David McNett (Nugget)

I recently reconnected with my friend Steven, who I'd known well during the early '90s but had lost touch with over the years. I happened to stumble across an interview with him online over the weekend which sent me off searching for his name on Facebook and all those other places where layabouts from my generation congregate.

When I first met Steven he'd recently met Peter and I watched as their relationship bloomed and grew. I grew to be friends with both of them over the years. As it turns out, Steven and Peter stayed together this whole time and even got married just as soon as the state of Massachusetts allowed them.

Quite tragically, though, Peter died in an accident just about a month ago -- literally just a few weeks before I stumbled across Steven's name and tracked them down. I'm gutted to learn the news and morbidly fascinated by the coincidence of the timing. I wish (and sort of don't wish) I'd found that interview a year ago, or even just a few months ago. It's rough, you know?

In the aftermath of Peter's death, Steven wrote about the impact their marriage had on his ability to navigate the complications surrounding his husband's death. It's sad to reflect on how different the circumstance might have been in the absence of a marriage, a reality faced by gay couples in all those states which do not allow gay marriage. Steven is articulate and his story is moving:

"We will win when we focus on equality."

I'm glad that he was motivated to write about his life because I think it's invaluable for this debate over gay marriage to be grounded in real people and real stories and not the abstract societal ideals that the conversation is so often about. I'm sad for my friend, but I'm more sad for the couples who have to deal with death and weren't allowed to marry.

Goofyhoofy @ fool.com:

There are two famous tea parties that I can think of.

The first, of course, was in Boston Harbor, where a group of revolutionaries dumped someone else's property into the Boston Harbor to protest the tax on it, the rationale for the protest being "Taxation Without Representation." (Well, actually there's a lot more to it than that, but that's become the popular meme.) Economic terrorism and property destruction at its best! I'm hoping today's protestors aren't calling on that historical precedent, but I could be wrong.

The other famous tea party, and one more closely attuned to today's events is the Mad Hatter's tea party from "Alice in Wonderland." You know the one, where the Mad Hatter (sponsor of the tea party) talks in nonsensical poetry and unanswerable riddles, changes positions at his whim, and fulminates against the Queen or any other imagined slights without bothering to give solutions, evidence, or anything else. He's great at slogans, however.

Perhaps the most appropriate part of the story involves the Mad Hatter asking the riddle: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" After much discussion, it turns out he doesn't have an answer to his own question. I can't think of a better metaphor for the Right Wing inspired and Fox News promoted astroturf campaign we are seeing played out among the babbling goobers who have only complaint, historical revision, and memory lapse when it comes to the politics of the past eight years.

Love those signs, though.

A nice guy named Thomas came out and installed our AT&T u-verse service this afternoon. We've got television and Internet at the new place (yay). I swear I'd rather have this than running water. I've spent about $30 at the iTunes Music Store buying all the television we've been missing for the past 14 days and it'll be nice to get back onto the old broadcast/DVR bandwagon again.

I'm measuring a boggling 21Mbps download / 2Mbps upload from their top tier internet plan. I'm paying $65/month for that speed which is roughly 2/3rds of what I was paying for 6mbps DSL at the Austin house and about half of what I was paying for a 33.6Kbps dedicated modem connection a decade ago. I did give up all my fancy static-ip, routed subnet, reverse DNS goodness as a byproduct of the switch but to be honest I think I'm done with the whole "hosting servers from my house" thing. I just don't find that to be worth the hassle and complexity any more.

On the television side the DVR is no TiVo, but it's at least as good as the DirecTV HR22 that it's replacing. The online integration (for scheduling recordings from a web page) is pretty solid but the flexibility overall seems poor. HD quality looks good but HDMI support is sucky.

Looking forward to watching the Daily Show tonight!

The Texas State Senate and State House are both looking at bills that would allow a single license plate (no more front plates). Texas friendslisters, please contact your State Senator and Representative and let them know of your support.

