SXSW: Barcamp 4

I didn't get to see much of Barcamp. Because Steve had classes that weekend, I stayed home with Erika most of Saturday. I got to BarCamp close to 5 pm. Since it started at 9 am, I missed most presentations. The few remaining ones that were still going on were by various companies (startups, probably) demonstrating their products. Most of them were specialized websites (e.g. a travel website) with a social networking element. None of them really intrigued me, but maybe I was too tired to pay full attention. I was more fascinated by tattoo artists plying their trade right there at BarCamp. They've set up a little shop in a corner of the room, and were doing brisk business. They tattooed 3 clients in about half an hour (and that was just while I watched). One guy got a barcode on the back of his neck. Must have been a pun on BarCamp? Not that anyone would recognize it in the outside world. The "victims" seemed fairly relaxed -- none of those people were screaming or writhing in pain, or even gritting their teeth. It made me even wonder if I should spontaneously get a tattoo as well. But no, I'm really not that spontaneous. :-)

Aside from product demos, there was a presentation on "death of advertising". But as my experience shows, a talk or an article touting the death of advertising is really just about new ways to advertise, and this one was no different. I don't know if the whole BarCamp was like that, but product demos and conversations about marketing are not why I would go to this event. Learning about other companies' products is not the kind of techie learning that would bring me to a BarCamp. But really, I can't judge it, having caught only the tail end of it. Still there were a few people around -- both old acquaintances and new ones -- to chat about our Twitter strategies and what not. :-)

I really liked the "bar" in which BarCamp took place -- the former Paradox night club, which is currently vacant. Our devoted organizers set it up with plenty of folding chairs and tables to put laptops on. I had no trouble finding an extension cord to plug my laptop into -- but maybe only because it was half empty at the moment? It turns out a nightclub can work very well as a conference room. All its interior details -- balconies, stages, little side lounges -- separate the room into many cozy spaces for groups to hold conversations. And we had sponsors that provided free (though mediocre) fish burritos for lunch, and munchies with a curious name "dillodog" for dinner. The name lead to a goodly number of puns. But really it was just a hotdog with bacon crumbles... I think. That's as far as I could tell in the dark. :-)

Pictures from BarCamp and other SXSWi events are in my photo gallery.

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Once in a while I get drawn into those debates...

As I said on Facebook and Twitter, I had an argument about atheism at the Ethical Society gathering. The other person said every atheist will experience God during their lifetime, just like everybody experiences love, even the people who say they don't believe in it.

Contrary to what some people said on Facebook, this guy was not at all an idiot; he seemed quite smart. But his argument was not very well thought out, even if it was superficially based on the latest neurological discoveries. Basically he said that God, like love, is one of those things human brains are hardwired to experience. I know God belief is not hardwired into everybody's brains, and I'm not even sure love is. There is a minority of people who never fall in love, much as they would like to. The same way, even as neuroscientists have found some evidence that many (if not most) people's brain have a "God module", there is a sizeable minority who do not "experience" God. It's possible that it comes down to differences in brain wiring, though I don't know how that would explain all the deconverted former theists (of which I met many). Maybe their former religious beliefs came from social conditioning, not from a direct, mystical experience of the ineffable. :-)

So I asked the guy to clarify in what sense does everyone "experiences God". Maybe he meant it in a primarily secular sense, such as "awe at the beauty and mystery of the natural world". Most people, including atheists, get that feeling that at some point. Some choose to call that God, but in reality that's a perfectly secular experience. But the guy declined to clarify. He said, how would you explain to a deaf person what music is? It's something that you know when you find it. I said, if you start from a position that experience of God can't be explained in rational words, then this argument is meaningless. If we don't have the language to talk about it, you can't present any arguments supporting your opinion, nor can I present arguments supporting mine. And so the topic was exhausted. We were too nice to ruin the afternoon going at each other's throats. :-)

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SXSW: Dorkbot

You would think that everyone at an event with a name like Dorkbot would be fond of technology. Certainly the presence of the Robot Group could lead you to think that. Almost fooled me! I saw an interesting sculpture, and assumed it was interactive, like everything else there, only at that time it wasn't interacting with anything. I would have never found out what it signified, if I hadn't run into Silona, who was standing next to it and chatting with its creator, a guy of mediterranean looks and vaguely european accent. So I stopped to chat with the artist as well. He said he was actually against "these guys", meaning the robo-geeks. Not only his sculpture didn't have a techno-element, its whole point was to illustrate a thesis that "technology is a virus". Now that I've been told, I saw it really resembled a virus. The body of the sculpture was made out of wood, perhaps a tree branch. The head was studded with various spiky techno junk -- old light bulbs, thingamabobs and such. They were very definitely not going to blink. I wonder if this artist felt like a sole fundamentalist Christian protester at a gay parade, or what. :-)

Then I saw people doing something I've previously heard about, but haven't seen with my own eyes: playing iPhone like a flute. Here's a short video of an iPhone duet.



Overall, though, I didn't see many new exhibits at Dorkbot. By "new" I mean something I haven't seen at every event where Robot Group is present. That includes local science fiction conventions (e.g. ArmadilloCon), Maker Faire, and some SXSW events, such as Plutopia party. I even wondered if it will make any sense to go Maker Faire this year -- will I really see anything new? Not that I blame the Robot Group for not coming up with new things several times a month. Their interactive art pieces are still amazing when you see them for the first time, as I'm sure many out-of-town visitors to SXSW did. I just have a mixed blessing of living in a town where they frequently exhibit their creations.

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SXSW: prelude

I can finally summon some energy and time to blog, not just tweet, about South by Southwest. First of all, I didn't even go to SXSW, only to public events. That alone was enough to keep me very busy.

