Category Archives: Thoughts on Thoughts

Interpretive Dance vs. Non-Verbal Communication

Idle Speculation, Puns, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

Over lunch today, we were talking, and the question came up as to exactly where the boundary was between interpretive dance and non-verbal communication.

Interpretive Dance is described as seeking to “to translate human emotions, conditions, situations or fantasies into movement and dramatic expression”.

Whereas Non-Verbal Communication is seeking “communication through sending and receiving wordless clues”.

So, what is the difference? Is Interpretive dance more intentional? Is it more specific? When an actor or performer is acting at their best, is their non-verbal communication any less intentional?

Perhaps these are just two sides of the same coin, like Rap and Spoken Word.

Dada Science

Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Puns, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

So, I was talking to G earlier today, after our coaching session, and I was struck by the misheard word: ‘Dada Science’.

I was immediately struck. *Of course!* That’s *exactly* what I try to do!

It’s all about Between. The space between meaning, the difference between art.

But what exactly is Dada? Or Dadaism? As Dadaist Jean Arp is reputed to have said, ‘To be a Dadaist means to be against Dada. Dada equals anti-Dada.’

The following really speaks to me about Dada:

“

Cubism and the development of collage, combined with Wassily Kandinsky’s theoretical writings and abstraction, detached the movement from the constraints of reality and convention. The influence of French poets and the writings of German Expressionists liberated Dada from the tight correlation between words and meaning.

”

But what is ‘Dada Science’? Namespace being what it is, there are already two others with a claim to the phrase.

For me, it’s all about helping people get to that space between meaning, where their minds are just a little more open to the possibilities. I quite enjoy being put in that state. Terry Pratchett might have likened it to ‘Thlabber‘, ” a recognised scientific term used by wizards to describe the precise instant during any magical transformation where, after a period of feeling elongated, stretched, altered, or reduced to a single point in the space-time continuum, things have just returned to normal and the subject is feeling the first hints of relief and disorientation.”

Perhaps the space is not created by the stretching, but by the reaction and recovery to the stretching.

The Line Between Art

Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

Yesterday, we were talking about the line between ‘Art’ and ‘Making’.

Over lunch today, I was talking with A & D, and they raised a couple of (unrelated) questions[1].

1. Yesterday, we had talked about the line between ‘Art’ and ‘Making’. But what about the line between ‘Art’ and ‘Destruction’? Auto-destructive art a reasonably recent example[2], but think about sculpture. In general, sculptures made from stone are just very (sometimes very very) finely controlled destruction.

Is it the intentionality? You could write an essay about the meaning of it, then hit a cube of concrete once with a sledgehammer and call it art. In the right context, that could be very provocative. So, where’s the line? Is it someone trying to make ‘Art’? Is it someone trying to create an emotional response? Because I would argue there are plenty of people who have destroyed things to create an emotional response[3], but that is not art. Is it destruction with the intent to help someone by creating an emotional response? Destroying a prized but hurtful possession can be helpful, but I would argue it is not art. So where’s the line?

2. On a more minor note, they also mentioned the line between graffiti and art. I would argue that a simple tag (especially tagging a mural) is not art. Often, it is vandalism. But when you draw an entire mural of your tag, with shading and curlicues, I would argue that that is art. It may be ‘pop-art’, it is likely still vandalism, but is still art.

So, where is the line here? Is it percentage art vs. percentage vandalism? Is it intentionality? Is it the amount of time spent? In the words of the immortal Duke Nukem, ‘Where is it?’

[1]I always really enjoy hanging out with sysadmins, and people who have been sysadmins in a previous life. They are endlessly fascinated by people and their design (or lack thereof) of complex systems. Complex systems which inevitably try to fly apart at the slightest provocation.

[2]And the first thing to appear when I searched for ‘destructive art’.

[3]I will not enumerate these here. This falls under the category of ‘memes I will not spread’.

What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?

Idle Speculation, Nostalgia, Things We've Built, Thoughts on Thoughts

Warming spring days bring with them the scent of renewal, of life waking up again. And as it’s waking up again, it’s starting to ask questions. Like ‘What do you want to do with your life?’ and ‘Why am I here?’

For me, a substantial part of this is the desire to build things.

