The Fugue State

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Please keep in mind that your comments have to be filtered .I WILL post them if they are from a human being, but it might take a delay.  Be cool, take your time in thinking about your response, and we’ll have a long conversation.

Update I finished the interview, they asked a lot of broad and ambiguous questions and I’m not sure I gave them entirely what they were looking for.  In the meanwhile they took a lot of footage(which hopefully I’ll be receiving) and they’re going to publish a youtube link or something similar later on, I will update this post as I get more information on this event.

In the meanwhile, Ambyvoc gave me this link to keep you until more substance gets posted here.

Update: Videos are here .    So far,  it’s reminding me of the old realplayer days :  Buffering….

Update : So far they are making me look good, albeit not fleshed out — perfect, I didn’t think I did a good job at fleshing out and concretely saying *anything*.  I’ve got to go to my lab now though!! More later.

Update : they really should have used one of my songs for the intro.  They never asked though!  Catatonic would have been nice.

* they really shouldn’t have introduced us.  Although I love the plug, there was no need for it

* Love the term “invisible college” in this context

* I would love to be able to edit my own video and take out the good stuff, maybe I will some day

enlightenment is a concept
by which we can measure our pain.

The dream is over
What can I say?
The dream is over
Yesterday
I was the Dreamweaver
But now I’m reborn

In 1980,  Athletes from around countries around the world, who had trained their entire lives to compete in a global event were left in the cold.  Many proud Canadian athletes had their dreams stolen.  Why did this happen?  How and why did so many athletes lose so much?

It was in the height of the Cold War.  And the USSR was at war in a far away country called Afghanistan.  At the same time, the Olympic Games was being hosted in Moscow.  Afghanistan was a bit of  a pet project of the United States at the time.  The US funneled money and arms into its Mujahadeen(who later became the Taliban)  in an attempt to destabilize the USSR.   The USSR had viewed Afghanistan as a place where Islamic guerrilla militants (ie, terrorists) were destabilizing peace in the region, and had sent their armed forces in to pacify the area.

Canada and the United States, among other countries in the free world held a boycott of the Soviet Union for their being at war in Afghanistan.  It was the largest boycott ever of the Olympics.

Flash forward to 2010.

Canada is at war with Islamic guerrilla militants in Afghanistan.   And yet we have the audacity to host the 2010 winter olympic games.   Do we not remember our boycott of the Soviet Union for this same reason?

If it is not worth boycotting a country over being at war in Afghanistan then the athletes who were left behind in 1980 deserve an official apology from the Canadian government.   We Canadians owe an apology to the people of Moscow, and Russia for needlessly slighting them for a cause that we should not have supported, that is, the people of Afghanistan.

However, if it is worth boycotting a country over being at war in Afghanistan then Canada should suggest, as it did in 1980, that all free Countries around the world boycott the country that is both hosting the games and who is at war, that is to say, us.  We should suggest that Russia, in particular boycott us.

Because if we fail to do either, the history books will recall what a gross act of hypocrisy we have committed, even if we choose to forget.

Okay first of all, this list doesn’t pretend to be the most relevant or interesting links for everybody.  This list is coming from me, Jeff Cliff, in Regina, Canada, and I have a particular biased viewpoint, especially when we’re talking about what I think is subjectively the more important of things to happen.  So keeping that in mind…

#52: You’d think by now that most of the research on the DMCA has been done in the US, but a group at the University of Washington somehow came out with some refreshingly new research.  Their DMCA paper: “how my printer got a DMCA takedown notice”

#51 Steyn’s censored article .  This would have been a minor historical footnote, had it not been banned so thoroughly.  Now it’s on this list, and Steyn is set to be some kind of a martyr that could easily tip off a global clash of civilizations.  This won’t, however be the only censorship entry on this list.

#50 more chinese colonialism in africa

#49 “centralized medical organizations like the CDC really do need to exist in a modern capitalist economy Without the CDC, those markets simply wouldn’t exist.  Call them parasites if you need to, but the CDC, or something like it, is necessary;  because multibillion dollar markets depend on its existence.  However, limits are in order.

#48 Suicide, and in general, the problem of the meaning of life, starts to become a problem worthy of serious global coordinated effort there as problems of basic sanitation, war, and disease start to become, although not solved yet, tractable.

#47 the Conservatives openly flaunting the rule of law while refusing to be held accountable by parliament.

#46 Russia threatens hot nuclear war against poland, just like they threatened a violent reaction to Georgia months before they went in.  And worse, there are many incentives for them to actually strike Poland/Ukraine

#45 The CBC continued to drop the ball, all year.

#44 Since the Cadman tape turned out to be accurate, which means Harper committed a felony by trying to have MP bribed.  Yet somehow, we re-elected him.  Go figure.

#43 With the CDMCA and otherwise, the conservatives tried to criminalize everything!

#42 The green party tried to shut buckdog up through a lawsuit.

#41 This image kind of puts things in perspective, and I’d nominate it for image of the year if I could.

#40 …and This one is probably the most messed up thing I’ve ever seen.