My SXSW experience started out with Austin Tech Happy Hour on Thursday. One of the startups featured at ATHH was Other Inbox. (I didn't find out what the other 2 were -- either there weren't any, or they were well hidden.) A woman at the Other Inbox table approached me with a pitch: "Do you need a cure for email overload?" I decided to play a devil's advocate for a while. I said I didn't really have email overload. That's not quite true -- I would feel very overloaded if I had to read the posts from all the email lists I am on, but I didn't go into detail. She replied that I am a lucky person. I said it's not a matter of luck: the only real cure for email overload is real-life management, not email management. In my opinion, the email you get is merely a reflection of responsibilities you take on. Don't take too many responsibilities, commit to only what you can accomplish, say "no" more often, unsubscribe from mailing lists that don't add much value to your life, and you won't be overwhelmed with email

I asked how can Other Inbox technology do all that to a person. They admitted it can't, but it can recognize which emails in your inbox come from real people versus mailing lists and such. Hmm. I was quite surprised one needs an application to do that -- I never had trouble telling real people's messages from mailing list messages. But you never know what kind of interesting difficulties some folks might have! :-)

I still think that no matter how you organize your inbox, if you have an average of x emails to read every day, it will take you the same amount of time. That's not to say that certain approaches to email don't help. Some people read it all first thing in the morning, others last thing at night, and so on -- to avoid being constantly interrupted by new emails. That's all good. But ultimately I think a cure for email overload is simply not to get too much of it.

Then I inadvertently crashed Austin Interactive Marketing Association meetup. I was told about it by one guy from Austin Linux Group, who said it was a "welcome out-of-towners to SXSW" happy hour. AIMA people at the registration desk have not heard of such a thing, though sure enough they took me for an out-of-towner. With my accent it was almost guaranteed. :-) (They asked me if I was from Sweden.) Anyway, I met with two people from Austin Linux Group, and we chatted for a bit. In their experience, Linux user groups are dying, at least in Austin. Or if not dying, they are going virtual. Some of them, including ALG, have strong email lists, but they don't feel much need to meet in person. Some people think it's a matter of there being so much good info about Linux on the internet, you can google anything, so you don't have to meet in person to ask for advice or help with hands-on installations, etc. But that's not what these two ALG people thought. The high likelihood that a typical newbie will run into serious problems with WiFi and thus lose interest in Linux, is one reason that Linux desktop is not gaining popularity. But there's also a more interesting reason. For many young people Linux is not in the running if they're considering an alternative to Windows. And not because they are Mac afficionados. A smartphone is a more likely competitor. Many people these days no longer want to carry around laptops when a smartphone is enough for their daily computing tasks. Thus, a phone becomes their primary computer.

Pictures from this Austin Tech Happy Hour and other SXSW events can be found in my photo gallery.

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Blellow beta review

I joined Blellow -- a web service that enables people to collaborate and share knowledge -- in its beta stage. So far I've only been on it one day and haven't done much. I've only tested its basic features. I'm writing this review so as to enter a drawing for an SXSW badge. :-)

Here are my notes on some of Blellow's features.

Meetups. I already have a suggestion for Meetups pages (though I realize meetups are probably not the most important feature of this site). I wish each event page had a message board so we could post questions to other members or the organizer. It would also be good to be able to contact the organizer of the event with a click of a button (or in any way at all, really. Right now there is no way.)

The "follow" thing. I clicked a "Follow" button under a person's name, but did not understand whether that meant I now was following her on Twitter, or if it was a special Blellow-specific "follow". I looked for help pages, but couldn't find any (another very important feature that's missing). My Twitter account (@elze) does not show I'm following her, so I guess a Blellow-follow is different from a Twitter-follow.

Groups. I was able to join groups without a problem.

Projects. I saw a list of other people's projects, but clicking on any of them produced the standard Ruby on Rails error "We're sorry, but something went wrong". Oh well -- it's beta.

How do I login? One thing that really baffled me: when I went to blellow.com home page on another computer, I could not find a "Log in" link. It was embarrassing. Made me feel really stupid. Yet there was truly no link. I eventually logged in again by following a beta invitation link that was emailed to me. I can only assume that the login is deliberately hidden from the general public, and will appear when Blellow is out of beta.

So far it seems the main activity one would do on this site is answer "What are you working on?" question. There is a lot more to do, such as participate in group discussions, but the "What are you working on?" page is the one you get immediately upon logging in. Well, this question certainly makes more sense to me than Twitter's "what are you doing?". It's good that the status area (which, at 300 characters, is much more roomy than Twitter's 140) allows you to attach a file and to check "I feel like sharing this" or "I'm looking for help" radio boxes. Obviously, though, you can't share your company's code in a public forum, so this is at best good for hobby or side projects. But, since I often get stuck on some Ruby on Rails problem (new as I am to this technology), I could see myself asking for help in this manner. It's good to have a framework where asking for help is built into the system, thus doesn't feel awkward.

One more thing -- maybe I'm just not thinking creatively, but I can't "unpack" Blellow's name. What exactly does it stand for? Blue and yellow? That's a stretch even considering the prevalence of green on its website. Does the "ellow" part signify it's kind of like yellow pages for freelancers? That would make some sense, though I think yellow pages is an outdated metaphor for a site whose goal is to promote collaboration and interactivity (as opposed to browsing a static list of people available for hire). In any case, I'm sorry to be blunt, but the name is a bit offputting. The "ble" part immediately evokes such associations as blech, bleary, or bleat. I think this site deserves better than that.

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Dr. Michael J. Ryan's Darwin Day talk

Dr. Michael J. Ryan from University of Texas was one of the speakers who gave a talk at the CFI Darwin Day celebration. It was "Sexual Selection, Darwin's Second Great Theory: Why males are dying to mate". A provocative title, somewhat -- and indeed, the idea of sexual selection was thought to be provocative and radical in Darwin's times. To me it was those historical footnotes that made up the main interest of his speech, as the idea itself wasn't new to me.

Sexual selection theory says animals evolve certain traits not because they help them to survive, but because those traits help them to attract mates -- even when doing so runs counter to survival. This helps explain why in some species males and females are so markedly different in their appearance and behavior. This is evident even in humans, if we believe "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" brand of stereotypes. :-) Behavioral differences between men and women sometimes seem so dramatic, they can make you wonder if men and women are from different planets. In the animal realm one of the most striking examples of appearance differences between sexes is a peacock's tail. That tail is what got Darwin thinking that natural selection in itself was not enough to explain how it evolved. How is it that this trait allowed peacocks to survive better? Darwin decided he needed another theory. So he came up with the sexual selection theory.

Often the traits that help males attract mates are also the ones that makes them more likely to die. Such is the case with tungara frogs, which Dr. Ryan has studied at length. The males of this species are more likely to attract females if their calls are more complex. (Here Dr. Ryan amused the audience by imitating tungara frog calls. He had to do it because sound wasn't working in his presentation. This was just as well, because, according to him, he can make frog calls so realistic he can even trick the frogs into conversing with him. Apparently male tungara frogs view conversation as a competitive sport: they respond with calls that are more complex than the ones they hear.)

