June 23, 2007

the two-stupid-question IQ test

file under: thoughts about things

a study released a few days ago shows that eldest children have the highest IQs in families, statistically speaking. i'm not interested in writing about that article or the study or IQ as a function of birth order. no, what i want to write about today is an NPR rebuttal to that story in which a reporter went around, found some eldest children, and did an impromptu IQ test.

this was a very tongue-in-cheek interview, but it still bugged me what the reporter did (or rather, how he did it). he asked two questions whose goal was supposedly to determine how smart someone was. the questions?

1. what is the square root of π?
2. what are the six types of quarks?

bueller? anyone?

...

1. π is not a perfect square, hence has no exact square root; it's pretty close to 1.77425. this lack of an exact square root is actually true of most numbers. in fact, the square root of 2 is not even defined (it's actually irrational).
2. the six types of quarks are up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.

better answers to these two questions are of course (1) let me get a calculator, and (2) who cares.

first, of course it's silly to think that you could see how intelligent someone was based on only two questions. it's pretty clear this was part of the tongue in cheek in this interview. second, the study related to IQ, and one could argue that there isn't a perfect correlation between IQ and intelligence (no comment on this from the reporter). third, these questions have little to no bearing on intelligence. the thing i can't figure out is whether or not the interviewer thought this was the case.

neither of these questions is difficult, but they rely on bodies of knowledge not needed in everyday life: number theory and particle physics. an inability to answer these questions accurately would mean you're ignorant of these particular facts, not stupid. this is especially true of the second question, which is based on rote memorization and thus equivalent to asking someone, "who is the author of Portait of the Artist as a Young Man?"

it seems to me that most people, when asked these questions, wouldn't be able to answer them, and might feel stupid because of it. why not pick questions that were either impossible to answer (e.g., can anything move faster than light?) or that were incredibly silly (e.g., how many politicians does it take to change a light bulb?). if you picked ridiculous questions on either end of the spectrum, it seems you'd get a laugh, make your point that two questions don't an IQ test make, and not make anyone wonder whether or not they were being made fun of.

then again, maybe i'm just overthinking things. it just irks me when intelligence is conflated with knowledge, and that's what i felt this NPR interviewer did with his two stupid questions.

Posted: 06.23.07 at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

June 22, 2007

woken furies

file under: books
tags: review , science fiction

the third novel in Richard K. Morgan's takeshi kovacs trilogy did not disappoint. kovacs (aka micky serendipity in this installment) is back in true form: ruthless, disaffected, unhappy, and yet strangely sympathetic.

spoilers to follow....i mean it.

...

kovacs is back on his home planet (Harlan's World), and man is he pissed. i mean, really pissed. a very specific group of individuals has raised his ire this time; it's not just his normal "kill anyone who looks at me sideways" sort of rage. this time, it's really personal. it takes awhile before we find out who, exactly, he is butchering ruthlessly and why. as it turns out, all of the high-level functionaries in a particular religion on Harlan's World are destined to reach the promised land a little sooner than expected...

this is just backdrop for a broader story arc where a fugitive Kovacs becomes involved with a group of mercenaries, one of whom (Sylvie) turns out to be carrying the soul of long-dead revolutionary leader Quellcrist Falconer inside her head. or not. it could just be a glitch in the matrix, a partial personality construct that got uploaded into some sophisticated mindware used by Sylvie and others like her for hardcore military command-and-control missions. whether or not it's the real Quellcrist is immaterial; her potential power as a symbol to reignite revolution on Harlan's World is enough to get everyone excited, despots and revolutionaries alike.

the leaders of Harlan's World decide that Sylvie needs to be procured to prevent revolution and its discontents. they learn that Kovacs is a part of the group running with her, and so decide to do something quite ingenious: they reincarnate a younger version of Kovacs to hunt him down and bring Sylvie to them. you see, it turns out that prior to the first book in the Kovacs series (see my previous entry on Altered Carbon), Harlan's leaders had managed to create an illegal copy of Kovacs and keep it on digital ice, just waiting for the day when a young, ruthless Envoy would come in handy. and what better occasion than the need to hunt down an older version of that same Envoy?

