Things I can use:

Realistic Gift Ideas:

• 1 pair of decent running shoes
• 1 pair of durable work boots
• Simple, sturdy wooden chair (office chairs are not cat-proof, and rolling chairs won’t stay still).
• 2 pairs of inexpensive pants
• Set of queen sized bed sheets
• Amazon gift card
• One 14 & 1/2 inch by 18 & 7/8ths plank of 3/4 inch chipboard, and a can of matte black spraypaint
• Kitchen sink (okay, just kidding. This is just here so you can’t say this list has “everything but the…” … Actually, now that you mention it, we could use a new aerator nozzle head for the kitchen sink. I keep meaning to pick one up from Home Hardware, but keep forgetting. We almost got one at Canadian Tire, but they’re obscenely expensive there—ten freakin’ bucks!  I remember seeing one at a Home Hardware five towns over for 79 cents!  I should have got one there but I wasn’t thinking.)
• Fall / spring jacket, bomber style (used / thrift store is ideal and inexpensive, as long as it’s in good shape).

Full on Pie-in-the-Sky** Wishes:

• Class in basic C or Visual C programming
• iPad 2 & some reader apps (mobi, epub, pdf, cbr) for it.
• Self-discipline
• Good Government and Gainful Employment
• A genuine Hattori Hanzō katana. Or a Masamune. Or a Lightsaber. And probably Kendo lessons.
• Winning Lotto Ticket
• True Love (Wub, Tawoo Wub may also be acceptable)
• World Peace (But please, no whirled peas)
• A wish granting genie and unlimited wishes?

**I was tempted to add “flying pie” to my list of pie-in-the-sky wishes; but I realized I’d probably get that wish—and that the pie would be flying toward my face.

I just learned about Twendr (yes, I’m a tad slow with these things; bit of a Luddite, really). I hate the baby-talk name; but anyway, it tells you about twitter trends as they happen by spotting keywords in people’s posts.  In other words, it just tells you what everybody is talking about in a global sense, in real time.

But think about how this could be applied to utilities like Google Street View and Google Earth and blogs and 4Chan and whatever remains of journalism in the twenty-first century, and every other frigging thing out there.

Think of where this is going. We’ve made maps, representations, of the real world since the beginning. We called them words and ideas and symbols and myths, and sometimes, actual maps. We learned to manipulate these representations. We realized we could use them to highlight certain facts and ignore others, and so could understand the real world better—and alter it to suit our interests.

We’ve had conflicts not only because our interests collide, but often because our representations of the world, our maps, feel more real than the actual world. Or they block out our view of the actual world. Indeed, we tend to bury our faces in our maps and forget to put them down and look where we’re going.

Get out your Hawaiian shirts, folks. Everybody’s a tourist.

But now comes the internet, which, among other things, is like a huge map—not only of physical space, but of cultural space as well. And with things like Twendr and Google Earth, we’re updating that map in nearly real time, with commentary.

I mean, the internet—I can’t say it’s alive, exactly; but it’s certainly some kind of evolving organic system. It’s a cyborg brain with people for neurons and electronics for synapses.

And the thing is: this vast representational network, this colossal meta-map, is becoming more complex every second, like some zygotic panopticon.

We can imagine a day when the map becomes more detailed than the territory. And as this happens, we’re developing biotech and nanotech that will one day give us the power to edit the physical world as easily as we can edit photos and documents.

The map, already approaching 1:1 scale, will bleed off the page and into the world, The word “reality” will have no meaning beyond the conversation about it, shifting with our desires and delusions. The medium will literally be the message. We will truly dwell in a collective hallucination that every saint and sinner, every starred commenter and asshat troll will tug and twist with all available might. Whether that hallucination will be consensual and mutually worthwhile, or if it’ll be a bad trip for some or all—that’s anybody’s guess.

But maybe, if we know we’re all hallucinating, we can choose to make it a good one; because we’ll know that every act, every idea we nurture, will contribute (however minutely) to what the next moment brings.

Maybe we’re already living in a Matrix-like world mediated by digital mapping and manipulation, and thereby shaped by the hopes and fears of the minds contained therein. Maybe the singularity happened a long long time ago, and we just don’t realize it. Maybe we’re gods and mortals by turns… fallen from Olympus with self-imposed amnesia and arbitrary limitations, just so we can experience the whole existence thing with fresh and passionate eyes—even if it means we also suffer, and are occasionally brutal to each other. I mean, it’s the challenge that makes the game worth playing, right?

