My position on Intelligent Design is that it should be taught in the Engineering Curriculum, so that our engineered products are intelligently designed.
I support teaching Creativity, as I fear that our culture is sadly undercultivated in the Creative Arts.
Of course this is merely an opinion or belief of mine, which makes it my personal religion. Your Belief System may differ.
As you know, Roz supervises a number of graduate students who, one would hope, are intelligently designing their systems in MIT's program on Affective Computing.
Last Friday, I stopped by the Media Lab to participate in the project with Alea and Roz. Alea was video recording boring conversations, to get raw material for the facial expression recognition software to use as training material.
Roz and I tried to bore each other with dull stories, but I'm afraid we failed miserably, leaving poor Alea with several hours of useless recordings. I suggested that she record videos of herself reviewing the endless fragments.
By the way, your beliefs about Roz and her attitudes on the subjects that you are so obsessed about are chimerical, if not comical.
Now here's something interesting, Don...
Did you know that all three of us are redheads?
And did you know that redheads are unusually interesting characters for a variety of reasons?
Life is full of perplexing problems, but perplexity is hard to read on the face. People at MIT tend to clench their teeth when wrestling with perplexing problems. But teeth-clenching is hard to detect.
Frustration might be easier to read than perplexity, but most people don't dwell in frustration all that long. They just give up and go on to pursue some other objective, putting the unsolved problem on the back burner or forgetting about it entirely.
Eventually, I suppose, people express boredom with old, unsolved problems, since nothing insightful has ever come along to illuminate a functional solution.
How many of us here can reliably distinguish phases along the slow journey from Intrigue to Perplexity, Frustration, Despair, Cynicism, Bitterness, and Terminal Ennui?
Anyone who has ever programmed a computer knows that 'hell' (AKA 'the pits') is a street term for an untamed recursion.
It's remarkably easy for a hill-climbing algorithm to go awry and end up descending into the hellish pits of the abyss.
The mathematical phenomenom of an untamed recursion is ubiquitous in the culture. The fact that those living in ancient times called it 'sheol' or 'the pits' or 'hell' is just an accident of naming. After all, who among us tumbles into the pit on purpose?
After all, the Sims were once called Dollhouse, no connection to Dalhousie University. Or not.
Suppose there were an episode of The Sims where some obnoxious character rails endlessly about some boring topic that interests no one save themselves? It could be written in Ruby on Rails, with characters depicted with tank treads on their faces.
Because the problem which erupted in violence in Colorado is so widespread in our culture, we need a way to understand it. This calls for a play to be devised that symbolically tells the story.
To begin with, such stories need powerful symbolic metaphors.
Here are my contributions to the story:
Columbine Flowers are what blooms from the Columbine plant.
Columbine is also the name of the High School where the horrific violence occurred in Colorado.
The flower of the Purple Columbine is shaped like a Dove.
The Dove is the symbol of Peace.
Purple is the color of Royalty.
Royalty are people with impeccable manners.
Purple is "Purr Pull." A cat purrs when it wants affection, softly pulls away when it wants more space. Purr Pull is the freedom to choose either way.
The Purple Columbine is a member of the Genus Crowfoot.
Crowfoot is Crow+Foot. To crow is to be proud. Foot is what you stumble with. Thus Crow+Foot maps to Proud+Stumble.
Thus, "Pride goeth before a Fall."
"Goeth" is similar to Goth, the adolescent cultural model for those who suffer Alienation of Affection, aka Stoners. Their hearts have been turned to stone by vice of alienation of affection.
When the Powers That Be finally figure this out, some will turn purple with shame and regret. When someone turns purple, they experience an epiphany and discover the importance of loving even the most outcast member of the community. When that happens, Aslan's Warm Breath softens the Stone Hearts of the Gothic Outcasts, and Peace is restored in the land.
This outline could the foundation for a play that could be mounted to help the culture find its way back.
What is the name of this play? What's missing from it? Who would like to work on it?
Copyleft 1999, Barsoom Tork Associates. This posting may be freely copied, edited, improved, enlarged upon, and recirculated.
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I support teaching Creativity, as I fear that our culture is sadly undercultivated in the Creative Arts.
