Notions

Understanding Computational Environments

• Four Types of User Interface
• Use of the words `Window' and `Frame'
• `Voice Recognition' implies two more types of interface
• Single Input -- Multiple Outputs [updated]
  On computers, a single input can produce multiple output formats.
  What might you see in an editor (or `word processor') that provides two or more different surface expressions at the same time as a deep representation? In addition, the introduction of an occasionally useful third term, that of `intermediate expression'.
• Single Input -- Multiple Outputs [continued]
  People mostly work with the `surface expressions' or `renderings' of a document; they listen to it or read it. Every document produced with a computer has at least three such renderings in addition to the deep representation in which it is stored electronically. Often systems have only one read-write format for their multiple read-only renderings (printing on paper being a rendering that is always read-only). When you have only one such read-write format, it is better as a deep representation. That way no one inadvertently comes to think that a computer is a single output device. Unfortunately, by default, some programs have you edit a high resolution format for typeset output instead.
• Situated Software
  Clay Shirky describes software `designed in and for a particular social situation or context.' This software does not scale, a problem. But it is cheaper and faster to create. Indeed my book on programming introduces this kind of work. But I focused individuals, while Shirky focuses on groups.
• Introduction to Emacspeak,
  one of the Four Types of User Interface, an Audio Desktop for the permanently or situationally blind.
• Purchasing a Computer for the Home
  A friend asked me for advice about purchasing a computer and here is what I came up with. This is not about particular brands or makes — I do not know anything about them. Rather it is about considering capabilities.
• HTML and email are opposite!
  The long standing convention for HTML opposes the convention for electronic mail. The one is "What You See Or Hear Is Formatted As You Decide" to hear or see; the other is "What You See Is What Your Correspondent Sent". The latter runs against reality, which is that some people are permanently blind and others are situationally blind, such as those who listen to their email while driving a car. So the convention cannot be followed exactly. Nonetheless, the convention has its value.
• A Danger of HTML Email
  Not only is the use of HTML in electronic mail contrary to convention and against the principle of "What You See Is What Your Correspondent Sent", for some it is dangerous. I recently received a message from a server located Nizhny Novgorod, Russia that claimed to be from eBay. I doubt it was (especially since I am not an `eBay member'); but I wonder how my late mother might have responded shortly before she died, when she was less alert than earlier in her life?
• Stopping HTML Email Dangers
  To stop HTML email dangers, we need a combination of alertness, law, and technical action. Some will be alert, but not everyone. Laws can be made more effective than in the past. We need to avoid reading HTML mail as HTML, we need good filters, we need other technical solutions, and we need to avoid companies and programs with a poor history.
• Emacs and VI
  Two old and exemplar programs employ fundamentally different user interfaces. Do people prefer one or other mode because of the detailed way they write or because of more general styles of thinking? In VI, an author writes a sentence or paragraph and then goes back to edit it. In Emacs, an author edits while writing, often changing a word in the middle.
• Cheaply Replace Plain Old Telephone Service
  In a May 2004 column, Robert Cringely argued that it is cheaper than you think to replace land-line telephone services and simultaneously receive high speed Internet access. He refers to it as a `disruptive technology.' Clearly, one way for susceptible companies to defend themselves is to stop progress by influencing governments. But if progress continues, users can benefit.
• Finding Open WiFi Access Points
  802.11b PCMCIA cards in computers, which marketers call `WiFi' cards, are radio transceivers that enable people to connect to the Internet and other machines. Other people can readily receive these radio signals. While flying today with my nephew, I found that many more `open' access points than I expected; people could transmit or receive over them. The practice is like leaving a door unlocked, except I do not think that many people quite realize this.
• Updating an Old Laptop
  A fast Internet connection inspired me to update an old laptop. The download was quick. The installation, which is going fine as I write this, is taking a long time because the machine is slow. Even though this is all commonplace, I find the process amazing.
• Reinstalling on old laptop
  As forecast, my old laptop died on me. So I took the opportunity to try out a new live CD, which worked fine, and to try a beta test version of the new Debian installer. The latter is installing as I write.
• High Resolution Computer Displays
  A high resolution computer display is more significant than I expected. Text and pictures look sharp. Movies look better. But even my high resolution display fails. We probably will not be satisfied until computer screens gain six or twelve times their current resolutions.

Free Software

• Shaping software
  Gain freedom
• Access and Empowerment
  
• Software Freedom: An Introduction
  (my short book)
• Why Awkward Software?
  As far as I can see, several big companies have not provided GNU/Linux with features that would have made those companies more profit. They are not investing in `human factors' studies. I do not understand.

