Ticks and Tufts

To act the part of one who is insane, one can get to know the insane.

But what is insanity?

Have you ever visited an insane asylum?

What is the absence or opposite of insanity?

Two recent events have bummed me out — the loss of the political party of my parents in national elections and the recent spy movie called “Skyfall.”

Both imply that the generation which raised me has passed the torch to a generation that has been labeled the “Me” Generation and the Baby Boomers, allegedly including myself.

The next generation, as exemplified by a recent restaurant server of ours who reminded us of the character Mr. Humphries in “Are You Being Served?” and knows neither Benny Hill nor “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” will have to decide for itself what of my generation is worth perpetuating.

For them, a “war” on foreign soil must seem normal, having experienced sensational news headlines about the continuing war on terror in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc.

For some of them, the phrase “7/7” or “9/11” will seem as old-fashioned as “Remember the Alamo,” or “December 7th, 1941…a date which will live in infamy.”

The old wars of military might have not completely faded away but new wars — cyber, financial, cultural — pick up the pace.

With Stephen Covey dead and gone, will anyone in the new generation know what a win-win situation is?

What about insanity?

How much of any one generation (generation being a label, of course, that generalises, not always accurately) is insane and is carried on by the next one?

News

Earlier today, Republican rural states, backed by a military fearing major cuts from the newly elected government, blocked the shipment of meat, vegetables and fuel to Democratic urban centres, attempting to starve people into political change unattainable via the recent election.

In addition, they promise more bad weather directed at urban areas, just like the ones they recently demonstrated on the northeast coast.

More as it develops…

For the record books…

In which part of the year is your area setting new maximum temperatures?

In which year: HSV-record-max-temp-year?

Thanks to the NOAA NWS Huntsville website for this data.

Real question:  is there a pattern in the data that we can do anything to change?

Three, Four, Five

Next to moss-covered shingles, leaves, turning to mulch, humourlessly humus, swept off the sunroom, revealing another hole chewed through the eave…

Ladder, broom and water hose stored, I sit down with coffee-scented candle burning nearby, next to portable phone, smartphone, cup of Earl Grey tea and books:

1. The Seventeen Solutions, autographed by the author, Ralph Nader, with one word, “Act”

2. The biography of General of the Army, Douglas Macarthur, by S.L. Mayer

3. Fighting Ships of World Wars One and Two, by Crescent Books

An email encourages me to like Windows 8 on facebook and buy it for $39.99.

While pondering the future in my thoughts for next week’s stop action video, I shall step away from writing the internet pad and read.

The Future is Calling But is It a Wrong Number?

Some books of my father wait to be catalogued and read, a few based on war and spying.

Is a civilisation a sign of its architecture or the other way around?

When we survey the megalopolises that attract people like moths to a flame, how does the data sort out?

The boxes and cubes,
the donuts and folds,
the windows and doors,
the ceilings and floors.

Their general purposes.

Our general intentions.

We tear down buildings that no longer profit us when the footprint is more valuable for deeper/taller skyscraping monoliths.

A few pyramids and burial mounds remain from the thousands that once existed.

We pour prehistoric plants and animals for roads between cities that grow like slime mold, tendrils stretching for miles and miles.

Roads that fade into history as the oases that feed civilisations die out and sprout dies.

Dies and molds,
Forms and shapes,
Injections and cuts,
Diaphanous and cold.

When two or more generations separate us from war, what will our descendants think about civilisations — their competition for primary cultural status in architecture, for instance?

“The laser’s red glare/The bombs bursting in air…”

In this post-nationalist, one-global-economy world, we still talk about the brand effects of nations.

We expect that powerful lasers will protect our ships and our borders, slicing bullets in half and cutting planes/drones/UAVs to pieces.

“Look out for the hazardous debris falling from the sky!” cried Chicken Little presciently, paraphrasing.

Speaking of borders, our crackpot scheming pseudoscientists devised a method to protect borders from tunnels — causing pinpoint earthquakes that unsettle the ground several hundred metres in any direction, shifting the soil around reinforced smuggling tunnels, hopefully collapsing them without knowing they’re there.

Are we ever in as much danger as we hear security companies try to sell us that we are?

What is the percentage chance that your home will be broken into?

Have you or anyone you know ever been robbed or mugged?

Has anything been stolen from you?

Have you stolen anything (including office material and work hours from your employer)?

As we create the next generation of our species, we take these questions into consideration.

Can we genetically encompass a moral compass?

What about a lack of fear of others?

It’s easy to create a new species of spider which has no moral compass.

Like we’ve discussed, “eat and/or be eaten” rules Earth, a moral compass unnecessary.

