Gore invokes “Satyagraha” in h…
Gore invokes “Satyagraha” in his Nobel speech
Science Addiction
A dormant blog by Devanshu Mehta
December 6, 2007
Initiating this experiment we …
Initiating this experiment we call Twitter…
August 14, 2007
Portrait of a Creator as a Sims Freak
Fantastic profile of Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, in <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?ei=5124&en=22efff4469281187&ex=1344744000&adxnnl=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&adxnnlx=1187101355-5HWiLxChv9ReqvISlLpTnQ”>the New York Times</a>. <blockquote>In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation. [..] Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,†could run “ancestor simulations†of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.</blockquote>
I’ve had a similar theory for a while now, which I’ve tried to spin in to a fantasy novel (someday…) about a creator as a high-on-sugar kid with a LEGO set, albeit a LEGO set that builds intricate worlds. I’m paraphrasing, of course.
In any case, none of these ideas are ‘Matrix’-like pluggable-hybrid humans; they’re actually completely simulate that live in the circuits. The tubes, as they say in Alaska. I’d buy this theory, except there’s no way of knowing if it’s true. This isn’t the Truman Show, where you can walk out the end of the world or where everyone else is in on the joke. So, ultimately, it’s a cool hypothesis but I’m already set against unprovable creators.
August 13, 2007
A Chinese Golden Parachute
The boss of the toy company responsible for the huge recall in the US has “committed suicide by hanging himself”:http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070813/china_tainted_products.html?.v=18 in his warehouse. The toys were recalled due to toxic paint in the toys, which was sold to this ‘boss’ by a close friend of his. The most interesting paragraph in the AP story is:<blockquote>Zhang hung himself on Saturday, according to the report. It is common for disgraced officials to commit suicide in China.</blockquote>
August 10, 2007
John Edwards on Green Living
“No Impact Man”:http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/interview-with-.html has put together a questionnaire for U.S. presidential hopefuls and John Edwards is the first to have answered. It’s a pretty straight and informed dialogue- I hope other candidates respond.
If you’re not familiar with <em>No Impact Man</em>, then his is a blog worth keeping track of. In his words:<blockquote>No Impact Man is my experiment with researching, developing and adopting a way of life for me and my little family—one wife, one toddler, one dog—to live in the heart of New York City while causing no net environmental impact. To do this, we will decrease the things we do that hurt the earth—make trash, cause carbon dioxide emissions, for example—and increase the things we do that help the earth—clean up the banks of the Hudson River, give money to charity, rescue sea birds, say.</blockquote>
This guy isn’t a nut- he’s doing this for the right reasons. To demonstrate that it can be done. To remove the cynicism and the inertia from the process of reducing our impact on the planet. This guy is the real deal and is an inspiration.
July 26, 2007
First: An Ode to the TSA
I created this video on a whim. I call it: “First, They Came for the Box Cutters”
July 25, 2007
Harry Potter and the Goblin’s Perpetual Copyright
Here’s a passage from page 517 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:
(Ron’s brother Bill is warning Harry against trusting a goblin Griphook.)
“You don’t understand, Harry, nobody could understand unless they have lived with goblins. To a goblin, the rightful and true master of any object is the maker, not the purchaser. All goblin-made objects are, in goblin eyes, rightfully theirs.”
“But if it was bought – ”
“- then they would consider it rented by the one who had paid the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of goblin-made objects passing from wizard to wizard. […] They consider our habit of keeping goblin-made objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further payment, little more than theft.”
These goblins sound like our friendly neighborhood MPAA/RIAA lawyers!
July 19, 2007
Unfree Culture and The Science Fiction Wars of 1978
In 1978, 20th Century Fox studio sued Universal for “stealing 34 distinct ideas” from the then recently, immensely successful film “Star Wars”:http://www.galaxyfaraway.com to create “Battlestar Galactica”. This was one year after the release of _Star Wars_ and an old, hackneyed genre had just been revived. At the time, Universal said that _this is like the first Western movie ever suing the second one_.
George Lucas visited the production of BSG and decided not to link his name with the law suit. 20th Century Fox, however, pressed on. Universal countersued with a claim that _Star Wars_ (particularly R2D2) was lifted from Universal’s own film _Silent Running_. Maybe it’s time for some descendant of the Brothers Grimm (the great-grandchildren Grimm?) to come knocking on Disney’s front doors with legal papers- suing them for every cent they’ve made since _Snow White_.
A few major _Star Wars_ co-conspirators were major players on the original BSG production as well- John Dykstra, Dennis Muren- which also played a major part in the common “feel” to them both.
There is a “fantastic article from 1978”:http://www.battlestargalactica.com/outside_docs/bg_outdoc0049.htm called *ABC’s Multi-Million Dollar SF Gamble: Battlestar Galactica* which closes with these two interesting paragraphs which hint at more issues than just copyright and derivative works:
Once all the charges of copyright infringement and the other legal elbowing have subsided, and once other modern space fantasies like Buck Rogers, Star Trek — The Motion Picture, Starcrash, and Flash Gordon have come out to keep Galactica company, it will be more evident that Galactica was innovative in many ways all its own — not the least of which is its courageous, almost carefree use of funds in the hope of bringing to the public a TV fantasy of unparalleled quality. And some of the daring can be seen in things that neither zoom, blast, flash, or explode.