#39 The bailout.  FC coverd it

#38 In probably the most manipulative politicking I’ve seen yet, the Conservatives tried to bankrupt the liberals, cripple the block, hurt the NDP and evaporate any hope for the greens in one fell swoop by removing federal subsidies for political parties, while keeping donation levels down.  This of course, lead to pretty much open revolt on them, and the creation of the Coalition which should be assuming power any day now.

#37 The perfect storm of food insecurity; the financial industry problems spread all over the world, with many countries stopping exports, having bad crop yields to begin with, all while china & the middle east oil caliphates buying heavy into foodstuffs.  Many are starving, this year.

#36 slashdot on computers & africa, and overpopulation.

#35 SDA on Copyright

#34 A neonazi woman capitulates to reason, and canadian inquisitor richard warmen pushes her back into the hardline right wing fold

#33 Lamarck vindicated

#32 Pseudoscience in Canada:

i) Kid’s being forced to go to “psychic” councillors in canadian school
ii) Psychic taken as evidence by the court system
iii) MOM BUGS THEIR KID WITH GPS AND AUDIO RECORDING EQUIPMENT, which proves her innocence.

#31 SEC, among other authorities, tempbanned shorting!

#30 Green party gets served lawsuit for being right on agent orange.  In 2007, but I didn’t hear about it back then.

#29 Health & Safety law clashed with a HRC tribunal, and as a result, restaurants, never really safe to begin with, will be even more dangerous to eat at. I wish this was the height of the HRC’s lunacy, but they will be featured more further down the list.

#28 for example, in their supporting Sharia law in Canada

#27 China surprised everyone by pulling off persecution of new york falungong

#26 Although the US election went to obama, we probably really don’t know what the vote really was.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and it seems like that’s about as accurate as the US election system is about now.

#25 Geist v. Crookes, along with Warman v. Conservative Blosphere.  In general, the blogosphere, both conservative and non, came under attack from all directions by people armed with lawyers.

#24 RIP 1948-2008 UN Declaration of Human Rights.

#23 Inner-city Saskatoon cooperative/food bank/health centre closed by Wall/Saskatchewan Conservatives.Very, very sad — it cost peanuts compared to other initiatives, and gave some degree of a safety net to an area with child prostitutes and gang violence, among other problems.  It’s leaving our fellow citizens to die in the gutter, and doing nothing to reduce crime.

#22 but how can we think rationally about these things when we’re drugging ourselves specifically so we don’t have to face up to such problems?

#21 Then there’s the forests in the US, a pretty remarkable tale of our impact on the world which we live in.

#20 Bell gave the middle finger to people in ontario, and throttled everyone, including ISPs which used Bell for connectivity.

#19 Greiving parents in China and Russia were both made into parents for greiving, probably the most cruel thing outside of genocide I’ve encountered.

#18 Marc Emery, last I heard, is still getting steamrolled by the US and Canadian government, and with him, any illusion that Canada is actually a soverign country.

#17 honeybees having trouble around the world–this is a surefire sign of biosphere collapse.

#16 Outside of Saskatchewan, Canada sheds its marijuana prohibition law

#15 Although not as obvious as Rwanda, Congo has its own problems of similar if not greater magnitude.

#13 The US is involved in terrifying things, hiding prisoners from the red cross(which, history shows, there is only one reason for…they knew they were torturing prisoners with no good reason, or that they knew right well that what they were doing could get them prosecuted in the hague)
What’s more; the very highest people in the US government are directly responsible.

#12 Oppression of the first nations continues as the innu get evicted.  It’s not merely ancient history—this is happening this year in Canada, folks.

#11 Data was read directly from the visual cortex

#10 You have to do more than Hyperlink to get charged with defamation in Canada, thankfully

#9 the IOC tried to steal the Canadian National Anthem

#8 Ezra Levant, censorship magnet and media gadfly, was attacked by everybody.

#7 Conservatives hide candidates from public, during an election.  What were they afraid of?

#6 Along with the greens being practically extinguished by the Conservatives, the liberals being soundly defeated, the Action party falling into internal strife, the Christian heritage party found itself in the sights of the HRC tribunals glare

#5 One of the casualties of all the censorship lawsuits, was the voice of Saskatchewan Saskblogs

#4 And independent news media is now a pipe dream in the west now that Winnipeg Indymedia has been destroyed.

#3 The CRTC, finally making itself useful, pushed the CHR line back a little by refusing to allow them to limit freedom on the internet.

#2 The HRCts tried to hide their mistakes, which there definitely were

#1 And in general the Human Rights Court Tribunals made themselves into a public spectacle.  First moderate conservatives, and finally those of us on the left are coming to grips that there is an unaccountable court going around setting bad precedent, and that there is a whole political backdrop(including threats of violence) involved–and that anyone who thinks freely, conservative or not, is at risk.

“CHR commission;  if you’re anti-racist, they will investigate you.  If you’re a racist, they will investigate you. The only appropriate response is submission”

Well there you go.

Today I was reading freethinking blog samizdata, and got to thinking. A lot of people have trouble accepting the work of peer review, especially when the results of peer review don’t ‘jive’ with their political stripe, or perhaps when they suspect that there is a significant bias involved against their theory of choice.