However, tungara frogs predators, such as bats, also favor males that make more complex calls. So the individuals that are more attractive to females are also more likely to die. Both selection and counter-selection forces play a role in evolution.

Back in Darwin's time people had hard time accepting the notion that sexual selection is driven by females choosing males with particular characteristics. They said, we only need to reflect on human species to realize how ridiculous this idea is. In Darwin's Victorian England women had very little choice in most things. So Darwin's idea at that time was radical.

Dr. Ryan (who, by the way, considers himself a feminist) noted that even these days there's large feminist literature that absolutely rejects the notion that female choice of mates is the driving force of sexual selection (among animals, at least). They are incredibly critical of this idea.

Pictures from Darwin Day can be found in my photo gallery. I will keep adding new pictures in the days to come.

Darwin Day lectures: Zachary Moore, "Evolution: A Theory Confirmed"

Center For Inquiry celebrated Charles Darwin's 200th birthday on February 15 (3 days after his actual birthday, but we had to wait for the weekend) with a day full of educational activities for children, lectures for grownups, and a dinner. There were three hour-long lectures of evolution. That's a lot to sit through in one chunk of time, but the talks were lively enough to hold my attention. Here's the summary of the first talk, given by Dr. Zachary Moore, a molecular biologist, and titled "Evolution: A Theory Confirmed". It doesn't say anything you wouldn't find elsewhere on the web in more detail, but it briefly sums up the ways evolution science has progressed since Darwin's times.

There were many things that Charles Darwin didn't know about evolution. They were discovered by scientists in the centuries to come. Three kinds of evidence for evolution that were discovered after Darwin's times are:

• speciation in action
• key transitional species
• molecular biology evidence

An example of speciation in action is so-called ring species.

When territories of two different, but related species of animals partially overlap, they can often interbreed. So you have a chain of several species, and any two neighboring species can interbreed between themselves. In a way it's like a spectrum: on one end there is "red" species, which then morphs into orange, yellow, green, and blue. Any color (or at least, individuals on the ends of any color) can interbreed with neighboring colors. But if the "blue" species migrates into the territory of the "red" species, they often find they can't interbreed anymore. Too many genetic differences have accumulated. Yet since interbreeding is possible all the way from red to blue, we don't know whether to consider them separate species or one big species. All that it takes for this group to separate into different species, is for some intermediate species to go extinct. This has happened in nature. Ring species illustrates how concept of species is arbitrary "in a cosmic context" (to quote Dr. Moore), but is meaningful in human context.

Transitional species

Many people imagine transitional species to be something akin to a mythical crocoduck kirkcameronii (here Moore showed a picture with a head of a crocodile and body of a duck). This, of course, is not what transitional species are like. A real example would be Achaeopteryx lithographica, a primitive bird with a lizard tail. It has wings and feathers.

How do you get from a fish to a tetrapod? Most people think there must have been something fishy-like that grew legs. But we haven't found a good example of it until discovery of Tiktaalik roseae in 2006. This shows predictive power of evolution. Scientists were able to predict in what type of rock, what type of location they could find something like this -- a fish-like creature with appendages resembling legs. It has a tail with fins, it also has gills. But the front fins were very different: they had primitive wristbones. It could push itself up with them. It also had a very unfish-like head, and a neck.

Another remarkable transitional species is Ambulocetus natans, a walking whale, discovered in 1996. It's a mammal that's perfectly adapted for aquatic life.

Molecular evidence

While the subtle points of the argument might have escaped me, the gist is that similar molecular sequences in ubiquitous genes indicate a genealogical relationship between species.

Pictures from Darwin Day can be found in my photo gallery. I will keep adding new pictures in the days to come.

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Ecovillages

A few weeks ago I went to a meeting of the Ethical Society of Austin. This was part of my search for a secular community. While I've been involved with a few of those, and frequently mention them in my blog, it doesn't mean I have found my "community-home". But that's not what this post is about. The folks at the Ethical Society were warm and welcoming. The presentation of the guest speaker, Kate Lovelady, was titled "A Sustainable Community -- Eco-Village Life and Ethical Culture". She spoke about the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, which she visited not long ago. I've heard about ecovillages, cohousing, and intentional communities before, but not in much detail. There is a range of communities that are variations on cohousing theme. Some of them are in big cities, and truly green living is not any more possible to them than it is to most of us, so they don't even set it as a goal. And then there are communities like Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, located in remote corners of the world, and their members take radical (by our standards) measures to live sustainably.

What do people in ecovillages live on?

When you imagine a community located far from a city, and you learn they share 3 cars among 50 people (a deliberately chosen restriction), you realize those people aren't just living out in the country and commuting to city jobs. That would be the opposite of sustainable. So you've got to ask yourself, what do they live on? The speaker, Kate, addressed that question, and the answer was not very inspiring. Most live on a patchwork of precarious sources of income. Such a lifestyle is easier in an ecovillage than in the mainstream world. The folks here don't need very much, and they get most of what they need from the inside economy. They grow their own food and do jobs for one another (such as building houses). Many do random jobs here and there. Some live off retirement funds. They have been entertaining an idea of opening a bed-and-breakfast. Not everyone agrees, though, because some people feel it would restrict them from gardening in the nude. But an increasing number of members have home-based, or web-based, businesses.

And yes, they have internet access.

Freedom from some of society's regulations is what prompted them to choose this unlikely location in Missouri, instead of someplace in California, as one might expect. This place does not have building codes for private residences, so they could build any kind of houses they wanted. One woman turned an old bus into a house. She insulated it and made it otherwise livable. However, at the time of Kate's visit, she had a big mouse problem.

To be a successful hippie, you have to have a lot of structure

This, however, does not mean everyone is free to live any way they want without any restrictions or regulations. Quite the contrary. Policies and procedures govern their everyday life. Kate quoted one resident saying: "When I joined the Dancing Rabbit, I thought I was going to have to throw my watch away. Instead I got a day planner!" They have lots of meetings to discuss issues that come up. "To be successfully hippy-dippy, you have to have a lot of structure," says Kate. They have co-ops for everything. I guess those are formal structures for exchange of goods and services. There's even an co-op for internet access, and, of course, car co-op. Sharing 3 cars among 50 or so members means lots of carpooling, thus, lots of coordinating.

