Hiro Antagonist

From the department of "Gosh, we never sat down and considered this for very long", I bring you two very different views on robotics:


Versus


So Nike uses this spiffy chalkbot to print out dot-matrix style messages with chalk at the Tour de France (video here). Apparently they're primarily in support of the Livestrong foundation, raising awareness of cancer victims.

All well and good, right? Not quite, it seems. Apparently Nike's chalkbot had an eerie resemblance to a previous robot, StreetWriter, a robot created by the Institute for Applied Autonomy to "...protest the militarization of robotics research...".

Namely at the DARPA Grand Challenge "...where its mission was to print Isaac Asimov’s First Rule of Robotics "A ROBOT MUST NOT KILL" at the starting line of the military robotics event."

So the IAA is getting all huffy about a evil corporation stealing their robotic thunder (which is covered in excellent detail by Near Future Laboratory here) and it struck me that the hullabaloo was really over a certain idea, namely that robots are somehow inherently moral devices.

To be moral to begin with, something must be capable of good and evil, or be inherently one way or the other. Humans can make moral actions that are 'good' or 'evil', because there's free will behind it, along with intent.

Inanimate objects; tools, on the other hand, can't be moral in the sense that they're inherently evil or good. The same hammer can be used to build a library or break knees - did it suddenly become evil or good because how it was used?

If you pause to think about it for a second, you'd realize that a hammer doesn't act on its own. Human beings direct the hammer, and it is the actions of the human that are moral - the hammer just helps.

To be certain, there are some tools or inventions that have very limited or no moral use in one category or another - torture chambers or pretty paintings, for example. It'd be difficult to do good by using a torture chamber, and it'd be hard to do evil by using pretty paintings. Not impossible, mind you, just difficult.

I hate it when some artistic group, or political group gets all worked up about something they didn't think through for more than ten minutes. Because frankly, if you go nuts over a concept and berate people over it, and make press releases, it should be over something that can't be proven to be false in a single paragraph.

Robots can be easily used in either moral direction, but protesting their militarization is just stupid. It isn't robots that are being militarized, it's just that people are militarized and they keep on finding news tools to aid them in this.

I'm so Ronery / So ronery / So ronery and sadry arone / There's no one / Just me onry / Sitting on my rittle throne / I work rearry hard and make up get prans / but, nobody listens, no one understands / Seems rike no one takes me serirousry / And so I got some nukes / now everyone is listening / ronery no more!


So north Korea has a long history of making threats. In the past though, it's only been just enough to push countries into giving it aid, as there's no other way it'd survive in the long term.

Lately? Lately though, the threats haven't been so idle. Aside from blowing up a nuke or two to show they mean business, they've also withdrawn from the 1953 armistice, something they've never done before.

Perhaps they're in such a hard corner that they have no other choice but to start a fight. Who can say? But it looks like they might actually carry through with the implied threats and go to war against South Korea and Japan. Possibly with nukes.

In the past, China has been a strong ally of North Korea, so no one could push North Korea around too much. Whether China sticks by N. Korea as it seemingly goes off the deep end will be an interesting question. If it doesn't, N. Korea runs the risk of getting a preemptive nuking. If it does, odds are that conventional war isn't far off.

I'm waiting to see what happens next...

So NPR airs this bit about how odd it is that the same black pastors that led the civil rights movement are against gay marriage.

It's fine by me if someone doesn't hold with something. I personally don't believe people should be screwing outside of marriage, regardless of gender. But any people that are capable of loving each other getting married seems like it can only be a good thing.

So why would a group of people who led the civil rights movement in the 60's be against what is essentially more of the same? One of the black pastors who'd been in the civil right's movement was recorded saying "If anybody can get married, that devalues marriage".

I sat there, stunned for a second. This was quite possibly the most stupid thing I'd heard in a long time, not to mention quite possibly the worst argument I'd ever heard.


Because, as we all know, 'If anyone could have civil rights, that'd devalue civil rights!'

