Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8
Thus spake peggy miller circa 11/11/2008 08:07 AM: Related to the issue of legalizing gay marriage, I think it is extremely important to stick with the Webster definition of marriage -- which includes to unite in a close personal way: AND a legal union as husband and wife -- I think if two people are the age of consenting adults and meet these two requirements (since gay couples can choose who is generally the husband and generally the wife if they want to) then they should be able to form a legal marriage. I think that anything else ignores their rights, and ignores the definition of marriage itself. But if we argue from the dictionary we may end up with arguments like the following. While all the below agree with your point: 1) marriage generally refers to a spousal relationship and 2) spouse is a term meaning things like vow, pledge, ritual, etc, and 3) husband generally means master of the house, wife really is defined to be a female. So, while lesbian couples can choose who is the husband and who is the wife; gay male couples can't. They can choose the husband; but neither can be a wife. Personally, I think marriage is an obsolete concept. We should completely separate legal contracts from religious ceremonies and purge marriage from the law entirely. It should be in the exact same category as baptism. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Fewer subscription requireds
A neat little tip (via lifehacker) that improves the odds of avoiding those subscription required messages when you are searching for academic papers: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/11/when-google-scholars-integration-with.html Robert FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Fewer subscription requireds
And here's a neat little Greasemonkey script that is also helpful: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/36647 -tj On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:51 AM, Robert Holmes [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A neat little tip (via lifehacker) that improves the odds of avoiding those subscription required messages when you are searching for academic papers: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/11/when-google-scholars-integration-with.html Robert FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -- == J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -- Buckminster Fuller == FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?
Phil Henshaw wrote: Does it just accelerate indefinitely, like the singularity guys propose?? Or does it reach some point of stabilization as a process, and a relative completion of the process of exploding rates of change? I feel that I am an anachronism, though I am probably not alone on this list. In reviewing the list of "obsolete skills" I find that I hold over half of them and actually practice half of those. For example: I still adjust the timing, gap the plugs and points, and clean the carbuerator on my 1949 ford truck. I cut my own firewood (often with handsaw and axe rather than chainsaw and logsplitter). I cook my meals on a wood cookstove which is my only heat other than the sun. I have built my own structures of mud and straw. I make my own charcoal and use it to forge my own iron and steel implements. I grow (some of) my own food. I have not owned a television for 20 years. I still own an operable manual typewriter. I was born just before Sputnik went up. I watched men walk on the moon. I've seen every square meter (literally) of the earth mapped from orbit. I've seen the surface of Mars via telepresence. I've watched global climate change go from a rough concept to a conspiracy theory to a widely accepted theory to an almost-directly experienced phenomena. The sunburn I got in NZ after 10 minutes on the beach at Sea Level helped to make the Ozone hole more real to me, for example. I have also personally experienced the accelerated advance of knowledge and technology. I have worked on some of the most advanced big physics, new biology, and advanced computing projects in the world. I was already a veteran user of the internet (NSFnet, ArpaNet, UUNet, etc.) when it was opened up to the world. I read Drexler's seminal nanotechnology-coining "Engines of Creation" while it was still only his master's thesis. I attended Feynman's "Plenty of Room at the Bottom" (first given the year I was born!) and "Reversible Computing" lectures. The list goes on. I am not unlike most of you on this list in this extreme contrast of experiences. Some here are at least a few years older than me, and many are much more well connected/embedded in the science and technology realm. Some here were born before the Manhattan Project. Many of you may even be mildly bionic (replaced hip or knee, pacemaker, etc.) and many of you will become moreso, possibly unto immortality. Singularian Rant We are perhaps at a unique cusp in time. I believe (but do not so much approve of) Kurzweil's vision of the Singularity up to the question of what it means to be *human*. If some of us do succeed in living forever, which almost requires replacing all of our meat, one piece at a time (like the Tin Man of Oz) or all at once (Kurzweil's upload), will we be the same person? Will we even be the same "species"? Would we even recognize ourselves? What is intelligence/cognition/self without embodiment? The turmoil in politics (last 8 years), economics (coming on hard as I type), and religion (fomenting for decades with possible more-acute symptoms any year now) may only be a mild tremor leading up to the extreme and abrupt changes we may be in for. Maybe I've read too much Science Fiction, too much Utopian/Dystopian fantasy. Maybe I am too easily fueled by Morbid