Do Not Covet Your Ideas.
Dubstep (and other styles of electronic music) explained in 3 minutes.
“CV Dazzle is camouflage from computer vision. It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling with face-detection thwarting designs. It opposes the mainstream push towards the widespread adoption of face recognition.”
Antagonistic technology. :)
Flaws in the 2010 Winnipeg Police Annual Report
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Looks like the Winnipeg Police Service needs bone up on their math skills. Their 2010 annual report includes some strange stats. When comparing 2010 with 2009:
- They report a 20-30% decrease in crime per district, even though their reported city-wide decrease is only 7%.
- This 7% decrease, when compared with their actual reported offence numbers, turns out to be a 9% increase.
- They report a decreases in “Events for Service” for all districts, even though there was no significant city-wide change in “Events for Service” between the two years.
Some of these discrepancies appear to be tied to the new WPS policy of listing certain incidents as “non-district specific.”
Reading and Listening in 2011
This is what I read and heard over the past year. I beat my goal of one book per month. Maybe I should try for 24+ in 2012.
Fiction
It was a very sci-fi year. Pullman’s Dark Materials books were my favourites, although I’d say this was a 4 star year on average.
- Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
- Quicksilver - Neal Stephenson
- The Captain and the Enemy - Graham Greene
- The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov
- The Dogs of Riga - Henning Mankell
- His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman:
- The Golden Compass
- The Subtle Knife
- The Amber Spyglass
- Childhood’s End - Arthur C. Clark
- After the Party - Lisa Jewell
- Calculating God - Robert Sawyer
- Foucault’s Pendulum - Umberto Eco
- Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clark
Non-Fiction
In the non-fiction world, I seem to be on a bit of a “Ruby with Olsen” kick.
- Eloquent Ruby - Russ Olsen
- Design Patterns in Ruby - Russ Olsen
Audio Lectures
This was the year I discovered audio lectures. Most of these were heard while running in Assiniboine park.
- Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines
- No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
- Art of Teaching: Best Practices from a Master Educator
- Science Fiction - The Literature of Technological Imagination (Out of Print)
- Art of Public Speaking: Lessons from the Greatest Speeches in History
- Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning
We Saw Each Other
“I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous — not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time… That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful.
The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.“
“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”
Precise Knowledge of Good and Evil?
A Quora thread on Etz haDaat tov V’ra, the fall of man from Genesis the first book of the Jewish and Christian Bibles.
Some responses worth reading:
“The question exhibits three further imprecisions about the fruit of this tree.”
— A close look at the question at hand.
“Genesis is just one of many attempts on the part of early man’s collective unconscious to narrativise a growing awareness that our species.”
— English gentleman Stephen Fry’s response.
“God did not want us to live forever in fear and shame, He needed to heal the self-inflicted wounds from the knowledge of good and evil before eternal life would be a gift.”
— Brother Francis Thérèse of Salvador da Bahia Mission
Related: On the Marionette Theater. In search of grace in adulthood, the burden of self-aware.
Translated items from Leonardo da Vinci’s to-do list from the 1490s.
A collection of Starlings is called a Murmuration. via
It’s Time to Stop Talking About Copyright
I’m all for sorting out the rules that govern the entertainment’s supply chain, but let’s keep some perspective here: when we ‘‘solve’’ copyright problems at the expense of the Internet, we solve them at the expense of 21st-century society as a whole. — Cory Doctorow
20 Hz visualizes “a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. Data courtesy of CARISMA, operated by the University of Alberta, funded by the Canadian Space Agency.”
The Kinetic Wave Sculpture of Reuben Margolin.
Oh, the beauty of trigonometry! This reminds me of the trig I was playing with in my early Processing sketches.
In Plain View - Allan Geske, Printmaker
My dad.
Allan Geske has been a printmaker since the mid-1970s and he employs various techniques in his art such as etching, engraving, relief and mixed media.
His prints are represented in collections throughout the USA, Japan, Korea, Britain & the Netherlands. Allan is best known for his copperplate engravings, intricate, complex & provocative images that at times evoke the landscape, but also stand as breathtaking abstractions. His etched work often incorporates prairie images paired with replications of charts, maps and iconic symbols.
Allan Geske’s studio will be open to the public next weekend, November 4th, 5th and 6th. All are welcome in room 523 of the Artspace Bldg, 100 Arthur St.
Friday: 5pm-9pm Sat/Sun: noon-5pm
I share space in the studio. Some of my work (prints, collage, photos) will also be shown.
“Hackety Hack! got a beautiful redesign last week. It’s an application that you can download that uses Shoes to teach you how to program in Ruby. It’s designed to start from scratch and guide you through writing programs— this is the tool for people who have never written a line of code in their lives; who may not even know that a ‘line of code’ is a thing that makes up a computer program.” — Casey Kolderup