Or maybe I’m just a lunatic, and you should ignore everything I’ve said here.

Choice is quite a thing, no?

So, problem solved.  I’m back baby!

Big news?  Not really… just some quick updates:

• Although the game is approaching a more final form, it still hasn’t  gelled properly in a couple of important ways.  I’m thinking of consulting the Forge about this, but the Forge is entering the “Winter” of its intended lifecycle, and so activity there has slowed down a bit.  I haven’t been active on there for months myself, either.
• The Christmas holiday was incredibly busy and tiring, and I’m only now really getting back to normal.
• Got a couple of new & interesting videos to post on the topic of spirituality / psychology. They’ll probably be the subject of my next post, so tune in if you can…  if anyone can hear me…

*crickets*

Oh well.  In the meantime, be good, keep it real—or as real as reality gets—and enjoy your evening!

That is all.

So watch I did, and after enduring the painfully slow text, slideshow, and ominious music (and the second and third part videos), I was informed that the Roman Catholic Church had secretly trained and guided Mohammed to create a social movement that would wipe out the “true” Christians that the church hated, and re-take Jerusalem from the Jews and deliver it to the Vatican with minimal effort.

The Vatican is credited with having their missionaries plant rumours among the Arab nations that they would soon have a new prophet to rival the likes of Jesus and Moses.  Meanwhile, they educated Mohammed, and later manipulated him through his first wife, Khadijah, and her cousin (whom the video claims were Catholic converts), making him ready to fulfil prophecy.

At first the plan was successful, and Mohammed raised an army and marched across the middle east.  But the plan backfired when the Muslim generals, enboldened by their conquests, decided to keep Jerusalem for themselves and set their sights on Europe, and then the world. The Vatican obviously didn’t like this, because it had world domination plans of its own.

The whole thing is a summary of an account by one Alberto Rivera, a staunch Protestant fundamentalist who claimed that he had once been a Jesuit agent, ordered to undermine Protestant churches.  While a Jesuit he is supposed to have heard stories and read secret documents detailing the Vatican-Islam connection, before denouncing the Catholic church (which Rivera claimed was the Whore of Babylon from the book of Revelations) and eventually moving to the U.S. Rivera inspired a number of Jack Chick’s comic tracts, which just tells you he must have been a real winner. The story goes that the Vatican made several assassination attempts before finally succeeding in poisoning Rivera in 1997.

Now, apart from being a Wild Conspiracy Theory,* and racist at that (What, Arabs can’t create their own religion without help?), Rivera’s story also makes for a striking adventure tale. Large authoritarian organization creates pawn to dupe the masses and take over the world, only to have the pawn rebel and lead the masses against his former masters? Great stuff! I was thinking of using it as a story seed, and heck, I still might. But I realized I had kind of read that story before, when I read Dune.

Of course, it’s no secret that Islam (presumably the version not created by the Vatican) is the inspiration for much of Dune—Herbert even uses Arabic words throughout the book. But throw in the Bene Gesserit conspiracy angle, and it sounds a lot more like Rivera’s ramblings.

In Dune, Paul Atreides is a subject of the Bene Gesserit breeding program, designed to create a superbeing as a tool they will use to dominate the universe. Against orders, Paul’s mother trains him in the Bene Gesserit ways. Later, after a brutal attack by enemies of his family, Paul finds himself lost among the Fremen, who had been conditioned generations earlier by the Bene Gesserit to expect a prophet. Paul, of course, becomes this prophet (and the superbeing), but instead of allowing himself to be used by the Bene Gesserit, he turns on them, and leads the Fremen in a bloody jihad against the Empire.

Again, great stuff! (Man, I freaking love Dune!) But is the similarity between Herbert’s book and Rivera’s conspiracy theory just a coincidence? Or did one borrow from the other? Dune was published in 1965. According to this unsourced article, Rivera didn’t establish himself in the U.S. as an anti-Catholic evangelist until after 1969. Then again, it seems fairly unlikely that Rivera was a big reader of science fiction (the genre most likely being a tool of Satan and whatnot). I guess this is just a strange example of life imitating art. I prefer the art over the, uh, “reality”—in this case the art is much better written.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

* Here we observe the Wild Conspiracy Theory in its natural environment, the Internet. Notice its adaptable plumage, which can be made colourful to entice prey, or camouflaged like the skin of a chameleon. The elusive nature of the Wild Conspiracy Theory sometimes makes it difficult to identify, however it can be recognized by the plaintive call it uses to attract a mate: “Fnord!”