Fascination. For better and/or worse, there are big changes afoot. Can Complexity Science help us to predict anything specific, help us to avoid any of the least desireable changes, or mitigate the worst effects? I'm not sure. Some of us seem to have a fundamentalist-like belief in Complexity. We believe that by increasing the complexity and/or diversity of a system, we get "good" results. Some of us seem to believe that our complex systems theories can help us model "everything that linear science cannot". I am not so sure, not so impressed, yet I *am* highly entertained and sometimes even hopeful at the meager understandings and predictions and even interventions we *have* achieved. As a member of this culture (high-tech Western Civ) and of this species (Homo Sapiens) and of the class mammalia and of the subphylum vertebrate and the general category of life itself, I am totally amazed and taken in by what we are. Not the pinnacle of evolution, whatever that means, but something uniquely interesting. Life seemingly being an antidote to entropy or at least a brave challenger in the face of entropy's statistical inevitability. If I survive the distortions we are entering into, and can still recognize my humanity, my membership in the family of all life, I hope that what I find in the PostHuman result is not a terrible aberration of all I currently hold dear and familiar. I doubt I will survive this time, possibly only because the time will be too long for the body I was born into and I personally have little interest in taking on the many changes and technologies implicated in singularian survival/advancement. I will most likely die in the next 20
Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?
The story of my life: curses, obsolesced again! -- rec -- FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?
Does it just accelerate indefinitely, like the singularity guys propose?? Or does it reach some point of stabilization as a process, and a relative completion of the process of exploding rates of change? Phil Henshaw -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Johnson Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 3:35 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] com Subject: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete? All: Some of us may recall Bruce Sterling's fun site, Dead Media, technologies that no longer are necessary or exist. http://www.deadmedia.org/ The human side of all that can now be found at Obsolete Skills http://obsoleteskills.com/Skills/Skills Build your personal timeline of obsolescence, friends. -tom -- == J. T. Johnson Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA www.analyticjournalism.com 505.577.6482(c)505.473.9646(h) http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. -- Buckminster Fuller == FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8
Thus spake Phil Henshaw circa 11/11/2008 09:12 AM: It's not really about definitions, That was precisely my point. However, the law _is_ about definitions (though the purpose of the law is not about definitions). Hence, my preferred solution regarding the law would be to eliminate the concept of marriage completely, for everyone. This would include legalizing poly[gamy|andry]. If 2, 3, or N people want to enter into a contract that involves household assets and medical power of attorney, then so be it. But leave your religion at the threshold of the courthouse. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8
Yes, that's the problem that simple rules get into with complex subjects. Polygamy is taboo for quite other reasons it seems. I'd say let marriage be whatever the spiritual tradition you feel part of says and let whoever wants to fulfill the legal obligations of civil unions, whatever they happen to be called, do that too. Then who people are in their relationships is quite up to them. I think there are too many overlapping kinds of interpersonal relationships to start drawing lines between them, and what nature does to solve that problem, let them all drink out of the same stream, is the way to sort things out. Phil Henshaw -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of glen e. p. ropella Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 12:36 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Obama, Proposition 8 Thus spake Phil Henshaw circa 11/11/2008 09:12 AM: It's not really about definitions, That was precisely my point. However, the law _is_ about definitions (though the purpose of the law is not about definitions). Hence, my preferred solution regarding the law would be to eliminate the concept of marriage completely, for everyone. This would include legalizing poly[gamy|andry]. If 2, 3, or N people want to enter into a contract that involves household assets and medical power of attorney, then so be it. But leave your religion at the threshold of the courthouse. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Dictionary definitions
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 8:28 PM, Nicholas Thompson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Think about the crisis in telephone land that occured when dials were replaced by keys. I came home tonight to a crisis in our home telephone land. My daughter says the phones are broken, everytime she tries to call Shelby the phone doesn't work, she places the phone on speaker, enters Shelby's number, presses dial, and the phone goes click click-click-click-click-click click-click-click-click If we'd waited long enough it would have finished dialing the call to Shelby in Texas. It took longer to figure out how to unreprogram the phones than it did to figure out what had happened, still don't know how it happened. -- rec -- FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?