Topical Issues

• A Topical Issue: the United States and Iraq
  Here is a synthesis of various of my short, topical essays concerning the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. This work should be shorter and easier to follow than the originals.

• Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
  A database is a basket. To defend your country, to make yourself secure, you must prevent a government, a private company, or any other organization from collecting your information in one place. A fable.
• Opportunity, Compassion, and Justice
  A topical issue: will the next major political conflict be over the ways in which a government can provide opportunity? And if so, which way will be successful? What will be the consequences of meritocracy? Will one of the political parties in the United States find the issue a new opportunity?
• Rentalists vrs Capitalists
  This is a topical question that opposes the preceding: is it helpful to think of the contemporary US as a rentalist economy rather than as a capitalist economy? (This uses the word rent in the economists' sense of a return from a differential advantage for production, not as a return from capital or labor invested.) Should we expect 21st century conflicts to occur between rentalists and capitalists, rather than between those who promote different paths towards Opportunity?
• Energy, Information, Opportunity
  Energy and information are critical to contemporary states. In addition, legitimacy is necessary. Opportunity, along with compassion and justice, will provide legitimacy. In turn, this determines in part how a civilized state should work.
• Persuasion, Legitimacy, and Power
  The United States will lack safety unless it gains power, and it will lack power unless it can persuade foreigners of its legitimacy. The US gains its chance only by favoring `opportunity', `compassion', and `justice'. Nothing else will survive the coming century.
• Soldier, Enemy Suspect, Criminal, Civilian
  Because of the increased political significance of enemies who do not wear uniforms to categorize them, the United States needs a new legal classification to handle people justly. The current US `Use of Force Resolution' is wrong.
• Graceful Winners, Graceful Losers
  For democracy to succeed, losers must be willing to lose. Equally, winners must not push the losers into subversion. In Iraq, this means that the US occupation forces must protect its recent enemies, the Sunni, from the desire of the majority for justice.
• Intrinsically Evil and Balance of Power
  For a long lasting, secure, and large government, those who design its constitution must presume that the people who will make up the government will be evil. This is a very bad presumption to make about neighbors, friends, or any stranger in general, but it helps in government. (In addition, constitutional designers must make arrangements so that losers leave and winners do not push the losers too far.)
• Persuading Those Not Sure
  How the US conducts its efforts against Al Qaeda makes a difference. It is "about convincing those people that aren't sure who to believe who is right." Both the current notions associated with war and those associated with policing fail under modern conditions; and that supposes competent action.
• The Goal was Victory
  For the United States in its war against terrorism, the goal was victory. That is to say, the goal was to enable Americans again to feel safe. If Americans do not feel safer in October 2041 than they did in October 2001, the war was lost. Since 2041 is so far from the present, the immediate question becomes whether you judge US strategy as reaching towards victory?
• Staying the Course
  A topical issue: on 2004 May 24, US President Bush said that he would continue his Administration's previous policy in Iraq. To me, this means the Administration has abandoned a long term goal of US victory, both in Iraq and within the United States.
• A Clear Statement of Purpose
  Travel provides a metaphor for purpose. If you do not know your destination, you will never learn whether you got there. Indeed, you will not even be able to figure out which direction to go. Lack of United States government clarity makes a review of its actions in Iraq difficult. By presuming a straightforward goal, we can judge the success or failure of US actions.
• What does the US want in Iraq?
  In John Robb's Web log, he asks what the United States wants in Iraq? Robb notes that inconsistant and fuzzy goals plague the US. I think the two major US goals were clear, but never spoken by the US government; and one has since been abandoned.
• Assymetrical Warfare
  From a military as well as civilian point of view, it makes sense for the United States to return to its old ideals. These are most likely to bring it victory in the `assymetrical' or `fourth generation' style of war it now suffers.
• Future US Weakness and French Long Term Strategy
  A topical question: what could the French government in particular, and the European Union in general, do to advance French and European influence against the US, without raising military expenditures?
• Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and Incompetence