My idea to try to bring some clarity into the real bias would be for journals with peer review in place should post not only the articles that made it through, but each article/edit of an article which did not.  Not in the same place, of course–but there should be a tool which generates a random paper, and you, the reader are supposed to act as a judge, as to whether or not you would accept the paper in the journal if it were up to you.  Not whether you accept the article as right, but whether you accept it as reasonable enough to make its way into the journal.

The next step would be, to allow you, as the general public to try to rate a good deal many of these papers, and then compare your results with the results of the actual body of ‘peers’ which does the ‘official’ reviewing.  Comment threads could be allowed to provide places for differences / errors to be discussed.  This would allow a Bayesian individual to gauge to some extent how rational the peers of that journal are, and in turn, how much respect to give that journal.

Of course, one could still be wrong in assuming what is and is not rational, however being given the access to the inner workings of a peer review journal would give you more reason to trust/not trust a journal than exists today.  Climate change skeptics, for example, might find that the science involved really is well thought through, or at the very least beyond their ability to understand and that they should perhaps either trust the IPCC more or trust their perhaps uninformed views less.  Non-climate change skeptics could also use the service to ’sanity check’ their beliefs in the IPCC’s results.

The best part about such a system is that the hard part–gathering the data–is already done.  Archiving the data might be a little bit more costly than the current approach(toss the crap, only publish the good stuff), but even a 1% acceptance rate by a journal would leave only two orders of magnitude; ie, hard drives are advancing in capacity such that this would only be a big deal for a few years before the drive capacity made the archival a non-issue again.  The engine for rating / creating Bayesian results wouldn’t be too difficult to write, and would look a lot like existing tools such as the Open Source engine running Reddit.

Open Access journals and journal aggregators such as arxiv are the first step of a reformation of how science is done, all levels including social and technical ones, that computer technology has started.

Thoughts?

I am employed by, and a member of the New Democrat Party of Canada.  However I do not represent the party, its views, the views of its members, blah blah blah.  But you may as well know this, in case you don’t read my other feeds.  I am biased, but I try to minimize my bias in general.

Words I do not see in the party platforms(hopefully this will be a larger list):

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As I promised to Jack Layton, I did indeed take 2 hours off work to watch the debates.  More as I add to this post.

For more on the stuff here, see my LJ (there’s a switch)

Oh I should mention an important fact(thanks Saskboy for pointing this out); I work for the NDP.  I am not an NDP member, so my views aren’t necessarily even close to the NDPs, but I should be pointing this out nonetheless.  I don’t intend to mislead you by neglecting to mention this, I just started there not that long ago and I haven’t quite picked up the habit of putting this disclaimer up routinely yet.  In my mind I’m pretty much just a university student still.

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Zen is a concept.

Picture this. You’re a University Student. Like me, when I took Macroeconomics, you’re taking a summer course, with online tests through WebCT. After a long walk home, you sit in your computer chair, and go through your books one last time; you have a quiz tonight.

You log in to your computer, and log on to the class website to do an online quiz for your class. You nod to your webcam; the webcam that was put there by your professor. The professor isn’t necessarily watching you, but your webcam tracks your every movement, so that when the quiz begins, you’re not caught looking at your textbook across the room, getting up to go the bathroom(and hence, obviously cheating, much like if you got up to go to the bathroom during a regular exam). There’s a microphone on your computer that’s listening to everything you say, and every rustle of paper. If it picks up any sound, it alerts your professor to pay attention to you—to make sure again that you’re not cheating.

But since this is mandatory, and since every class has this setup, there’s more—You accidentally think back to what lays across the room and remember you have a copy of 2600(a dissident magazine, the possession of which is liable to get you convicted on TERRORISM charges) laying in the open. You panic…you had gotten stoned last night and hung out with your secret hacker friends and had forgotten to put it away. You can’t look at it…the camera tracks your eye movement—you have to stay focused on the screen, focused on the test.

The camera detects something funny about your body movement, and the professor is alerted. She notices the magazine, and calls the cops. Before the test is done, the SWAT team kicks down your door, shooting your dog, and before you know what happened you’re unconscious in a black bag heading for a secret prison in cuba.

Sounds far fetched? Not really.

Check This out (at 18:15). It’s an Off the Hook episode which deals with a company selling the 1984-esque Mandatory Webcams. This is something you’ll probably have to see for yourself.

I have taken WebCT class, and I could probably have cheated, but didn’t. There was no point–WebCT tests are far easier than their paper counterparts, at least the ones I took. Actually in retrospect, it now makes more sense why the class average was so high.

I’ve got a webcam that I voluntarily put on my desk. It doesn’t work half the time, but still—-I’m probably on the ‘privacy is dead/useless’ side of most things, but even so, here in this case I don’t think it should be mandatory in order to go to university to subject yourself to this massive breach of privacy. Pretty much everything else in the above story has happened to someone, somewhere, there are no missing pieces of the puzzle anymore — if this system becomes commonly used(or worse, made mandatory by the government), it really will be the end of free society.