Steve, I recognize much of your experience of a rush toward a vanishing point and sense of expectation about that.My question is how can you tell the difference between the usual kind and the unusual kind? We've had exploding economic change for a couple hundred years, doubling in size every 20 years and radically transforming everything everywhere all the time. Look at how vastly each generations life experience has been from the last, going back as many generations as we have any personal knowledge of. People have declared the sky is falling and the end is near endlessly it seems too.I think when I set about to find the answer to that question, to see if I could validate some of feelings of expectation, I asked some of the useful questions and narrowed it down quite a bit. The question though, is what question would you ask to tell if a feeling of impending grand transformation was real or not? I don't think magic is what we're talking about. One would not have any way of confirming a premonition of magic.I do think quite sincerely and confidently that foresight about real complex system transformations, approaching 'water shed moments' is very likely to be verifiable if they're real. Phil Henshaw From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Smith Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 1:56 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete? Phil Henshaw wrote: Does it just accelerate indefinitely, like the singularity guys propose?? Or does it reach some point of stabilization as a process, and a relative completion of the process of exploding rates of change? I feel that I am an anachronism, though I am probably not alone on this list. In reviewing the list of obsolete skills I find that I hold over half of them and actually practice half of those. For example: I still adjust the timing, gap the plugs and points, and clean the carbuerator on my 1949 ford truck. I cut my own firewood (often with handsaw and axe rather than chainsaw and logsplitter). I cook my meals on a wood cookstove which is my only heat other than the sun. I have built my own structures of mud and straw. I make my own charcoal and use it to forge my own iron and steel implements. I grow (some of) my own food. I have not owned a television for 20 years. I still own an operable manual typewriter. I was born just before Sputnik went up. I watched men walk on the moon. I've seen every square meter (literally) of the earth mapped from orbit. I've seen the surface of Mars via telepresence. I've watched global climate change go from a rough concept to a conspiracy theory to a widely accepted theory to an almost-directly experienced phenomena. The sunburn I got in NZ after 10 minutes on the beach at Sea Level helped to make the Ozone hole more real to me, for example. I have also personally experienced the accelerated advance of knowledge and technology. I have worked on some of the most advanced big physics, new biology, and advanced computing projects in the world. I was already a veteran user of the internet (NSFnet, ArpaNet, UUNet, etc.) when it was opened up to the world. I read Drexler's seminal nanotechnology-coining Engines of Creation while it was still only his master's thesis. I attended Feynman's Plenty of Room at the Bottom (first given the year I was born!) and Reversible Computing lectures. The list goes on. I am not unlike most of you on this list in this extreme contrast of experiences. Some here are at least a few years older than me, and many are much more well connected/embedded in the science and technology realm. Some here were born before the Manhattan Project. Many of you may even be mildly bionic (replaced hip or knee, pacemaker, etc.) and many of you will become moreso, possibly unto immortality. Singularian Rant We are perhaps at a unique cusp in time. I believe (but do not so much approve of) Kurzweil's vision of the Singularity up to the question of what it means to be *human*. If some of us do succeed in living forever, which almost requires replacing all of our meat, one piece at a time (like the Tin Man of Oz) or all at once (Kurzweil's upload), will we be the same person? Will we even be the same species? Would we even recognize ourselves? What is intelligence/cognition/self without embodiment? The turmoil in politics (last 8 years), economics (coming on hard as I type), and religion (fomenting for decades with possible more-acute symptoms any year now) may only be a mild tremor leading up to the extreme and abrupt changes we may be in for. Maybe I've read too much Science Fiction, too much Utopian/Dystopian fantasy. Maybe I am too easily fueled by Morbid Fascination. For better and/or worse, there are big changes afoot. Can Complexity Science help us to predict anything specific, help us to avoid any of the least desireable changes, or
Re: [FRIAM] Are your skills obsolete?
When I graduated in Engineering I was told my knowledge had a half life of 4 years. This from a Continuing Education specialist. That means that of my degree training only 1/861 st of it is still useful. Trouble is I can't figure out which bit that was or where I left it! R Tom Johnson wrote: All: Some of us may recall Bruce Sterling's fun site, Dead Media, technologies that no longer are necessary or exist. http://www.deadmedia.org/ The human side of all that can now be found at Obsolete Skills http://obsoleteskills.com/Skills/Skills Build your personal timeline of obsolescence, friends. -tom FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
