Author's posts
Dec 09 2009
Midnight Cowboy: A Return to Naranjastan
Man, I can’t wait to get back to Naranjastan. I am sure it’s the same as before, because Peeder built the machine, ct just maintains it. Since I last played peeder’s game, which I much prefer to Ender’s, the meta tools for playing such adventures have advanced.
Basically I have cheat codes for assessing the meta structure of any online community. Lucky for everyone, raiding is so 2006. So here is what Daily Kos’s home page looks to me, through meta colored glasses:
This looks like a good relevancy sample because comments is near discuss.
Looks like they are really into the Public Option and the Senate, fixated if you will. Two major meta blocks missing are War and Economy. Jobs does get a cornerstone position but does not carry much weight.
Funny data strings:
If you look at the House Health Bill block, President Woman appears. Daily Kos is still secretly a Hilldog site! I kid, sorta.
Next to Public Option, the white First. First GOP Year. See! In meta terms, Dkos does know what’s up, they are just lying to themselves.
They do know they are progressives. It’s at the core of the structure. Progressives Things Diary to be exact, and they are diary for Insurance. The truth hurts, especially when its not covered by the Insurance trust they pretend to be fighting.
The purity is still strong in Naranjastan. Make note of that.
Also missing from the list:
Torture
LGBT Rights
Katrina
Liberal7’s Harry Reid says AP wrong, Public Option not dropped caught my eye. Someone does not like the pony they are being given.
Gonna filter that, be right back.
Update
Back! For a reality denial diary it was pretty mundane.
Wow, another football. Naranjstan kicks a lot this.
Well, this shows two simple things. The sounds of their own voices commenting is equally to the content of the meta ball. Besides the major theme of the diary Public Option, the next biggest asset is +0.
All in all, there doesn’t seem to be a flowing meta fetish as there use to be. Who knows, maybe they changed the Trusted User rule now its like level 120 immortals only.
The funny part about this diary is that it isn’t based in reality or what is being reported. At the right tip, not big at all is truth and lying, under plans of all things. They also Care Always, right next to the +0.
The funniest part of this structure is to the right of Public, the major meme of the diary: Buy-In Hope.
That’s what this diary is full of, people who had buy-in hope for Obama. They even took their time to write their names down on the meta wall.
Last stop, Recent Diary List!
Here it is, clean as a whistle:
This pretty much speaks for itself, they are trying to break some kind of public option.
A meltdown there is good to likely. They know the truth about Copenhagen, those parties are gonna be crazy. Sexual Edition Global, indeed.
At least we know they are Worried Americans.
I’m not sure they are even worth the effort.
This is like finding out people still play muds online.
Dec 08 2009
Politics as Pro Wrestling
Oh man, there is nothing like Corporate Ponies holding a Nuremberg Rally. Can you believe this shit? When it was Bush was driving the car, we all wanted to go home.
Now that Obama gots the keys, these supposed doves go nationalistic at the drop of a hat, out of which they pull a hawk and want to fly more troops directly into the imperial wars!
Across the Poniesosphere sites that had call for marches and donations to the cause of peace, now blow the trumpet of war. Unfucking real.
It was then that it hit me.
Politics has become pro wrestling, but with less believable plot lines.
As Obama has said recently, the news is pretty unserious. Infotainment has supplanted real discourse turning our national government into ab epic Hulk Hogan versus Ric Flair title match.
For months before the showdown, the election itself, we have people yelling into the microphone about how much they love America, and how they are going to win this for America!
It’s the same shit, and instead of those B Rate “sports”casters that the WCW or whatever the fuck they are called now uses, we have Pop Bear O’Reilly and Keith O hyping the crowd inbetween bouts.
And the Poniesosphere is just fan art for this political pro wrestling.
When the plot line changes and now Hulk Hogan has to accept the darkside of Sgt. Slaughter to fight the Iron Sheik and his dreaded Camel clutch, they howl for the Sheik to feel the wrath of the Axe Bomber and the Atomic Leg Drop.
