the life and times of endenizen

Yeah, like underwear.

t’has been a while. Wow that contraction didn’t work at all. For more examples of strange contractions, see urban dictionary’s entry on “t’would”:

James: Wanna go hang out at the mall next week?
Jill: T’would be cool.

But I digress, it is my pledge to make a post with more substance than content. Or vice versa, whichever sounds better. Underwear aside… eh, let’s try again.

Hi, I’m Brian. This is my blog and it hasn’t seen the light of my thoughts (I’m conceited that way) in about… let’s see here… just shy of five months, all told. No doubt when I started I didn’t imagine I would suffer quite a dry spell all at once, but there you have it. I’ve gone quite inward about the whole thing. What is a blog? Why do I need to use it? Is it possible to swallow one’s pride, as it were, and still commit one’s thoughts to paper for everyone else to see? Maybe not, but I guess I don’t care anymore for I’ve given up seeking the answers to such questions.

I work for a company that recently bought another company and you can read all about that over here. I neglect the mention of specific names because that would mean SEO which gets on my nerves. I’ve been doing all sorts of neat work on new features, new designs, fixing old things, and staring out the window in anticipation of the massive crowds set to arrive on April 9th. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about, let’s torch this joint!

“Olympic Torch” this joint, that is! That’s right, the torch is coming to San Francisco and I’m gonna be at ground zero when stuff happens. I’m not sure exactly what will happen, but if you’ve been watching the news recently, you know it will be worth a few photos.

Security heightened at Golden Gate Bridge
Olympic Torch Relay Descends Into Chaos
Olympic torch relay should be confined to host country says IOC official

Officials in Paris were today forced to extinguish the Olympic flame and carry it by bus when protesters against Chinese policy in Tibet tried to seize it.

Can a protest ever ‘win’? Perhaps in time, a ‘win’ can be felt. In Paris, a more immediate win was experienced when the Olympic flame, nay, spirit which travels the world for everyone to see, amidst thousands of security personnel had to be put out and confined to a bus. My friends in Paris, I say to you, “good show”. We Americans now have a protest to out-protest.

But I digress, (yes I did that twice. Don’t tempt me should you not wish a third.) there are other things on my mind as well. Doctor Who, for instance. It was recently revealed that Richard Dawkins would appear in an upcoming episode, as himself!

“People were falling at his feet,” says Davies, creator of the BBC’s flagship show. “We’ve had Kylie Minogue on that set, but it was Dawkins people were worshipping.”

I guess I can’t imagine how Dawkins fits in to all of this but I hope it at least involves a turtle that can fly.

And on that note, Battlestar Galactica was good, if not a bit uneventful in light of all the promises made. I suppose that’s how they get you hooked for the entire season. Maybe I should just wait till the season is over. It’s much more fulfilling to watch a whole season over a few days than feel cheated at the end of each 40-minute segment. Though I suppose to make it a social occasion would be a good excuse to have “Friday night plans”. Oh who am I kidding, I don’t know anyone else who watches this show.

Well, back to my life, which, at this moment, includes me going to bed.

I flipped on the TV while cleaning my apartment to see if there were any good football games. Then I remembered I don’t really like football and settled for Tom and Jerry. When you think about it, the cartoon is rather profound. Both for its interesting take on the physical world, and the creative situations made up by frequent writer/producer Chuck Jones (who did the cartoon I am currently watching so my points may need to be adjusted to cover the whole of Tom and Jerry cartoons).

First and foremost, no story is necessary (as is especially apparent during the Chuck Jones era). The substance of almost every episode relies on the bitter rivalry between that darned cat Tom and his would-be lunch Jerry. While this provides quite a bit of conflict to an otherwise straightforward drama, it is presented in much the same way as comical theatre: should the villain ever catch the hero… well we don’t even want to think about that. In fact, many episodes end with Jerry coming to Tom’s rescue and asserting that he is the “better mouse”… or animal, or whatever.

A few recurring themes tend to appear:

• Any romance must be portrayed by a French-speaking animal
• Any dog which appears in the show must be angry, or stupid, or both
• When an animal moving at significant speed runs into a stationary object, it must be smashed like a pancake, an accordion-like pancake, or severed into multiple pieces (none of these will cause permanent damage)
• When high above the ground, an animal won’t fall unless it looks down, and/or is not Jerry
• Cats are hollow - an object (such as a mouse) moving fast enough can potentially enter through a cat’s mouth and proceed straight through to the tail and out (note: to prevent further injury, tying the tail below the exit point is recommended)
• Inflating something with air will result in that object becoming lighter than air
• Slowing down is not an option - when moving around a corner, the turn will be taken too quickly resulting in a skidding sound and a hopping motion (this is required, therefore, no animal can gain an advantage by attempting to circumvent this process)

And finally…

• When a foe (typically a dog) presents a threat to the well-being of either party, all inter-species conflict may be temporarily set aside until such time that said foe is “removed from the picture” either by pancaking, accordion-pancaking, or being severed into multiple pieces. At this point, chasing may resume (occasionally preceded by a handshake)

Tom and Jerry cartoons are some of the most well-known in history. They have won seven academy awards and solidly established themselves as the Saturday-morning cartoons. So the next time you feel like flipping on the game, watch Tom and Jerry instead. I did!

(and by now, unfortunately, it’s over and some “modern” cartoon is on - with more story, more characters, more colors, and much more confusion. imagine the attention span you’d need to have to watch a cartoon with so much going on… it’s more than I can handle)

Stay home for halloween. If you dare!

Tonight is Halloween. The city has spent $40,000 on a campaign to keep people out of the Castro. The massive hordes which usually converge here are being told that there is “no party” and all the bars will be closed. All subway stations near the Castro are also closing early.