Some of the biggest sore points among members are dogs and children. Those are two kinds of creatures that don't necessarily obey rules, and it does not help that many ecovillagers are opposed to population growth. So there are constant boundary negotiations going on, some people's freedoms pushing against other people's rights.

What do they do for healthcare?

Since they are outside of the corporate world and don't have health insurance, what do they do for healthcare? Most people, unfortunately, go without. Some visit local rural clinics, staffed by nurses. Some are negotiating with health insurance companies to create special plans for intentional communities, though they don't seem to have made a lot of headway. Some justify their opting out of healthcare with an argument "if something happened to me, I'd rather die at home than be hooked up to life support machines in a hospital for weeks". That's an understandable sentiment, but, as Kate Lovelady pointed out, there are many shades of gray between good health and life support machines, and many times a doctor is invaluable.

Living one's values to the maximum

What specific ways of sustainable living have they adopted? They heat houses using waste woods from local small factories, and solar arrays. This does not mean entire houses are covered with them. Solar arrays, Kate says, don't have to be big to power VCRs, refrigerators and power tools. The bathrooms in the ecovillage -- one of the more "exotic" manifestations of sustainable living -- use "humanure" system. That's pretty much what it sounds like. The villagers use human waste for compost. Instead of flushing the toilet, you cover up waste with sawdust. Kate said she was more than a bit uneasy about using them at first, but in reality there's nothing gross or weird about them. The bathrooms mostly just smell like sawdust.

Similarly, the folks who live in ecovillages are not weird. They are mostly just ordinary people; what's different about them, Kate thinks, is dedication they put into living their values. Kate herself practices environmentalism -- she's a vegan, rides a scooter, and wears second-hand clothes. She's considered an extremist even in the Ethical Society. But in the Dancing Rabbit she was perceived as a bourgeois!

As one may expect, living your values to the maximum comes at a cost. Apart from lack of healthcare, there are more personal costs as well. In private conversations with Kate some people expressed their apprehensions regarding loneliness. Someone being one of only three singles in the community, if they don't hit it off with one of the other two people, they'll probably move on in half a year.

Christopher Moore "Lamb": CFI book club discussion

4 people attended the CFI Science And Religion In Fiction book club discussion of Christopher Moore's book "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal". Only one of them has read other novels by Christopher Moore (6-7 or them, in fact, and he was the one who recommended "Lamb" to the group).

"Lamb" is a humorous account of the life of Jesus Christ, as told by his childhood pal Biff. If we believe this novel (and we have as much reason to believe it as the Bible, as far as I'm concerned :-)) Biff was Jesus' trusty sidekick all throughout his life. The story focuses on Jesus' missing years between ages 14 and 30; it shows Jesus and Biff traveling all over the world in search of the three wise men. Their travels take them to Middle East, China, and India, where they get entangled into many fantastic adventures, each one more bizarre than the previous one.

We all acknowledged that "Lamb" is intended as a funny book rather than serious deconstruction of Christianity. It's a humorous what-if scenario of how doctrines of Christianity came together. "I think Christianity has pulled its ethics from a whole lot of sources, and that's what Moore showed here, that made for a serious message in the book, if there is any," said a reader. Our group liked that aspect of it.

A serious message is not easily found in this book, however. A few readers found the book very lightweight. This is not a book you would learn a lot from. But we all found it hilarious. The humor and the adventures are enough to pull you through the book. One reader said he tried to read a passage from the first 100 pages to his wife, and could not finish, because he fell over laughing. Another person compared the humor in this book to that in "The Simpsons". "A lot of Homer's humor is naivete, taking things seriously," said a reader, pointing out parallels with the "Lamb": "For example, when Gaspar tells Biff the parable of the boat -- when you cross the river, do yo carry the boat with you? And Biff asks, well, how big is the boat, etc.?" The very manner of Biff's speech is modern American. But there were undoubtedly wisecrackers in biblical times, too.

The humor in "Lamb" really shines when it's used to explain the origin of Jesus' famous sayings. From "turn the other cheek" to "you will be the rock I'll build my church upon", they all are shown as having arisen from profane, goofy situations, rather than divine revelation.

The ending was found to be a little too sweet by some people. But it's consistent with the general feel-good tone of this novel that stays funny without hardly ever becoming sarcastic. Indeed, a remarkable feature of "Lamb" is that this tale of young Jesus' escapades manages to be completely non-offensive to Christianity. Some of us noted that it has a surprisingly sympathetic view of Jesus. "I really felt for the guy," said a reader, "he was such a good person. He really was. If the Bible was written more like this, I think a lot more people would end up Christians. At least I might have." Chris Moore mentions in the epilogue that practically no religious person ever came up to him and complained. "Lamb" is full of blasphemy, but it's presented so well that it's almost impossible to feel insulted.

I personally found it funny and sad -- or maybe just sad -- that Biff is considered by everyone to be an idiot, when he is really quite brilliant. He's certainly smarter than Jesus himself. He comes up with theories of round Earth, and of evolution, millenia before anyone else. It seems Chris Moore could not resist the irony of Jesus pal discovering theories that are so viciously opposed by fundamentalist Christians.

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"Flightplan": continuing about movies

I had better luck with another movie I watched on my vacation, "Flightplan". Nothing in it posed facial recognition difficulties. I think the key was that it had only one person per gender per age category per hair color, if you know what I mean. :-) The two main male actors (the air marshal and the pilot) differed in age by about 2 decades, so I didn't have trouble telling them apart; same for the female characters -- Jodie Foster and two flight attendants. The flight attendants were both young, but somehow it's much easier for me to distinguish between female faces than male, so telling the two apart didn't present a problem. Another advantage of "Flightplan" was good lighting: well-lit faces carry more visual information.

"Flightplan" is a thriller that takes place entirely on a plane. It's an ultimate anti-in-flight movie. Best not to watch it within a week before flying.

I found it more original than most thrillers I watched (which is not very many). It was hard to predict who the bad guys were or what they wanted, or how they were going to achieve it. My only beef with it is that it had a point-of-view problem. Actually, I'm not sure if point-of-view analysis applies to movies as much as to books. In written fiction, it is necessary for the author to stick with selected point of view, i.e. to show the story happening through the eyes of a chosen character. There can be one or more of them, but the author has to be consistent about who's telling the story. I'm not sure how much this applies to movies in general, but "Flightplan" is told very clearly from the perspective of Jodie Foster's character. Throughout the movie we know only as much as she knows. Then towards the end we are briefly shown who the bad guys are and what is really happening. This detracted from my enjoyment. It's as if the authors thought the've confused the audience so much, the viewers won't figure it out for themselves, and need to be shown all the cards.