  In 1941, the Roosevelt Administration failed to forestall the Pearl Harbor attack. In the 2001, the Bush Administration failed to forestall the attacks of September 11. A topical question: Was there no way that anyone could have foreseen the latter? Or was the failure a problem of incompetence? Since the Administration depended on intelligence still influenced by its predecessor, we have to look at other actions to gain evidence, one way or the other.
• United States Failure and Challenger Success
  It never mattered that the US Central Intelligence Agency failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, or that it underestimated the number of Soviet nuclear weapons. For the 25 years after 1975, CIA failings did not lead to disaster. As a governmental organization, it thrived. But without major change, the US will fail and its challengers succeed.
• `Mobile' and `Immobile' People and Societies
  In `immobile' societies, leaders' wealth comes predominately from the land or what is under it, such as oil. In `mobile' societies, wealth comes from activities that transcend geographic location, such as bottle making. Over the past few centuries, Europe and a few of its former colonies have shifted towards a `mobile' society, even though much ultimately depends on agriculture and mining. But other societies have not. Reuven Brenner inspires this way of thinking and suggests specific policies for the United states to follow in Iraq.
• Further Thoughts on `Mobile' and `Immobile'
  For Americans, Reuven Brenner's categorization insults those who are `immobile' or come from `immobile' societies. This weakens thought. But the terms also help. In Paleolithic times, people were `mobile'; the rise of agriculture saw an increase in `immobility'. The modern era brings with it `mobility', but its technology is fragile. Moreover, certain belief systems, which may be an advantage in the short run, hinder long term advance.
• Torture and Balance of Power
  A US government memo from 6 March 2003 tries to justify torture and other actions by agents of the United States. These claims are unconstitutional. A US President may pardon a criminal who commits a crime, such as torture, after he is sentenced by a court, but not before. Moreover, courts must follow the US Constitution and law. Governance in the United States is based on a balance of power.
• The US Invasion of Iraq
  While I do not think that any of the arguments made publicly in favor of the US invasion of Iraq persuaded the US government as a whole or its military, I do think that two other arguments did: in the short run, to intimidate other anti-US countries; and in the long run, to change Middle Eastern countries' cultures enough to make them as safe to the United States. This essay talks about the second question.
• What is Fascism?
  I am just starting a book by Robert Paxton called The Anatomy of Fascism. I already have strong ideas on the subject. We shall learn what I think.
• What is Fascism? A Few Quotations ... [more]
  Here are more quotations from Robert Paxton's book, The Anatomy of Fascism. A few weeks ago, I provided quotations from the beginning of the book. Here are the rest. I hope to develop a thesis that connects with my notion of Opportunity, Compassion, and Justice.
• Saddam's Generals and Modernization
  According to a story, several of Saddam Hussein's generals spoke in June 2004. The story's author quotes them as saying that [w]e knew that if the United States decided to attack Iraq, we would have no chance .... The war was lost in advance, so we prepared the post-war .... Our strategy was not improvised .... Among other points, I note that their statements (which may be disinformation) fit with Reuven Brenner's classification of societies into `mobile' and `immobile', and suggest that the attempt towards a `mobile' society was only partial.
• End of the US-Iraqi War?
  Has the war between the US and Iraq ended? Or are we seeing an ongoing `assymetical war'? I think the latter, but find little public discussion of the issue in America. Moreover, several of Saddam Hussein's generals speak of the current period as the post-war.
• Forthcoming Attacks?
  A topical issue: Frank Richter argues that the United States should not expect any more attacks on its soil. Moreover, Americans tend to think short term. What if American enemies, who may well figure they are winning at the moment, decide to wait a few years, and then attack outside the US? Will Americans even perceive the event? While I tend to expect an attack of some sort shortly, I wonder.
• Low Budget, Old Plans?
  A topical issue: in contrast to an argument that Americans can to some extent predict that the United States should not expect any more attacks on its soil, because such an action would be a military mistake in the summer of 2004, a friend argues that we shall see the eventual implementation of old, low budget plans. Moreover, since the movement against the United States is based on ideas, a military `decapitation strategy' will fail.
• Post-Sale Followup Services
  A topical issue: in a dream last night, I found myself describing the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq in a business language: what post-sale followup service did the US fail to provide and what about repeat sales? Then I applied another business metaphor to war, that markets are conversations.
• Sarin in an Iraqi Shell
