Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Blog Moveage

I've set up a new blog here: http://blog.daviddufty.com/. I'll mainly be using it for blogging about my book, Lost in Transit: The Strange Story of the Philip K Dick Android.

It was fun blogging here but I haven't done it for a couple of years now. My focus is on writing larger, more substantive pieces. Specifically, books. I may one day take up blogging again on issues about science and philosophy, and if so, it may be back here at time-etc.com.

But right now I have a lot of time commitments, and blogging is an indulgence I can't afford, especially for something as whimsical and unfocused as this site. Anyway, head over to my new blog at David F Dufty, and if you want to read more in-depth analysis by me, well... you'll just have to buy my book!

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Lost in Transit


Coming soon to Australia and New Zealand:
"LOST IN TRANSIT: The Strange Story of the Philip K Dick Android" by David Dufty.
You can already pre-order online if you are so inclined.

LOST IN TRANSIT is the strange but true story of the Philip K Dick android that was built in 2005 by Hanson Robotics and the University of Memphis and was exhibited at Chicago NextFest. It was lost on a flight to San Francisco in December 2005 and has never been seen since.

By the way, I might be setting up a proper standalone blog soon, a non-blogspot one with my name and everything. I've set up a twitter account but that will no doubt not be the end of the story.

Friday, August 28, 2009

the Floating Plastic Island

Maybe you've wondered what happens to all that plastic that drops through grates, blows into rivers, and floats down storm water drains. Wonder no more. It's forming a massive vortex in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, known as the Great Ocean Garbage Patch. or Great Pacific Garbage Patch. You can't see it from satellite pictures because a lot of it is floating just under the surface.
"Garbage Patch" is not a very appealing name. We all understand that it's not good for the environment, but let's spice it up a little, eh? Maybe we should call it the Great Floating Plastic Island instead.
Scientists are wondering: is it getting into the food chain? Is it breaking down and releasing toxins, and is that something to worry about? Or is this massive trash vortex benign, a curious echo of human activity.
Is it nature's way of picking up after us?

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Why this blog is dormant

I've pretty much stopped putting new content on this blog, for a number of reasons. Here's why.

  • I have a demanding full-time job;
  • We've recently moved to a new city and I don't yet have internet at home;
  • My father is very ill and this takes up quite a bit of my time;
  • I am working on a major project - a book - that takes up any free time that I happen to have outside of work and family.

However, I do like the idea of blogs and having a blog, so maybe one day... who knows? If I have made any errors here, it was in trying to create substantial, insightful content rather than just whimsical observation. Blogs, I think, are ultimately about whimsy.

If you want to read stuff I've written in the past, here are some of my non-whimsy articles:

Is the Large Hadron Collider safe?
Information decay
Why time travel is impossible


Cheers.

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

modern myths

A list of modern myths.
I agree with about half of these.

UPDATE:

Goaded by an anonymous - and rather snippy - commenter, I have decided to elaborate.

My original post to this simply said that “I agree with about half of these.” I didn't have time (at the time) to articulate my thoughts, but I wanted to record my reaction anyway, with the idea that I might come back and respond in more detail.
An anonymous reader posted a rather sarcastic response, suggesting that since I didn't agree with everything in the article, I therefore must hold absurd and stupid beliefs, such as “shouldn't people on detox send their waste to the toxic waste disposal place ?”

So here's the detailed response.

Basically, this article promised much, and didn’t deliver.
This is a pity, because there are so many “modern myths” and misconceptions, that it seemed like a wasted opportunity.
So lets go through them...

1. The myth of meaning.

People think words mean things and that they know what they mean. Both claims are often untrue.
I guess meaning is a myth if you subscribe to post-modernism. That’s very last decade, but let's not quibble. It's true that meaning is -as a friend of mine would say- "a big mess."

