Tech Petting Zoo

So I’ve gotten a lot of questions regarding the tech petting zoo. I’m not sure how much of this is proprietary info, so I’ll try to avoid going into too much detail…

Basically, there’s a center at my firm’s HQ which is solely dedicated to state-of-the art as an art form. They update it quarterly so that the absolute latest gadgets and new technologies are there for employees to try out. For instance, they have one of the new iPods. They have one of those tables Microsoft showed off last year with a fully-touch interface. They also have other, less notorious technologies like adaptive multidirectional/monodirectional sensors.

Basically, it’s a whole room of awesome.

Incidentally, I got my first assignment today. I can’t really talk about orientation, etc… But I’m liking this firm. A lot. Here’s hoping I still like it when I actually get work to do.

Quick thought… Babylon 5 poses a powerful quandry to its audience. On the one hand, there are the Vorlons - bastions of order, embodied by the question, “Who are you?”; and the Shadows - sowers of chaos, who wish only to know, “What do you want?”

To the Vorlons, who one is cannot be answered by titles and affiliations, but only by truly understanding one’s place in the universe. That’s right, the only acceptable answer is, “I am a cog in the machine, a p

Boy - they wouldn’t be happy with the Japanese. Last I checked, it’s standard practice in Japanese culture to define oneself by organizations and affiliations rather than personal characteristics… Some champions of order the Vorlons turn out to be…

The cultural case for moral relativism, a.k.a Sci-Fi geek-fest time

Earlier I posted my argument in defense of moral relativism. At the time, I was lacking in a strong example to illustrate my point. Tonight, I found one.

For those of you who don’t watch Babylon 5, I suggest you go check out this website and this website for background on the episode “Believers”.

The episode is essentially presenting a Cold Equations scenario. Cold Equations was an episode of the Twilight Zone which was described by J. Michael Straczynski in one of the links above as follows:

There is a wonderful short story, which we adapted for Twilight Zone, called “The Cold Equations,” where a small shuttle is going from point A to point B. There is enough fuel for the shuttle, and one pilot, and no more. The ship is bringing medicine to save 500 colonists. A young girl has stowed away on the ship to see her brother. She’s discovered. If the pilot does nothing, the ship won’t arrive, and he and the girl will die, and the colonists will die. If he sacrifices himself, she won’t be able/won’t know how to guide the ship to its destination. The only way out is to ask her to enter the airlock so he can space her and continue the mission. And that’s what happens. You can’t argue with math.

The episode, similarly, handles the theme of impossible choices. In the episode, a young alien boy is brought to MedLab with a serious condition curable by a relatively simple operation. He belongs, however, to a religion that believes that any puncture of the chest cavity will result in the loss of the soul. Dr. Steven Franklin, a moral objectivist in the grand tradition of many fictional doctors, is firm in his belief that life is a higher concern than any other, and petitions Commander Sinclair to issue an order to operate against the parents’ wishes. After some pretty serious soul-searching, Sinclair decides that he cannot allow Franklin to violate the parents’ wishes. “Who are we,” he asks, “to decide whose beliefs are right?”

Franklin disobeys Sinclair’s order and saves the boy’s life, only to arrive moments to late to stop the boy’s parents from killing the boy, who they now see as a soulless abomination. Ironically, the Wikipedia article has its analysis all wrong - Straczynski discusses the episode’s meaning in the second link above, and has very different things to say. According to him, the point of the episode is much the same as “Cold Equations” - sometimes there is no right or wrong. Sometimes right or wrong is defined by your point of view, and the only “correct” decision is to allow others to govern their own fate as they see fit, whether or not it conflicts with your beliefs.

Franklin shines in this episode as a character that the viewers cannot help but sympathize with: after all, we all want desperately to believe that saving the boy’s life is the right decision. The sheer horror Franklin experiences when he learns of the boy’s ultimate fate is gut-wrenching to watch and mirrors the reaction any of us would have in a similar circumstance. Even worse, however, is his realization that his actions have forced the boy’s parents to commit an act far more abhorrent to his belief system than if he had allowing the boy to die.

For all our differing cultures, languages, and backgrounds, all humans do share some things in common; what will it be like when we’re faced with beings whose code of beliefs is so alien to us that we can no longer see the echo of our own values in their decisions? Will we have the courage to let them decide their own fate, or will we, like Franklin, be forced to learn the hard way that the indiscriminate application of our values has consequences we cannot possibly foresee?

Gone AGAIN?

Right you are, sir!

My baby died for real this time. Catastrophic hard drive failure. Data not recoverable without extensive dicking around in a clean room. Sucks to be me…

One new HD, and some quality time spent in Tim’s basement, however, means that I’m back up and running. I’m trying to get my Thinkpad back to its former glory as we speak. Once I do, I should be back at least a bit

One more thing…

Oh, and can we talk about women for a second?

Totally apart from the sheer mess that is one of my best friends’ relationship with his “ex” who’s currently abroad (who he talks to for HOURS a day - and don’t deny it, you know it’s true!), which stresses me out by proxy, it seems I spend all my time these days trying to figure out just what the hell is up with the woman and I. You know the one - the one I debated talking to about a month ago. Things are coming to an end, and we’re on the same see-saw we’ve been on since day one. You know, the one she probably doesn’t realize we’re on.

I might have sort of told her off last week.

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Oops, I seem to have disappeared!