  A topical issue: the US says it found a small amount of the nerve gas sarin in a shell in Iraq. Where did the shell come from? At the end of May 2003, the United States had not visited approximately 700 suspected sites that it feared contained chemical, biological, nuclear, or radiological weapons or the makings of such. As far as I can see, troops in the US Army could at least have made cursory visits in the time following the fall of Baghdad. That they did not indicates a major failing.
• Standard Operating Procedures
  A topical issue: new US military standard operating procedures provided a way for Colonel Dicker to analyze what the US has done in Iraq. It looks to me, in the reversal of an old saying, that the `phase 4' operations are an effort `to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory'.
• Who Controls Weapons?
  When you `think like the enemy', you realize that the kinds of weapon preferred by a dictator are different from the kinds preferred by a stateless soldier or terrorist. This is because the two have different goals and control mechanisms.
• Shooting Satellites
  A topical question: why is the United States is deploying an anti-ballistic missile system that uses nuclear warheads?
• A Chinese Project Orion
  A (probably not likely) topical issue: what if the current Chinese government decided to adopt a technological method to gain immediate military parity with the US, rather than depend more on non-military techniques?
• Kinetic Energy Impacters for Taiwan
  Another Chinese issue: to provide deterrence against mainland China, Taiwan could develop and deploy `kinetic energy impacters' — tungsten rods in orbit. I do not know whether Taiwan will do this — I rather doubt it — but it could happen.
• Has the Bush Administration Given Up on the Israel-Palestine Conflict?
  Writing in June of 2002, I noted that many commentators figured that the 2002 `roadmap for peace in the Israel-Palestinian conflict' would fail because it `set the bar too high'. I offered several reasons why the Bush administration might perceive such failure as an advantage. Here is that I wrote then, followed by a brief August 2004 update.
• Opportunity and Estate Taxes
  A topical issue and its implications: Is it true that in a conventional, capitalist society, large fortunes tend to maintain themselves? If so, and if you also favor opportunity and progress, are estate taxes on fortunes greater than, say US$10 million, necessary? Is this even more important than it might be because of the changing nature of the state?
• Metaphors, Taxes, and Health Payments
  The term `tax relief' uses the same word as that used by people who talk of a medicine to relieve an upset stomach. It is a metaphor. Another metaphor compares taxes to country club dues, a payment for jointly used amenities. Given that people in the US and UK both pay roughly the same in taxes for health services (but not in overall health payments) and given the metaphor that you prefer,
• A Long Term US Deficit
  A topical and pessimistic issue: what if the current United States government deficit continues without the economic growth and security that enables it to borrow from abroad? Since the US can continue such a deficit for a generation or so, a deficit is economically rational for those who plan to take their money and abandon the country before the advent of the unemployment, higher prices, higher taxes, and other suffering that come from the end of such deficits.
• `Global Warming', a Bigger Danger If Natural
  A topical issue: in August of 2003, US Senator James Inhofe said that current climate change comes from natural variability, not human activity. I hope he is wrong, because if he is right, we must act immediately and vigorously to restrict human-produced greenhouse gases to compensate for damaging and costly natural changes. The mainstream, `anti-global warming' advice gives us more time and requires less effort.
• Morality, Ethics, Politics
  Does the United States face a systemic political problem that cannot be solved by focusing on individuals? Stirling Newberry argues that it does. Since people do not want to watch their representatives, they end up rewarding those who can lie convincingly, even though they want honest politicians.
• Defeating Oneself
  A topical issue: will Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11 help US President Bush win the forthcoming US election? The movie may convince strong Democrats that Bush is very bad indeed. Presidential candidate Kerry may fear that rather than go along with the kinds of compromises that would gain him additional votes, potential supporters will stay home. Hence no compromises and no extra votes.
• US Democratic Party Failures
  A topical issue: over the past few days of September 2004, people posting on the `Blogging of the President' Web site have argued that the Democratic campaign will lose the coming US presidential election. The discussion is posed as a conflict between `modernism' and `post-modernism'. I argue this is wrong because neither offers a believable mechanism for determining a hint towards what is true.
• Responsibility, Frugality, Markets
  After current Bush Administration policies fail, the U. S. Republican party will have to adapt. `Responsibility', `Frugality', and `Markets' provide the base for slogans that can also define policies. Moreover, U. S. Democrats could live with the policies suggested and the political process within the U. S. improve.