When, since the days of the Untouchables, have we seen such exciting wholesale slaughter on our livingroom screens? And it happened during the very season when the networks have been bragging that at last they have censored physical conflict from the screen. The full extent of the ramifications of a successful Galactica on TV programming is yet to be seen, but it will certainly be interesting to watch.
Ah, good old 1978. It was the best of time, it was the worst of times. Television bosses were actively censoring TV. Major studios were trying to control the fate of genre media. Journalists were hoping for a future that resembled a rose-tinted past. And beneath the surface, a vast array of creators were waiting to unleash their derivative works that had the potential to change the face of a genre, at the very least, and media in general if we were lucky. In short, it was a time much like today.
July 17, 2007
Love is Old, Love is New
I was in Vegas in April of this year and saw Cirque du Soleil’s Love– a truly magnificent tribute to The Beatles through their music and Cirque’s visual extravagance.
The show opens with one of the last songs The Beatles recorded- “Because” for Let it Be. John Lennon is quoted as having said that the song is based on Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. Listen to both, and you know he’s right.
(“Video of Moonlight Sonata”:http://youtube.com/watch?v=O6txOvK-mAk on YouTube)
This got me to thinking about fair use. Would Lennon (or his lawyers) have risked it if the Sonata was still under copyright? There were “only” about 170 years between Moonlight Sonata and Let it Be, so in modern copyright terms, they were cutting it a little close.
Think that’s a stretch? Remember, Rep. Mary Bono channeling Jack Valenti once asked Congress for “forever less one day” copyright terms.
Note: I know that Lennon’s use would probably be ruled as fair use in a reasonable court of law. That is not the issue. The issue is that fear of litigation may have prevented Lennon (or his producers) from ever releasing “Because” in to the wild and ours would have been a poorer culture for that.
July 16, 2007
US Presidential Politics and Geek Activism
When I had my idea for “a questionnaire for US Presidential candidates”:http://www.scienceaddiction.com/2007/07/09/geek-activism-questionnaire-for-presidential-candidates/ about issues important to geek activists like myself, I started reading up on the positions of the most popular candidates.
Guess what? None of them talk about the issues that matter to us directly. Even the big ones like reforming the USA PATRIOT Act aren’t being touched with a 10-foot pole- no one wants to look weak on security, I suppose.
At the same time, I have been thinking a lot about Lawrence Lessig. For those not familiar, after 10 years of leading the fight to protect a free culture among other things, “Lessig is stepping away”:http://lessig.org/blog/2007/06/required_reading_the_next_10_y_1.html to embrace a much broader issue- *corruption*. At first, this seems simplistic, naive. But in the end, isn’t that what it _all_ comes down to?
Net neutrality, copyright laws and fair use, the MPAA/RIAA, the DMCA and all the other issues that lock consumers, fans, hackers and hobbyists in a cage where the key is sold to the highest bidder. As a geek, these look like issues for _hacktivists_. In a broader sense, however, this is the oldest game in politics- the government serving the deepest pockets.
Corruption. Lessig is specific about what he means by corruption, in this quote as applied to himself:
I never promote as policy a position that I have been paid to advise about, consult upon, or write about. If payment is made to an institution that might reasonably be said to benefit me indirectly, then I will either follow the same rule, or disclose the payment.
The key word is *never*. Not sometimes. Not with disclosure. Just, plain, never.
So coming back to the issue of getting the current US Presidential contenders to answer questions about PATRIOT Act reform or Network Neutrality- shouldn’t the ultimate question be: *What would you do to remove the influence of lobbies and corporations from US politics?*
If we have an answer for that- a workable, sincere one- then we have an answer not only for problems in hackland, but also in healthcare, in energy policy, in every major social issue of this land of plenty.
Along those lines, here are links to what the major contenders have to say on Washington’s _culture of corruption_:
* Barack Obama on “Reforming Washington”:http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/obama-corruption-fact.pdf
* Hillary Clinton on “Government Reform”:http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/reform/ and how “she is shaping up as the Privacy Candidate”:http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/01/72549
* John Edwards’ “letter to the FCC Chairman”:http://johnedwards.com/news/headlines/20070530-fcc/ regarding the upcoming 700MHz auction.
* The closest Rudy Giuliani comes is in “talking about fiscal responsibility”:http://www.joinrudy2008.com/index.php?section=2 but that’s a stretch. Also, here is “video of Edwards’ talk at Google”:http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/05/john-edwards-at-googleplex.html
* Mitt Romney on “investment in technology and tort liability”:http://www.mittromney.com/Issue-Watch/Technology
* John McCain on “Lobbying & Ethics Reform”:http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/cb15a056-ac87-485d-a64d-82989bdc948c.htm and “McCain at Google”:http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/05/mccain-talks-tech-policy-at-googleplex.html talking policy.
(Send me more links for the rest of the candidates if you find them. Also, I’m still putting together a questionnaire for the candidates, so suggestions would be great!)
Science Addiction 