Having just read..

"The Outsider" by Albert Camus I now understand what he meant by "if you want to be a philosopher, write novels". You can't quite possibly understand this until you've read the book I think.

The entire story seems to rush past you as a reader. I didn't get the impression of being "of" the literary world created by Camus insomuch as an observer with Meursault watching other people partake of it. Meursault's only fault seems to be his unwavering honesty. Everyone around him is challenged by it. In the final scene with Meursault sitting in his cell awaiting his execution, his honesty totally disarms the chaplain of his religious crutches. He rejects the need for a god before his death, with a calm, respectful and straightforward philosophy. Contrast this to the emotional disbelief of the chaplain and you get a sense for the way Meursault deals with everyone in the story.

"The Outsider" totally blew me away. Check it out.

Regarding "The Trial" by Franz Kafka

Just read "The Trial". Here are some thoughts.

K. (the story's protagonist) is such a poorly understood individual.

Having not received a summons after his first interrogation and the outburst that ensued, where people placed cushions between their heads and the ceiling to avoid being hurt, he ventures to the same delapidated building and finds the same faceless woman who introduced him the week before. She informs him that there is no session this week. Looking past her he sees several books lying on the Examining Magistrate's table, and asks to have a look at them. He's told that this is not allowed, and given no explanation, like every every other confusing juncture in the story up until that point, offers an explanation in it's stead.

"I see," K. said and nodded, "the books must be law-books, and it's characteristic of this judicial system that a man is condemned not only when he's innocent but also in ignorance of the facts". "Yes, that must be it," said the woman, who had not quite understood him.

This comical ignorance, this condescending disregard for his understanding of what is taking place, recurs throughout the story. K., not given any explanation as to the course of events and very often not even told about the the basic tenets of the society within which he must conduct himself seems like a very poorly understood individual indeed.

He tries to mesh with people in his world and is inevitably wrestled into subservience on every occasion. The result is a frustrated entanglement of ideals. The actions of those around him are never given sufficient substance and he ends up living through a vitiating flurry of intellectual ephemera. He second guesses his actions to such an extent that he becomes little more than a play thing for a band of reverse-psychology-wielding mind police.

Really good book. Read it.

Greedy little podcasters

Apart from the fact that I will never pay for a podcast I think it's pretty damn important to make sure you have even a little bit of quality before charging for it. Ricky Gervais' podcasts aren't that funny. They're certainly not as funny as The Office or Extras. They're not as funny as his standup comedy stuff. In my judgement they're pretty much just boring podcast crap. Sure - Ricky does a good job of repeating other people's jokes and screaming like a little girl in his annoyingly high pitched voice, but that's about it. What I think Ricky needs to remember (or learn) is that popularity for something that is free is quite likely going to be a hell of a lot higher than something people have to pay for.

It'll be interesting to see how he goes. But I'd hazard a guess that unless this greedy little Pom puts a great deal more effort into writing his "podcast" scripts (which he is clearly not doing currently) then his "most popular podcast on the internet" will be lining up for a trip down the good old Karsey Moilet.

Media hype about Mac OS X trojan/virus...

is a total non-event. If you download and run the installer, it will install - like any other program. Wow - big security risk! If you're not running as an Administrator account it'll barely "infect" anything. *Yawn*. Don't stop, nothing further to see here.

There really is no point..

in blogging is there? The so called wanky "blogosphere" is full of tossers who either can't spell, have nothing interesting to say, are so full of themselves it's a wonder they're not just one oversized stagnating piece of shit, or are just generally so socially maladjusted they get off to "chatting online with babes all day" and/or "training to be a cage fighter". You know who you are.

Myself included.

What a fucking waste of time.

Jack loves Jill (with her bionic and cognitive enhancements)

Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a mechanism to understand a forward-causation physical process which seems to mimick backward-causation or teleology such that a progression appears designed and "intelligent". That's where the religious proponents of "Intelligent Design" get it fundamentally wrong. Rather than rely on a notion that a preternatural being is shaping this intelligent course of design and improvement, we have a simple process which can explain something which moving forward in time, looks to design itself in amazing and complex ways.

I'll take an example from "How the mind works" by Steven Pinker. He describes the concept of a replicator and how that is central to the Theory of Evolution. We have two states, A and B. B can't cause A if A comes first (e.g. seeing well can't cause an eye to have a clear lens). Assume that A causes B, and B causes A to make a copy of itself which we call AA. AA and A look identical, so much so that you could be forgiven for thinking that B caused A, but it didn't, it just caused AA (a copy of A). Now suppose there are three animals, two with a cloudy lens and one with a clear lens. Having a clear lens (A) causes the eye in that animal to see well (B). Seeing well causes this animal to reproduce by finding mates and avoiding predators. The offspring (AA) have clear lenses and can see well too. This all appears to an observer that the offspring have eyes so that they can see well (which is backwards causation), but that's actually not what's really happening. The offspring simply have eyes because their parents had good eyes (which is good, forward causation). Futhermore, if this process continues through many generations then you may end up with offspring with incredibly well designed vision. There isn't a supernatural designer here, just a process which explains the progression to a complex, "designed" end state.