Practicalities

• Order, Law, Justice, Democracy
  An optimistic essay about people's fundamental political desires. Without order, you cannot have law. Justice requires both law and order. Democracy enables a society to change its government to adapt new laws to new conditions and thereby preserve justice. Dictatorship, in a monarchy for example, may succeed during periods of slow change, but the governmental structure adapts poorly to new conditions. Unless various governments stop change, or a catastrophe damages us enough, over the next few generations, democracy will survive.
• High Initial Cost/Low Incremental Production
  What should we do about a common, modern problem?
• Words, Money, and Guns
  How to change society?
• Periods of Unraveling
  What happens after the revolution?
• A Period of Crisis
  How long will the current crisis last?
• Liberty and Resources
  When do societies provide liberty for some?
• Governance for Software Development and Reproduction
  What makes for good statecraft?
• Tax, Borrow, or Scrimp
  What else can a government do than tax, borrow, or scrimp? Does a government have any other source of income than by borrowing or by some form of tax, whether it be an income tax, an inflation, or a sale of property it owns?
• Needful Government Regulation
  Competitive, free markets only succeed in a some circumstances. At the same time, regulators often act against the public. So what is necessary for a country to succeed?
• A Market for Pollutants
  Why a market for pollutants is more efficient than a ban on them, but more difficult to administer. Such a market fails when a government is corrupt.
• Accounting in the Middle Ages
  Double entry book keeping appeared in the European Middle Ages. For this to happen, three new ways of thinking had to emerge, one of which is monetary `balance'. At the same time, outsiders would have a hard time seeing how profit could come from balance. I am not an accountant: this is based on a history I read years ago.
• Double Entry Book Keeping
  A short discussion of the two initial purposes of double entry book keeping: reporting and control. One problem is that as an informational tool, such book keeping tracks only `internal costs'. Since double entry book keeping in itself does not encourage government regulation, it does not record `external costs', such as pollution.
• Sudden, New Technology
  What technologies have been a surprise to may people and what future technologies might do the same?
• Low and High Density Alternative Sources of Energy: a Categorization
  The traditional `elements', Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, along with Aristotle's fifth element, Quintessence, can categorize the types of modern `alternative sources of energy'. The traditional four depend on low energy density transformations; the celestial fifth, nuclear energy, is a high density transformation.
• What If No Cheap Electricity from Fusion?
  Suppose electricity-generating fusion continues to be a dream? What of the alternatives? Oil can synthesized from coal or tar. But if the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels causes trouble sooner than anticipated, or if Senator James Inhofe is right, which means we must reduce fossil fuel use even more than mainstream scientists anticipate, we will have to turn to irregular and expensive alternatives.
• Energy Vulnerability
  A topical issue, made worse by a common response, which deals with demand rather than supply, and with clashes of interest. Moreover, attacks that reduce world oil supplies by a percent or two might occur three or five years apart. The people who govern rich countries may fail to perceive a threat and fail to engage in an expensive, generation-long effort to change their sources. effort to change their sources of supply.
• Comparative Costs
  Over the past half century, the cost of destruction has dropped compared to the cost of building. It has always been less expensive to destroy than to build; but over the past few generations, the cost difference has widened. Assymetrical war is both more possible now than it was, and more available to those without the vast resources of the government of a great power.
• Xenophobia, Savy, and Xenophilia
  Does a pessimistic view of human nature merit pessimistic expectations for future human action?
• Societies as Von Neumann Machines
  Although the notion of a self-replicating entity is old, John von Neumann first suggested a modern, robotic form. Usually, we think of such entities as `machines', but human societies reproduce themselves, too.
• Tentacle City
  Do large fortunes tend to grow? Are competitive, free markets unstable? I explore these questions through an analog: the beginnings of a science fiction story in which you explore an island is full of tentacled entities whose ecological rules match those of our business society.
• Libertarians versus Left-wing Democrats
  How are some Libertarians and some Left-wing Democrats similar? Many think this question prefigures a joke, but I disagree. I see two similarities, one favoring a rule by thugs, the other against a rule by men who are like bronze age warriors.
• A Three Chamber Government
  While I do not think that a `world government' is possible, a larger government than we now see might occur if it divides power in a way that appeals to each member country.
• Law, Property, and Legitimacy
  Why has capitalism succeeded in countries such as the United States but failed in most of the world? Hernando de Soto argues that without the ability to borrow from strangers, no one will be able to build a firm that competes with existing, large `Western' companies. But strangers will not lend unless they can seize a defaulter's assets. And without a reliable, quick, and honest legal system, assets stand for nothing. So for success, `extralegal' assets, such as houses, must be converted into legal assets. The only way to do this successfully is to give the legal system legitimacy by adapting to existing, actual social contracts.
• Business Dispute Resolution in China
  A friend suggests that in contemporary China, anthropologically speaking, people in business think that only their families are a part of the group with whom they should be honest. This means that business transaction costs will be higher and that customers will perceive that markets are neither fair nor legitimate.