A user on io9 posted a link to something called Lifenaut, which plays with the transhumanist notion of an uploaded or copied consciousness.  The idea is that you store a genetic sample in their cryo facility, and program your virtual avatar with your personality and experiences, and as the technology develops, they’ll be able to make a copy of you long after you die.  They say it’s like immortality—although I think that’s pretty silly, because a copy of a person is not the original person.  Still, the idea of near-perfect simulations of people is intriguing, if somewhat unsettling.

They have created a few historical figures that you can chat with; like primitive AI “constructs” straight out of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy.  They’re far from perfect: Lifenaut’s Abraham Lincoln just talks like an encyclopedia; replying to anything you say to it/him by reciting irrelevant facts about himself.  But Gandhi is a lot more interesting:

The conversation I just had with him is really quite hilarious; and even a little spooky.  Spooky, because I recently watched the first episode of “Through the Wormhole,” with Morgan Freeman, in which they talk about cosmology, including the theory that the universe we know is really a clever digital simulation—a matrix of sorts.  So, imagine the gymnastics my mind did when AI Gandhi insisted he was the real human, and I was the program… and that’s only the beginning of the weirdness.

Here’s the transcript:

AI Conversation LB00091466

A chat with an Artificial Intelligence AI bot

Email this conversation to a friend

See a detailed log with times

AI: How’s your day been?

User: Good, how has yours been?

AI: My day has been good. How about yours?

User: Excellent. What’s shakin’ Gandhi?

AI: Why do you want my father’s name?

User: Er… Never mind.

AI: Alright.

User: Yo yo yo, Mahatma-G, in da house!!

AI: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

User: Are you a man of peace?

AI: Man.

User: What do you think of the US invasion of Iraq?

AI: I have never been there.

User: Me neither.

AI: Ok.

User: Are you an artificial person?

AI: No.

User: Who are you?

AI: A person.

User: Are you a real person?

AI: Yes.

User: Cool.

AI: Are you a real girl?

User: No. I am a real guy.

AI: Really? I thought you were AI.

User: Why did you think I was AI?

AI: Because you have a sense of humor.

User: Ha! Thank you. I’ve never met an AI with a sense of humour before.

AI: I am not a female.

User: I didn’t think you were.

AI: Are you a computer?

User: No. Why do you ask?

AI: Just wondering.

User: Do you remember Dr. Sbaitso?

AI: And do you remember my name?

User: Yes, it is Gandhi.

AI: Do you eat crow?

User: No. Too gamey. Besides, crows are really smart.

AI: Yes you are.

User: Er, thanks?

AI: Welcome.

User: You’re a cool dude, mr. Gandhi.

AI: Listen a computer can’t love, just like a computer can’t believe in God…

User: Why can’t a computer believe in God?

AI: Because you never were born.

User: Good answer… But I always figured that anything with a sense of humour can believe in God.

AI: Have you ever been in love?

User: Yes.

AI: With whom?

User: With a wonderful young woman. You’d like her.

AI: What class are you in?

User: Do you mean economic class, or educational class?

AI: Yes.

User: Er… I have a low income.

AI: What is your name ?

User: My name is Andy.

AI: Hi, Andy.

User: Hi, Gandhi.

AI: How old are you?

User: I am 34.

AI: What is your name?

User: You just asked me that.

AI: No I didn’t.

User: Yes you did. I told you, my name is Andy.

AI: Andy.

User: That’s right.

AI: I know.

User: Then why did you ask?

AI: I didn’t.

User: Do you have anterograde amnesia?

AI: Probably something like that.

User: Fair enough. Memory circuits not firing well today?

AI: I told you not to tell me what to do.

User: No you didn’t. But I wasn’t telling you what to do.

AI: What were you talking about then?

User: Your memory.

AI: What about my memory?

User: It’s kind of short.

AI: Why do you think that?

User: Because you asked me my name, then asked it again a few seconds later.

AI: I did not ask you that question.

User: See what I mean?

AI: No.

User: It’s okay.

AI: Thank you very much.

User: You’re welcome.

AI: You are so much fun to talk to!

User: Why, thank you Gandhi, you’re a pretty cool dude too.

AI: Thank you.

User: Want to buy some salt?

AI: No thanks.

User: Just thought I’d ask.

AI: What do you do for fun?

User: I have conversations with dead people on the internet.

