Date: 2008-07-08 13:44 Subject: Palindromic Haiku Security: Public

I won't whore every post I make on my other blog individually, but I am pretty happy with my new post on palindromic haiku.

Date: 2008-06-23 22:07 Subject: HFS, I'm a whore Security: Public

Blog blog blog, elsewhere.

I'm still not sure what the point of that blog is, but it sure does get a lot of people searching for "zebra penis".

Date: 2008-06-14 19:39 Subject: More blog whoring Security: Public Tags: hfs, no way

My other blog is so much more interesting than this one.

See?

Recent topics covered include lightning, zebra penises, the galactic plane, more penises, tiny dogs and nuclear weapons.

Date: 2008-05-22 22:02 Subject: New blog Security: Public Tags: hfs, no way

I've started a new blog:

The Daily HFS

Why? Because sometimes your day needs less WTF, and more HFS.

Hopefully I'll update the new one more often than the old one.

Date: 2008-04-27 09:28 Subject: Cooter Brown Security: Public Tags: beer, hooray

Today's random article (and let's just forget the three-month break, shall we?) is Cooter Brown.

I'm afraid I can't summarize who Cooter Brown is any better than the article can, so here we go: "Cooter Brown is a name used in metaphors of drunkenness"... as in "Goddamn, he's as drunk as Cooter Brown". The story is supposedly as follows: Cooter Brown lived right on the Mason-Dixon line during the US Civil War, and was eligible for the draft by both sides. Instead of deciding which side to fight for, he decided to get drunk and stay drunk for the entire duration of the Civil War.

Here's to you, Cooter Brown. Your drunkenness, indecisiveness and cowardice is an example to us all.

Also notable in this article is some guy's first-person ramble about how his uncle used to say something similar.

Date: 2008-01-27 14:11 Subject: I am bothered Security: Public Mood: weird

If I may digress momentarily from the main theme of this journal (one random wikipedia article a day for a few days every six months or so), I'd like to unload my brain on livejournal for a moment. I read wzdd's post on the Chinese room a few days ago, and it got me thinking about consciousness in a particularly bothersome way, and now I'm officially bothered in a way I haven't been for a while.

Even more bothersome, after thinking through this whole scenario, I remembered that I didn't invent it at all, I'd read something pretty similar in Hofstader and Dennett's The Mind's I a few years ago (In the dialogue A Conversation With Einstein's Brain). But I just went back and looked at the book and it's sufficiently different that I'm gonna write this anyway.

1. OK, let's suppose we have a big-ass computer, running a simulation of a human brain. Maybe it's a simulation on the neural level, or if that's not good enough then maybe it's a simulation on an atomic level, it doesn't really matter. But it's a simulation, so at each timestep we look at the state of the system (which we have stored in memory somewhere), throw in whatever sensory input we might want to put in at this particular timestep, and use our simulated laws of physics to determine what the state of the system will be at the next timestep. Our simulated brain will be just as intelligent as the real thing, and it'll pass any kind of Turing test you might like to throw at it. Is it conscious? To me it seems reasonably obvious that the answer should be yes.

2. OK, now let's suppose we had an even bigger computer and decided to simplify things with a look-up table. Instead of using simulated laws of physics to determine the next brain state from the current brain state, we can just figure it out ahead of time -- for each brainstate there's a "next" brainstate into which it will deterministically evolve at the next timestep. Now, we can still run our simulation exactly as before, except at each timestep we simply figure out the index of the current brain state in the table, look up its successor, and update the brain state in memory. Is this system conscious? It behaves exactly like the other one, but now instead of doing a proper brain simulation we're just iterating our way through a table.