• Business Dispute Resolution in India
  Earlier, I wrote about the method of business dispute resolution in China. My same friend who commented on China suggests that anthropologically speaking, business dispute resolution in India fits the `tort law' model better and is less expensive for a society as a whole. This suggests that India may eventually outgrow China, presuming that lower Chinese costs for labor, capital, land, energy, and government action do not overwhelm this one factor.
• Succeeding With Worse, or Why Companies Move to China
  In their book, The Innovator's Solution, Christensen and Raynor suggest ways for a company to avoid losing to a smaller, but faster moving competitor. The same reasoning explains why some United States companies are moving manufacturing to China. The analysis also suggests what American companies that remain in the US will do. It does not offer any hope for those who wish the overseas movement did not occur.
• China into Far Eastern Russia in 20 Years? [updated]
  Will China peacefully or otherwise take over the far eastern part of Russia in 20 or 40 years? I wrote this first yesterday, and have added a few comments.
• Developing and Extralegal
  A switch in view: rather than think of `the' economy as national, developed, and legal, think of it as global, developing, and extralegal. Public servants and private investors both have reason to make this switch.
• Encyclopedias as Trust Based Institutions
  Banks and insurance companies depend on trust. That is because they offer promises of future delivery, not anything that can be checked in the here and now. Encyclopedias are also based on trust since, as a practical matter, no one is able to check their articles. To be useful, you need to trust that the unchecked articles are good enough.
• One Way to Implement Trust
  To make it hard for frauds or well-intentioned but faulty people from destroying its quality, one Web site randomly selects people to serve as temporary judges. Such a judge must be a long time regular, willing to serve, and respected by other judges. Such a person receives a number of points that expire quickly. After they expire, the person stops being a judge.
• The Petals of Cooperation
  What are the political, constitutional changes that enable a just and sustainable society to succeed? They are consent, freedom, and law. To evaluate a political proposal, you can ask whether it protects, preserves, prepares, and provides? You can investigate the five qualities of a social recipe: reason, rigor, reality, honesty, and responsibility. And then, the details ...
• Who Gets What?
  Currently, capitalist societies transfer income from one person to another according to four criteria: services or products rendered, ownership, government edict, and charity. What should societies do when such transfers mean much reduced returns to people who produce goods or when machines, not people, produce objects?
• US Isolationism
  The United States is a strongly isolationist country, even though it is strongly involved in the world and now fighting abroad. Will it continue to act alone or will it join a larger country with a three chamber government?
• Crime and Age
  When do crooks go straight?
• Trucking, costly and fragile
  Just looking at a big highway, it is evident that trucking has increasingly replaced rail over the past generation. How much more damage to the roads do these additional trucks cause than cars? Many years ago, a man from the state Dept. of Public Works told me a high number. Moreover, trucks and cars depend on fossil fuels; they cannot run without them. Unfortunately, fossil fuel production is pretty well fixed; and the amount produced might suddenly fall.
• Conflict over the Goals of a Civilization
  At a public hearing I found a clash within my civilization: what kind of noise to accept or protest? An old friend sought a special permit to keep a rooster and chickens behind her house. The protest is over the sound of a cock's crow. Do you support our current technology or do you hope to supersede it? Do you view farm animals as workers or as pets? What pollutes?
• New and Old Politics
  Over the next few generations, political leaders will come decide fewer issues. Instead they will permit their political supporters to decide some of them. They will do this because otherwise, they will not gain supporters at all.
• Medieval Armor and Violence
  A museum of Medieval armor and weapons reminded me that many Medieval soldiers lived in `honor based' societies. The men were sensitive to how they perceived others thought of them and would fight if they felt slighted. Modern civilization grew as these men were superseded by governments in which more peaceful people gained power.
• Unknown unknowns and the Rest
  When you do not even know you do not know something, you face an `unknown unknown'. For most young children, this is the case with calculus. Then there is a fifth category.... the disease of experts.
• Disastrous Decisions
  Jared Diamond asked why some societies make disastrous decisions? He talked about four kinds of failure, each with its own several reasons: to fail to anticipate a problem, to fail to perceive it; to fail to try to solve it, and to fail to solve it after trying. For example, one reason to fail to anticipate is because of misleading metaphors, as happened in Iceland with the Vikings.
• Pessimistic Scenarios
  Mostly, I am optimistic, but today I decided to be pessimistic. The simplest and least dangerous scenario is electronic mail that is formatted in HTML. From there I point to the possibility that we may never be able to generate cheap electricity from fusion and be unable to create a reasonably efficient alternative source. I end up with issues of governance and the causes for societies making disastrous decisions.
• Schooling
  More than ten years ago, David Perkins published a book that enables us to judge an educational system. His underlying notion is simple: that people learn much of which they have a reasonable opportunity and motivation to learn. This concept defines the simplest of conditions for good schooling, which are needed if we wish to avoid disastrous decisions.