My thought map for this might look like the following:

“I want to build things.”
– ‘I’
– Does this need to be only me? :: No, I like working people, but I also like entering flow by myself (this is a conundrum)
– ‘want’
– Is this a want or a need? How strong is this? :: I don’t think I will ever be satisfied if I don’t build. Perhaps not even then.
– ‘to’
– I can’t think of any reasonable way to disassemble this word. :: No.
– ‘build’
– What does ‘building’ mean? How firmly am I wedded to this definition? :: Assembling might be fine. The key is that it is easily recognizable that I had substantive creative input into the process. For example, ‘Biggle’, while a copy of an established game had clear creative input because of the absurd larginess, as well as the fact that I(we) made it by hand.
– ‘things’
– How broad is ‘things’? Could this include an organization? :: In this context, I mean things, I have a separate category for organization(s).

So, what do *you* want to do with your life?

Sensory Fruit

Cooking, Idle Speculation, Puns, Science!, Thoughts on Thoughts

Warning: Fart Jokes and possibly worse.

If beans are the ‘musical fruit’, what is the ‘visually artistic fruit’? And are there fruits for the other senses?

The ‘Miracle Fruit’ (Synsepalum dulcificum) is known to interact with taste buds to make sour foods (such as itself) taste sweet.

‘D. Spinosa‘ is purported to induce visions, either from tea made from its leaves, or from its berries.

For fruit which will change your sense of smell, one needs look no further than horseradish[1]. If you don’t know what I mean, try eating some wasabi[2].

To change your proprioception, try drinking fermented grapes.

The plant Acmella Oleracea is known to cause numbness. Interestingly, it is used as a garnish in salads, as ‘small amounts of shredded fresh leaves are said to add a unique flavour to salads.‘

Stay tuned for next time, when we discuss plants as if we were horses looking for a snack!

[1]Cultivated by real horses!

[2]Really, don’t. Please.

TNG: The Power of Adversaries, Seasons 4-5

Analysis, Internet Culture, Nostalgia, Space!, Thoughts on Thoughts

Continuing from where we left off talking about TNG: Seasons 1-3, here are the stats for the power levels of the crew’s adversaries in Seasons four and five.

As before, I defined ‘high-powered’ challenges as those where firing phasers would only make the problem worse, so the crew must needs turn to guile. ‘Equal-powered’ challenges are those situations where firing phasers would lead to a toss-up. ‘Low-powered’ challenges are those where phasers or transporters would solve the problem handily[3]. ‘Self-powered’ challenges are those where the conflict is inside the crew, or between crew members, or between all or part of the crew and Starfleet.

Seasons four and five seem to be exploring alternately how the crew deals with very strong external adversaries and wrestling with themselves.

Season Four (26 episodes): 2-120202-1221112022-122-10-11-12
High: 12
Equal: 4
Low: 4
Self: 6

“The Best of Both Worlds (part II)” and “Family” are probably the best example of this.

Or you could look at “Night Terrors” (‘One moon circles.’, still the best metaphor for Hydrogen I’ve seen) and “The Drumhead” as (for me) two other good examples.

Another example which marries the two is “Remember Me“.

Season Five (26 episodes): 21122-1110-1-10002-102-1-1-12-12-12
High: 8
Equal: 4
Low: 5
Self: 9

Season five’s “The Game” is a good example of an episode which is difficult to categorize between ‘high-powered adversary’ and ‘self-adversary’. To me, the episode is really about the crew struggling with themselves and an addiction. Else, you could see it as them struggling against magic mind-controlling aliens.

However, changing this wouldn’t really change the overall stats for the season.

“Conundrum” contains the line which was the inspiration for this series of posts: “One photon torpedo would have ended their war.” It had some excellent moments talking about the ethical use of power, I think a hallmark of TNG (and much of Star Trek).

Any conversation about season five would be incomplete without mentioning “The Inner Light“, perhaps discussing some similar issues to “Remember Me” above. For me, “The Inner Light” was the most poignant, for the way it portrayed memory and loss, nostalgia and time passing. May we all have an epitaph as powerful.

But for now, I will continue with analyzing TV from my childhood[1].

[1]And puns.

The Songs of Nuclear Wessels

Fiction, Nostalgia, Science!, Thoughts on Thoughts

A haunting melody from the deep. Chitters and sirens and cries through the water. That was what most people heard while listening to Gracie and George.

But these viewers were not people, at least not people as you would understand them.

They heard the song and heard pieces of conversation. Snippets taken out of context, tantalizing pieces of words. Pieces of words that they were trying to reassemble to understand who were the real Gracie and George.

The arguments spanned thousands of miles and dozens of years. Some called them ‘Those who traveled when none had gone before’, some called them ‘Heroes’. Some were less charitable.

But none could deny the effect their story had on their planetary compatriots.