Find out who your representatives are and send them an email asking them to support the bill. (HB309 for House, SB561 for Senate)

Movers are here packing up everything at NuggetHaus 2.0 and tomorrow the journey begins.

New address is:

NuggetHaus 3.0
2131 Colquitt St
Houston, TX 77098-3310
(pics) (map)

Farewell beers at BB Rover's tonight for anyone who wants to commiserate or congratulate.

Discover Magazine interviews Gerald Edelman:

Can consciousness be artificially created?
Someday scientists will make a conscious artifact. There are certain requirements. For example, it might have to report back through some kind of language, allowing scientists to test it in various ways. They would not tell it what they are testing, and they would continually change the test. If the artifact corresponds to every changed test, then scientists could be pretty secure in the notion that it is conscious.

How are you pursuing the creation of conscious artifacts in your work at the Neurosciences Institute?
We construct what we call brain-based devices, or BBDs, which will be increasingly useful in understanding how the brain works and modeling the brain. They may also be the beginning of the design of truly intelligent machines.

What exactly is a brain-based device?
It looks like maybe a robot, R2-D2 almost. But it isn’t a robot, because it’s not run by an artificial intelligence [AI] program of logic. It’s run by an artificial brain modeled on the vertebrate or mammalian brain. Where it differs from a real brain, aside from being simulated in a computer, is in the number of neurons. Compared with, let’s say, 30 billion neurons and a million billion connections in the human cortex alone, the most complex brain-based devices presently have less than a million neurons and maybe up to 10 million or so synapses, the space across which nerve impulses pass from one neuron to another.
Our brain-based device learned to pick up a ball and kick it back to a human colleague. It did not just execute algorithms.
What is interesting about BBDs is that they are embedded in and sample the real world. They have something that is equivalent to an eye: a camera. We give them microphones for the equivalent of ears. We have something that matches conductance for taste. These devices send inputs into the brain as if they were your tongue, your eyes, your ears. Our BBD called Darwin 7 can actually undergo conditioning. It can learn to pick up and “taste” blocks, which have patterns that can be identified as good-tasting or bad-tasting. It will stay away from the bad-tasting blocks, which have images of blobs instead of stripes on them —rather than pick them up and taste them. It learns to do that all on its own.
. . .
What we find, to our delight, is that it has intrinsic activity. Up until now our BBDs had activity only when they confronted the world, when they saw input signals. In between signals, they went dark. But this damn thing now fires on its own continually. The second thing is, it has beta waves and gamma waves just like the regular cortex—what you would see if you did an electroencephalogram. Third of all, it has a rest state. That is, when you don’t stimulate it, the whole population of neurons stray back and forth, as has been described by scientists in human beings who aren’t thinking of anything.
In other words, our device has some lovely properties that are necessary to the idea of a conscious artifact. It has that property of indwelling activity. So the brain is already speaking to itself. That’s a very important concept for consciousness.

(more at the article linked above)

Got an email from the fine, fine folks at youtube tonight whinging about the blatant audio piracy in one of my youtube videos. I took some video of a day trip dbaker and I took from Tokyo to Hiroshima and put together a little video using the love theme from st. elmo's fire (at deebses request) and uploaded it to youtube. The video's been online for years. I wonder if they are automatically detecting violations now or if some human reported the video. It doesn't have very many views.

( Arrrrrrr )

Just a reminder, we're having our super-special _fool-commemorative edition New Year's Eve nuclear tacos tonight at NuggetHaus. Event is tracked over on the myface.

Festivities begin at precisely 17:59:60 at the moment of today's leap second! (Show up a few minutes early if you want to add that to the day's celebrations).

(crossposted to nucleartacos)

Gotcha!

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, [police] lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

Follow link above for additional commentary and video of local news coverage of the setup. It's not entrapment when civilians do it to the cops.

