tisiwoota

What’s that? You’ve been waiting your whole life to sign an obscure petition for a cause I support related to my line of work? Why, today’s your lucky day!

Actually, I should clarify a bit: this petition is important and not at all obscure to the NGO’s who are banning together to put it out. It just doesn’t have that many non organization-affiliated citizens signing it (or ah, even aware of it).

So here’s where you come in– see this pretty picture?

It shows the ratio of signatures per population.
And how’s your country doing?
Getting the tar beaten out of it because 1 measly person is a ridiculously huge percentage of St. Lucia’s population? Well, aren’t you going to do something about that? Don’t you want to help your country win the top–

Oh? The cause?

Yeah, I suppose I could tell you a bit about that…
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Suppose you find yourself in a deciduous country that gets it right:
Spring actually comes in the spring, and this spring-timed spring is _actually_ Spring (rather than say, schizophrenic vacillation between winter and summer interspersed with bludgeonings by random precipitation; a clearly theoretical comparison that couldn`t possibly be based on a real region of an actual country where a blogger might have spent the first 23 years of her life).

Then suppose the view out of your window is a panorama of green fields, a handsome woodland, a hint of pale-blue lake, sweeping clouds, and say, the tallest mountain in Europe (beautifully snow-capped).

Meanwhile, imagine that the gentle breeze is sweet with the fragrance of refreshing alpine air mingled with newborn wildflowers, and that above the usual faint birdsong in the background, you often hear the trilling whinny of the long-winged hawks which sometimes dance across your line of sight.

Wow, you think, dragging your gaze contentedly back to your computer screen, knowing that you`ll be treated to some iteration of this every day of your visit. This is really ideal. Nothing could possibly top this view; it`s totally perf–

And then the world grins and says, Wanna bet?

As it reveals a rainbow which graces aforesaid perfection smack dab in the middle. And no fooling around, either: it`s a full-span rainbow, bearing colors that are at once vivid and distinct yet ethereally translucent. Fit for faeries. A scene that was already complete, already incomprehensibly perfect, has become even more so.

Magic.

(And you don`t even think to want a camera, because it doesn`t even occur to you to think that the scene might change or go away: it seems so self-evidently right, and in any event you`re worlds beyond thinking… It takes every bit of you, that first moment, just to appreciate it as it is. So perfect, this perfection, that it could almost make you cry.)

Interesting story in the NY Times today, about a death sentence verdict that was thrown out because jurors had consulted the Bible as part of their deliberation. Apparently the issue isn’t so much the use of religion as a deliberative factor, as that jurors were relying on “extraneous material” to make their decision.

In my opinion that’s a fair principle to have in place– it’s difficult enough that jurors come with so many different moral premises as it is, without throwing in explicit consideration of religious texts and viewpoints to make things even more time-consumingly counterproductive, not to mention overtly contentious. [And, as the article points out, “the Bible is hardly monolithic about what constitutes justice”. Even within one religion, there could be quite a brawl].

And it’s not really about religion per se– it would be an equal distraction from the facts of the case and laws at hand for jurors to bring in a book by Austin Sarat (he-whose-CV-is-longer-than-god) on the death penalty in legal theory. Even if such a book “forms the basis of [a juror’s] moral universe”.

Somehow I rather doubt the religious-right will be picking up on that key bit of nuance though…

There`s something horribly ironic about genetically-engineering a mouse to give it a cat-allergy…

GoogleNews headline: Heterosexuals Hold ‘Patent’ On Marriage, Calif. Appeals Court Told.

Oh really? Well, if you’re sure that’s what you want, mister attorney… A time-limited monopoly on marriage you shall have.

To think, all this time we misunderstood what the ’sanctity of marriage’ movement was saying. We thought they wanted to ban gay marriage, but it turns they just want to delay it for 20 years.

And okay, maybe it’s not an ideal victory for the gay rights movement: there is, for example, some danger of evergreening. That is, the patent-holder (and who, by the way, will get to claim having invented marriage? I’m pretty sure there’s a fair amount of prior art documentation on that one…) might, 19 years in to the life of the marriage patent, conveniently ‘discover’ a new use that will allow for the patent monopoly to be extended (ie, in addition to the original specification of marriage as ‘the legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife’, a new application might claim ‘hey look, this ‘marriage’-invention can also be used as great fodder for kitschy sitcoms!’).

Nonetheless, it’s a pretty significant step for the ’sanctity of marriage’ movement to admit that they don’t have permanent exclusive rights to exclusive commitments.

And no wonder: patents can be pretty costly to maintain, especially when you’ve got to defend them in lawsuits all the time, the way these folks are…

Though it would be pretty amazing if I’d managed to transmogrify that title into a profound metaphor for something, I’m just passing along to a link to an effort to answer that question.

Fun Internet Toy! I found a website that is an artificial-intelligence version of 20-questions; ie, you think of an object, and the computer program tries to guess it. The point is that as more people play, the computer will “learn” how to play better, by learning how people categorize things.

Below is how it fared with me (I decided to choose something that was more difficult than an ordinary object, but not as snarky as going for something completely abstract like “hope” or “an idea”)…
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So yesterday I read Paul.za`s excellent post on the approximately-imminent oil situation. Just now it occurred to me to idly muse: hmmm, I wonder how IP might come into play in this picture?
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A combinatorial approach for generating literature, as reported by 3quarksdaily.

“If the original text is well written, the resulting text is a bit surreal, but usually retains the original’s rhythm and even something of its sense.”

Incidentally, the original ABC article references “La Disparition” by Georges Perec, a 300-page experimental french novel that does not use the letter E (aside from “the four unfortunate instances” in the author’s name)– which I happened to come across in a bookstore and, for some inscrutable reason, purchase, back in my reckless youth. A novelty, but not particularly attention-holding. Astute readers will recall that I don’t parlait French– and indeed, this was the English version. Quite a feat of translation!

Video* of this year’s winning… er, contraption?

The challenge was to create machines that would replace batteries in a flashlight in a minimum of 20 steps. The winning team took 125 steps, thus earning a chance to compete in the national competition. Their outer-space themed machine is described in an article from the Purdue site as incorporating “a bouncing water balloon, a fireman action figure fleeing a fire and weights attached to a spinning bicycle wheel.”

…

This is right up there with nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, and computer hacking skills, don’t you think?

* And I’m proud to mention, this is not mere low-hanging fruit from milkandcookies.com, but something I found on my very own! [Too bad blogs don’t come with refrigerators; luddite self back-patting will have to do]

PS If, sigh, you have the gall not to know who Rube Goldberg is, you can remedy that here. [Actually, if was interesting to learn from Wikipedia that “Rube Goldberg” style cartoons have arisen independently in several different cultures… Which suggests that, like the multiplicitous domestication of pigs, this is an evolutionarily robust tendency– Not, of course, to denigrate the singular contributions of dear Reuben Lucius]

Dogbert puts a whole new spin on the concept of using intellectual property for the public interest: here