However much of an effort the city makes to deter people, they also know that people will inevitably show up. There was talk of setting up portable toilets on Castro street because very few bars will be open. There was even talk of closing the street if too many people show up. Doesn’t sound like much of a party deterrent to me.

It’s 7pm now and security appears to be building up all over. The Muni has many employees patrolling the subway stations and there are police at every exit (perhaps to enforce the closure in an hour and a half).

Most interestingly, the 24-hour Safeway across the street has had a temporary fence set up around its border. It appears they are keeping only one entrance and exit open for the time being and additionally, there are three busses directly in front of the store (with an additional 7 or 8 on Market St nearby). I’m not sure what any of this is for, but there are a few possibilities.

Perhaps they are simply accomodating shoppers who stay late and would usually take the subway home. This seems strange as there will be free shuttles running after the subway is closed. Also, to have so many busses standing by at a station which is neither the start nor the end of the closure seems a little inefficient.

Another possibility is that the police will be using these busses to cart off partyers by the proverbial and literal “busload”.

According to the SF Weekly “The Snitch” blog, the cops will be using them, but not to carry people away:

Deputy Chief David Shinn and at least half a dozen other officials made pains to note that Muni buses and drivers will be available to ferry “platoons” of cops around town like troop transports. The notion of the police taking Muni to travel about town rapidly was greeted with barely a snicker, by the way.

The overall plan goes something like this:

Shinn will receive reports every half hour from command stations throughout the city; Mission Station, the post nearest the Castro, will be led by Capt. John Goldberg. At Shinn’s discretion, police can be redeployed throughout the city as needed. Shinn described a “zero-tolerance” policy for drunkenness, public urination and other likely offenses (he originally used the term “aggressive enforcement” but changed his wording when Police Commissioner Theresa Sparks told him that “aggressive enforcement” conjured up mental images of Tiananmen Square).

(quotes from: http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2007/10/100000_people_are_coming_where.php)

Should turn out to be an exciting Halloween after all

Singularity Summit 2007

The “Singularity” is the predicted event when artificial intelligence expands beyond its programmed 0’s and 1’s and starts to think for itself. As this undoubtedly means a huge change for us measly humans (whether very good, very bad, or somewhere in the middle), an organization called the “The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence” holds a yearly conference to address the progress, roadblocks, and concerns with bringing such life into the world.

What will it mean to have a computer that is smarter than a human? Will society give it rights? Will it need emotions to understand the questions we ask of it? Will groups be founded to “free” the enslaved robots? These questions and many more have been asked, skirted around, addressed, and discussed by many of the foremost researchers, authors, professors, and futurists today at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco.

Ray Kurzweil, while only attending via video-conference tomorrow, is present in spirit with every speaker as a leading futurist and inventor of many cutting-edge technologies in use today. In his recent book “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” he predicts the singularity will occur sometime in the next 10 to 40 years. This is rather optimistic in my opinion but I’d sure love to see the results of such a change within my lifetime.

The conference is focused on artificial “general” intelligence (or AGI), rather than a more task-focused, “specific” AI, such as IBM’s Deep Blue. AGI’s will essentially be frameworks which, once created, require no more programming (in the traditional sense) to learn and apply any other type of intelligence. An example used by several speakers is a high-schooler who can be trained to do many low-skilled jobs. These types of jobs typically involve repetition and an ability to follow simple rules but they are still well outside the grasp of even the most powerful supercomputer running our most advanced algorithms.

I mention algorithms because brute force alone will not solve this problem! Simply having a computer with the processing power of every human brain on the planet will not suddenly make it self-aware. However, just because we don’t have this power, doesn’t mean we can’t get started today…

In the factoring of prime numbers, would you rather run a 1977 algorithm on 2007 hardware or a 2007 algorithm on 1977 hardware? Many people assume the former simply because computers have gotten so much faster. The fastest solution is the 2007 algorithm running on 1977 hardware. It would take about 12 years to factor a 90-digit number using the 1977 algorithm on Blue Gene and only about 3 years to factor a 90-digit number using the 2007 algorithm on an Apple II. Developing the algorithms that drive artificial intelligence today will produce some major results on a smaller scale as we build up computing power.

Today’s talks focused on what advanced AI is, what is being researched and what progress has been made. A fun equation created by Dr. Rodney Brooks calculated that by 2019, we would be able to fit every movie even the slightest bit interesting on an iPod. In only two years, we’ll be able to fit the entire Library of Congress. Barney Pell, while his talk was more of an overview of the future of AI, had some interesting things to say about natural language processing, or NLP, and his company Powerset (which aspires to collect knowledge from the web, rather than data). NLP is fascinating to me because there’s just so much data on the web and so few ways to process it. Google and Ask Jeeves are on the right track with answers to simple questions, and even simple dialogs with phrases like “did you mean…” but there are many more places that search tools could go to become more useful to everyone. The panel discussions were quite interesting, with questions ranging from “What world (real or imagined) would you choose to live on?” (Paul Saffo answered “this one” after relating a story about driving across the golden gate bridge the night before) to “Why are people working to prolong life?” (which drew some puzzled looks and an answer from Peter Voss, “some of us have tried this life thing for a while now, and we kinda like it”) and plenty of on-topic ones as well.

I suppose the theme of the conference is that there are no “correct” answers yet, so feel free to give the wrong ones because no one will be able to prove you wrong for years. At this point, keeping open the lines of communication between everyone in the field will help anticipate any problems and will help everyone avoid them.

Tomorrow, the talks will cover the ethical issues surrounding AI as well as the potential risks of smart computers (queue almost every recent Hollywood movie about AI). Kurzweil will also be making his video-appearance so that should be exciting.

Ooh, doesn’t it just give you the chills? I can’t wait!

As seen here - The Dark Knight - Teaser