Current Effort

For the past several years, I have been writing fiction. That is why you have not heard from me. Please write me if you are interested.

As for a previous effort,

• Choice and Constraint has `1' added to its edition number because I added chapters and changed their order.

  Choice and Constraint is both a description of `what is' ... not a `what is' of political scientists, but a `what is' that reflects the current world and a statement of `what can be done'. I turn to forms of persuasion. Aristotle spoke more than two thousand years ago. Unfortunately, he is limited. I talk about modern methods of determination. And I consider what should be done? The last chapter is now The Petals of Cooperation.

Biology

• Darwin's Five Laws of Evolution
  With the supporting evidence he provided, Darwin's notions were best described as theories. Now, they have been as well established as Newton's Laws, so they should be called laws. (Darwin saw his hypotheses as one conjoined notion, hence the singular; but they are distinct notions.)
• Design Process and Multiples
  For the past several thousand years, most people have not only presumed that a `design' requires a `designer', but that only an entity can design, never a process. The English language favors this `folk belief' by making the usual term for `that which designs' be the word `designer'. This is a mistake. Moreover, for a unplanned design process to succeed, people must think in terms of populations, of multiple, rather than of exemplars or typical cases.
• Von Neumann Machines
  An essay on von Neumann machines as such rather than as metaphors for human societies and economies or as conceptual tools for thinking about evolution. A von Neumann Machine is a robotic self-replicator. It has a minimum number of parts, which humans can readily understand. In so far as copies are inexact and circumstances change, new forms become commonplace.
• The Elegance of Darwinian Evolution
  While Darwinian evolution is true and cruel, it is not inelegant, inefficient, or wasteful. Those judgement categories are irrelevant. Of course, if you farm, then waste becomes an issue. But not if you are a forest.
• A Species is Not an Organism
  Often, I speak of a species as an organism. But it is not. Nor is an ecology. But sometimes it is useful to imagine the one as the other. Moreover, since it is easier to think more clearly about an imaginary self-replicating, robotic factory than about your own society or your food supply, a von Neumann machine is a good model.
• An Early High Death Rate and how it effects evolution.
• Pre-industrial Kondratiev Cycles
  A Kondratiev cycle is a change in prices that lasts 50 – 60 years. Michael Alexander provides a theory that I find intriguing why such a Kondratiev cycle occurred in Medieval Europe, which was a pre-industrial, agricultural society. He provides some evidence.
• Pre-industrial Kondratiev Cycles and `Generations'
  Michael Alexander combines his two generation theory of a pre-industrial Kondratiev cycle with the four generation, 100 – 120 year, cycle that Strauss and Howe develop in their work on `Generations'.
• Build with Unbreakable Components
  Unlike the wood of a sailing ship or the metal of a car, a number is unbreakable. Computer programs are built from such unbreakable objects. This enables developers to create complex entities. In biology, atoms are also unbreakable. So are sacred postulates and basic laws. Nonetheless programs, animals, theologies, and law have all become as difficult to maintain as ships and cars. Entities stop becoming more complex, stop becoming more prey to rot, only when the complexity or rot kills enough of them.

Free Lunches, Oil, and Outer Space

• No Free Lunch
  An erroneous theory
• Oil Reserves
• Inexpensive Access to Outer Space
• Space Mining