3. For further convenience (though at the cost of making our memory requirements even larger) why don't we replace the table by a matrix? That is, we now have an N*N matrix (where N is the number of possible brain states) and each element ij is 1 if state i evolves to state j, and 0 if it doesn't. This will, of course, be an extremely sparse matrix with very few 1s and a whole lot of 0s. Now we can simulate the brain just by starting with a vector which contains a 1 in one row (corresponding to the initial state) and repeatedly multiplying the vector by the matrix. Is _this_ system conscious? For no added computational cost, we can have two 1s in our vector instead of only one, and simulate two brains at once. Or (and you can see where I'm going here, I'm sure) you can just stick a whole column of 1s in as a starting state, and simulate all possible brainstates at once. Woohoo!

OK, so now we have three scenarios. To me at least it seems fairly obvious that the carefully-simulated-brain system in scenario (1) should be conscious, whereas the vector-matrix multiplication system in scenario (3) shouldn't be, with (2) being completely non-obvious to me. But on some level they're all completely equivalent, which really bothers me.

Of course the other difference is that the computer you'd need to run simulation (1) is actually pretty reasonable in size, and it may well be possible in the coming decades, whereas for simulations (2) and (3) you'd need a computer far larger than the universe just to store the look-up tables. Given 10^11 neurons and assuming each neuron has only two states (probably an oversimplification, but not by too many orders of magnitude) then you'd only need 10^11 bits of memory for scenario (1), whereas you'd need (I think) something like (10^11)*(2^(10^11)) bits for the look-up table in scenario (2) and (2^10^11)*(2^10^11) bits for the matrix in scenario (3).

Anyway, I know I'm not the first person to think along these lines, but putting it in these terms really bothers me in a way that, say, the Chinese Room never did. If anyone has any comments I'd be glad to hear 'em.

Date: 2007-04-18 19:20 Subject: Boll Weevil Monument Security: Public Tags: and the honeysuckle clutters up the vine, the land of the boll weevil, where the laws are medieval

This is one of the more genuinely interesting articles I've found randomly: the Boll Weevil Monument. This is a monument erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Alabama, and remains the only monument ever to be erected to an agricultural pest.

Apparently the boll weevil arrived in the area in about 1915, and within three years was eating the entire goddamn cotton crop. So the farmers switched to peanuts (mmm, peanuts) which wound up making them more money, so in an astounding display of... somethingorother... they erected a monument (consisting of a woman standing with her arms outstretched) to the boll weevil "as a tribute to how something disastrous can be a catalyst to change".

Aww, isn't that inspiring?

Choice quote: "The boll weevil was not added until thirty years later, when Luther Baker thought the Boll Weevil Monument should have a boll weevil on it."

Sadly, it has been damanged by vandalism. :(

Date: 2007-03-15 15:53 Subject: Russia at the winter olympics Security: Public

Russia at the Winter Olympics! They've only competed four times as a separate nation since the breakup of the USSR. And generally, they've been going downhill (zomg, I could totally insert a skiing joke here) since 1994.

They're not that great at skiing actually, but they kick ass at figure skating and cross country skiing -- presumably because Russia has a whole lot of cold stuff which is mostly flat. They're also pretty good at the winter Biathlon which is without doubt the dumbest combination of sports ever put together into a combo event: cross-country skiing and shooting.

Oh, and in Soviet Russia, skiier shoots you!

Date: 2007-03-06 20:12 Subject: (no subject) Security: Public

OK, the most amusing thing about the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in midtown Manhattan is that it was designed by a guy called Krapp.

Is wikipedia getting more boring, or am I getting less witty?

Date: 2007-03-04 20:40 Subject: Broadside Security: Public

Oh joy. Random Article Button today gives me a Transformer. I was never that into transformers, to be honest. I had Machine Men, which I note in retrospect were a dodgy ripoff, but at the time seemed a whole lot cooler. Hell, one of them turned into a gold Porsche 911!

Anyway, today's wikipedia Transformer is Broadside . He's a robot who has two alternative forms -- an F-4 Phantom, or an aircraft carrier.

Wait, what? Let's think about this for a moment. He turns from a fighter jet into an aircraft carrier. Fighter jets are pretty big. Aircraft carriers are really big. Aircraft carriers are a lot bigger than fighter jets, what with the fact that one needs to be able to take off and land on the other. This doesn't appear to make a helluva lot of sense.

