual feelings of closeness, desire for particular company, etc. Kin often get a "first shot" at closeness, but apart from what may be instinct imposing a certain solidarity (which I feel in myself), we may often find, as we grow as people, we end up in mental places different from where our kin do. While there are kin for me where I might imagine being friends were they not kin, that's not everyone. If I imagined finding out that an acquaintence turned out to be blood to me and family events pushed me to consider them kin, it still probably would change how I felt about them, even though I would not consider it necessarily an obligation to feel so nor do I think that the Confucian model for family (or its cousins in traditional western moralities) is particularly worth holding as an ideal. Someone completely Moist would not strike me as odd or problematic (although a special attachment to children being reared is probably a very good idea in most cases and intrepreting Mo-zi as against the symbiotic life-partnerships people might form with their SOs is not something I would like if we were to hold his ideals).

I really like how SqHill has both large social circles and a neighbourhood feeling that they fit together into. The ability to walk around to get everywhere one needs is vital to that, I think (I recently had a discussion with someone whether cars or tv are worse for modern society - I went with tv, but the case for cars is not a weak one). The feeling is a bit stronger here than anywhere else I've lived - I'm not sure how easy it is for students-away-from-home to broadly participate in these things in most cities (Columbus had the "art scene", but I never felt part of a neighbourhood - did any such neighbourhoods have what we have here, or is that something not all places have?).. I wonder, if that is in fact missing from a lot of areas of the US, what would it take to bring it about? Presumably suburbs, cars-as-necessity, and tv are part of the problem. I belive people who "need to drive" to go anywhere, regularly watch TV for a few hours every day, and live in the suburbs are less likely to be interesting people or to participate in culture. What can be done?]]> http://blog.dachte.org/pound/blog/dachte/entries/entry1210996289.html Legendary Springs Pat Gunn 2008-05-17T03:51:29Z Most people I know are of the relatively stationary type in arrangements, but a few are the sort that can talk about spending a few months in place X, a few months and Y, staying in Z for a bit, and then going to N. I've had a certain amount of jealousy/admiration for those who can manage that very mobile life, as the experiences they would have seem really enriching, they wouldn't need to suffer from being away from people they want to be near so much (assuming they're not all in one place), and it seems unlikely they'd get in a rut (I'm moving largely because I'm in a rut and think maybe I'll have a better shot at finding love/happiness/whatever elsewhere.. but it's not at all easy). I sometimes wonder how they manage - finding a good job and a good apartment are all a "big deal" to me on the paperwork side, and on the social side, making friends, learning an area and its cultures, and building a life are another "big deal". How do the highly mobile people manage it? I know on the job front, a few of them are likely to go into business for themselves, doing anything from remote consulting (which they usually could do from anywhere) to endless streams of contract work. Most of my jobs, by contrast, have been very secure, solid positions where I could've stayed forever if I had wanted, and the benefit plans and culture of the workplace assumed that I would. Each apartment I've lived in was a place I expected to be for awhile, and so I settled in a bit - I've always held the ideal, sometime down the line, of settling in "all the way", for a place I'd be for much longer, but in practice I've settled in quite a bit. Maybe on some level I'd love to have far fewer *stuff* tying me down though, where although moving would not emotionally be easy, it at least would be pretty easy on the arranging-things scale. I think a lot of this is that I'm very risk-averse in some ways, and unless I think I might meet some long-frustrated goals (like making a lasting romance, which got me to Pgh in the first place), it's hard for me to gamble. Extreme risk-aversion seems to inform other parts of my life too, even my bouldering/rock-climbing style.

On some level, I'm laughing at myself for thinking this way, but I'm consoling myself that if I don't like Santa Barbara I can always come back to Pittsburgh, or try Boston, Austin, Dublin, or the other places I've considered - there won't be the personal tie to any of them but here, of course. I would be at least moderately embarassed if in 8 months I find myself returning to Pgh, but who knows? The emotional aspects of moving totally suck. Maybe I can learn to think a little less heavily about living arrangements and employment with this though. Jobs should not be like a life partnership/relationship - it should be ok to go if I decide my heart isn't in it. That's what "at will" employment means. I even know people who have left PhD programmes or changed them when things didn't work out - I need to stop seeing everything as shackles and always doing the "proper" thing to do.

I just need to convince myself of that.

Today there was Sleek, and it was insanely good. It is, unfortunately, not a food that seems to be particularly well-known by the internet, so I shall describe it. Spinach, black-eyed peas, the light taste (but no texture - maybe ground in?) of onions, cracked wheat, all sauteed, with some lemons to squeeze over it. It apparently hails from Lebanon, and there are, of course, other ways to make it - here is a different one. I hopefully will try Kassab's sleek sometime before I go - while they're not conveniently located for me anymore (no more free bus pass), I should stop by the Beehive again anyhow and I've loved everything else I've eaten at Kassab's.