morgan explores at least three separate themes in Woken Furies: revolution, the role of religion in society, and the nature of identity. not your average topics for a sci-fi thriller. the exploration of revolution is interesting, that of religion is intensely biased (negatively, as you might expect), and that of identity the most interesting. it' all good stuff, but i'll only touch on the latter.

imagine you were a fugitive, and you were being hunted by a younger copy of yourself. can you outsmart yourself? are age and experience enough to outwit the same intellect? and what of the encounter between the two copies of you? the young copy looks at the old and judges: is that who i thought i would be? the older version looks at the youth through the distorting lens of memory; would he look with fondness or disdain? how do we reconcile our visions of ourselves, both looking forward and looking back? i thought morgan did a good job of exploring this conundrum, and the way our visions of our own futures often don't match the reality.

in summary, another great book by a gifted writer. it's thrilling, well-written science fiction with some sophisticated ideas. highly recommended.

Posted: 06.22.07 at 6:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 17, 2007

our one-year anniversary

file under: my life

one year ago today, elaine and i got married. i'd marry her again, and a hundred times more. it's hard to believe it's been a year. i suspect, when we're old and gray, we'll look back and say something similar. i look forward to that day and all the days in between.

how could you not with guns and a spirit like hers?

Posted: 06.17.07 at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

ryan and his dad

file under: my life

the photo above was taken around the end of 1974 when i was just about 8 years old. my dad had asked a friend of his to take some photos of us, and then to render them as mixed media artwork (which he did, with pencil and washes of vibrant orange and yellow that only the 70s could have produced). one of those pictures still hangs on my dad's wall today, along with some of the crude pen and ink drawings i did as a child.

thirty-odd years pass, and then the photo above is taken, one year ago today, on my wedding day – father and son, standing together on a day of immeasurable happiness after four decades riding the rolloercoaster of life. i would never have survived that ride, and enjoyed it the way i have, were it not for him.

thank you, Dad, for 40 years of standing by my side.

Posted: 06.17.07 at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

walk the line

file under: movies
tags: review

i didn't know much about Johnny Cash before seeing Walk the Line. i was familiar with some of his more famous songs (e.g., Ring of Fire), and had heard a great interview Cash did with terry gross on fresh air a few years before he died. oh yeah, and that he covered a nine inch nails song on his last album. that was about all i knew. pretty sad, given his status and importance as a country singer and music icon of the 20th century. i wanted to see the film to fill in the gaps, and it did a great job.

in a nutshell, i'd say the man in black walked a line, and spent a fair amount of time on the wrong side of it, consumed by addiction and self-destructive behavior. it makes for an interesting story, given the historical import and the impact the characters had on music, and the film told it well. joaquin phoenix and reese witherspoon both turned in fantastic performances, and created a believable depiction of a complex drama between two talented performers. the story wasn't totally unexpected, and the film didn't break any moviemaking ground, but it was very entertaining and completely evoked the time period in which it was set. definitely recommended if you have any interest in the man or his music.

Posted: 06.17.07 at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

June 16, 2007

one year minus one day

file under: my life
tags: elaine

Posted: 06.16.07 at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

marc andreesen's top 10 science fiction novelists of the 00s

file under: links
tags: science fiction

marc andreesen of Netscape fame has started a blog. while you might expect it to contain thoughts about the internet and tech industry (which it does), it's also a bit more personal. a recent entry lists his top 10 science fiction novelists of the 00s. i thought a few of my readers might be interested in his list; i certainly was, since it seems he and i share similar taste in sci fi.

Posted: 06.16.07 at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 11, 2007

black plague caused by ninjas

file under: links
tags: humor

ask a ninja about colds. in his own special way, he will tell you everything you need to know, and provide some useful fashion tips along the way.

Posted: 06.11.07 at 1:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 9, 2007

year zero

file under: music , thoughts about things
tags: alternate reality game , nine inch nails , review

Nine Inch Nails (aka Trent Reznor) have released their latest album: Year Zero.

the nutshell review? there isn't one. it's a distressing, thought-inspiring, sprawling, frustrating, visionary effort put forth by one of the great innovators in electronic music. it's an attempt to merge art and political statement using digital tools and trickery. it's an alternate reality game. it's a brilliant "concept album," but it's not an album in the LP-sense of the word – it's an aggregate of ideas and media and information whose combination reveals an unsettling and dystopian vision for modern society, all wrapped in an aurally compelling package.