Oh, plus there was another Transformer in 2003 by the same name, which turned into a truck. 'cos, you know, all the good transformer names were taken.

And then in 2007 they made _another_ transformer by the same name. Who turned into a tank.

Date: 2007-03-03 21:20 Subject: Blogging about it Security: Public

OK, back to blogging after a three-month hiatus. Let's hope the Random Article button gives me something interesting today.

RAF Fowlmere! It's an RAF base near Cambridge. It was used by the RAF in World War I, and primarily by the USAAF in World War II. Article includes some cool pictures of P-51 Mustangs. Then it was sold back to the local farmers in the 1950s.

Damn, I can't think of anything amusing or witty to say about this. Better try another article.

OK, how about William Stoddart? This guy? This guy sounds like a jerk, and the article is an obvious vanity article. If I weren't so lazy I'd nominate it for deletion.

OK, got nuthin' today.

Date: 2006-10-25 17:22 Subject: Kirsi Ylijoki Security: Public

A very dull entry on the very dull Finnish actress Kirsi Ylijoki is enlivened by some silly names. Meet Kirsi! Her husband Eicca! Sons Eelis and Ilmari!

OK, that's about it really. Wikipedia doesn't even provide a picture, but googling reveals that she was probably hot about ten years ago, but now she's 35 and is going wrinkly, as is the European way.

Date: 2006-10-14 08:55 Subject: Diamond color Security: Public

OK, so I sit down and decide to blog about one random article today before I leave. And what should I get but Diamond Color?

This is something I happen to know about, cos I used to work on it. Why do diamonds have colours? Because they have individual point defects inside which absorb and re-radiate at various different wavelengths. A defect-free diamond is perfectly transparent, but diamonds tend to acquire various types of defect depending on the conditions under which they were formed. Nitrogen is the most common defect, and it can either sit in clumps, or in pairs, or singly, this determines the overall type of the diamond.

Interestingly, it turns out somebody's already had my idea of using ion implantation to alter the colour of a diamond for jewellery purposes. Screw you, other people! So there ya go, I learned something from a wikipedia article on a subject I already know about - hooray for wikipedia. I now turn back to my regular schedule of obscure Czech towns and Irish radio transmitters.

Date: 2006-09-28 21:47 Subject: Cocking-cloth Security: Public Tags: cloth, cock, cocking cloth gonna take me away, ing, yeah

Hooray for randomness! Today it brings me a cocking-cloth.

That could be lots of things, many of which would be more interesting than what it actually is. But instead, it's a big square non-airworthy kite that you hide behind in order to sneak up on pheasants.

A pheasant, you see, is a really fucking stupid bird. If it sees you sneaking up on it with a gun it will fly away, but if it sees a big kite sneaking up on it, it won't bother.

This also proves that pheasants did not evolve in an environment containing predatory canvas squares.

Date: 2006-08-05 20:45 Subject: Blogging about it Security: Public Tags: ireland, radio towers, shitty little islands

Ooh, I've just been reminded (Hi Joel!) that I haven't done my wikipedia thing for a while. So, here's a nice random article for ya: Arranmore Island Transmitter! It's a 45-metre high radio transmission tower on a crappy island off the coast of Ireland. It serves the 528 people of Arranmore Island, who incidentally didn't get electricity until 1957.

Wow, this is obscure even by random article standards.

Date: 2006-07-18 18:57 Subject: Laffey Matrix Security: Public

The wikipedia article on the Laffey Matrix is really apallingly written, and I have no idea what the hell it's on about. Apparently it's some kind of matrix that determines the appropriate rates at which legal fees are charged. In my experience this means every element of the matrix probably just says "an absolute fuckload". Apart from that, I'm pretty confused.

Date: 2006-07-14 06:40 Subject: Optic atrophy Security: Public Tags: omg i'm blind

Ooh. I knew that a large proportion of wikipedia would be composed of horrible diseases, and here's the first optic atrophy is atrophy of the optic nerve, although it's suggested that "atrophy" is the wrong word and it should be called "neuropathy", since atrophied body parts (e.g. muscles) can usually regrow, but the optic nerve can't. Unsurprisingly, symptoms include blindness.