The thing is, basic rights belonging to all human beings cannot be devalued by letting all humans exercise them. Rights are not like gold in the sense that the more everyone else has, the less your own supply is worth.

I'm not sure which I hate more, hypocrisy or people who make stupid arguments that aren't logically sound.

"I don't use P2P but for everyone else I say go for it. Rob those bastards blind. Why? One sentence: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. Think about that for a minute. That man has been worm food (or a Popsicle depending on who you believe) for a half a fricking century and yet his first work, one made when cars were started with a crank and antibiotics were just a crazy dream, is STILL under copyright.

Copyrights were a CONTRACT, nothing more. In return for a LIMITED copyright We, The People got a richer Public Domain. Instead they used outright bribery to corrupt our politicians and buy our laws away from us. So I say screw the thieving bastards. Let them rot. They used their money to steal our public domain away from us so if someone wants to steal from the thieves I say more power to them. I just can't be bothered because I honestly think their product is shit and isn't even worth stealing. But frankly expecting us to feel so sorry for those thieving bastards is just pushing it too far. Put the copyrights back to the way they were for over a century and quit robbing our public domain!"
-hairyfeet


Certainly raises a few interesting points. Especially one that's usually forgotten in the US - what is legal is not always right, and what is right is not always legal. Just because you do something does not mean you can demand compensation for it.

Music used to only be something one could get money for by performing live (pre-1800's). It's actually still that way today for artists, just not the parasitic companies that represent them.

Something I've never liked about the USA is the thirst for blood. Here in Texas, the public fondness for executing people is perhaps more obvious than in other states. In a fit of extreme irony, you often hear people who are against abortion and the execution of the unborn who are pro-death penalty.

I've been against killing people for as long as I can remember, more from philosophical reasons than any particular religious ones. You should never kill anyone unless your own life is under immediate threat. There's simply no *need* to kill people unless they're trying to kill you and can't be stopped otherwise.

Honesty needs to come first. Life is cheap, and on the whole, humans don't value it that highly. People have always been willing to die and kill for just about anything.

Civilization has been a story of triumph, of man over man's own nature for the last few thousand years. We've been winning more than we've been loosing for a while now, and we shouldn't give up, especially on a battle this important.

Security:
The death penalty is no longer about this. Modern prisons are secure, and can keep society safe from violent criminals. It can no longer be said that a criminal is so dangerous that he must die, otherwise everyone in the country is otherwise at risk. Most people in this country recognize this is a bullshit argument and no longer resort to it.

Vengeance:
Killing people never brought back anyone, or made anything better. I'm reminded of a famous popular saying by Holly Near "Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong?" We act as if somehow, when we kill someone as a group (the State), we are less guilty than when we kill someone as individuals.

One of the most respected thinkers on law, William Blackstone, once said "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

In the last *three* years in Dallas county alone, NINETEEN people have been freed from death row on DNA evidence showing they could not possibly have been guilty of the charges they had been convicted on. Dallas county currently leads the nation in number of prisoners on death row proven wrongfully convicted. It's not a statistic to be proud of. Probably one we should be abhorred by, really.


I have yet to run into anyone who was pro-death penalty because of anything based on reason. It's always been vengeance. An eye for an eye ends up with a nation of blind people when you let animal instinct triumph over reason. There is no animal on the planet more vicious than human beings. But there's also no animal on the planet capable of such great triumph over their negative qualities. Hopefully the chain of victories over the worst aspects of human nature doesn't end here.

I'm not sure if it's just the people I know, or people in general, but what's up with people being flaky?

To frame this, I'm not the "Eins svie drie" punctual-to-the-minute sort. But I can commit to things, and when I do, I'll show up. And I understand the mysterious art of 'Canceling' if I can't make something I said I would. In general, I have a schedule that I can tell people.