I think if you are showing both sides' POVs, you have to do it from the beginning. Then it would be a different kind of movie -- it would be about a cat-and-mouse play between the two parties. I actually prefer "Flightplan" the way it is now, a story of a woman who upsets all the norms of socially acceptable behavior, and stands up to people who tell her she's crazy, as she searches for her missing daughter. Not to mention she pulls off very scary stunts as she crawls up into an airplane's avionics section and rampages through it, scaring the s**t out of the airplane's passengers. All in all, a good piece of escapism.

"Prestige" and reflections on movie-watching techniques

A while ago I mentioned a complete cognitive fiasco I experienced when trying to watch "Prestige". Surprisingly, I managed to understand it on a second try. Subtitles were the key -- thanks to my Twitter buddies who suggested them in response to my real-time cries of frustration! Once I turned the subtitles on, the actors' British accent stopped being a problem. It did not, of course, help with facial recognition. Since I could not tell the two main actors apart until the end, I probably missed some important plot points. "Prestige" is an extra-tricky movie, since this tale of two Victorian era magicians revolves around trickery and misdirection and some characters passing for others. As much as it is an absorbing movie, it's hard work for someone with poor facial recognition skills. For example, in the end it turns out that a certain secondary or tertiary character was very important. Yet not only I couldn't guess the importance of that character, I was not even aware of his existence up until all the secrets of the plot were revealed.

Subtitles are a great technology, but I could use a few others to help me watch movies. There could be a button on the remote control that would pop up bubbles with character names over characters' heads. Those bubbles could contain not just names, but short summaries of the characters' storylines. In other words, the more information in the movie can be conveyed by text, the better for me. Ergo, the best movies are books. :-) But I already knew that.

"Slumdog Millionaire": movie review

"Slumdog Millionaire" is shaping up to be THE must-see movie of the year, so I went to see it. Its freshness comes from its unvarnished portrayal of India's brutal realities, but overall this feel-good drama does not deviate one bit from genre cliches. All the characters eventually are rewarded according to their choices. Somebody who went over to the dark side redeems himself in death. Sorry if that's too spoilerous, but really, you can predict the characters' fates halfway into the movie. The scenes of brutality are disturbing enough to possibly trick you into thinking you are watching Real Art. :-) But this is not a movie that will make you think, unless it's of human rights violations in India. That's a worthy topic, but it's merely an aside in this movie.

I used to watch lots of Indian movies back in my teenage years. In the time and place I grew up in, Indian movies were so popular as to be practically mainstream. I had a friend who liked to revel in the kitschy, over-the-top spirit of Indian dramas, and she used to drag me to see them. This is not, of course, a Bollywood movie per se (it's made by a British director); but I saw in it echos of memes common to Indian movies of my day. For example, there's the Decades-Long Search for the Beloved Missing Person meme that used to drive the plot of every other Indian movie. Usually it was a mother searching for a son separated from her since young age. In Slumdog Millionaire it's a boy searching for a girl he loved since childhood. Anyway. There's also the Improbable Coincidences meme. I'm referring to a certain scene in the finale. Well, it wasn't a completely improbable coincidence, since it was logically set up to be that way. And I have to say it played out cleverly, what with a real-life- and a televised drama converging over a cell phone. I liked it.

So overall it is a good escapist movie. It's heartfelt and sincere, and the characters will make you root for them. Not a bad way to spend 2 hours. But I wouldn't go see it if I wanted some more thought-provoking.

Robert Charles Wilson "Axis": book review

"Axis" is a lot less ambitious than its predecessor "Spin", but what it does it does well. It does not attempt to span decades of history, and so it avoids long stretches of tedium with which "Spin" is riddled. In "Axis" we don't have to watch the characters live their pedestrian lives while mysterious events unfold somewhere in the background. The main characters are always in action, and plot tension is sustained from beginning to end.

However, "Axis" is also a lot less conceptual than "Spin". It does not introduce new ideas, only elaborates (and only minimally) on the ones introduced in "Spin". My biggest disappointment with this book was that we don't really learn more about the Hypotheticals than we knew at the beginning. The idea that the Hypotheticals come to Earth to collect memories and upload them into some kind of vast cosmic network, is so basic and vague that it does not advance our understanding of the Hypotheticals very much. We still don't know why they want those memories, what they are going to do with them, or why did they have to move the Earth billions of years ahead in time. Or why did they attach a parallel universe to it, joined by the Arc. I wonder if the author chose an ignorant and simple-minded protagonist, a 12-year-old child, to communicate with the Hypotheticals, so as not to have to intelligently speculate about all that. I would have been more interested if the communicator was someone educated, especially someone who had studied the Hypotheticals, such as Lise's father. If Lise's father had enough material to write a book about them, he must have had more than just vague speculations?

Apparently the focus of this trilogy is not the Hypotheticals, but how the contact with them will affect humanity. At the end of "Axis" it becomes clear that the third book will be about humanity having to deal with uploading and the "5th age". This makes me look forward to it despite the underwhelming second book.

Although scientific mysteries go unanswered, "Axis" is still a good character-driven novel. With just a few brushstrokes Wilson sets up a wide range of believable characters. There is a determined truth-seeker (Lise); a person whose purpose in life is to preserve the existing order (Lise's ex-husband); a drifter who is nevertheless courageous and likeable (Turk); there are characters who and resist change kicking and screaming, like Lise's mother; and ambitious opportunists who seek to manipulate the change for their own purposes, like Dr. Dvali. For some reason secondary characters like Brian the ex-husband, and Dr. Dvali came through as the most vivid, while the protagonist, Lise, somehow didn't feel like a real person to me. But overall the diverse cast of characters and the plot tension made this book an enjoyable read.

Social Media camp: the Half-Baked game

It's been only 5 months, but I finally wrote a post on the Half-Baked game that was played at the Social Media Camp on July 30, 2008! My first post on Social Media Camp was here.

