Author: Jon

Im back

The Garreau Group

And I’m reading a new book.  I got a bunch of books from my in-laws, and I’ve started reading Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau. It’s about a group of fundamentalist Christian zealots who start blowing up buildings to protest the teaching of evolution in schools.

I’m just kidding.  It’s actually non-fiction about the marriage of technology and evolution, and whether we are approaching “The Singularity“, which is basically the tipping point beyond which there is a fundamental change in what it means to be human.  This is not the only view of the Singularity, but this is more or less the view he’s going with. So far I’m more or less buying it.  He makes some assumptions that I don’t think are true, but none of them are really important to his hypothesis.  It’s a little scary/exciting, because he and others he quotes are expecting huge changes in not just the way we live, but the way we are.  And they’re expecting them in the next few decades.

I’ll keep you all posted on how it’s going.  If I start getting a little existential here, tell me to take a break from the science and go watch some reality tv.  Nothing will destroy my faith in the imminent transcendence of humanity quicker than a few hours of prime time television.

What a nice way of putting it

Techdirt: Who’ll Pay For C3PO’s Social Security Benefits?

The paper admits we won’t be worrying about any of this for at least another twenty years, assuming robots can first hurdle the monumental task of self-sustained bipedal movement sans fatality.

This has been going around for the last few days – how will we handle things when we have artificial intelligences demanding citizenship?  Frankly, I don’t think it will be that big a deal.  Things are likely to be very different around here by the time robots are thinking enough to want citizenship, and this change will just be rolled into all the rest of them.  Not that we don’t have to think about it – we’ll definitely have to really examine the changes and figure out a long-term solution.  But it’s not like we’re suddenly going to have hundreds of thousands of thinking robots taking social security benefits all at once.

I posted this article rather than any other simply because of the “self-sustained bipedal movement sans fatality”, because I’m a dork.

Almost out

I’m at work until lunchtime today, and then home to finish packing and head off to the in-laws’.  It still sounds weird to talk about going to my father-in-law’s house.  This is my first Christmas away from home, so it should be an experience.  I’m a little sad to be away from my family, but this was inevitable at some point, and I’m excited to experience my wife’s family Christmas.  It promises to be more hectic than mine.

That said, don’t expect much posting until I get back next week.  I’ll have computer access there, but I don’t expect to use it very often.  And without my stored passwords, I may forget how to login here to post anything.  But I imagine most of you will be similarly busy with family and holiday celebrations and just not being at work.

So, happy holidays, whichever holidays it may be that you do or don’t celebrate.

Angry letter to Safeway

Well, it wasn’t really angry, exactly.  Puzzled is probably more accurate.  But it’s here, along with Safeway’s response.  Well, along with a summary of Safeway’s response, because their email to me had a “don’t share this with anyone or we’ll shoot you” note at the bottom.

_Note:  Safeway did not actually threaten to shoot me.  I just said that for effect. _

Safeway hates the environment

I recently purchased a carton of Safeway brand organic milk from the Safeway near my house. After drinking the milk, I rinsed the carton, and then asked my wife whether it could be recycled with the bottles and cans, or if we had to take it with the cardboard. She didn’t know. So I checked the carton.

To my utter shock and dismay, I found no indication that the carton was recyclable at all! This is organic milk, friendly to cows, friendly to the environment, but the carton has to go in the trash? I hoped that I was just missing the mark on the carton that explained how to recycle it.

I went to Safeway online and filled out their contact form.

I purchased a carton of your Safeway brand organic milk, and the carton does not seem to be recycleable. Is this true? While I applaud Safeway’s efforts to provide a greater selection of certified organic foods, I would hope that you would also provide more environmentally friendly packaging.

I’m not allowed to print their response because it might contain Safeway proprietary information. I’m not sure if their little disclaimer would stand up in court, but I don’t really want to get an email from their lawyer. But I can summarize.

Thank you for your email. Sorry it took so long to respond. Thanks for telling us that you can’t recycle the organic milk carton. Your comments are important to us. We’re glad you’re buying our organic products, even though the “O” symbol we use reminds people of Oprah. We’re going to have more organic products in the future, and we hope Oprah isn’t just waiting for us to get further along before she sues us. We’ll file your comments away somewhere, and probably no one will ever read them, even though we told you that they would. Thanks for contributing to the bottom line – some executive just got a million dollar bonus for heading up the organic initiative.

Safeway may or may not have said all those things. I’m not sure. Maybe they should have let me reprint it verbatim to make sure I haven’t misquoted them.

Its nice to be a grown-up

There are a lot of hidden and unexpected benefits to growing up.  Many of the benefits are obvious:  You can drive, you have a real income, you don’t get funny looks from convenience store clerks . . . the list goes on.  But then there are the things you never thought about.

Right up there on that list is that you have the maturity to know that there’s nothing wrong with going to bed really early when you’re tired.  I generally go to bed between 11 and 11:30, since I get up at 6:15.  Last night, the wife and I met some friends out for dinner and got home around 9pm.  We were both pretty tired – It’s been kind of a long, stressful week.  So we went to bed at 9:30.

What a difference.  I feel much better this morning.  Sometimes, you need to get a few extra hours of sleep, and sometimes it isn’t feasible to do that by sleeping in.

I won’t be in bed early tonight because I have to take the cat to the babysitter’s.  Her old owners are watching her while I’m at my in-laws’ for Christmas.  And of course I can’t just drive down there when I get out of work, because traffic is hideous.  So I’ll have to wait until 7:30 or so.  It’s an hour each way to their house, and I can’t imagine I won’t stay for a bit (They’re some of my best friends as well as cat-sitters).

So, I have a few recommendations for all of you:

  1. Go to bed really early every once in a while.
  2. Have friends who barely even notice an extra cat for a week.
  3. Don’t drive on 395 in DC at 5pm.

OMG, Transformers are soooo dark

Next Transformers Trailer Online at Dethroner

It’s dark, but a Transformers movie should (or at least could) be; the franchise is no stranger to dark moments.

I can’t decide whether I really like reading Dethroner or not, but this made me laugh.  I mean, yes, I almost cried when Optimus Prime died.  But, to be fair, I was 8.  Does that justify “the franchise is no stranger to dark moments”?  Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

I can’t decide, either, whether I want to see this movie.  I did not see the Dukes of Hazzard movie after loving the series as a kid.  After seeing the cast, I’m pretty sure I made the right call.  But I maybe do want to see Transformers.

Depressing politics

I was writing a lot here about politics before the elections, and since then I’ve written almost nothing.  Partly this is your fault for not holding me to my promise to write a letter to Jim Webb as soon as Novel Writing Month was over.  You all are such slackers.

But partly I just find myself depressed by the state of politics.  I was about to write something about a Wash Post article that celebrates Bush’s first admission that we’re not winning the war in Iraq, but as I was reading it, I lost heart.  I mean, what do I say at this point?  We’ve made a huge mess over there, and we show no signs that we’re close to having it cleaned up.  Bush is going to send more troops, but the article thinks that will take years.  That’s comforting.  Are we really spread so thin that we can’t scrape together a few hundred thousand troops?  What if something else happens that requires our attention?

I realize I don’t really know what I’m talking about here, and that’s part of my frustration.

On a lighter note, I can already see someone on SNL making a joke out of Bush’s “We’re not losing, we’re not winning.”  If I were funnier than I am, I would think of a new word that means something in the middle.  And then I would say it in my best imitation of someone imitating Bush.  Then people would laugh.