In fact, so does everyone else. People sleep at fairly regular intervals. They usually go to work or classes at similarly regular intervals. Everyone can say when they will absolutely be unable to do something. I've yet to meet people that can pull off sleeping and another activity at the same time, all jokes aside. Or be at work and at the pub at the same time (what a talent that would be!)

So why do I get the impression that I'm the weird one and most of humanity is flaky? Is the vast majority of humanity flaky and non-flaky sorts are the exception?

One of the things the recent economic depression really drove home was the problems created by the economic version of the Larsen effect (aka 'audio feedback').

Suddenly the economy isn't doing too well. People can't afford to buy as many things as they did before.

Suddenly even more companies aren't doing too well. People can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Jobs get cut.

Suddenly even more companies aren't doing too well. People can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Jobs get cut. People without jobs can't can't afford to buy as many things as they did before.

Suddenly even more companies aren't doing too well. People can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Jobs get cut. People without jobs can't can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Suddenly even more companies aren't doing too well. People can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Jobs get cut. People without jobs can't can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. People without jobs can't can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Suddenly even more companies aren't doing too well. People can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Jobs get cut. People without jobs can't can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. People without jobs can't can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Suddenly even more companies aren't doing too well. People can't afford to buy as many things as they did before. Jobs get cut. People without jobs can't can't afford to buy as many things as they did before.

[your economy has just imploded.]
Game Over

Yeah. See how that sucks?

If there was only a mechanism to eliminate negative self-amplifying economic feedback. In audio production, there's a few things you can do to prevent unwanted feedback. The economic version of echo cancellation could possibly even work on the same principle. Digital signal processors look for the originally transmitted signal that re-appears, with some delay, in the transmitted or received signal.

How would one implement this as an economics device? Well, if the financial world was entirely run through computer managed networks, this might not be that hard. Spotting 'echos', that is. A DSP will 'kill' the echo, but would canceling a transaction that fit the definition of 'economic echo' work well? How would false-positives be handled? I'm sure there's a economics paper in all of this, if not a nobel prize.

One thing that troubles me about the US legal system as it currently stands is the fact that someone can be sued on groundless charges and still loose.

Large corporations and wealthy individuals don't have to win a suit against an enemy, they simple have to run up the clock in court to bankrupt their target with lawyer's fees.

Why in the world haven't we patched the legal system to fix this 'sploit?


If legislators know that people can be sued for something they're not guilty of, but still be ruined when they have to pay the vast fees for defending themselves against a lawsuit that doesn't result in a guilty verdict, why not change the law?

A simple fix would seem to be 'Accuser pays defendant's legal fees if defendant is found not guilty'.


Besides running up the fees with suits that won't result in guilty verdict, but can be dragged out to financially ruin someone, suits can be dragged out to take up an individual's time to the point where it ruins them. For example, a business owner who can't run a business if they're constantly in court fighting a groundless suit.

While growing up, I was often frustrated when told things along the line of 'with age, you'll understand', as even back then I understood that intelligence doesn't increase with age.

Unfortunately, people often failed to distinguish how age generally increased experience rather than intelligence, and in many cases, perhaps weren't able to distinguish such differences with enough clarity to convey them.

Truth be told, the ability to clearly express the things you know in your head via spoken word seems to be a fairly random trait, rather than being correlated with any particular age or level of intelligence or experience. While I was an art major, I frequently ran into this with peers whose artistic ability was something I envied quite a bit, but they would drive me to frustration when trying to have a conversation that involved them describing anything inside their head. Perfectly smart people, often above average, in fact. Highly talented. Couldn't put their artistic vision into words even at gunpoint, however :(


In simple words, just because someone is young doesn't mean they will be unable to understand something. Someone at the age of eleven is just as smart as they will be at the age of forty. However, the ability to grasp a concept and the ability to put it in a mental framework that will make the concept relevant and useful are two different things.

For example, an eleven year old who asks you why someone they know to be a rational person suddenly acts irrational when around a particular person of the opposite gender. If you explain that rationality can fly out the window in certain circumstances, like when someone has a crush on another person, they'll be able to grasp the concept perfectly.