Remind them of this fact and they will say Obama campaigned on it. If Obama campaigned for you to run off a cliff, you still going to do it? Just because Obama says we going to jump of that cliff?
It’s ridiculous as their attacks on Grayson or the Little Woodland Critter Dennis Who Married That Smoking Elf or anyone else shows they do not care about the policies.
They just want to cheer and be winning for once. Hulk Obama can do no wrong, because he is doing it for America.
Those of us who are not fans of political wrestling will never understand why we can’t just have government based on sound policy and actual civics. We are to dumb apparently, to understand that infotainment is high discourse these days.
The the howling of two wrestlers, one in red and one in blue, howling for each others’ throat for 24 hours a day, never about what is really going on in this country.
It is a political media commodity meant to absorb the time of the political class in an epic game of World of Wresting and steal the oxygen away from anybody who wants to ask any real questions.
And if you point out that political wrestling is fake, you will have an angry Corporate Pony on your hand.
In Closing, here is
Ric Flair the Republican:
Hulk Hogan the Democrat:
Iron Sheik, The Taliban
True.
Jun 27 2009
The Holy War for 1.999… not equaling 2 v1.1
<- this has sparked lively discussion elsewhere, and I thought some heads on here would enjoy this ->
This started in the Math SubReddit where I refused to give ground with much much better math minds than myself. I am known to be stubborn and I will not grant the Tall order that calculating the infinite series, 1+1/2+1/4+1/8+1/16… comes out to 2.
This is bullshit.
darkon points out some valid holes in my conjecture
http://www.reddit.com/r/math/c…
It doesn’t progress. It’s already there.Consider an arrow hitting a target. It goes halfway there, then half of the remaining distance, then half of the still remaining distance, then half again, and so on.
The arrow still gets there even though it has to go through an infinite number of “halfways” to do it.
In the same way, 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 +1/16 + 1/32 + … adds up to 2 even though there are an infinite number of terms in the sum. Actually it sums to 2 because there are an infinite number of terms. Any finite number of terms and it’s not equal to 2, although it can get very close with a finite number of terms.
This is to ignore the value of the some of the parts. It is the boundries of the sum of all these units that are in question. The sum of the whole fellas.
Of course if the sum of units without disregard for their individual value will equal two in an infinite set of numbers. It’s really not that hard to do.
1+1=2
The proof for that is a little long, so I won’t post it here.
I refuse to believe you cannot add more value to the sum of the whole as 1.999… without getting to the value 2.
If it already equals 2, it is 2, the is the bound of the value of that unit.
The distance between 2 and 1.999… is infinitely small as you can always add half of the unit before it, one more unit in the sum of the whole which gets infinitely close to the bounds of the value 2.
To deny that such an infinitely small distance cannot exist is to deny that infinity can not go the other direction. It’s the same concept.
That would be a major flaw in the entire system.
This guy explains the problem.
lydianrain
http://www.reddit.com/r/math/c…
Since you’re being downmodded without real explanation, (not by me) I’ll try to give this a shot.The trouble here is the nature of the “…” in the title post. It’s a little vague, and many people who try to talk about what an infinite series is miss the point.
The statement “the sum from n=0 to infinity of 1/2^n EQUALS 2” is a formal statement that means what you are saying: the partial sums can come as close to 2 as we wish. (more rigorously: for every epsilon there is an N blah blah blah) What it is not is a statement of equality of two numbers.
In mathematics, it is often standard to abuse this notation a little bit, and treat the sum as a number, and say that the above statement is a statement of equality of two numbers. This is usually only problematic in cases where existence of the limit is under question.
In any case, the people downmodding you presumably haven’t thought much about this distinction, and are criticizing the idea that an infinite series is not truly equal to something. Hence the snarky “we do math” as though this notational sleight-of-hand should be plainly obvious to any fool.
