a thaumaturgical compendium

Continuing the theme of lifelike robots, BoingBoing points to a lifelike Philip K. Dick replibot, who is able to identify friends, and imitate the author’s own personality, just as Dick predicted in his own We Can Build You. Imagine having Abraham Lincoln as a guest speaker for third-grade history.

Last night we talked a bit about retail informatics. One of the things we didn’t talk about was the move from retail stores to highly mobile retail. When I got home, this commercial (wmv format) from Nextel was on. (I know we have an alektorophobe in the class who should probably avoid watching; I don’t know if she also has megameleagrophobia.) It provides an interesting view of how mobile devices can be used now. Nextel also provides phones that allow you to track your employees and fleets with GPS for example. I wonder where this extends, looking forward.

I am just so pleased to have finally made it. A new method of ranking bloggers, which is clearly superior to all earlier methods, places me at number 100 of the top 100 bloggers.

The method is easy to follow. You simply look for where your Alexa traffic ranking falls when compared with the Technorati Top 100, and that’s your rightful place, apparently. Since my ranking is better than Swirlee’s, I am now number 100. Heck, I am number 1 among untenured professor bloggers by the same measure.

Glad that’s settled.

People are up in arms about Dick Durbin’s “Godwin’s Law” moment. And of course he isn’t comparing our military with the Nazis, because if there is one thing we must do as a society it is support our troops. It is America’s last sacred cow. Anyone who does not support the troops is, by present standards, a traitor.

I do not support the troops. That doesn’t mean that I wish them harm, and it doesn’t mean that, on an individual level, I can’t have respect for many of them. It doesn’t mean I am un-American, or that I am a friend of terrorists. But at this point it is clear that there are more that just a few bad apples, and it is more than just “following orders.” Yes, the buck may ultimately stop at the door to the oval office, but there are soldiers torturing prisoners, and there is neither honor nor glory in that. While many soldiers are fighting honorably in Iraq, we have examples also of acts of cruelty and unecessary violence. I don’t believe that most, or even many, soldiers are behaving inappropriately, but the acts of a few do and should reflect on the whole.

I think that this war has brought shame upon the military, and while we should celebrate them when they do their job, and when they act to defend the United States, no government organization should escape the censure of the American people when they act injustly.

I recognize that the soldier does not choose the battles he or she is sent to, but by volunteering for the military a person does not abdicate responsibility for his or her actions, and indeed takes on collective responsibility for those actions. We need to make clear to American soldiers and sailors that their uniforms bear the stains of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Such scorn is appropriate if for no other reason than to make clear to those who enlist that becoming a soldier means that they may be put into the position of making excuses for torturers.

It is not for me to suspend judgment of those who kill and torture in my name. I recognize that the brunt of my criticism is correctly aimed at those in charge, and that the responsibility ultimately rests in the Commander in Cheif. Nonetheless, there is no honor in carrying out injustice.

Some more diamonds in the rough for your perusal:

• I could write a review of Batman Begins, but instead I’ll have your read the one by Tom Coates and just urge you to go see the movie. I’m also kicking myself for not sneaking in to St. Pancras Station before my meeting at the British Library last year—is was awfully tempting. But then, I would probably have been picked up as an “enemy combatant” or something…

• Trying to look like a local? Order like a pro with the In-N-Out secret menu. Or, at the grocery, with the Cook’s Thesaurus.

• To the plagiarist in my summer class, “Here are some of the many reasons I hate plagiarism and those who practice it…”

• Map hacking, Roman style.

• Trying to suss out the housing situation in New York? If you are a Federal Anti-Terror Agency (FATA? No, that’s already taken), Chelsea seems to be the place to watch. Of course, if the cost of apartment rentals in New York is getting you down, there are always alternatives.

• vSkype—Skype with video—is in beta. I guess it still has rough spots. However, I recently had a colleague participate in a defense via video link, and we ended up using NetMeeting for the video and Skype for the audio. (The combination gave us the best combination of audio quality with video.) I’ll look forward to using it, and hope that it is as solid as their VoIP app.

Yeah, I know—sounds like the title of a bad S.F. movie. Anyway, I have a short essay up in the ASIST Bulletin called Social Informatics: Beyond Emergence. It’s a very broad kind of essay, but I would be happy to have any feedback on it.

In last night’s seminar, we spoke a bit about the uncanny valley. How’s this for an example: a robot covered in “skinlike silicone,” was presented at the 2005 World Expo in Japan:

Internal sensors allow the android to react “naturally.” It can block an attempted slap, for example. But it’s the little, “unconscious” movements that give the robot its eerie verisimilitude: the slight flutter of the eyelids, the subtle rising and falling of the chest, the constant, nearly imperceptible shifting so familiar to humans.

Well, that ruins my plans for robot slapping. I guess I can always go after kitchen appliances.