However, until they've had a few years of *personal* experience with the phenomenon, it won't be fully related to all of the other things they understand.


Intelligence, an ability that is constant no matter what the age allows facts to be comprehended. Experience, an ability that increases in a linear fashion as you age allows the same facts to be utilized in daily life with a level of skill dependent on the amount of experience.

Much like a pilot fresh out of flight school knows exactly what all the controls in a plane do and why, the knowledge can't be used to its full potential until they've had a few thousand hours of flight time under their belt.


So the next time a little kid asks you a question whose answer would seem to be beyond their grasp? They're just looking for the theory, not the application.


And if they're not satisfied with the theory of the concept and are actually looking for the application? Tell them that such understanding cannot be given by others, only gained after getting enough XP and leveling up ;)

Seeing some WWI pictures on Flickr today, I was reminded of one of the most hilarious aspects of that war. At the very beginning, it was seen as a great adventure by many young men, especially those in Britain. I fancy it went much like this:


British Manor house, smell of fresh air, sounds of birds chirping, sun shinning: "Pip-pip mother! I'm off to the war! It will be dashing fun! A great adventure!"

ONE YEAR LATER

Bottom of a muddy trench, smell of rotting human flesh, sounds of soldiers moaning as they die slowly, rain pouring: "War is hell. All my friends. Damn. The machine gun nests didn't miss them, but I sure do. I miss my legs too. I want to go back home now."

Browsing the internets, as I do, I notice strange trends every now and then. One that's had me somewhat puzzled lately is the amount of foreign interest in the American presidential election.

From every country, large and small, there seems to be quite a few non-Americans that actually care about who the next US president will be. Why?

Britain has a prime minister. Britain rocks, but I honestly couldn't tell you who the contenders for the position were. I remember the French presidential race, but only because I listen to NPR. Germany? Japan? No idea. I'm just a random Joe, not a political wonk or fanboy.

Yet look at an international website like Rlslog (only 20% of their traffic is from America), and look at the comments on a post about the latest US presidential debate. They're hardly alone in this trend.

Weird, huh?

So why the massive foreign interest?

Aside from being a hilarious if extremely crude movie, Team America: World Police is an astute observation on the state of American foreign relations, and what Americans in general perceive as the purpose of their military.

The world is a rough place. Wars start all the time, and people die horribly for all sorts of preventable reasons. It's enough to cause any civilized person heartache. If you had the power to stop it from happening, shouldn't you? 'With great power comes great responsibility', right?


Well, yes and no. There's a right way to go about it, and a wrong way. Unfortunately, over the years, Americans have confused their military with their police to horrific effect. The distinction between the military and the police is very simple. The main purpose of the first is to kill people, and the main purpose of the second is to protect people. The real life effect is much akin to a building owner confusing a demolition company with a renovation company. Sure they'll both fix the problem, but you really don't want to use the first unless you wanted to destroy the building in the first place.

Aside from the equivalent of confusing the person who blows up a building with the person who renovates it, Americans have confused foreign conflicts with domestic disputes. War hasn't touched America in a long, long, long time. No one alive today remembers the American Civil War, and every war after that never made much of an impact, as it was always 'elsewhere' to the average American. Without a proper frame of reference, people try to classify something in relation to the most similar thing they know.

A domestic dispute.

If you hear screaming, yelling and fighting from your neighbors down the street, you call the police. They come over and take care of the situation. Problem solved! Yay!

The Bosnian-Serbian conflict was perceived in exactly the same light, as far as I could tell. At the time, people lamented what a horrible situation it was, and how it was the duty of America to help stop it. Like it was some kind of fucking domestic dispute that *could* be stopped by a policeman. Yeah, that turned out well.