...

i've been a die-hard NIN fan ever since the release or Pretty Hate Machine. my life was consumed in fiery confusion at the time of its release, and it became a place for me to retreat during my struggles to make the transition from child to adult, to navigate my self-indulgent passage through loneliness and anger. it was a great listen, one that helped defined the entire industrial electronica genre of which i was a great fan. he followed with the brilliant Broken, the inspired and seminal Downward Spiral, the bloated and somewhat self-indulgent Fragile, and the half-listenable-but-safe With Teeth, which followed a loooong six-year hiatus containing scattered singles and tour materials.

after Downward Spiral, he sort of lost his way...who knows why? stardom, undiscerning idolatry, drug addiction and self-abuse...the usual litany of pop stardom woes followed by subsequent decay into mediocrity (at least in the minds of some). thankfully, reznor pulled out of his own downward spiral and produced something to rival or surpass the album of the same name. the new album looks out more than in, taking on multiple perspectives and voices, while still holding onto many of the core themes that have woven themselves through all of his work (god, religion, oppression, power, control).

the music

the album has been reviewed in a number of places. the year zero wikipedia entry has a list of fifteen or so critical reviews. as with most of NIN's later efforts, this one evokes a mixed reaction, ranging from brilliant to [shrug] to bollocks. this is to be expected, and despite the fact that i love it and can't stop listening to it, your mileage may vary significantly.

reznor recorded the bulk of the album himself while on tour. he plays almost all instruments, wrote every song. musically, this album pulls from the usual bag of NIN tricks, and to good effect. it's sonically varied as it progresses from beginning to end, wandering from kinetic industrial guitars to pulsing, danceable beats to quiet, earnest melodies and messages buried in whispers and static. standout tracks for me include: Capital G, God Given, Meet Your Master, Another Version of the Truth, In This Twilight, and Zero Sum. the album passes through an arc, one that starts with The Beginning of the End and ends with the affecting and thoughtful Zero Sum. songs represent the perspectives of some of the different personas and organizations in this dystopian vision of society.

zero sum is particularly moving. it's a look back at the (future) wasteland that we've created through our shortsightedness, our selfishness, and we're living in a twilight, one where the coming night may or may not end. a sample:

they're starting to open up the sky
they're starting to reach down through
and it feels like we're living in that split-second
of a car crash
and time is slowing down
and if we only had a little more time
and this time is all there is
do you remember the time we
and all the times we
and should have
and were going to
i know
and i know you remember
how we could justify it all
and we knew better
in our hearts we knew better
and we told ourselves it didn't matter
and we chose to continue
and none of that matters anymore
in the hour of our twilight
and soon it will all be said and done
and we will all be back together as one
if we will continue at all

at the end of it all, reznor doesn't seem to take hope in much, or if he does, he doesn't vocalize it. the future could be very grim indeed if his vision came to pass...but that's probably the point: shake our collective shoulders hard enough so that we invidually do what we can to foment positive political, social and environmental change.

politics and Year Zero

Year Zero was a political concept before it was the title of a NIN album. from the Wikipedia entry above:

The idea behind Year Zero is that all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed or discarded and a new revolutionary culture must replace it, starting from scratch. All history of a nation or people before Year Zero is largely irrelevant, as it will (as an ideal) be purged and replaced from the ground up.

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge originated this term, and followed it with well-documented atrocities and suppression of civil liberties for the good of the state. Year Zero (as appropriated by NIN) imagines a time 15 years in the future where the international calendar has been reset by the US and a Coalition for Peace, where Church and State have merged to fight the onslaught of global terrorism, where drugs are used to control the population, where freedom is a privilege, not a right.

