What a challenge, these blues!

For those of you who enjoy film, jazz, folklore, animation, culture, and tales that transcend time and space -even if the one's telling it can't exactly get all the elements straight- I urge you to check out the charming animated feature, Sita Sings the Blues (by Nina Paley), if you have not already.

http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfS2p1vFics

Self;Aware

Do you remember when you became self aware?

I understand most people ask this question with, "What is your earliest memory?"

Perhaps they're different questions.

Laplace's Demon

Sometimes when I make a purchase I’ll try to follow the event backward, figure out what lead up to it, what advertisements I was I exposed to, when did I first hear about the product, what sparked my initial interest?
Advertising agencies know a great deal about us, which is what makes it so bloody amusing whenever someone will boldly state how, “Advertising has no effect on me.”
Well, they have a demographic for you too.
Humans are hard wired to respond to various stimuli, all of which these agencies know, know you might know, and know you know they know you might know and might resist.
They study it all and they know that an ad crafted for the demographic of Special K, Yogurt, and Advanced Therapy Lotions is not supposed to work on the demographic for Energy Drinks, Maxim Magazine and 4 Fast 4 Furious.
However, if it somehow does they’ll just adapt whatever worked from that model and move on.

Is this control, or is it providing you with information you would agree with anyways?

Beverly Hills Chihuahua Worldwide Gross: $140,601,977
4 Fast 4 Furious Current Worldwide Gross: $106,801,524
The ten most commonly entered responses to this site are, in order: "me", "sex", "you", "water", "dog", "down", "man", "cat", "good", "love."

Notice anything?

Ghost in the Earth

What would happen if each member of the world was asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using the Internet to simulate the axons and dendrites that connect neurons. Would this arrangement have a mind or consciousness in the same way that brains do?

Could this hypothetical being already exist?
Could we have created this brain without realising it?

Say this being does exist, how could we know for sure?
What tests could we run?

What is it thinking?

Alas, there is no cure for old

Sometimes I forget I have body parts. Mostly this happens when I'm not announcing the various ways these parts are decaying within me. Other than that, unless you are studying for a biology exam, there isn't much of a need to remember these parts exist, so long as they are in working order.

This morning when I looked into the dark abyss of my coffee cup I was reminded that I cannot undo the mixture of coffee and water, I cannot feed the water back into the tap, and I cannot reassemble the coffee grains into beans.

Why would I?

This past month I observed the effects of a small body as its parts began to fail, and the other day I was reminded again how death is an indisputable and frequently experienced part of existence. Like my decaying organs, the cup of coffee, or our living on the surface of a gigantic rock hurtling through space, I knew it was happening and I knew there was little I could do about it.

Today everyone in my life seems more precious.

Diminishing Cognition

There was a point in my life, as I’m sure there is in everyone’s lives, where I perpetually sought out self-destructive pastimes. I would smoke excessively, drink mass amounts of alcohol and caffeine, and stay up for days on end.
When I did sleep it would be in strange and awkward places. I would park my car in an abandoned lot, that I hoped no one would bother with, and take a nap. Sometimes I would have the opportunity to crash on a couch, or in a lounge, or at least sleep in a stairwell using my knapsack as a pillow.
Needless to say I developed a crick in my neck and dark circles under my eyes, which had managed to develop a reddish tawny color from the eyestrain and build up of bilirubin in my blood.
My complexion was a pale and sallow outer coating of skin fitted over muscles that were clearly suffering from a lack of proper nutrition, which, contrary to my belief at the time, could not be derived from the investment of $.75 into a vending machine every few hours.
In my youthful inanity I would wear my ailments as something that had been achieved successfully. They displayed that I had the upper hand in my body’s struggle to stay alive and in good condition.
Somewhere something changed. I started to exercise regularly, I quit everything but caffeine, I got a haircut, but I can’t remember what triggered it.
Perhaps it was from reading articles about how my body will steadily decline well enough on its own without my assistance in the matter thank you very much.
The bad news is the “notable decline in certain measures of abstract reasoning, brain speed and in puzzle-solving" becoming apparent at 27.
The good news is “vocabulary and general knowledge, actually increase at least until the age of 60.”
After one begins the inevitable decline, what is there to look forward to?
So far all I have found is that by the time I reach 60, and can no longer learn new words, my body will have eased itself out of its current caffeine addiction.
This does me no good, as I enjoy coffee too much and will continue to drink it with flagrant abandon.

Murder by numbers

In London on July 10th, 2008, four people were murdered in separate incidents.
BBC correspondent Andy Tighe said "To have four fatal stabbings in one day could be a statistical freak."
Professor Spiegelhalter declares this number was predictable.

http://www.physorg.com/news156540743.html

Prof. Spiegelhalter and his team of statisticians "counted how many murders occurred on each day over a three-year period. Four murders on the same day in London would be expected to occur about once every three years, and it has done. Seven days without a murder should occur about six times a year, and it does."

The trouble here is that the overall patterns are predictable, whereas specific events are not.

I'd like to introduce you to Eliza, a computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum, designed to imitate a non-directional psychotherapist. Cutting edge stuff back in 1966, but it's now easily dominated by AIM bots.
Eliza's importance was the approach it used in developing AI, which undoubtedly inspired Robin Burgener, in 1988 to invent something you may already be familiar with, 20q.

Based on the less addicting parlor game, 20q is an AI website that can guess what you are thinking of in approximately 20 questions or less.
The thing is uncannily good in the same way Amazon.com has become eerily good at recommending Cure cds I already own after I tell it how much I enjoyed the movie Dark City.

Now this is something of a morbid thought, but could one possibly develop this AI to assist in carving away the specifics from the patterns of murder?