The Half-Baked game was the most entertaining event in the Social Media Camp. In this game, people are randomly assigned into 6 teams. The goal of each team is to come up with a startup idea and present its business plan to the judges. This being a Social Media Camp, one of the requirements was that the social media aspect should be built into the business plan.

It was fascinating to see how aspiring internet entrepreneurs think. It left me shaking my head: so this is how internet bubbles form! These are the kind of minds that gave us stuff like Pets.com in 2000. But no, it would be unfair to reach sweeping conclusions based on what I saw. 20 minutes is hardly enough time to come up with a business plan that's both original and viable. It was only a game after all.

First, the audience came up with 50 random words, and those words were written on the whiteboard. Each team needed to pick any two words that will make up their company's name. Then they had 20 minutes to come up with a tag line and a business plan. (Preferrably also a logo -- the room was full of people with computers, and I bet a lot of them, like me, had Photoshop).

Here is a sampling of the words suggested by the audience.

Here are the judges' criteria for evaluating the business concepts.

Here are the startup concepts the teams came up with:

Team 1: Buzz Squad -- like GPS for drinking

Team 2: Porn Sucks -- promoting positive porn to save sex workers

Team 3: Beer Buzz -- our team

Team 4: Time Pirates dot AAARGH! -- find a hidden treasure in your calendara

Team 5: Green Ninjas -- making green hot, but not like global warming

Team 6: Love Cookies -- customizable cookies

The whole article can be found on my web site. The pictures from the Half-Baked game and the rest of the Social Media camp can be found in my photo gallery.

Patrice Sarath "Gordath Wood": FACT reading group discussion

13 people attended the discussion of "Gordath Wood". 5 people have read Patrice Sarath's short stories before. Everybody except 3 people started the book. 7 finished it. The rest were planning to finish it.

"Gordath Wood" starts with two young women, Lynn and Kate, venturing out (separately) into the woods in search of a runaway horse. Unbeknownst to themselves, they each cross into a parallel world resembling medieval Europe. Before they know it, the two heroines are dragged into a war between two feudal lords. As they try to find a way to come back to their world, or find their mission in the one they ended up in, it turns out that the portal between the worlds has become unstable, threatening destruction in both the parallel and their own world.

The two women are very involved with horses, and so big parts of the text revolve around horse riding and care. Several readers observed that the author taught them more about horses than they wanted to know; however, she did it in a non-boring way. The horse specifics are woven into the plot and don't overshadow the story.

Character-driven, not a concept-driven story

Everybody agreed this was a character-driven rather than concept-driven story. Several people liked its vivid, realistic characters. The villains weren't all bad, and good people weren't all good. Still, not everybody found the characters realistic, noting that the bad guys -- the general, the detective -- acted too stupid to be believable. "The villains were so illogical in their behavior that they seemed just devices to have tension in the book," said a reader. Examples: the general had Kate flogged after she brought him weapons and radios; the detective went after Joe, and later after Lynn, for no reason. Kate might have been the most likeable character of them all, but even she occasionally did reckless, impulsive things. Some group members explained it as Kate merely being a teenager: having raised teenagers themselves, they were familiar with those patterns of behavior.

Most people thought Kate was more interesting than the other female protagonist, Lynn. One reader commented that Lynn mainly existed for men to fall in love with her. Kate, on the other hand, was more active. "She had more interactions with people on widely diferent levels, from people who tended the horses, to women who did menial labor, to the doctor and the general. We saw a lot more of the culture through her," said a reader. Some readers could identify with Joe more than any other character; others said they could not identify with a drifter. A few readers could not identify with any character.

Despite a cover that suggested (at least to some people) Harlequin romance, this book notably lacked romance cliches. Even though some characters fall in love, those love stories do not end in a typical romance novel way. One person liked the author's "non-girly" approach to relationships, and declared this book suitable reading for men. Yet a reader, regardless of gender, who looks for something more than character development in a SF/F story may not find it here. A few people said they prefer a genre book to have at least some unusual conceptual element, but there were none in this book. So, enjoyable as it was, this type of story would never become their main reading fare.

For a first novel, it's...

Since "Gordath Wood" is Patrice Sarath's first novel, there were a lot of "for a first novel, it's..." judgments floating around. The style and characaterization in "Gordath Wood" was found to be better than that of many other debut novels this group has read over the recent years. Readers thought "Gordath Wood" balanced many points of view successfully, which is not easy for a beginner author. On the other hand, the multitude of viewpoints confused some people, especially since some characters changed sides in the war. It didn't help that the viewpoint often jumped back and forth between two characters within one chapter.

One reader thought the story suffered from serious logistical problems. He thought some characters' location, direction, and speed of movement did not compute. You'll have some people at point A, and after a certain time you'll find them at point B, where they could not have gotten so fast. It was also not clear whether the portal of travel between world was located between two rock formations, or if it spanned a larger area of the woods.

Beside some fuzzy travel-related math, the world portrayed in "Gordath Wood" was found inconsistent on a larger conceptual level. On one hand, nature looked the same on both sides of the portal, and people on both worlds spoke some dialect of English, which suggested the parallel world was an alternative Earth. But the stars in the sky were different, which would imply it's not the same planet. One reader said he would have been curious to see if Patrice Sarath had worked out the relationship of the two worlds in her head, or it if was just handwaving. Most people suspected the latter. To her credit, though, the author did not employ many arbitrary kinds of magic, avoiding the problems other writers introduce when they pull out magic objects out of the hat at a character's convenience. It was also good that the characters of "Gordath Wood" did not cross back and forth between worlds at will. They stayed on one side or the other for most of the story.

Personally what I liked the most was bringing the economics of our world into that of a medieval society. And I don't mean just the fact that the modern humans smuggled guns into the medieval world. I was most impressed with the twist that happens at the end and explains some characters' true motivations for the war. They were going to take advantage of the medieval country's untapped natural resourcwes. I know this has already been done by Charles Stross in "Merchant Princes" series, but Charles Stross' characters didn't capture me the way Patrice Sarath's did.

Inconsistencies notwithstanding, most people enjoyed the story and were looking forward to reading the sequel. One reader, though, was disappointed to find out there's a sequel: she thought all the plot ends were wrapped too perfectly in the first book.

After the meeting the group met with Patrice Sarath for dinner, where she answered some of our questions about this book and its characters, as well as her future plans. For example, she told us that Kate's character wasn't based on Patrice's teenage daughter. It was based on Patrice herself, or rather the kind of person she perceived herself to be in her adolescence.

