Category Archives: Ponderings

DISTRACTION – So coin! Much gender. Wow

Ah Bitcoin, you reminder that cognitive dissonance and random hope are the fundamental drivers of human culture.

Let us draw two circles, let us create a Venn diagram of two sets. One being those who “mine” the Bitcoin, the other being women. And the intersection of the two, the common members of both sets? I strongly suspect that it will be zero, a null set.

Has currency, the concept of money, always been gendered? Has Bitcoin merely thrown a light on something that always was there, obscured by time and common practice? I reach for my Delphy.

Let us draw another circle, this time let it be made up of those who complain about “fiat currency”, those who demand that money be based on something that has intrinsic value.

Which is of course an absurdity, anything and everything is only worth what someone is willing to give in return for it. And that applies to the medium of exchange like everything else. But I still remember the shock in my classmate’s voices when, as mere cubs, we were told the truth about money. That it is an agreed collective delusion. Like everything else we call culture or human nature.

Now let us look at the circle of true money believers and the Bitcoin “miners” (so macho, much struggle, wow). I suspect that this time the intersection is not empty and that the two groups overlap to a marked extent. Despite, no, of course, because Bitcoin is a delusion based on bits, on the hum of the machine. Boil the oceans so that we may be journey deeper into the Bank of Babel.

Bitcoin is Tlön. An answer to an obscure trivia question in 2021. It is not caek.

Forgotten

It would be easier if we either remembered things or just simply forgot them. But sometimes things just do not enter our minds.

If memory is one and forgetting minus one, then there is a zero. A nothingness of things that neither are nor are not.

Sometimes a thought trips over a nothingness and we feel a moment of unease, like but not like the sensation we have when we think we have forgotten something.

For that sensation still has an echo of the object, whilst this is wholly of the void. No matter how much we strain we can never find the lost memory, it never existed in the first place.

What is is but an infinitesimal in what is not.

And that is why your birthday card is still sitting on my mantelpiece.

Bringing dragons into the enterprise

I am currently playing Ni No Kuni and enjoying the excellent art work and well written script.

One of the grimmest neologisms of recent times is “gamification”. The concept that adding elements for gaming into, usually drudge, work will make us happier and more productive.

So we have seen attempts to combine role playing games with housework so you gain points for mopping the floor. For me this seems a bizarre hybrid of grinding and drudge work.

But playing Ni No Kuni I am reminded of something games do very well, guide the user through a world upskilling the player as they go. You start with a simple stick and seamlessly you are guided to a point where you are flying a dragon, commanding a ship, crafting items and performing magic.

Compare this with the grey, grim world of Enterprise IT with “Press F1 for help” that seldom ever helps, “wizards” that are never going to open the pod bay doors, and training courses that vanish from memory the instant one leaves the room.

Why can’t we replace that with the organic learning we find in Ni No Kuni?

In the beginning

After a pleasant lunch – scallopine alla limone, if you are interested – I popped into the Wallace Collection.

I find the Watteau’s to be painful but the corners of the House are full of odd and wonderful curios, as well as a perfect Rembrandt.

As I wandered around the House my eye was caught by the paintings of animals – mostly dogs, some horses, and one lone cat on a tapestry. I found myself wondering, “Which animal was painted first? The dog or the cat?”

Did we first paint the hunter’s companion or the deity? Man’s best friend or the enemy of mice?

Rover or Tiddles?

A machine for poets

Musing on Oulipo I propose the following attack on poetry –

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mort lity,
Seen in their s d re lity,
Were not s things th t gods despise;
Wh t w s thy pity’s recompense?
sil nt suff ring, nd int ns ;
Th ro k, th vultur , nd th h in,
ll th t th proud n f l o p in,
T ony t y o not s ow,
T suffo t n s ns o wo ,
W sp ks ut n ts lon l n ss,
n t n s lous l st t s y
S ou v st n r, nor w s
Unt ts vo s o ss.

Hello World – An epic poem in 4500 stanzas

Hello new followers, lured here by the power of poetry.

I fear I may disappoint you as I do not post that many poems. For obvious reasons 🙂

Like most people my first real encounter with poetry was at school. The classics seemed shrouded in an impermeable patina of age and respectability.  They felt like punishment, not illumination.

But there were some poems that were different – the syllabus included an Ogden Nash poem, e.e. cummings, Randall Jarrell.

These poems were chewable, they filled the mouth and challenged the mind.

Then I discovered Mayakovsky and everything changed. Poetry was no longer an abstract concept, locked on the page, it was an active engagement with the world.

Alphaville introduced me to Paul Eluard. A girlfriend to Martin Espada. Chance to Fernando Pessoa. My past to Yeats and Heaney. Through Mayakovsky to Akhmatova to Mandelstam.

Random browsing of Penguin classics brought me Li Bao and Tu Fu. Random reading of NYRB and LRB brought me Weldon Kees and Amy Clampitt.

Poetry went from being something trapped behind a glaze of worthiness to being something core, an essential thing.

That is the thing about poetry. It sneaks up on you, taking no prisoners.

Image

Nothing is Simple

I am currently reading the excellent book by Jim Holt – “Why Does the World Exist?”.

And it turns out that that question is related to one of my late night musings – “What is the simplest possible universe?”

As in every good debate, we start by defining our terms. “Something” is easy to define, at least as a bucket, but what is “nothing”?

One way to define nothing is to start with something and then take it away.

So we start with our universe and remove all the matter. Do we then have “nothing”? And is then the simplest possible universe “nothing”?

The problem is that emptying the universe is not as simple as subtracting 1 from 1 to give us 0.

Even if we removed all matter, particles would still bubble up from the Dirac Sea. The only way to stop that is to remove the fundamental laws of this universe.

But where are these? How are they manifested?

Are they intrinsic to our universe or do they sit outside? And if outside then how do they affect our universe and have we not just replaced God with an equally inaccessible controller?

If they are intrinsic then where are they? Wearing a Mysterian hat, perhaps they are in plain sight but are imperceivable to our consciousness.

Emptying the universe starts to seem a lot less simple.

In the book, Jim Holt gives three requirements for this subtractive model of nothingness. One of which he, though not I, thinks is a deal breaker.

For me the fundamental problem with the subtractive model, aside from the challenge mentioned above, is ghosts.

Ghosts do not exist, they are therefore nothing. But they are obviously not nothing as there is a word in the page “ghosts” and you who read it know what it means.

Ghosts are both being and nothingness. What do I take away from what to create the nothingness that is a ghost?

Chromebook – first thoughts

Google yesterday launched the Chromebook and a lot of the coverage has been about the 3 year leasing model which they offering.

I am still waiting for more details but based on the information here I have some first impressions.

Chromebooks essentially appear to be thin clients in netbook form – data and apps are stored remotely with the device essentially being the presentation layer.

On a 3 year basis the cheapest device has a cost of $28 x 36 or $1008 as opposed to the one off purchase cost of $349.

So the question is “Is the service wrap worth $659?”

The only details I can find so far are here.

Cost savings seem to be mainly captured in this paragraph:

Chromebooks and the management console automate or eliminate many common, time-intensive IT tasks like machine image creation, application distribution, patching, and upgrades. Additionally, there is no need to purchase licenses for anti-virus, data encryption or data back-up software. Subscription pricing means that you only pay a low monthly amount.

Minimum quantity is 10 so service wrap will be a minimum of $2197 per annum.

But someone still needs to do configuration, deployment, run the management console etc.

Will do some more detailed modelling and realworld comparisons but will be interested to see a) how the thin client model works in operation and b) whether the netbook form factor is now too unfashionable for the market to accept!