Edward Tufte is going to be passing back through Austin again in late January for anyone who missed his seminar the last time he was in town. I highly recommend it!

Posted by request, here's my standard response any time a grammar nazi flame war breaks out on an internet forum. It incorporates all the usual suspects from my pullet surprise list in one nice, tidy package. This is revision eight or so, I keep finding "great" stuff to add:

What do you expect? This is just an online message board. Nobody here is going to win the pullet surprise for their posts. Mistakes like mispeling "lose" as "loose" are pardon parcel with people who learn the language through talking and not through reading.

I could of made that same mistake if I hadn't learned these words by reading them. Sadly, people who don't read just can't cut the muster. Alot of people would just assume watch a movie instead of read a book and it shows in there writing. For all intensive purposes they are exposed to new words strickly by hearing them and they never learn the proper spelling -- It's simple cause and affect. Problems like this really peeked my interest and I found that there are lots of web sight's that can help.

I've come to turns with it, but the sad thing is that these loosers look like idiots. It's a doggy dog world and they're selling themselves short. One mispeled post to the internet and -- walla -- the whole world knows they don't read books. And there's no statue of limitations for Internet posts -- it will be in Google forever. What is more important then that? I don't mean that there dumb persay, just that there supposably illiterate. You might think that this is all just a mute point but I prefer to air on the side of caution. Common, if you don't think spelling matters you're diluting yourself.

I had a piffany about this: learning to spell words is a right of passage that is to important to skip. Take my advise: if you don't read you'll never be a bonified grammar nazi like me.

It makes my head ache.
Revised: 17-Jun-2009

See also: http://macnugget.org/pullet-surprise

Step 1...	Step 2...	Step 3...

Had an awesome weekend out at Texas World Speedway with karl and I'm eagerly ready for a followup at MSR Cresson on Dec 6/7. I dominated the blue run group and I think I'm ready to move into yellow. Planning on a full dance card for '09 -- join us.

Just a reminder -- we'll all be sharing in the stress and excitement of the election tonight at the third annual Nugget's Surprise Birthday Party. NuggetHaus -- show up any time, most people will be rolling in after work. Bring drinks and snacks, I'll provide the food. Stewart/Colbert coverage begins at 9pm.

Freedom fries, arugula, and lattes for all my commie socialist hippie liberal friends.
Apple pie and cheeseburgers (american cheese, of course) for my gun toting, fascist, science-hating conservative friends.

I'm a nervous wreck. I can't wait for this thing to be over.

I'm old too. :)

See that building in the background with the dome roof? That's the old Saint Louis County Courthouse where, in 1847, Dred Scott sued for his freedom.

161 years ago the court ruled that slaves were property had no claim to freedom. Today is a different story.

I can't find anything in this analysis of this election that I disagree with.

Please, if you're reading this, make sure you're registered to vote.

Judge tells woman to stop having kids:

"A judge in Travis County has ordered a woman to stop having children as a condition of her probation in her case of injury to a child..."

The total cost of the Iraq War will be over $3 trillion, according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard public finance professor Linda Bilmes. That's enough to buy a new Toyota Prius for every household in America.

Other things we could have done for the same three trillion:

• Buy everything on the UK stock market
  
• Buy a platinum vibrator studded with diamonds for each woman in Europe and the Americas
  
• Buy a 'Bridge to Nowhere' for each house or condo in Alaskan Zip Code 99901
  
• Buy every impoverished American child a lifetime of nice dinners
  
• Give every woman in Afghanistan as many servants as John McCain
  
• Surround the entire country of Afghanistan with a 100 foot tall wall of $100 bills
  
• Give every human on the planet two iPhones

Many more creative uses for the money at the link above.

In a world where Don LaFontaine has died...
...one man must ascend...
...to become the new voiceover king...
now more than ever.

In memoriam:

• The Voice
  
• 5 guys in a limo

And, if you haven't yet already, it's a good way to spend 45 minutes.