How much of a civil society do we need when our DNA is significantly modified to handle new offworld environments?

How does one carve a niche when one’s genetic code designates one’s predilected destiny?

How much education can we cram into our genes?

What is the ideal citizen in 2037, 25 years from now, not far from an imaginary moment in Unix history?

Adaptable, of course.

What else…?

Who is Felicia Day and why have I never heard of her before today?

Irony Defined

My wife and I saw a trailer for a remake of the film, “Red Dawn.” Toward the end of the trailer, a character says, “To them this is just a place, but to us, THIS IS OUR HOME.”

Ironic, is it not?

A patriotic treatise or patriotic parody? A political satire? How can a film both inspire a feeling of idealistic national pride AND question one’s tendencies toward nationalistic idealism?

Time to [re]read Karl Jaspers’ “The Question of German Guilt” and find the answer(s).

Arduino and Android – A Match Made in Haven

Today, my scientists gave me a bag of parts to see if I could recreate the discovery they made.

Inside the bag was an Arduino board, a Sylvania Android tablet, a alcohol breathalyser and miscellaneous parts.

Within a couple of hours, I analysed the software installed on the two computer systems and deduced what my illustrious, if not esteemed, colleagues had pieced together for themselves.

Combining a voiceprint system with language dialect detection, the breathalyser signals are broken down by the Arduino, which coordinates with the Android tablet to create a personality profile, including a medical report on the person who breathes into the breathalyser, looks into the webcam and speaks several phrases at a precise rate of speed tailored to the individual test subject.

The software determines the approximate location of the person’s upbringing, compares the person’s speech patterns against a database of people observed in public CCTV/private webcam situations from the same subculture, analyses minute mouth/tongue/throat movement and breath contents to produce a health profile.

As a byproduct, the software guesstimates the type of childhood education the subject received and its effectiveness, using the audiovisual techniques given during the speech pattern testing portion of the software’s mini-exam.

Government-approved public education systems have already requested multiple copies of this “Arduinoidalyser,” in hopes that the software test results can be used in place of standardised classroom testing to predict a child’s future place in society without stigmatising the child’s testtaking abilities in comparison to other children.

Teachers who like the “tip the bottle,” as the saying goes, have asked that the breathalyser portion be turned off should the teachers have to submit themselves to the Arduinoidalyser for benchmarking.

= = = = =

Meanwhile, the Chinese government today demanded that all retailers carrying authentic/counterfeit footwear designed/manufactured by/for Wolverine Worldwide are officially banned because the Wolverine corporation makes footwear for the U.S. military and thus must be a covert spy operating on Chinese soil.

The U.S. government denied any direct covert surveillance connection to Wolverine.

After seeing the Wolverine Worldwide press release, Marvel Comics has decided to sue the Wolverine corporation for the use of the name of one of their most popular cartoon characters.

Wolverine Worldwide immediately countersued, saying they’ll grind their boots in the face of an comic book hero that never really served in the military.

The University of Michigan, in order to avoid controversy, has changed its mascot to the Persian Rugs in recognition of the changing democratics demographics in the Great Lakes state.

In the old days…

In the old days, I would have put together a system like this:

You know, a touchscreen computer monitor with a plugin interface for a smartphone which acts as the portable PC with local, physical, wireless keyboard and other HID as needed for desktop use.

But then, gesture control got in the way.

I’m not one to talk with my hands and arms.

I’ve been typing on keyboards for about as long as I’ve written short stories.

I am not like the kids of today who barely know what a computer mouse is, let alone a physical keyboard.

Watching kids in the classroom manipulate their way through their coursework with a tablet PC makes we worry for no particular reason.

How many of them are more comfortable working with a game controller, including accelerometer/gyroscope/etc. than with a keyboard/mouse combination?

And what about the next set of students more comfortable with natural gesture control, where their indoor environments are wired to respond to them like living beings and augmented reality makes their outdoor environments feel more connected, their senses more stimulated by information [over]load?

What about this worries me?

The digital divide.

Environmental impact.

Collapsing world economy.

What is the sustainable version of these images?

We are not crying “Wolf” here, simply recognising the support structure needed to maintain and enhance these technological achievements for decades more without interruption by global war.

Back to the Committee meeting where we need full cooperation by those willing to reach consensus on a few important issues not yet discussed in this public forum…

Where drone-sized minimissile defense systems line national borders using UWB/mesh network technology to intercept and destroy rogue UAVs, killing a few kites (yes, birds) as collateral in the process.  See the latest cartoon films starring Iron Man for a moving example.  Detente is a terrible deterrent to waste, like al dente is a terrible burden on the waist.