There seems to be a sentiment that human civilisation is progressing and becoming more sophisticated at an ever increasing rate. While this may afford cozy, fuzzy feelings of security I would argue that this is not actually the case. By-products of our intelligence are increasing rapidly in sophistication. Human behaviour isn't. Our nature isn't changing. The industrial revolution or the information age has changed the context in which we live, but hasn't changed us. Conceptually, on a very basic level we are progressing very slowly, whilst the pace of improvement in our creations is outflanking us. If you were to put a timeline of human technological advancement and a timeline showing human evolution next to each other and try to determine which has grown at a more outstanding pace I think you'd agree that the the technological advancement timeline would win. We can fly, we can kick-start nuclear fission, we can bundle information into an abstract binary language and shoot it around the planet in milliseconds. But we still follow popular fashions, we detox, we work out in gyms, we still dance to tribal music to attract the opposite sex (albeit in darkened bars) and we still follow advertising campaigns which target our needs to be physically attractive. It's all so primitive, and it should be.

Attraction between humans uses the most primitive communication methods available to us to express itself. Sight, a physical appearance. A dominate, powerful male image. A nurturing female appearance. Body language, another pervasive form of physical communication. Smell, an attractive fragrance or scent conjouring sexual interest, or expressing sexual compatibility. Sound, the timbral quality of a voice or laugh. We place so much emphasis on these forms of communication. Throughout history the human brain has spent more than 90% of it's existence fine tuning methods to impress others using such devices. These are some of the most basic elements of human communication, elements we probably relied on before speech and language developed. We marvel and wonder at how clever and intelligent some of our closest primate cousins are, yet don't find it remarkable how primitive and base our natural behaviour is.

Technological advancement is outstripping human advancement. It's easier to design a smaller transistor than it is to design a different reaction to rejection. What happens when technological advancement proceeds to the point where we're left behind? The answer is a science fiction fantasy, which will become a reality sooner than we think. The Augmented Human. That has to be the most effective way for us to piggy-back onto the pace of our technological evolution.

Measure Map

I would like to play with this. Looks very cool to me.

Might be worth waiting..

for a new shiny Intel iMac...

Just then - outside my apartment...

What is it with asian people and littering. Fuck it shits me. Yes you're in Australia now. Yes you have more freedom. Yes your parents are rich and you can afford to buy ridiculous cars which you lack the skill to drive. But how is it cool to sit there and spit in the middle of George St, Sydney, or throw quaint Japanese drink bottles out of car windows? The next time I see someone do that I'm going to pick up said bottle and ram it down their little sushi gobbling throats. Have some fucking respect.

Bush distractions and cover-ups

This is pretty damn funny. It's such an obvious attempt to bolster waning popularity polls and distract attention from an increasingly vocal group of critics. I found this quote particularly funny:

Bush referred to the plot as targeting the Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, but White House aides afterward said Bush had meant to say the intended target was the city's Library Tower.

We all know the President of the United States isn't the most intelligent man on Earth, but you have to wonder how deliberate these "mistakes" are. What a leader!

Forgetting to ask why?

I keep bumping my head gently against the belly of "architectural wisdom" at work of late. I think a stochastic analysis of the words used by my manager over the last few weeks would be quiet telling; "SharePoint", "integration", "services", "portal technology", ".NET webparts", "team expertise", "organic technology".

I love the phrase "organic technology". Something in me wants to embrace and work with "organic technology" to such an extent that I find myself somewhat persuaded to the cause simply because I love the idea so much, until I start to question the basis for such a statement anyway. SharePoint is an organic technology? What does "organic" mean in the context of technology, especially SharePoint? The more I think about it the more I feel "virulent" would be a more appropriate description for the way SharePoint has taken hold in our organisation.

Regardless, this is the cerebral flotsam which flows through the collective consciousness of my team at work and it's starting to have an effect. People are starting to conform. It's scary. I keep asking "Why .NET?", "What are the reasons for choosing this technology and mandating that we work with it?", "Can we use Ruby?", "Imagine writing this in Lisp!", "Have you checked out document management product xyz" etc. So far I'm just getting looks of mild discomfort and a determined change of subject - a subtle message to not challenge the status quo.

I really shouldn't be suprised, but isn't this is a perfect example of big business making some really important technological decisions and seemingly not being able to back them up, or at least not being willing to discuss the rationale behind those decisions? I'm seeing a leadership model where as a team we are exposed to a barrage of value judgements that are never substantiated and are actively maintained as fact with out any kind of supportive reasoning. SharePoint is an "organic" technology. Intranet requirements mean we need to use a "portal-like technology". We are going to build all these applications in .NET... the list goes on. The right response to all these statements is a simple question in my mind - "Why?".

Noone is asking this question at work anymore. I wonder why?