Perceptions, Thinking, and Incomplete Evidence

• Guttman Scales
  How we perceive
• Omission and Commission
  Zero-sum situations are bad and best avoided. Likewise, it is dangerous to allow those who have considerable power to define a situation as `black and white' since people like to think within a `container' metaphor. That mode is one of the four ways people tend to perceive and think. It is the most simple of the four. Nonetheless, others sometimes put us into such situation. I think we should endeavor to act against them, even when the circumstances are bad, and when the action is dubious, complex, and its outcome doubtful.
• Styles of Thought
  Quick now, why ... ?
• Understanding Without Proof
  Benjamin Peirce famously spoke of a mathematical equation `that is surely true ... and we don't know what it means.' Meaning and proof are different. Only recently has anyone explained the underlying nature of mathematical meaning.
• An Electrical Metaphor
  The metaphor we use for electricity is so embedded in the language that we hardly notice: the metaphor is based on the notion of a flow of water and uses the word current. Yet the metaphor implies a flow through a solid metal, and what we measure, initially a weight, later the position of a needle, is not a measurement of the current itself, but of something else.
• Computer Metaphors
  The word `computer' is wrong. In the old days, a computer was a person who computed, just as a baker was a person who baked and a typewriter was a person who wrote on a typewriting machine. However, in the past century and a half, the words `computer' and `typewriter' have shifted from referring to the person to referring to the machine. Moreover, we `program' a computer rather than write `recipes' for it.
• Counting in Base 12
  I am furious that in the Middle Ages, Christian Europe adopted an Indian/Arabic base 10 numerical system rather than the better base 12 system. Base 12 fits the number of Christian Apostles. It fits the number of eggs in dozen. In base 12, you can count on one hand.
• Certainty Factors
  When the evidence is `suggestive'
• An Exercise Using Certainty Factors
  How certainty factors might be used to understand a controversial political situation; and a practical use for selling robot vacuum cleaners.
• Three Aids to Judgement
  As far as I can see, in 1700, school children could have learned three aspects of judgement: certainty factors, frequency-based probability judgements, and estimates of of the likelihood of one-time-only events.
• Black, White, and Gray
  More complex logics, and how they relate to our perceptions.
• Regarding `Black, White, and Gray'
  A question asking whether computers already use certainty factors under the name of Bayesian analysis, or whether the two are different? If they are different, which is better for everyday human use?
• Influences on me
  Ways of thinking about the world.
• Quotations from "Ecology, Meaning & Religion" by Roy Rappaport
  I mention Rappaport in Influences on me
  Here is more.
• Homer's Odyssey and Rappaport's anthropology
  A presentation by a new translator of the `Odyssey' suggested to me that Roy Rappaport had made sense when he pointed out a way to provide law when no laws can be enforced by governments. I wonder whether this was the case.
• Additive and Non-additive Ideas
  You can learn more: learning is additive. But you cannot hold two contradictory opinions at the same time. You cannot simultaneously be both a Christian and a Moslem. As statements of truth, some pairs of ideas are rivalrous, to use economists' jargon. They are similar to shirts and shoes. But as learnable ideas, they are non-rivalrous, like software.
• Differing Virtues
  A plant, animal, human society, or product may reduplicate prolifically so long as it is alone. But it may not survive competition from its own kind. Virtues that help it in the first circumstance may be outweighed by faults in the second. Will Microsoft Windows die as its faults come to outweigh its virtues?
• What is Science?
  Science the most robust form of transcultural communication yet known. It is a way of persuading a person that one judgement is better than another. But instead of trying to persuade another by appealing to a common cultural understanding or to a widely accepted authority, a scientific communication strives to generate an internal experience. This transcends culture. Clearly, most such communication is irrelevant; but sometimes truth is important.
• Cats to the Veterinarian
  When I was a child, I learned that `God moves in mysterious ways'. Today, I took the cats to the veterinarian for their rabies' shots and checkups, an action that to them was mysterious and unpleasant. What would be the metaphoric nature of God for a child, if the animal to which he or she related were a large horse or cow rather than a small cat (or sheep or goat, which children often tended)?
• Horses as Prey Animals
  Unlike cats and dogs, which are predators, horses are prey animals. This makes horses different from cats and dogs. (Humans are both predators and prey.) I know little about horses; this is what friends have told me.
• Birds' and Bees' Color Vision
  Birds see more colors than humans. Their perceptions must be different. Not only can birds see ultraviolet, they have at least four types of color sensitive cone cells. Humans have only three types of cone. (`Rods' are for dimmer, grey, night vision.) To birds, their plumages may be even more colorful than to humans, or colorful in different ways. [Updated.]
• A Coherent Model Based on Observation
  In Plato's dialog, Timaeus provides a coherent model of the universe that derives in a large part from observation and only in a small part from cultural presumption. As a theory, it enjoyed a long run. It outlasted two civilizations, the Classical and the Medieval. Unfortunately, the observations were poor and the model wrong.
• Old Fashioned Newspaper Format
  Years ago, by looking at a bunch of them, I induced the format for stories written by journalists working for my local newspaper. Articles were written so that an editor could delete paragraphs from the end. (This is a well known style, but I did not know about it then.)

Typewriters, Computers, Telescopes, and Privacy

• Secret, Anonymous Communications
• Super Typewriters
• A Small Telescope
  A correspondent asked which of two small telescopes he should choose. For astronomy, because of light pollution and lack of contrast, the better is bigger. You also need to think about the mount, and the whole optical path.
• Calc Embedded mode
  A short discussion about using Calc Embedded mode in your mail buffer in GNU Emacs to solve a complex equation for one of its variables.

Bombs, Language, and Exploration

• Counting Seconds
  Was that flash lightning or a distant atomic detonation?
• Tenseless Language
• Early but expensive explorations

Science Fiction and Non-fiction, Predictions

• The Outcasts of Heaven Belt: a Commentary
  `Notes on the use of stereotypes within a genre.' I just rediscovered these notes I wrote in 1981 about a science fiction novel by Joan D. Vinge. Among other topics, the novel talks about two collapses of civilization, although the second is off-stage and incomplete.
• The Economics of Interstellar Trade
  Even using the optimistic assumptions of a 3% per year growth rate for 500 years, interstellar trade will be expensive. Most `goods' will be more cheaply manufactured locally. Most `transport' will be via radio rather than by physically carrying an object.
• Innovations After Their Time
  Many innovations could have taken place earlier, but no one thought of them. A hot air balloon, even a dirigible, could have been built four thousand years ago. Food could have been rapidly frozen and preserved in an ice house.
• Innovations of the Next Half Century (from 1980)
  Here are five innovations that I figured would have a large impact when I wrote these predictions in 1980. All the predictions were wrong; at least, none have yet transpired. Yet even in retrospect, none appear impossible and all look profitable.
• The `Singularity'
  In 1993, Vernor Vinge argued that within two generations, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. To me, that notion looks like a millennial religious concept in modern garb.

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