As their planetary compatriots guided them through the ‘Great modification’, or ‘Great Uplift’, as they liked to call it, they were asked what they wanted to call themselves. They responded in song, as they always did. If one could have translated it, it might have read ‘bumpy-nosed ones’. They always did have a sense of humour, which was only enhanced by their play with the ‘long-nosed ones’, who had also received greater intelligence.

This greater intelligence had allowed them wider ranging discussions and arguments, allowing for even more interesting discussions when they would meet at the yearly underwater summit in Cape Verde.

This year, new information had been uncovered. New recordings of Gracie and George! Maybe now they would truly understand what they were trying to say, what the movie was truly about.

The

Internet Culture, Puns, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

Earlier tonight, I was at a dinner where awards were being presented. One of the awardees had a name with only four characters (two each for first and last name). S mentioned that this would be incredibly useful for anonymity, because you would never be findable[1].

This got us to thinking that if or when we have a child, we should call it ‘It The’. Of course to do this, we would have to change our last name to ‘The’, but since our most recent last namechange to ‘Spaceman’ that’s not as much of a stretch.

Of course, since our consulting group is called ‘the The Group’, this would make for some interesting descriptive sentences, such as:

‘The Thes of the The Group’

But we then decided that ‘The’ should be a title as well as a last name[2], leading to:

‘Sarah The, the The, and Bryan The, the The, the The Thes of the The Group.’

You’re welcome.

-S&B The.

“Ruining Language.”

[1]’findable’, or ‘findeable’?

[2]cf. ‘Thane’

The Internet of Thins

Engineering, Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Puns, Science!, Thoughts on Thoughts, Words!

S and I were walking down the street today, and were thinking about the Internet of Things. Now, it’s a buzzword, and should be taken with a similar-sized grain of salt to all other similar buzzwords.

So we attempted to come up with the worst ideas possible for an Internet of Things.

The first idea was to put chips/sensors in each block in the sidewalk. But thinking about it, that would be really useful. Similar to rail lines[1], there is a widely distributed infrastructure, and checking each part individually is expensive.

Then we thought of putting individual chips/sensors in each tile in a person’s house. How silly would that be? But then you could know exactly what the person was doing, turn lights on and off correctly, rather than the current primitive motion sensors, help people track a daily routine, all kinds of things.

But the last idea we came up with led to the title of this post. What if every cracker you ate had a sensor/chip in it? You would have an almost continuous stream of data about your digestive system, what you were eating, how your body was responding to it. Think of the advances in nutrition science!

And we would owe it all to the Internet of Thins[2].

[1]Look it up! Think about the maintenance costs of surveying 140,000 miles of track.

[2]Gluten-free Wheat Thins for some.

Computers Win when the Rules are Fixed

Internet Culture, Machine Learning, Programming, Thoughts on Thoughts

One of the important reminders from game four of Alpha Go vs. Lee Sodol was the difference between what computers and humans are each best at.

Traditionally, computers were best at the most repetitive tasks, that were well understood and could be completely described.

If you talk to any release or test engineer, they will tell you that once you can fully describe a process, it’s only a few more steps to be able to automate it.

What makes Machine Learning so tantalizing is that it’s been giving hints of being able to learn to perform not-fully-described tasks, most recently Go.

At the same time, Machine Learning still requires thousands or millions of examples in order to be able to ‘see’ things, whereas humans can understand and make inferences with many fewer examples. It’s unclear to me (and I’m guessing most people) exactly why this is. It’s like there’s something about the way we learn things which helps us learn other things.

But back to the topic at hand. What game four showed us (yet again) is that the better defined the problem, the better humans perform vs. computers.

A different example of this is how high paid market research analysts are being replaced by automation, doing in minutes what would take the analysts days.

So, how do you stay relevant as things become more and more automated and automateable?

As Lee Sedol showed, one strategy is to play Calvinball[1]. Find the part of your discipline that is the least defined, and pour yourself into pushing that boundary, leaving defined pieces in your wake[2].

Note: Playing Strategema like Data is another ‘fun’ option[3], but most useful only when playing against a computer opponent, not so much for forging your own path. It consists of playing sub-optimal moves so as to confuse or anger the other player, to thrown them off balance. It is postulated that Deep Blue did this to Kasparov.

[1]Calvinball is a mostly fictional game invented by Bill Watterson for Calvin and Hobbes. The game has only one rule, that it can never be played the same way twice.

[2]Technically, Lee Sedol played a very ‘loose’ game, which was difficult to define, where parts of the board far away from each other were more easily related. You can also use this tactic to find things and do them in a way where humans are better than computers.

[3]We called this ‘victory through annoyance’ during undergrad. It had mixed reviews.