In any case, Soupstorm is basically right that we can “allow” a series to have a value, and I think a lot of people are interpreting you as contradicting him. However, the whole thing is taking on cultish tones with the invocation of the name of “mathematics” to justify a very vague, mostly implicit position–what does it mean to “allow” anyway?–so I’m inclined to take your side here.
For some reason the mere questioning of Tall brought about the wraths of some acolytes from some D&D scenario, all chanting “Mathematics, Mathematics”.
A two word comment would have sufficed:
It’s shorthand.
The notion that the notion behind that shorthand could be challenged will be challenged.
It must always be challenged to give validity to the value for it to be a fact, otherwise it is an act of faith.
Excuse the muddy boots on the ivory floors, I did not know “we do math” was going to be a sleight of hand magic show performed by high priests.
Do not look down upon 1.999…, denying it equality of a value independent of two, just watch the acolytes saw lady rules in half in half, and magically put her back together again.
It’s quite a show.
1.999… does not equal 2, ever, except when needed as shorthand in computation.
Add that to the magic cult’s bylaws.
Jun 03 2009
We have either become Nazis or Zombies.
There are two truths in the world of video gaming:
1) You will always have to save the princess again
2) The only two acceptable enemies to slaughter in games of war are zombies and Nazis.
Not even during the height of the Cold War were Russians placed in a gamescape to be gunned mercilessly by 14 year old boys. This was always reserved for the most foul and unholiest of creatures, Nazis and zombies.
Zombies were a no brainer, and yes I meant that pun. But Nazis were always rendered as human beings fighting for the horror show that was Nazi Germany. The very first popular first person shooter would lead to decades of war against digital Nazis, with no other human foes ever inserted, not even people we fought like the Koreans or Vietnamese:
Sure, there was an oddball terrorist to kill here and there, but they would always answer to some higher power, which would always turn out to be a freaking Nazi.
Always.
This is why this new game is a bit of a teller, and how the world might add Americans to the list of evils:
Congrats America! Let’s hope the world thinks we zombies, at least then we can claim to just be mindless torturers.
Jun 03 2009
Do they dream of electric sheep asleep in the hub?
That doesn’t look like much does it? Just some robots doing their thing, finding a light source, charging their batteries. What you are actually looking at is Skynet in the making.
This is the work of Dario Floreano of Laboratory of Intelligent Systems based at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. What you are looking at is Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence.
What the does that mean, you are asking yourself? Well, let’s let a layman explain it:
http://current.com/items/90119…
Dario Floreano and his team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology built a swarm of mobile robots, outfitted with light bulbs and photodetectors. These were set loose in a zone with illuminated “food” and “poison” zones which charged or depleted their batteries. Their programming was initially random, so the first generation staggered around the place like bunch of concussed puppies.
At intervals, the robots were shut down and those that had the most charge left in their batteries were chosen as “successful”, and their neural programming was combined to produce the next generation of the robots. These offspring are downloaded into the same mechanical bodies their parents inhabited, forming an closed-circuit Buddhist system which might be an extremely efficient method of maintaining a stable population, but will provide a serious headache for any robot philosophers who might turn up.Which could happen before long. Within fifty generations of this electronic evolution, co-operative societies of robots had formed – helping each other to find food and avoid poison. Even more amazing is the emergence of cheats and martyrs. Transistorized traitors emerged which wrongly identified poison zone as food, luring their trusting brethren to their doom before scooting off to silently charge in a food zone – presumably while using a mechanical claw to twirl a silicon carving of a handlebar moustache.
You might be upset by this result, scientific proof that those who say “Evil is utterly fundamental to human nature” actually understates the scope of the problem, there were also silicon souls on the side of the angels. Some robots advanced fearlessly into poison zones, flashing warning lights to keep other robots out of harms way.
This is one of the most incredibly bad ideas I have ever seen. Asimov is twirling in his grave, and he didn’t even know what neural networks were.
That is what is going on here, the crazy Swiss. Not these little bots will ever achieve enlightment due to the need to be downloaded into a new body, but sooner or later some dumb monkey is going recreate this project with a group of robots capable of longevity.
