Brad Ideas - Comments

already exists, not used

Russ Nelson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:00:08 -0700

The license you're talking about already exists, but it's hardly used at all. It's the Aladdin Free Public License. It doesn't allow you to distribute the software on the same media as any proprietary software. As far as I know, Ghostscript is the only package that uses it. It's been around for about twenty years now. If your idea was a good one, someone would have likely picked up the AFPL.

Actually....

ccohen — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:05:03 -0700

You ask whether Time Travel is categorically possible, with emphasis on travelling farther into the future.
It has in fact been proven that someone can travel into the future at a faster rate. This depends on the speed the person is travelling.
For example, in numerous scientific studies, physicists have synchronized atomic clocks and have placed one on a jet and another on the ground (i.e. no relative motion). The result is that the atomic clock on the jet is a few nanoseconds behind the one that remained on the ground. This means that the clock aged more slowly then per usual and thus has reached the present faster.
Of course this is nigh insignificant but at speeds close to the speed of light, it has been theorized that one could travel hundreds of years into the future while only having aged anywhere between a few weeks to a few months.
(An interesting tid-bit in SF, it has been hypothesized that if this technology were possible, you could have a theater full of people watch a half a show with a younger cast, go at a fraction of the speed of light and return 20 years in the future (more or less a day depending on the speed, and watch the 2nd half with a more matured cast. Wouldn't that be exciting)
Anyway, travelling in the future is not difficult as we are doing this already. However, if you go into the future, our current understanding of Physics and Space-Time have no way of bringing you back to your 'natural' time. (Perhaps somewhere delved within Quantum Mechanics, M-theory or something unknown holds the answer.)
Good Luck though

To say that American Express

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:13:35 -0800

To say that American Express is not an American company is more correct than you may know. Over a decade ago they began tossing their American employees out and replacing them with Indian contractors who were brought to this country on work visas. They weren't taking jobs that Americans didn't want (if such a thing actually exists). They were taking good to high-paying technology and finance jobs. And, then it happened slowly but surely and unpredictable only to utter idiots. The contractors became the experts of the realm of their responsibilities and to ensure control over that expertise, the company hired them as employees. Indian non-managers became managers and then vice presidents and then senior vice presidents. Today, the average American would be hard pressed to readily pronounce the names of most of the resources who now occupy the offices and cubes at American Express' American sites. The best part is that they forgot to leave their discriminatory, classist beliefs at the airport. So, not only are these American sites run by non-Americans, the nature of the working environments is distinctly non-American. Manipulation, cronyism and oppression (particularly of women) reign. Our government leaders talk about job creation. How can they not know that simply by putting controls on H1B1 visas, they would make tens of thousands of jobs once again available to Americans -- the people who made this company and the people who still represent their greatest revenue pool?

Amex does drug testing

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:55:13 -0800

Amex does drug testing apparently because they prefer employees who are naturally stupid. Their leaders are as ignorant as they are arrogant and darn proud of it.

I Think There May Be a Distinction Being Missed

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:40:56 -0800

What the review actually said is that a God becoming an active character is problematic, particularly in a show that got its bones from its supposed gritty realism. I don't know that any intervention by a God has to be an automatic epic failure. Even in BSG, more subtlety could have had an effective God intervention open to multiple interpretations. The problem here is that one can argue God pretty much just takes over the entire show and becomes THE CHARACTER. I'm hard pressed to think of any clear examples where something like that works in a serious drama. Strangely, the disjointed storytelling in Season 4 simply amplifies the damage; it didn't make sense because it didn't have to make sense because the whole story turns out to be about a God and his will anyway. That's messed up, like Mr. Templeton says.

And he's also right that the BSG staff themselves gave the game away. They didn't have a clear God story in mind in the beginning. It was a bolt on. Read their interviews and listen to their own podcasts (which were probably a mistake to have ever offered given how clearly visible "that man behind the curtain" becomes toward the end).

Good points

brad — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 12:40:46 -0800

I agree they are not entirely serious about paying out, and more want the publicity. But I liked the controversy it started, because of the conflict of values — ethical treatment, environmental damage and fear of “frankenfoods.”

But while clearly eggs and dairy are not as bad by any of the measures as beef is, they have enough problems to be worth attacking, and they seem — by intuition — to be more tractable problems as they are liquids.

Frankly the 2012 timeframe

Joel Upchurch — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:28:09 -0800

Frankly the 2012 timeframe indicates to me that they aren't serious. This area of research isn't actually being ignored and a million dollars isn't much incentive to speed it up. Also the texture is a bigger technical issue than the taste, as you pointed out. Also beef is a much more suitable target, since the GHG footprint is 13 times higher per pound of meat and people are already used to eating ground beef. Reducing GHG emissions might save a lot more animals than go to the slaughter house, including some that can vote.