2. The myth of religious belief
People say they believe in life after death but still grieve when people die. Christians try to get rich and Muslims gamble. The state of mind here is unaccountable in the same way as that of the child who pretends that the tree stump is a bear and then becomes genuinely frightened of it, while knowing all the time that it is a tree stump. Like the child's game, the grown-up one deserves no special respect, but provided it keeps away from the serious side of life it can remain harmless enough.
In other words, religious belief doesn’t exist, because people don’t act as if their beliefs are real.
This is easily refuted. I present Mother Teresa and Jonestown as two examples.

3. The myth of British values
This holds that there is a special system of British values, of 24-carat export quality.
This was a sensible point to make, but the sneering tone undermined it somewhat.

4. The myth of the scientist
A version of this myth is that something called science is a self-propelled self-governing activity of special virtue, dedicated solely to truth.
Let’s break that down into its components and see which parts are myth and which parts are true.

Self-propelled- partly true. It would be impossible to stop “science” from being conducted, but on the other hand it could be slowed by cutting funding
Self-governing – true
Special virtue – not true; that part is indeed a myth
Dedicated solely to truth – true.

There doesn't seem to be much of of a myth component to this myth.

5. The myth of management
“This claims that people can be managed like warehouses and airports, and that some other people are especially good at it. This is entirely wrong”
I’m looking around, and you know, people are being managed. We might not like it, but it’s happening. Managers are telling them what to do and they are doing it. Not only that, but some people seem to be better at doing this than others.

There is an actual myth buried in here: the idea that there is some kind of innate skill called “management ability,” that some people have and others don’t, that can be transferred across domains.

6. The myth of democracy
“By and large, even in systems with advanced educational resources, the people cannot do better than take their news and opinions from the likes of Rupert Murdoch”
The fact that people don’t pay much attention to the news, or that the news is often of poor quality, doesn’t mean democracy is broken.

7. The myth of culture
As it occurs in phrases such as multiculturalism, working-class culture and the like, this is the myth that there is a definite, admirable, rooted traditional way of being, and that it must be valued and cosseted and, above all, respected. All this is poppycock. Tempores mutant et nos mutamus in illis - the times change and we change with them.
I agree completely.

8. The myth of equal respect
The belief that everyone deserves equal respect and that anything else is discriminatory and elitist. The truth is the exact opposite: discrimination is a virtuous activity and elites are to be admired.
Where does my uncle with Downs’ Syndrome fit in to this world-view?

9. The myth of choice and competition
This is the idea that people are better off, more free, more liberated, if they can choose which of two equally toxic hospitals they can use, instead of being offered just one good one.
Maybe this myth alludes to issues specific to Britain and health care that I'm not aware of. At any rate, I wasn't sure what the overall point was. That free markets don't work? That health care should not be privatised? That dividing resources produces poor outcomes? It's not clear.

10. The myth of the public service ethos
The idea that sometimes people will do something because it is the right thing to do, not because it affords them any advantage. This was once true, but constant repetition by politicians and economists that it is a myth has successfully made it one.
I assume this one was a joke.

Monday, April 21, 2008

we are alone

From Discovery News:

Given the amount of time it has taken for human beings to evolve on Earth and the fact that the planet will no longer be habitable in a billion years or so when the sun brightens, Andrew Watson, with the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia in Norwich, says we are probably alone.

Earthlings overcame horrendous odds -- Watson pegs it at less than 0.01 percent over 4 billion years -- to achieve life. The harsh reality is that we don't have much time left.


This is basically modern support for the so-called "rare earth" theory, that says that intelligent life is an improbable abberation. If it's true, then SETI is a waste of time.

The problem is establishing the probability of an event after the event has actually occurred. While this is a knotty problem for statisticians, human brains are wired to perform such calculations quickly (but wrongly).
"We're here." goes the rule-of-thumb reasoning. "So how unlikely could it be for us to have evolved? Not very!"
However the fallacy of the reasoning can be seen if you look at the point of view of someone who has won the lottery. "It happened to me, so how unlikely can it be?"
Pretty unlikely.
The same might be true for the existence of intelligent life. We're cosmic lottery winners.