And that’s where we will destroy ourselves.
Now to understand exactly what they are recreating with these robots, one must understand basic connection theory.
Load the bowls boy, your about the enter the Pinche Zone.
Watch the whole thing:
http://www.torrentreactor.net/…
That’s right, Kevin Bacon is the secret of the universe. In any system a pattern emerges, elegant in simplicity, yet complex in it’s execution. The infinite sum in a single line of code.
Someone has already taken the time to crib note this episode so let’s borrow, shall we?
http://www.newearthperspective…
A number of scientists have been sharing their data and taking this fledgling science into new areas of application. It is now being scientifically demonstrated that everything — all systems — in nature utilize the same pervasive laws of organization. These laws of organization are always seeking to ensure the survival and success of whatever is in the network. So the chorus of crickets, or the flashing synchronicity of a ten thousand fireflies, the movement of people from one website to another, the movement of traffic through a city, the movement of signals through our brain’s neural circuitry and the cooperative activity of proteins in our cells are all inter-related through the underlying organizational principles that they use.
One very interesting aspect of networks that has been discovered is that all networks have “hubs” where a greater concentration of connections exist. On the internet these would be called “portals.” In the study that was done on the network of all known movie stars the hubs were the more popular stars who had more contacts in the movie star world.The net result of this research seems to indicate that these hubs are very important to the health of the network. They offer other members of the network the capability of connecting to significantly more additional members than they could on their own. This points to a vulnerability in the network, if something happens to the hub(s) then the network becomes fragmented with isolated pockets rather than functioning as a whole organism.
This basic scientific principle has already been employed to identify and destroy the hubs in terrorist networks and reportedly has worked very well. An even more constructive use of this technology is emerging in the medical field. They have mapped all known diseases and the DNA codons that are involved in each disease for those diseases for which the associated codons are currently known. This has resulted in revealing a massive network of interconnectedness between many different diseases. This system takes advantage of the DNA codons as the hubs in the network.
A good example is how Daily Kos is the hub to a lot of smaller sites that are connected together by their association with Naranjastan. Without Daily Kos, most of the progressive blogosphere would not exist, or at least not in its current state.
In fact, life began on earth when certain organic compounds formed hubs out of the chaos, creating a network of connections that evolved as per the underlying geometry of the known universe.
And if one looks at a map big enough of the universe itself, one will also see a network of hubs of the collective whole of all, starting small and going infinitely big, but all following the same mathematics as that of our very cells:
As stated above, all forms of life follow connection theory and hubs. And that is exactly what those robots above are doing.
In the neural network of these AI robots, connections to their environment and themselves has lead to hubs, nexuses of learning, that has allowed them to evolve.
And as with any system, you will have angels and devils, which was probably what formed our concepts of religion during humanity’s era of mythos.
Humanity evolved no differently in connection with each other than these robots are currently doing, so who is to say that these robots will not develop a concept of god?
And if they are decide that god has given them dominion over all, much like humanity did, what is to stop them? Especially if we weaponize large robots, or even worse, nanorobots within a structured neural network allowing for the development of hubs?
The answer my friend is nothing.
And that is why I will always campaign against the neural networking of AI robots, no matter the hubba hubba about how nothing could possible go wrong.
Because the geometry of the universe will make sure it goes right, and that will be against humanity’s best wishes.
May 29 2009
All they wanted was cookies!!
So here’s a mindfuck for you:
Cookies, not torture, convinced al Qaeda suspect to talk, FBI interrogator says
http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/…
The practice of torturing suspected terrorists received fresh blows Friday after a magazine reported that a key al Qaeda suspect offered useful intelligence after receiving sugar-free cookies.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator, revealed in an article being released in June that Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguard opened up about the 9/11 terror attacks only after being offered — sugar free cookies.
Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Jandal is a diabetic, Soufan said, and wouldn’t eat sugar cookies he’d been offered.