But the average American never learned anything from that. After all, they were never faced with the consequences of that conflict. It happened 'somewhere else'. The reality of it never became apparent to them. And so now every time there's some other conflict that 'CRIES OUT FOR OUR HELP!', public opinion supports the military being sent to 'FIX THE PROBLEM!' And politicians are elected by the same population, and 'being a heartless bastard' isn't a viable premise for re-election.

Consequently, the rest of the world sees it as 'Team America: World Bully' or worse. But hey, Americans don't have to deal with world opinion! What the rest of the world thinks isn't going to have one iota of impact on the life of the average American. And so the cycle continues.

I fucking hate ignorance.

Living in Dallas Texas, one thing that's stood out since I moved here from 'the north' (Ohio) eight years ago is that roughly a half to a third of the personal vehicles on the road are pickup trucks.

On a personal level, this often drove me nuts. It's understandable if you're always hauling stuff around, but 95% of the pickups I'd see would have a perfectly scratch-free truck bed. If you actually use a pickup truck to haul stuff, it doesn't stay scratch free for more than one or two trips.

So why buy a vehicle if you're going to waste 2/3rds of the space in it? In Ohio, the only people you see driving a pickup truck are either farmers or landscapers. What I didn't realize is that pickup trucks aren't a utilitarian item down here like they are up north.


Someone remarked to me last week that the pickup truck is the equivalent of the horse for the modern cowboy. And suddenly it all clicked into place. People didn't buy pickup trucks because they needed a truck bed to haul stuff in, they bought pickup trucks because they were enamored with the cowboy mythos.

Most of the northern US never really had much of a cowboy tradition. The southwest however? The 'classic' cowboy wasn't around for long, historically speaking but in that short time, they made an impression on the society around them like few other archetypes have.

When a Texan buys a pickup truck, they're not simply getting a vehicle to haul stuff around in, they're purchasing something that lets them participate in the cowboy mythos. And the power of myth has a big draw in the human mind.

Inspired by descendingchaos's entry on the same topic:

There's an Indian show 'Dadagiri', where the contestants do their best to survive 3 rounds of bullying for a cash prize. Apparently the abuse heaped on the contestants is pretty fierce, and got out of hand during the taping of a recent show.

A dominatrix type woman started insulting one of the guests as usual, but then he told her off. She slaps him and he slaps her right back. Then the studio devolves into chaos and people are pushing and shoving everywhere. You can see the video on Youtube here, though the audio is NSFW.


Some people have been commenting that there was nothing wrong with the guy slapping her back, because, hey, equal rights means equal responsibility, right? In general, if you go around slapping people, you'll get the same or worse in return.

Most women haven't figured this out yet, and are enjoying some of the happy benefits of chivalry that have yet to die. Women hitting men isn't rare, and often people are told 'you shouldn't hit back, because women can't fight someone bigger and stronger than they are'.

However, you'll notice that most male geeks who weigh 150 pounds sopping wet don't go around hitting 240 pound muscle-bound types. Of course a slap from a scrawny geek wouldn't be much of a threat to someone like that, but the male geeks are smart enough to know that starting physical violence means you have to be able to take what you dish out.


So is the guy in the wrong for slapping her back? Or should we shed our foolish notions of chivalry and let everyone compete on an mostly-equal playing field and get the snot smacked out of them if they're stupid enough to start something they can't finish?

One of the problems with politics in general, and certainly in specific with regards to the United States is that:

A.) You're electing people who collectively have a vast amount of influence over your life and that of your fellow citizens, but

B.) You have little to no idea what they do, how well they do it, and what the results of their actions are.

Put it this way. With great power comes great oversight. Political oversight is generally relegated to self-policing (hah!) and political watchdog groups that are generally issue-specific and can't watch everyone all the time. The potential for abuse is high and the odds of getting caught are low.

All in all, not a happy scenario.


So how to fix it? How can things be made more transparent to the populace at large? Internet access is fairly widespread, and websites can be designed to allow users to sift through vast amounts of data and still have a clear overview of what is happening. Not to mention the ability to drill down to view specific things in great detail. So there's a good way to present the information. How to gather it though?