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George Hrab concert in Austin

George Hrab was one of the line of atheist singers and songwriters (Roy Zimmerman, Paul Martin a.k.a Aspiring Atheist, Linda Chorney) that performed for the Center For Inquiry Austin in the recent months. He gave a concert at La Madeleine on November 22, 2008.

I was impressed by his songwriting more than that of others (except maybe Roy Zimmerman, who is quite witty too). Hrab's lyrics are fast -- both in the sense that his tongue goes a mile a minute, and also that they are so full of unexpected witticisms and intellectual references, you blink and you'll miss them. Speaking of Blink -- Malcom Gladwell's book by the same title -- the musician takes a jab at its premise in his song "Assumption". Here's a YouTube video of it.

He takes on all sorts of skepticism-related topics. One of his songs' topic was "grief rapists", psychics that will "communicate" -- for a fee, of course -- with your dead loved one, making money off people's grief and prolonging their suffering. As he says, if your dead loved one was really able to bend time and space and laws of nature to communicate with the living, do you really think the only thing he/she had to say would be along the lines of "you own a locket"?

Here is the video of his live performance of this song. It may or may not be called "Why would they only speak to you?" (That's a line in the chorus.)



Then there is a song "think for yourself" that admonishes the reader to use their mind and read the fine print. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Here is the video:



Many of his songs do not explicitly deal with nonbelief in god(s), but address some of the universal themes like relationships or grief. "Small comfort" is a song he wrote after his beloved dog died, during the time at which he had to really resist a comforting fantasy that his dog is living carefree somewhere in the doggy heaven. So he sang about comfort that can be found in an atheist's view of death: at least his dog would not have to miss him. If the dog passed away with a thought of waking up and going for a walk, that was it -- he did not get to find out otherwise.

A video of the grief song:



Then there was a memorable song "How do you do what you do", dedicated to all those people that are more successful than us at the things we strive to do. In the presence of people who are superior to you in the the area that really matters to you it's very hard not to fold and give up. This song, with its edgy, anxious melody, has stuck with me.

A video of "How do you do what you do"



Then again, he had some very outspokenly atheistic songs, like "God is not great" (a YouTube video) -- the same title as Christopher Hitchens' book. Hrab said he secretly hopes Hitchens will get to hear it and maybe like it. This would not be unprecedented, as Hrab's experience shows. He spent a lot of his between-song patter talking about his encounters with famous skeptics and atheists. At one convention he introduced himself to Mike Chapman, the great-great...-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. Chapman had him floored by recognizing his work: "George Hrab? You're funny." Hrab recounts shaking hands with Chapman as "I touched Charles Darwin's DNA!" He had more such encounters with the who-is-who of the freethought pantheon (so to speak :-)). The crowning moment came when James Randi, sitting in the front row of Hrab's concert, was singing along -- he knew the words of Hrab's songs! Hrab fake-swooned when he recounted this. Then again, one must wonder if such idol-worship doesn't run counter to the spirit of freethought? :-)

His most memorable song was "brainsbodyboth", about his dream girl who would have a killer body and brains to match. It's full of funny and politically incorrect double entendres, and each line gives you something to chuckle at (or occasionally cringe). The line that really gave me a pause was where he compares his dream woman's brain and body to a... wait for it... "domain name that's case-specific". I'm not completely sure what that meant. Perhaps there's some kind of a visual analogy created by uppercase and lowercase letters strung together? Hmmm.... :-)



Another source of amusement in his concert was audience's questions. At the beginning of the show he asked people to write down questions for him (about anything in the world) on pieces of paper, and he was going to answer them during the show. He promised to reward the author of the best question with a "Think for yourself" t-shirt. The slip of paper with the question he deemed the best held these words:

" "? This is a homeopatic question.

So we had funny people in the audience on par with the performer -- our own CFI'ers no less!

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A Twitter paradox

I have a question for Twitterati. I see a lot of people on Twitter begging for new followers. They want to get their follower count up to a magic, round number, such as 2000 or 4000. I wonder what do they do when new people follow them after they reach that number? Will it break the magic and the race will start all over again, from 2001 to 3000? But there are also a few practical questions:

1. Do those people follow every follower back? (Aside from spammers, of course.) Because it's not fair to beg people to follow you if you have no intent to reciprocate.

2. If so, when do they have time to read updates of 2000 people? I can barely keep up with the 100+ people I follow.

3. Maybe their secret is that they don't read the updates of everyone they follow? While the Twitter web interface doesn't let you group your followees into those you read and those you don't, there may be Twitter clients that let you create groups, filtering out the wheat from the chaff. I don't know because I don't use any clients. If that's what those people really do -- read only the VIP updates while ignoring the unwashed masses -- then it's doubly unfair. The ignored followers don't even know their updates aren't being read.

So I'm curious to know how this works. Not follow back, secretly ignore the bulk of followers, or make an honest effort to read everyone's updates and not get anything else done? I hope Teh Interwebs can enlighten me.

Interesting startups at the Austin Tech Happy Hour: part 2

Another startup I chatted with at the Austin Tech Happy Hour was SocialWare. It integrates with social networks, but for different purposes than Social Agency. They are making tools like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn suitable for corporate communications. That includes communications between employees, and company's communications with its customers or vendors. The idea is that employees, customers and vendors will use those tools in the same way as they do socially -- e.g. by posting status updates -- to keep all interested parties updated on the issues they're working on. For that, the information that passes through those channels needs to be secure. So the SocialWare software intercepts those communications on the company's firewall and then does some kind of magic so that only the authorized parties would see the updates. The rest of Facebook or Twitter visitors, if they looked at a person's X feed, would only see "X sent a private message". Those updates are stored on the company's servers, not on the social networks' servers.

It sounds like a neat idea, although I'm unclear how exactly they enable the information to be seen by the authorized eyes only and prevent it from crossing company's boundaries. At one point Cameron Cooper, the guy who gave the demo, mentioned that a particular safety feature depends on people using a separate Facebook profile for work, so that it would be invisible to outside friends. But this kind of defeats the purpose of using the widespread social networking tools in the first place. The only reason I would use Facebook to communicate with my customers / vendors would be if I was already spending lots of times on Facebook as it is. That is to say, I would have to be already participatting in Facebook for "play". That way I would not need separate software for work communications. I could avoid installing another program on my computer and having another source of interruptions and another window to clutter my desktop. This of course implies that the employee is socializing on Facebook while at work. dMany companies don't allow that. (The smarter ones realize it's a harmless distraction that actually increases morale. :-))

But if I'm not using Facebook for play, I might as well install use separate, dedicated instant messaging software, fortified with extra security features that corporate communications require. So I don't see much logic here.