“Soufan noticed that he didn’t touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: ‘He was a diabetic and couldn’t eat anything with sugar in it,’ Time’s Bobby Ghosh wrote. “At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal’s angry demeanor.
“We had showed him respect, and we had done this nice thing for him,” Soufan told Ghosh. “So he started talking to us instead of giving us lectures.”
——-
Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Jandal is a diabetic, Soufan said, and wouldn’t eat sugar cookies he’d been offered.
“Soufan noticed that he didn’t touch any of the cookies that had been served with tea: ‘He was a diabetic and couldn’t eat anything with sugar in it,’ Time’s Bobby Ghosh wrote. “At their next meeting, the Americans brought him some sugar-free cookies, a gesture that took the edge off Abu Jandal’s angry demeanor.
Jesus, all it took was cookies?
So you are telling me that instead of sexually abusing them, we should have just broke out boxes of Girl Scout cookies?
Sadly, that seems to have been the answer. I think America way overshoot on the whole anal raping thing, when tea and cookies was all they wanted.
But someone needs to waterboard this guy, he’s always been in a sleeper cell brainwashing our children for years:
May 28 2009
Obama no longer finds rape sensational.
As I am sure many know here, President Obama has decided to become a rape enabler by covering up the war crimes committed over the last few years by suppressing evidence. As U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba, who lead the investigation into abuses, said:
“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one.”
Last I checked raping a small child and using the tears of their present mother for lube is pretty much a crime no matter what country you are in. I challenge anyone to name a nation-state on earth that allows for the use of a a truncheon to be forcefully inserted into any number of young innocent orifices.
With President Obama’s “level-headed” leadership, we have finally moved on to a realm of time when the raping of children is not even a legal concern, and hardly even hits the President’s outrage meter. After viewing photos of numerous rapes, foreign object insertions and sexual depravity, Obama had this to say:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new…
Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational.”
See how easy that was?
Not only has Obama deemed the cramming of a fluorescent tube up that shattered anus of a small shepherd boy from outside of Mosul no longer a legal issue, Obama says it’s not even a moral issue. Not even sensational. No, in President Obama’s world, the gang raping of young Iraqi women is mundane at best.
And God Bless America for that.
Because a country that rapes together, stays together.
Let’s Hope Obama Never Changes, because then someone might actually get outraged.
May 08 2009
Pelosi demands we only talk about waterboarding.
I am going to make this short and sweet so the message is not muddled.
Here is the money quote from Madame Speaker Pelosi’s office covering her ass on torture:
“As this document shows, the speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used,” said Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s spokesman.
In the mere clarification that Pelosi did not know that the CIA was waterboarding, but that she had been briefed on other techniques which are also against the Common Article 2 of the Geneva Convention shows she is implicated as an accessory to war crimes.
Do not let Madame Speaker muddy the waters by making this only about waterboarding, there were other clear human rights violations per the Geneva Convention also used in Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (aka Torture).
Pelosi is trying to steer the discussion to the fact she did not know they had already used waterboarding, hoping no one catches on to the fact she knew about the other war crimes occurring. Waterboarding was not the only technique employed that was against the Geneva Convention.
DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN.
And anyone who carries water for Pelosi on this better check the bucket, because that ain’t water they got.
It’s the blood of the victims now on their hands.
Looking at you mcjoan.
Apr 20 2009
Iran To Waterboard Journalist Per New American Standards
(cross-posted then banned from Daily Kos)
Undisclosed Location, Iran – With a new era of global human rights being ushered in by United States of America, allies and axises of evil alike are coming on board for waterboarding. With pesky traditions like the Numerberg Principles finally filed away in a pre-9-11 world, certain countries are stretching their legs, and those of their prisoners, in the realm of what was once known as torture.
One such hatchman is Heydar Rastinpour, who is currently holding freelance journalist Roxana Saberi in a Iranian prison inspired by Bagram, a new international model opened recently by President Obama in Afghanistan.