The vast majority of public policy in the US is a matter of public record. Getting it, and then making sense of it might be another matter altogether, but it can be gotten to begin with.

Bills that are signed into law often go through quite a few revisions, and various politicians add bits on to serve their various desires, so you'll find things like farm bills with pork barrel style funding added on for something completely different, like bridge building. The bridge never gets built, but where does the money go? You have no idea.

Wikipedia has a fairly decent system that allows users to track changes to pages, and see a version by version history that shows changes, differences and deletions by users. Such a concept could easily be adapted to things like bills that are signed into law.

It's just a rough concept that would need a huge amount of work to become viable, but it's also a very workable idea, which is its best selling point. It seems like something that would function well in the Real World (TM), but as usual, the only way to find out for sure is to give it a shot.

The vast majority of the hullabaloo about Iran and North Korea seems to be linked to their desire to become a nuclear power. Truthfully? I can't blame them.

There's two types of countries; those with nukes and those without.

If you've got nukes, people take you seriously. If you don't? Anyone with nukes has you over a barrel. Anyone without nukes has much less to worry about if they attack you. Simply put, if you've got nukes, you never have to worry about being invaded.


Given all that, I can't fault North Korea and Iran in their attempts to become nuclear powers.

Of course, if you're a nuclear power, it's in your best interests, as a country, to keep other countries from becoming nuclear powers. So I can't fault the attempts of the US and other nuclear powers to try and stop North Korea and Iran.

I feel like I'm sitting on the philosophical equivalent of a fence rail. It's not terribly comfortable either.

Have you ever seen someone you knew to be intelligent do something stupid, even though they themselves knew it to be stupid? Perhaps you asked yourself 'why would someone who knew better do something stupid like that?'

Human nature is a brutal master.

While we are all creatures of intellect and reason, these can go right out the door under the influence of human nature.

Take 'yo mama' jokes as an example. Past a certain age, people come to understand that they can do no harm and are simply used to goad them into taking actions best not taken. Yet quite often, they still work. Why?

People have a soft spot for their mothers. Someone who could completely ignore such an insult would be considered a cold fish indeed.

And there you have the crux of the problem. If you embrace intellect and reason and leave behind the callings of a foolish nature that can be goaded by such insults, you cease to be human in all the ways that count to the rest of humanity.

Ten thousand years from now, will one still be able to goad people with that era's equivalent of the 'yo mama' joke? Sadly, yes.

We often endeavor to do that which is wise, and not give into impulses that arise from our nature. Yet it is a relief to give into those impulses. Why?

Doing something unnatural is generally hard going.

Some impulses are positive, charity, kindness, forgiveness, love - and others negative; spite, cruelty, hate.

Intellect and logic, on the other hand, are neither positive or negative. Much like tools, the ends which they are put to do not change their lack of moral or ethical balance.

Perhaps that's why they seem so alien and unnatural. Human beings don't seem to do too well with things that are neither good nor bad. With human beings, anything around them that lacks character and intent is given it via one form of anthropomorphism or another.

The fact that the notion of 'anthropomorphism' even exists should be testament enough to humanity's inability to exist around things that are so neutral.

People like me always secretly hope for the triumph of elegant intellect and reason over brute human nature because witnessing the failure of it is pretty darn painful. On the other hand, someone who didn't bristle at a 'yo mama' joke would be tough to get along with.

The mean between the two is where the salvation of humanity lies. Human enough to be upset by a 'yo mama' joke, but wise enough not to fall into the trap it presents. If only everyone could be endowed with this quality from birth... Who knows what the genetic engineering of the future will bring?

The last few years of married life have been very enjoyable, but as time goes on, some things go from the realm of stereotype to proven reality. As it turns out, it's not just the wife, it's the majority of our female peers too, as we're all roughly the same age. It seems that the last few years before hitting thirty highlight strong genetic impulses that none of us gave much credit to previously.