Of course, the real question when you learn about a new horrible disease is: do I have it? According to my eye test of two weeks ago I can still see, so I don't have the most common childhood-onset congenital form. But there's another form which has its onset in 20-30 year old males. Holy crap, I'm a 20-30 year old male!

Date: 2006-07-11 19:38 Subject: Tekovska Breznica and other unpronouncable crap Security: Public Tags: that's not a moon, this is a moon

Man, I'm glad I don't have to read this shit out loud. Tekovská Breznica is a town in the Žarnovica District of the Banská Bystrica Region of Slovakia. Wikipedia gives eight centuries of totally unpronouncable history associated with the town. It has a cool-looking castle and shit.

Also, while I'm getting all medieval on your ass, here's Narrow Water Castle in Ireland. It's near some narrow water or something. Kindof an unimaginative name, but I suppose if the alternative is unpronouncability, that might be preferable. It was built by Hugh de Lacy, who has a cool name. I picture him as a really gay version of me.

Third article for the day is Tarvos . It's a shitty moon of Saturn. How shitty is a shitty moon? Well, it's only 13km wide. That's pretty shitty. The Death Star , by contrast, is 120 km wide (or 160 km for the second one).

Date: 2006-07-09 22:53 Subject: Too damn close to home Security: Public Tags: mango chicken quesadillas, netball chicks look like horses

This is getting weird. Out of all the 1.2 million articles, wikipedia randomly gives me the Sydney Sandpipers, a netball team based out of the University of Sydney. It doesn't have much to say about them except that they operated from 1997 to 2003 and wore sky-blue uniforms, which presumably allowed them to be camouflaged when playing much shorter opponents.

That was a bit short so I'll follow it up with... Agriculture in Mesoamerica. The ancient mesoamericans seem to have done pretty well with the whole agriculture thing, so it's a bit of a shame that the only worthwhile crops they had were maize and squash. Oh, and beans. And tomatoes, cacao, avacados, guavas, chillies and prickly pear. Okay, actually they did pretty well. Food would suck if we didn't have corn, tomatoes, chillies and chocolate.

Prickly pear? Not so much.

Date: 2006-07-08 10:17 Subject: Three more boring articles Security: Public

OK, Mr Random Article button, gimme something interesting!

...

Sayoko Kawauchi isn't very interesting. She's a Japanese archer. And not an especially good one either. She placed 53rd in the 2004 Olympics, with a 72-arrow score of 601. Okay, that's probably better than I could do, but it's unlikely to be showing up in Trivial Pursuit anytime soon. Unless there's a "Trivial Pursuit: Ridiculously Obscure Questions Edition".

Slightly more interesting is Otto von Hapsburg, or to give him his full name, Franz Josef Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix René Ludwig Gaetano Pius Ignazius von Habsburg-Lothringen . He's the current head of the Hapsburg family, and at any other stage in history probably would have been king of somewhere (Hapsburgs have been kings of Germany, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Spain, Bohemia and Portugal, plus Grand Princes of Transylvania and Emperors of Mexico, among many other titles) but since most of Europe seems to have abolished their monarchies he's stuck being an old rich guy. He did get to be Crown Prince of Austria and Hungary from 1916 to 1918, but both countries got their monarchies abolished after losing WW1. He opposed the Anschluss, or at least he claimed to have opposed it afterwards. He recently made news for totally Godwinning himself while complaining about Vladimir Putin. And he's a German, Austrian, Croatian and Hungarian citizen, but he chooses to live in Bavaria -- who wouldn't? So all in all, Otto con Hapsburg sounds like a pretty cool guy.

Discourse markers!. Y'know, these are like words or phrases in spoken discourse that totally, like, mark boundaries in dialogue. Wikipedia gives "you know", "actually", "basically", "like" and "I mean" as examples.