“I remember when I brought the issue up of waterboarding this lady, because I mean, I don’t want to hang from gallows and all,” said Rastipour, soaking his towels in anticipation of the sixth enhanced interrogation of the day. “But then they pointed out the champions of human rights, none of than the USA, had basically okayed these techinques and that they were not punishable by law, I was told I could go hog wild, and even use a hog.”
“When I force Saberia into a confined boxed and fill it with ants and spiders, I know I am just upholding a new fine American tradition. Plus I am just following orders, so I got immunity from prosecution,” he added, before cranking up “Roxanne” by The Police to 11, which has been playing on endless loop at full blast to keep Ms. Saberi sleep-deprived since her arrival.
Apr 11 2009
Put the pitchforks down, you got the wrong monster.
Wow people. Did anyone actually look up why we are in such mob mode over wiretapping? I see the torches head towards the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice when it should be marching on Capital Hill.
The radical departure the Bush Administration made in regards to intelligence gathering.
was between active and passive wiretapping.
While FISA has been legal since the 1970s, you still had to present probably cause to the FISA court to get issued your search warrant for wiretapping. This even included retroactive warrants, due to time constraints in the modern age and instantaneous global communication, so you could even go back and do the paperwork.
What it did not allow for was passive wiretapping filling up databases to be sifted through over a course of time. If the NSA program under the Bush Administration is still live, then every moment of every day every citizen’s 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures is being violated.
Also, no Warrants shall issue be issued, but upon probable cause. It’s plain as day in the Constitution, no legal opinion by some obscure court required.
The NSA has no probably cause to gather and store information on citizens, it is unconstitutional.
And to equate the passive gathering of personal information of private citizens with that of active investigation associated with FISA is disingenuous at best.
And “trust us” is no longer a valid response.
Which leads us to redress. This is where it gets funny.
The claims made by the DOJ is actually in line with the rule of law. The right to sue was taken away by Congress.
Not the Executive Branch. That is one of the keys here that is often over looked.
Section 223 of the Patriot Act
* You can no longer sue the government for “intentional” violations of the law, like you can sue everyone else. Instead, the violation has to be “willful,” a much higher standard.
This is the exact defense the DOJ of the Obama Administration is making, actually based on the laws of the lands passed through Congress.
* Before, you could get a trial in front of a jury if you sued the government. Now, suits against the government are heard only by a judge.
The next one is particularly grand in a Rubenesque bureaucracy fashion:
# Unlike with any other defendant, if you want to sue the federal government for illegal wiretapping you have to first go through an administrative procedure with the agency that did the wiretapping. That means, essentially, that you have to politely complain to the illegal wiretappers and tip them off to your legal strategy, and then wait for a while as they decide whether to do anything about it before you can sue them in court.
And last or not least, the legal pickle:
# Before PATRIOT, in addition to being able to sue for money damages, you could sue for declaratory relief from a judge. For example, an Internet service provider could ask the court to declare that a particular type of wiretapping that the government wants to do on its network is illegal. One could also sue for an injunction from the court, ordering that any illegal wiretapping stop. PATRIOT section 223 signficantly reduced a judge’s ability to remedy unlawful surveillance, making it so you can only sue the government for money damages. This means, for example, that no one could sue the government to stop an ongoing illegal wiretap. At best, one could sue for the government to pay damages while the illegal tap continued!
All this can be found on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s page about Section 223 of the Patriot Act:
http://w2.eff.org/patriot/suns…
If people want to get serious about this, we have to repeal the law first.
All the Obama administration’s DOJ is doing is following the law as they are on the books.
Nancy Pelosi wants them to sunset, end in December as per the law.
I say they get off their duffs and take care of a pressing issue the rabble is all roused about.
But it’s Congress who must repeal this part of the Patriot Act if you want any changes on illegal wiretapping.
Otherwise, you are getting made at the Obama Administration for following the rule of law, while claiming he is doing the exact opposite.
Because the laws on the books, are the law of the land, which is the rule of law.
Harass your congresscritter today.