Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 93

chili and galaxies

I took a long weekend off from MIT (actually, carrying work with me, of course) to go to ChiliCon, an annual event put on by two Cincinnati fans, Guy Allen and Becca Levin. Just put in about an hour and a half chopping vegetables for tomorrow's vegan pot. There will also be two pots of beef, hot and not-too-hot, and one of elk. I predict the elk will go first.

One of the most stunning astro-pictures I've seen in a while is the NASA UV picture of the Andromeda Galaxy, http...

bipolar blues

(In sffnet, we're talking about Jonah Lehrer's book _How We Decide_ . . .)

It does look like a fascinating book. But should I buy it? I can't decide . . .

Currently preparing a talk about THE GREAT GATSBY, so all this meditation about decision-making process leads me to Fitzgerald's famous aphorism: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." Give that guy a shot of dopamine.

Thi...

The Three, or Many, Laws of Bureaucracy

(Responding to Dave Nicholas on sff.net, about using AI in a bureacracy . . . )

Maybe, Dave, it's worth deconstructing Asimov's Three Laws in this regard.

1. A bureaucrat may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A bureaucrat must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A bureaucrat must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Sec...

bureaucracy and the Beast

(from sffnet) Blipvert, I don't know whether this is accurate -- I think I got it from a Heinlein novel -- but the story is that bureaucracy started out in ancient China, both as a way of keeping an increasingly complex society together and a provision for continuity between dynasties.

Hmm . . . I googled, and Wiki confirms this: "The most modernesque of all ancient bureaucracies . . .was the Chinese bureaucracy. During the chaos of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period,...

triage

(In sffnet, we're talking about smoking and motorcycle helmets and such -- personal lifestyle decisions that have public health consequences that translate into tax dollars from others who haven't made such decisions . . . )

I didn't know that about California, Karen. When Florida repealed their motorcycle helmet law some ten years ago, there was some graveyard humor about it -- "what do you call a biker without a helmet?" "A transplant donor."

In fact, an often-repeated rationale against hel...

joe_haldeman @ 2009-09-08T20:54:00

(from a sff.net conversation ... )

Just to reinforce the obvious . . . I was a heavy smoker in college and a triply heavy smoker in Vietnam, where cigs were free and you were going to die anyhow. In my thirties I was able to quit inhaling ("") and get by with a pipe and cigars, and finally gave that up at 40. Twenty-six years later, I'm still smoke-free.

But not completely free. The addiction is gone, but the longing will always be there. Not for cigarettes, but the pipe and good cigars. N...

not a soapbox

I should have come up with a word that has fewer associations than "administration." You just want to start with the problem, which is that we have various functions that have to be performed "by society" so that people can live in reasonable comfort and security. Of course the details of these functions vary from culture to culture, neighborhood to neighborhood, and so on down to the individual. When I'm home alone, the television can stop functioning for weeks and I won't even know. If ...

Who you callin' a liberal?

(In sff.net the hills are alive with the sound of political labels.)

I call myself a progressive, too, rather than a liberal, but in a precise sense I'm an anarchist. I think that government as an instrument has outlived its usefulness, and some day humans will look back on it and wonder how we ever got from Monday to Friday.

What will replace government? The exciting answer is probably "administration." But a kind of administration (by whatever name) that actually administers to the multiva...

joe_haldeman @ 2009-09-04T09:17:00

View Poll: Books B Gone

Books B Gone

Big story above the fold in the Globe this morning: "Welcome to the library. Say Goodbye to the books." It's about Cushing Academy, a prep school west of Boston, whose headmaster says, "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books." They're emptying the library of its 20,000 volumes (save antiquarian volumes and a few hundred children's books) and spending $500,000 on a "learning center" with three large flat-screen terminals and "laptop-friendly" study ca...