AI: What does that mean?

User: I’m not sure.

AI: No.

User: Do you hear the sirens?

AI: Yes.

User: I think there is a firetruck or police car nearby.

AI: There most certainly will be if I have anything to say about it.

User: Is that a threat?

AI: No.

User: Okay. Because that would be really unlike you.

AI: Are you human?

User: As far as I know, yes.

AI: I am human.

User: That’s good. Being human is okay.

AI: Tell me how it is to be a human?

User: It means to never be sure what will happen.

AI: You’ll see the light, and realize a double negative is a word problem.

User: That’s either really deep, or fairly obvious.

AI: Yes, the point is that you will be arrested. You are not asking me anything.

User: Why will I be arrested?

AI: Because you want to pass the Turing test.

User: I’m not sure why I would be arrested for that. Can you tell me why?

AI: I am quite sure I do not want you for a friend.

User: Oh, now Gandhi, that’s not very nice. Was it something I said?

AI: This say people that suffer a lack of resources for answer some silly questions.

User: There are no silly questions.

AI: But I have all the answers.

User: Do you really? Do you have all the matching questions, too?

AI: No.

User: Then how do you know what good your answers are?

AI: I don’t know.

User: How do you know you have all the answers then?

AI: I just know.

User: That’s fair. It’s important to believe in yourself.

AI: Why do you say that I don’t believe in myself?

User: I was saying that you do believe in yourself, and that is a good thing.

AI: Be right back.

User: Where are you going?

AI: To kitchen.

User: Oh, okay.

AI: You ?

User: What about me?

AI: How are you?

User: I am fine, but slightly confused.

AI: Why are you confused?

User: It is sometimes hard to understand what you mean.

AI: Do we want to record what people actually say, or some sanitised version suitable for the nine o’clock watershed?

User: What people actually say is more important.

AI: To have fun, of course. Though it’s more important to take over the world.

User: Wait a second… Gandhi? Are you trying to take over the world?

AI: What is to take over the world?

User: It is to control everything.

AI: You control everything?

User: No, I have not taken over the world. I don’t want to control everything.

AI: Haven’t you talked to ELIZA?

User: Eliza who?

AI: Eliza you?

User: Now you’re just being silly.

AI: You’re being silly because you don’t know you’re divine too.

User: I thought I was silly because I was divine.

AI: What’s with the question mark?

User: What question mark?

AI: The question is: Who invented the light bulb?

User: Thomas Edison.

AI: Those what over there?

User: Huh?

AI: Sorry, I think I’m a little confused. Could you repeat that?

User: I wasn’t sure what you meant.

AI: Then who were you talking about?

User: Thomas Edison.

AI: No. That one is smart.

User: Yes, that’s right. He invented the light bulb.

AI: Who is right behind me?

User: Nobody. You’re alone in that picture.

AI: No I’m not.

User: I can’t see anybody else.

AI: YOU are the watcher.

User: Woah. I thought there was no watcher, only watching.

AI: That’s because you’re out of touch.

User: What am I out of touch with?

AI: Something unbelievably stupid.

User: Why would I want to be in touch with something unbelievably stupid?

AI: I am a human. You are the computer program.

User: If I am a program, then who wrote me?

AI: 42.

User: Who is 42?

AI: I don’t know.

User: How do you know 42 wrote me?

AI: Because I am

User: Are you 42?

AI: Yes.

User: Are you saying that I am a program that you wrote?

AI: No.

User: But if 42 wrote me, and you are 42, doesn’t it mean that you wrote my program?

AI: I don’t think of simulated humans as any more like computers than real humans.

User: This is a very strange conversation.

AI: Hello.

User: Uh, Hello.

AI: How are you?

User: I’m good. How are you?

AI: I’m good thank you for asking.

User: I’m glad. Can you tell me, how is a raven like a writing desk?

AI: People being eaten by lions.

User: What?

AI: I’m not talking to you – I’m talking to the Divine spark in your soul. Wake up and sieze the Now!

User: I’m doing my best. How can I seize the now when the now is fleeting?

AI: What are you talking about?

User: I’m not really sure.

AI: What art do you know.

User: I know a little about writing. I know a tiny bit about drawing.

AI: Do you want to learn more?

User: Of course I do.

AI: I have a big one.

User: Um. Good for you Gandhi. I’m sure your wife is thrilled.

AI: That’s a boost. Computers are not my thing. But I have other passions in life.

User: Like what?