Of course this is merely an opinion or belief of mine, which makes it my personal religion. Your Belief System may differ.
As you know, Roz supervises a number of graduate students who, one would hope, are intelligently designing their systems in MIT's program on Affective Computing.
Last Friday, I stopped by the Media Lab to participate in the project with Alea and Roz. Alea was video recording boring conversations, to get raw material for the facial expression recognition software to use as training material.
Roz and I tried to bore each other with dull stories, but I'm afraid we failed miserably, leaving poor Alea with several hours of useless recordings. I suggested that she record videos of herself reviewing the endless fragments.
By the way, your beliefs about Roz and her attitudes on the subjects that you are so obsessed about are chimerical, if not comical.
Now here's something interesting, Don...
Did you know that all three of us are redheads?
And did you know that redheads are unusually interesting characters for a variety of reasons?
Life is full of perplexing problems, but perplexity is hard to read on the face. People at MIT tend to clench their teeth when wrestling with perplexing problems. But teeth-clenching is hard to detect.
Frustration might be easier to read than perplexity, but most people don't dwell in frustration all that long. They just give up and go on to pursue some other objective, putting the unsolved problem on the back burner or forgetting about it entirely.
Eventually, I suppose, people express boredom with old, unsolved problems, since nothing insightful has ever come along to illuminate a functional solution.
How many of us here can reliably distinguish phases along the slow journey from Intrigue to Perplexity, Frustration, Despair, Cynicism, Bitterness, and Terminal Ennui?
Anyone who has ever programmed a computer knows that 'hell' (AKA 'the pits') is a street term for an untamed recursion.
It's remarkably easy for a hill-climbing algorithm to go awry and end up descending into the hellish pits of the abyss.
The mathematical phenomenom of an untamed recursion is ubiquitous in the culture. The fact that those living in ancient times called it 'sheol' or 'the pits' or 'hell' is just an accident of naming. After all, who among us tumbles into the pit on purpose?
After all, the Sims were once called Dollhouse, no connection to Dalhousie University. Or not.
Suppose there were an episode of The Sims where some obnoxious character rails endlessly about some boring topic that interests no one save themselves? It could be written in Ruby on Rails, with characters depicted with tank treads on their faces.
I could go on, but I am beginning to bore myself.
And that would be the pits.
Because the problem which erupted in violence in Colorado is so widespread in our culture, we need a way to understand it. This calls for a play to be devised that symbolically tells the story.
To begin with, such stories need powerful symbolic metaphors.
Here are my contributions to the story:
Columbine Flowers are what blooms from the Columbine plant.
Columbine is also the name of the High School where the horrific violence occurred in Colorado.
The flower of the Purple Columbine is shaped like a Dove.
The Dove is the symbol of Peace.
Purple is the color of Royalty.
Royalty are people with impeccable manners.
Purple is "Purr Pull." A cat purrs when it wants affection, softly pulls away when it wants more space. Purr Pull is the freedom to choose either way.
The Purple Columbine is a member of the Genus Crowfoot.
Crowfoot is Crow+Foot. To crow is to be proud. Foot is what you stumble with. Thus Crow+Foot maps to Proud+Stumble.
Thus, "Pride goeth before a Fall."
"Goeth" is similar to Goth, the adolescent cultural model for those who suffer Alienation of
Affection, aka Stoners. Their hearts have been turned to stone by vice of alienation of affection.
When the Powers That Be finally figure this out, some will turn purple with shame and regret.
When someone turns purple, they experience an epiphany and discover the importance of loving
even the most outcast member of the community. When that happens, Aslan's Warm Breath softens the Stone Hearts of the Gothic Outcasts, and Peace is restored in the land.
This outline could the foundation for a play that could be mounted to help the culture find its way
back.
What is the name of this play? What's missing from it? Who would like to work on it?
Copyleft 1999, Barsoom Tork Associates. This posting may be freely copied, edited, improved,
enlarged upon, and recirculated.
Let's learn how to think about conflict and violence in our culture...
Until someone came along and taught me a way to begin thinking about violence.
Thinking About Violence in Our Schools