I guess I’ll never really get used to blogging. Short list of changes since my last post:

1. My computer is better than fine. Turns out the wireless card driver was glitching.
2. I’m a year older.
3. I’m out like $800 on the geekiest (and best) weekend ever. No questions, please - even *I* have secrets. I’m debating reviewing some of my new acquisitions on the blog
4. I’ve been through the last class of my college career. I’m now struggling to muster the energy to care about finals…
5. Both my best friends are back on the horse. I’m not yet… Guess that’s what senior week is for!

I always kinda thought there’d be some great fanfare when college ended. Like some sort of marching band, or crack in the sky or something. I guess I should have expected that Georgetown would have a little bit too much dignity to make a big deal out of it. Of course, my last class WAS Advanced International Business, and it’s not like I haven’t spent the whole semester in that class checking my e-mail, updating my blog, and generally doing anything but paying attention to the professor. He gave a speech… And not one that really made sense. Oh well - that’s Georgetown for you.

My friends took me out for dinner/drinking on Friday to celebrate my birthday a little late. I had a fever going in, but I couldn’t tell by a few hours in and I had a lot of fun. Found a great place in Adams Morgan called The Blaguard. They have, I shit you not, shuffleboard. Which we suck at… But the Guinness was $6 a pint, and that more than made up for it. There’s also the close proximity of Amsterdam Falafel Shop for convenient drunk-munchies. We also managed to hit Wingos on the way back. I’d feel bad, except I’m up to running three miles a day these days.

I also got my grilling in for the weekend. Found around 4 and a half pounds of ground beef in the freezer that made for an excellent few hours of grilling (which I did instead of working on my paper on Organizational Change and Mountain Carvings). I think I’m declaring open-season on all food in the house on Wednesday. Maybe then my house-mates will finally eat some of the shit that’s been sitting around since September. Oh - and I saw Iron Man. God DAMN that movie was awesome.

I can’t believe it’s all over in a week.

Joining the pack…

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for almost a year now. It was originally written when I was living in Japan, and it was meant to go down a different road… Oddly, it seems to have come back into relevance, so I’m editing it to fit my desired theme and running with it:

If there’s one thing you notice when you first hit Japan, it’s that you stand out like a sore thumb. In this case, I’m not refering to the fact that I’m a 6′4″ anglo-european guy and was living in a country populated by predominantly 5′6″ asian people, but rather to the fact that I didn’t have a cell phone. Don’t get me wrong - I knew life without my cellphone would be bad. But this was seriously like having an arm cut off. Or possibly like discovering that all Santa’s left you for Christmas is a lump of coal and some socks (that’re really from Aunt Polly - but let’s face it, as a kid you don’t know what came from where). It’s that bad. So within the first week, I was off to Ikebukuro with a friend to get my very own 携帯電話. That’s cell phone for those of you who don’t speak the lingo. This happened again when I got back from Japan, too. In Japan, at least, many of my friends didn’t have cell phones either. In the US, I was the only one out of contact.

I recently rediscovered this unpleasant situation during the minor crisis I had with my laptop. I got it back Wednesday and was informed - to my utter horror - that “nothing is wrong with it”. That’s the kiss of death with troubleshooting computer problems, in layman’s terms it translates to “We have no idea what’s wrong, but we’re glad it’s not our problem anymore!” Fortunately, I’m a tech-savvy person and was able to fix the problem. Backed up a lot of my stuff, too - just in case. For one evening, though, I stared long and hard into the abyss and pondered the implications of an immediate future without my laptop. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

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Computer trouble…

I hate the words “computer trouble”. Even reading it, there’s this negative image of computers that pops up in my mind. Of course, I’m a little biased - I spend 6+ hours a day around my computer.

Which is why I’ve been so AWOL recently… I got back from Kenyon College last Monday and, to my horror, found that my computer wouldn’t boot. After a few attempts to fix the problem myself (I reseated the RAM - made sense given the error…), I finally took it to the business school’s tech center to have it repaired. They gave me a loaner, so I’ve been able to do work, but it’s been so long that I’d forgotten what it’s like to use a computer other than my own. It’s kind of disturbing not having all my bookmarks, all my preferences, my favorite programs. I actually found out where that virus last year came from when I tried to install my alarm clock on this computer - turns out it’s bundled with a downloader trojan.

Still no word on what’s wrong with my baby, but I’m getting kind of worried. In the mean time, my USB keys have been fully updated with the usual suite of programs. If only they had a WordpressPortable plugin suite…

Tags

I forgot to mention (though it’s been a few days and I’m sure anyone who actually reads the site will already be aware)… I’ve integrated tags into the blog. Wordpress’ newest version finally caught up with the trend in the Blogosphere and included them as part of the default functionality.

Unfortunately, Vistered Little didn’t. Or rather, I think VL was built with Tag Warrior in mind, because the coding COMES with tag functions prefaced with “TW_”. Needless to say - since I don’t have Tag Warrior, and the integrated WP tags aren’t compatible with any other tag service (maybe?) - that pretty much spelled doom for tags. I found a work-around, though, meaning that you can all enjoy tag-navigating-goodness.  Still working on fixing the titlebar’s glitch…

Cool fact #2 is the “Tags: ” line at the bottom of the post. I may not have figured out how to move the social networking links to the end of the post, but I DID build that “Tags: ” line from scratch. Quite the accomplishment for a 素人 like me.

And see? I’m posting. Updating the twitter feed and the tumble too…