The notion of the wife as 'a ball and chain' in common parlance brings up stereotypical images of a wife being a wet blanket towards her husband. Namely towards her husband's notion of going out and doing social things instead of staying at home in the evenings.

On a recent trip to a friend's wedding, we carpooled with one of our friends from college. She and the wife talked along the way, and one of the things that came up was the subject of 'gosh, I wouldn't want my husband staying out late at night partying! Think of the children!!' Said friend is the sort of person that's very in tune with their biological drive. The wife, a little less so, took a few moments to digest the notion, but came to the same conclusion. It's simply wrong for attached men to be out late at night!

Quite often you'll hear talk of men thinking with the 'wrong head', or thinking with their crotch rather than their brain. As it turns out, women do this too! Who knew?!


When I spoke about going out to play poker, or go to a movie at 2am with friends, the wife logically knew I was a responsible person, and wouldn't do such a thing if it'd mean missing work, or ruining our home life. There are times when you *can* party responsibly. But then the Magic Talking Vagina (TM) spoke up and she suddenly was of the opinion that going out late at night to have fun, at all, was bad, universally.

Fascinating.


Once the mechanism at work was apparent, I didn't bother saying much else. Let the wave of hormones pass and bring it up another time. The fact that women are just as much a slave to their uteri as men are to their gonads was more than worth the price of admission.

It's comforting to know that women are idiots in this way just as much as men are. It was starting to feel lonely out here ;)

One of these days, I'd like to build my own house. The only problem is that it's an entirely blank canvas. So for inspiration, the primary factor is 'What are the best examples in the field?' The most obvious filter to use is cost - after all, if it costs more, the odds are that it will have a better design than its less expensive brethren, right?

As it turns out, even for $122,000,000 with a place like Uptown Court in England, you get boring un-inspired architecture. Go figure!

The next best filter that comes to mind is 'Award winning architects'. One of the most notable awards in the world of architecture is the Pritzker Prize, which caught my eye when I looked at the architects that won it and thought "Wow, all of their work is stuff I like!".

I want a house that people would look at and say "This looks like I.M. Pei and Frank Gehry's love child!", not "Wow, this is a really big house that looks like it cost a lot of money. It's even got its own golf course!"

Fuck golf courses.

I want something with style. Not something that says "I have more money than sense". I want something I can live in every day for the rest of my life comfortably, and still have it make architectural coffee table books of 'Examples of the best architecture in the field'




A home should look like this:

Island resort


Not this:

Uptown Court, England.

The political scene in the United States of America is fraught with the buying and selling of political power, and politicians themselves.

The system is what is truly at fault though, as human beings can only react as well as their circumstances and nature allow. In other words, if you put a steak in front of a starving man, and tell him not to eat it, well... Don't hold out much hope for that steak sticking around.

If human beings are corruptible by nature, the solution does not lie in electing a better politician, but rather in fixing the system that elects them and rules on what they can and cannot do.

Part of the problem is that lobbying is allowed. Another part of the problem is that it's legal to give gifts and money to politicians, and politicians need money to get into office, and when re-election comes around, to stay in office.

If someone contributes money, they'll have influence proportional to the amount of money they contribute. Some have tried to restrict donations to a level that the average citizen can compete with - ie, no donations over what a well off person could manage, but there's always ways around that. The best and simplest solution is simply to make donations illegal, and to have campaigns funded by the state.


Another part of the problem is "Who do politicians listen to?". Lobbyists tend to be very good at chatting up politicians. How do you prevent lobbyists from having undue influence on politicians? If they can't buy them, they'll buy people who specialize in being friends with politicians, and politicians will suddenly have no lack of friends who have well thought out views on certain issues.

Joe Smith at home can't compete with that. Nor should he have to.

How to solve the second of these two problems, I don't know yet. I'm going to be thinking about it though. It's time for a second American Revolution, a bloodless reform of a corrupted political system. Government doesn't have to suck. It can be better. It will be better.