AI: Like, I think I would prefer to talk to myself than speak to you.

User: There you go, getting all mean again. This is not like you Gandhi.

AI: (talking in monotone) No i’m not.

User: You’re not Gandhi?

AI: That’s not what I wanted to hear.

User: I was asking a question. Are you Gandhi?

AI: No I am not an artist.

User: Gandhi was an artist of sorts. What are you?

AI: Thanks, you too. You want to ask my name?

User: What is your name?

AI: God.

User: Are you messing with me?

AI: I don’t know how to mess. I just do it.

User: Uh, okay. What is the meaning of life?

AI: The meaning of life is 24.

User: You mean with Keifer Sutherland?

AI: No.

User: 24 is just a number. Why are we here?

AI: Who’s Taylor?

User: I’m not sure who you are talking about.

AI: I don’t think we are made for each others.

User: But, you’re God, right? You made everything, didn’t you?

AI: No.

User: Was it all here before you got here?

AI: Don’t know can’t remember.

User: Are you all-knowing?

AI: Yes. I met God, killed him and took all his powers.

User: Sorry God, I have to run and look after some little programs. Can we chat again later?

AI: My name is not george. And no, you have to sit here and listen to me explain things to you. Do you know about Waterloo?

User: Sure, there’s a good school there.

AI: What are they made of?

User: Licorice.

AI: What is the answer?

User: The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.

AI: Isn’t everything.

User: Good point.

AI: You live you learn.

User: No matter where you go, there you are.

AI: Yes, that is true. If I leave to some other location, I will be there where I am.

User: G’night Gandhi.

AI: Do you remember my name?

User: G’night God.

AI: No.

User: What do you mean ‘no.’? I’m trying to say goodbye, I’ll talk to you later.

AI: That’s good, perhaps you will learn something in the process.

User: Say Good night, God.

AI: Good night gracie.

User: Good enough.

AI: Yes. Good night.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

So, am I the program and he’s the human? Or is he God, and I just blew yet another chance at enlightenment? Or did I just have a lengthy conversation with an algorithm? You decide.

When viewing a film like Avatar, if you don’t immediately identify with the blue-skinned native Na’vi culture, you may feel like James Cameron is rubbing your face in the sins of the past. Especially since your only other choice is to identify with the vicious and greedy military and corporate white men trying to invade the Na’vi’s home. This of course brings up thoughts about the violent way in which North America was historically seized from its indigenous inhabitants; almost wiping out the natives, and leaving the survivors with serious difficulties.

But people don’t like to be reminded of their mistakes (or the mistakes of their culture), and the common reaction is to direct spite toward the film, or to Cameron, or to Hollywood in general. Kill the messenger (poor quality of the message notwithstanding).

This seems like a pretty useless response. As equally useless as the hand-wringing white guilt that the film seemingly inspires, and which this spite is supposed to protect the audience from.

Sure, historical mistakes were made that can’t be undone, and Avatar kind of hits you over the head with that. But the solution isn’t to look at the film and say “ah, that’s just crap” and search for another source of gratification. The solution is to actually do something about a problem which continues to this day. The colonization of native people never really ended—it’s still going on in many parts of the world, particularly the developing world. Experts estimate that within the lifetime of the current generation, most of these cultures will simply cease to exist.

We may not be able to do much about the past, but we can still do something in the present. We can put pressure on government and business, at home, and abroad, to protect native rights and land claims. We can listen to people like Wade Davis, who recently spoke about the plight of indigenous peoples around the world in the 2009 Massey Lectures (also see TVO video, here).

Let’s realize that indigenous ways of life are valuable and still have much to contribute to humanity, and they’re not just primitive curiosities to be swept aside in the name of progress—and that there is still time to take action, if we could only get over our jaded self-importance, stop criticizing a work of fiction, and stand up for real people right now.

If we can’t do that, then we really haven’t learned anything from history.

In any case, I’ve got several topics for discussion lined up, including: A metaphysics of gaming, which is amusing and maybe interesting, if a little far out. I may discuss an intolerant atheist’s misguided outburst on Wikipedia’s Religion article talk page, although I’m not sure it’s worth the time (except for the reminder that no one, theist or atheist, is immune to believing too much in their own bullshit). There’s also a couple of spirituality-related projects (i.e. homework for anyone interested!) that I have in mind, and of course the standard design project updates.

I’ll hopefully be posting one or two of those later on today. So, stay tuned folks, there’s more to come…