Here is a blog post I wrote that links to issues on GHG footprints of meat.

http://www.anupchurchchrestomathy.com/2009/12/greenhouse-gas-footprint-f...

Chartjunk

Joel Upchurch — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:01:17 -0800

Brad,

I'm afraid that I disagree about this graphic. The layout is confusing and some of the data is misleading at best. Using similar colors for the charts and the map is confusing, since the colors on the map have no relationship to the charts.

The stat about 62% of traffic fatalities coming from 10 countries is misleading since those 10 countries have 54% of the population.

The only thing I thought was interesting was that nearly half the traffic fatalities were to people who aren't in a car or truck.

On the general topic, I'd like to suggest the book "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)" by Tom Vanderbilt.

Bolt-on and not bolt-on

brad — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:55:23 -0800

It is bolt-on from the audience’s point of view, because there were so many more natural rather than supernatural explanations possible for what was shown. Just because a show has religious people is hardly a clue that their religion is true!.

But more to the point, it was bolt-on to the writers. They have admitted they really did not know what head-six was for the first several seasons. They had her say lots of things, including angel of god, but they only decided to make the god real much later.

They had not even intended much of it. Moore threw in some lines about Cylon religion and the network write back, “Machines with religion? Give us more of that.”

Not a cop-out

chromedome — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:42:47 -0800

"God Did It" is not a cop-out--the idea of "One True God" is fundamental to the story, laid out from the very beginning of BSG. InHead Six stated openly and often that she was an Angel of God, and she was clearly manipulating Baltar.
The same concept appears in the first moments of Caprica.

The nature, intent, frequency/degree of direct intervention of this One True God/Cylon God is not at all clear, but a key mystery of the premise overall.

So, with everything in the story woven with those threads, treating as if it was a "bolt-on" plot resolution at the end is absurd. Like it or don't like it, be disappointed by the lack of details or explanations, fine--but the God element in the story arc has been present from the beginining.

The critique above invalidates itself by defining any interventions by a God as automatic epic failure, but also says BSG was great until God was used right there at the end. The concept of intervention and manipulation by God was there from the very beginning of the show.

Synthetic biology might be able to manage it

slothman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:03:45 -0800

It might be as simple as finding the genes that crank out the appropriate mix of proteins and stuffing them into properly programmed bacteria. Synthetic biology is still in its very early stages right now, but we might wind up with bioreactors where you pour in finely chopped waste cellulose and get out basic food proteins like you mention above.

Particularly athletic ability?

brad — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:32:34 -0800

The main advantage of athletic ability is that not everybody has it? I can’t say I agree with that (not having too much of it myself.) Yes, much of what the world’s greatest athletes does only comes from intense training that most people have no interest in doing, but not all of it.

The more interesting issue (also talked about in many novels) is beauty. There are objective standards of it, and people want to gene-shape their kids to meet them, to be tall and symmetrical etc. And they will also go for more subjective and cultural ideas of beauty, including strange ones. In addition to the more obviously useful things like health, strength, endurance, weight maintenance, longevity and intelligence.

Converging genetic analysis technology with facial analysis tech

Jason Goodburn-Moffitt — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:09:50 -0800

(Brad aside), has anyone considered the consequences of a convergence of genetic data from 23andMe, et al. with say the face recognition technology of MyHeritage, et al?

To what degree would it be possible to associate a particular shape, sizing or placement nose-eye-mouth, or the ratios between such to specific markers?

Though genetic influence in facial characteristics is fairly obvious over 1 or 2 generations, it would be interesting to see how many generations this persists for before being "washed out" by genetic noise.

Does legislation exist or is required to forever prevent such data associations? How does one prevent a US based 23andMe from sharing information with Israel-based MyHeritage?

I suppose this is no different from correlating finger-prints, retina scans, hand-print analysis, etc. to you-name-it.

Same for me.

Phillip Helbig — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:12:02 -0800

Same for me. In fact, I don't even have to pay more, just register the address.

"It will of course be

Phillip Helbig — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:10:05 -0800

"It will of course be possible not only to make a child which is “the best of both parents” but also to add the good stuff from the world’s leading minds and athletes with the best of the parents."

Considering that the main advantage of these traits (particularly athletic ability) is that not everyone has them, then if it becomes easy to have them, then some of the motivation for having them is gone. I think this vision of the future is about as credible as that of The Jetsons.

Fred Pohl entitled his autobiography THE WAY THE FUTURE WAS.