I sometimes wonder if middle easterners had some people following the same vegetarian traditions that Indians have - Israeli/Arab restaurants seem just as good as Indian ones at having a wide variety of non-meat dishes to order. It is, of course, possible that "variety restaurants" in big cities in the US always have vegetarian dishes because the same demographic that eats a lot of foreign food (drawing mainly from liberal educated city-folk, I would guess) captures almost all vegetarians in the US (apart, of course, from American Hindus, who may or may not be liberal or educated in the same way - incidentally, Pittsburgh's Hindu temple was the first in the United States).]]> http://blog.dachte.org/pound/blog/dachte/entries/entry1211038919.html Talking to Shades Pat Gunn 2008-05-17T15:41:59Z Just a dream: First part of dream was not tightly tied to a person - a group of people needed to find something that had been lost to civilisation a long time ago, and they had tracked it down to a lost area of the city. As it turned out, due to upheavals of the earth, an entire set of streets had been buried underground (and preserved intact, with a moderate level of earth separating their air-filld resting place from the surface). The "team" lookig for the thing managed to find an older property owner nearby who knew about the lost areas and had dug beneath his house to excavate, although he said he stopped exploring down there because it was haunted. The team took lanterns and went down - although initially it looked like a cavern, the ceiling quickly stretched far above, and the houses, mostly stone and wood on the outside, had occasional dusty carpets hanging from the windows. The first hallucination was that we saw slight movement in these carpets, with a face briefly appearing on some of them for a moment. Team decided to press onwards - goal: a very large commune. Team stepped into the door, and there was a shimmer in the air as something was woken up. The lights were suddenly on, and people of various ages from their 40s to late 70s were standing around talking. Rocky Horror came on, and some set of them started dancing to the time warp. The effect was incomplete - details of some of their faces were not there (they just looked kind of glowy or jewellish in those parts), and some of them had a coloured aura surrounding their entire bodies or looked a bit translucent. Some team members had the feeling that staying with them would be like Pespherone eating the seeds, so they carefully stepped through the crowd and navigated through several isolated staircases moving upwards. Eventually, they found me.

I was an older man, and one of the animated ghosts, sitting in the bedroom in which I used to reside, and I could sense something was a bit odd with seeing the visitors that meant the situatio wasn't quite normal - the air around them didn't quite reach them, with strands of colour mixed with blackness and brown rock surrounding them like a close bubble. I tried talking to them, and my voice came to them through a device they had nearby - a red gem attached to a black box. Initially I was very confused, but they explained that they were from my future, and were looking for something or some information. I knew I couldn't directly help them, and eventually they grew tired and decided to rest in a few of the rooms of the commune in this upper area, "taking" a few of the rooms. As I could not touch them (hands passed right through), I presumed nobody else could, and the others around me who had lived here for awhile seemed to have difficulty even seeing them. I stayed in the same room as some of the team, and listened to their music - it was like nothing I had heard before, and I tried to comment so, but the red-gem-box seemed to have lost its power. They seemed a bit upset that it had died.. Eventually one of them who could read lips started focusing on me to understand what I was saying, his attention only occasionally interrupted when a team member would accidentally move through me or otherwise block my view - I would guess I wasn't very substantial - I spoke about how great this music was and told them a bit about how things were. I expressed that on the off chance I were still alive in their time, they might've had trouble finding me, but there was only one other place "I found worthwhile on this earth". Unfortunately, I think I had offended (or exhausted) whatever was making this communication possible - the dream perspective pulled back from me to the scene, and showed that whatever was binding the me-of-the-past to the team's "present" was failing and began showing us as dying-of-age folk - not dangerous, but losing our ability to communicate.

Surprise: "I" woke up elsewhere, the old guy, and knew they were in danger if they actually did spend the night down there as they were planning. I seemed actually to be not much older than I was in their experience, and grabbing a lantern, I left where I was, returned to the town, and managed to figure out another way into the "buried" part of town. I found it deeply frightening seeing where I had lived like this, and was creeped out even moreso by seeing people from my past brought back to life like this. Some of them seemed altered to give me truly feral looks when they saw me, and while some of them began to dance again, I felt some threat in their motions - I found the chutzpah to swing out my arm, and they were pushed back as I hurried towards the stairs, my lantern giving me the double vision of the solid wood and stone of the past and the decaying wood and worn stone of the present. I made my way up to the rooms, finding some of them asleep already - eventually I found some in the party who were not yet asleep, and they had to carry the sleeping members (who did not seem able to wake down here), and we started to head back down the stairs.

I then woke up and the dream ended.

I have boxes, but still no place to live in SB nor anyone to take my current place. Hopefully one or both of these will resolve soon. In yet another "nooooooo! Why must this happen when I'm leaving?" moment (surprising numbers of these), the Rocky Horror Picture Show now seems to finally have a regular cast and place here. Damnit. It is seriously not fair for Pgh to keep suggesting all these things when it is theoretically too late to stay but not actually so. Job offers at CMU that actually sound kinda good, new friendships(?), revival of rocky, sudden interest in figuring out and going to grad school, people I might've hung out with more had they lived nearer moving really nearby, Grr. I don't know whether to be more mad at the world for providing the situations or myself for being pulled so neatly towards ugly unsure limbos whenever I try to make changes in my life. ]]>