That's not to say that SocialWare's premise is flimsy: it is possible that some of their social network integration makes use of your "play" profile while keeping the communications secure. As I said, there were probably many details I missed in what Cameron said. (The room was NOISY!)

I was impressed by both companies, but especially Social Agency. It seems they've got a little closer to answering the big question of how to monetize social networks. Of course, their product is just a different twist on marketing / advertising. But companies might like it better to have their brand integrated into people's feeds -- woven into the threads of their daily lives, if you will -- than to sell ads that are displayed on the web page's margins and ignored by visitors.

More pictures from Austin Tech Happy hours are in my photo gallery

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Interesting startups at the Austin Tech Happy Hour: part 1

At the December Austin Tech Happy Hour I saw demos of two Austin startups. Both of their names start with Social. Both do integration with Facebook and other networks, in two very different ways.

Social Agency creates Facebook and MySpace applications for their customers. (Actually, I'm not completely sure if MySpace has applications the way Facebook does. But apparently it has something like that, since Lee Parker said they are doing a MySpace integration as well.) Their customers are companies who want their brands to be closer integrated into social networks. Social Agency used our local NPR radio station kut.org as an example for their demo. They have created a Texas Music Matters application for Facebook. So when a Facebook user adds this application to their profile and starts "doing things" with it (though I haven't investigated what kind of Facebook'y things you can do on Texas Music Matters), those things will show up in your Facebook feed. Maybe the TMM song of the day will be embedded in your feed every day, or something like that? I didn't ask the Social Agency guy for specific examples. The bar was LOUD. :-) In any case I thought it was a neat idea.

More pictures from Austin Tech Happy hours are in my photo gallery.

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China Mieville "The Scar": book review

China Mieville's "The Scar" is set in the same universe as "Perdido Street Station", but is not a sequel. It follows a very strange journey of a woman named Bellis, as she flees New Crobuzon by boat in the post-Perdido-Street-Station fallout. Her goal is to emigrate to a faraway corner of Bas Lag, but her trip takes a wrong -- or rather, strange -- turn when the ship is hijacked by, and incorporated into, a floating conglomerate of ships called Armada. Armada is, loosely speaking, a pirate society. It belongs to no country and obeys no laws except their own. It is governed by several mysterious figures. Soon it becomes apparent that Armada targeted this particular ship for deeper reasons than just to enslave its passengers and take their stuff. The leaders of Armada seem to have their own goals they don't share with the common citizens. Since their fate is at the mercy of the rulers, the captives have a strong interest in finding out what's in store for Armada. Plotting and scheming ensues, punctuated by encounters with improbable sea creatures, and carriers of ancient, secret knowledge.

Plot tension not sustained

The premise of the novel is interesting, yet this book suffers from the same affliction as "Perdido Street Station", only to a much larger extent. The plot does not progress seamlessly. It lurches along in fits and starts. Individual characters' mysteries, along with hints that something Big is about to happen to Armada, may be enough to sustain the reader's interest, but not very consistently. This book did not keep me glued to it. The plot tension rises and lets up, but not in any meaningful rhythm. Just when you hope the plot is thickening, it suddenly plateaus and diffuses, and we're back to following Bellis's mundane daily activities. Yes, life in a floating anarchist state apparently can get very mundane, even indistinguishable from a middle class urban dweller's existence. This could be partly because Armada put Bellis to work as a librarian. We get to follow her along as she goes to her boring job, sulks, pines for New Crobuzon, and makes painful attempts to connect with people who are positively bad for her. Well, she meets a few good folks too, but somehow her interactions with them aren't nearly as interesting as with the bad guys. :-). They bring tension to the plot, rekindling our interest just as we were about to forget why we were reading this book.

The ending does indeed justify the expectation that something Big is bound to happen, but it does not directly follow from the events in the plot. I got a feeling that the key plot threads were tied up retroactively, rather than being thought out from the beginning. The ending is not really predictable, but neither is it convincing. It feels a bit arbitrary.

Interesting characters compensate for plot deficiencies

That said, "Scar" has a lot to recommend it. I found the characters more interesting than in "Perdido Street Station", perhaps because I could identify with the brooding, misanthropic, individualistic, suspicious Bellis. She despises Armada's attempts to integrate her. Even when she relents, she continues to secretly weave her own plans. But as much as she resists it, her perspective of both New Crobuzon and of Armada starts to change when she meets people who were oppressed in New Crobuzon and found freedom, paradoxically, as citizens of Armada. The ambiguity of her situation and the promise of freedom in captivity is one aspect of the story that makes it interesting to see how it plays out. In the process she makes some critical mistakes and suffers harshly for doing what she thought was right.

I have to say I was surprised to learn the point China Mieville tried to make with Bellis's fate. In one interview he said Bellis's punishment for doing what she thought was right goes to show that a person's fantasy of singlehandedly saving the world is futile, and change can only be brought about by organized mass resistance. If this was the moral of Bellis story, I don't think it came through very well. Bellis did not act out of exaggerated sense of her own importance. She honestly thought she had the right information and simply could not stand by and allow a disaster to happen. There was no way for her to know the information she was acting on was wrong.

Still, the message that only the masses can effect change came through loud and clear in the end for different reasons. It just wasn't the reason for Bellis' failure.

Several secondary characters also make this book worth reading. As is often the case in fantasy, the mysterious bad guys are more interesting than the goody-goodies. :-) There are hints at a budding romance between characters who would make a rather unlikely couple, and I was very interested to see how it was going to turn out.

Consistent worldbuilding

A good thing about "The Scar" is also that it is not overloaded with monsters. Sure, there is a healthy dose of them, and some of encounters with them are more or less gratuitous (the episode with blood-sucking anophelii seemed like a detour from the main story) but they are less chaotic and more integrated into the plot than in "Perdido Street Station". Since most of the book takes place in the sea, all the creatures encountered along the way are part of the ocean ecology. So the worldbuilding in this novel seems more orderly and therefore more convincing than "Perdido Street Station".

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