Year Zero – alternate reality game

the music album Year Zero is only one small piece of a much larger puzzle. Reznor and his compatriots have constructed a large-scale alternate reality game (ARG) that houses the story behind Year Zero (YZ). the game has been unfolding through an elaborate series of hints and clues scattered across both the real world and the internet (USB flash drives left at concerts, MP3 files with hidden clues (see below), web sites, hidden urls, unlinked images on the web, album artwork, and telephone recordings). it started with bold letters on a concert t-shirt, which when strung together, led people to the web site iamtryingtobelieve.com. this hinted at the upcoming album, led to more web sites in the fictional universe being created, and started the game.

as an example of the kind of hints that have been scattered around the world and Net, the first album track was "leaked" on a USB flash drive left at a concert. it contained a high-quality version of My Violent Heart. it also contained 8 or 9 seconds of static at the end of the song, which when run through a spectrographic analysis, reveals an unsettling image of a godhead that's a central component of the game: The Presence (compare the image below to the album cover above). A number of other spectral analyses of MP3s have revealed additional clues, some in morse code, some in images as references to the online NIN community, some as phone numbers. (Note that NIN are by no means the first to embed images inside songs. another notable example is Aphex Twin.)

an example of one of the web sites used in the game is anotherversionofthetruth.com. at first glance, the site is a patriotic reflection of NIN's fictional Bureau of Morality, but drag your mouse across the site and it reveals a subversive message and links to an imagined future discussion forum in the game universe, which in turn reveals additional clues.

all told, at present, there are 30 separate web sites that have been linked to the YZ ARG. the storyline is fleshing itself out, complete with characters and a timeline, and it is pushing the buttons of a lot of OCD NIN fans who obsessively write about it and analyze every element of the universe. the best source for all of this information is the unofficial NIN Wiki, which at this point seems to be mostly focused on the YZ ARG. as a side note, several sites exist to help unravel the puzzles within ARGs (see unfiction and lonelygirl15)

open-sourcing art, resistance and music

an organization called Open Source Resistance (OSR) and its sister Art is Resistance (AIR) feature prominently in the YZ ARG, partially because they exist in the present day. by subscribing to the OSR mailing list, people were encouraged to come for a meeting in LA on Melrose place. they were met by people toting OSR rebellion kits, complete with stencils and other paraphernalia, all brandished with the OSR logo:

From the Wikipedia entry on the groups:

Although the group is technically in-game and fictitious, by allowing participants within the game to contribute via their art, "secret meetings," and similarly underground (though staged) activities, AIR could also be considered a real group, comprised of participants of the game and as a manifestation of the political awareness that the Year Zero game promotes.

this is, of course, reminiscent of past viral marketing campaigns. the one it conjures in my mind is Shepard Fairey's Obey Giant campaign, which eventually spread worldwide. no doubt, NIN would love to have their OSR stickers all over the world. free marketing for them, whereas for Fairey it was a social experiment.

but i digress.

the Open Source movement has been thriving for the past decade, with the rise of Linux, PHP, Mozilla, and other technologies based on freely contributing communities and networks, all striving towards a greater good without explicit rewards. reznor clearly believes in these ideas as they apply to intellectual property and digital rights management (DRM) of media. he clearly dislikes record labels and their approach to music sales as well. with the release of Year Zero, he has embraced these principles more firmly than ever. the entire album can be streamed from the NIN MySpace page, and all tracks will eventually be released in GarageBand/logic format for people to remix the songs themselves.

how all of this applies to the notion of rebellion and resistance is a little unclear to me. by its very nature, rebellion and resistance require networks of people, communities of the like-minded, in order to be successful. whether or not they are open or secret depends on the context in which they live. today, with our relatively free society, resistance can be more vocal and visible, provided it lives within the confines of the law. under the rule of a Pol Pot, resistance would have to be secret, since it would be punishable (usually by death). so, a secret resistance network seems a bit antithetical to the true ideals of open source (where everything is open and visible), although that's probably too literal an intepretation of the OSR term in the YZ context. the power of open source comes through the scale of networks it enables, and rebellion can only be successful if enough people join to fight, so maybe this is what NIN is getting at.

marketing, political statement and art

so what's the point of all of this? is it just a new NIN album with Marketing 2.0, or is there something deeper?

a cynic could argue (and many have), that the entire YZ ARG and concept are merely part of a brilliant viral marketing campaign, constructed to tap into NIN's core demographic (if there even is one). based on what i've read online, there wasn't much of a traditional marketing campaign for the album, so the viral marketing argument makes a lot of sense. however, many seem to stop there, as if that suffices to explain the entire effort. an implicit argument here is that the YZ ARG and everything around it has no meaning or value beyond the strict means to an end: sell more albums. i think there's more to it.

Year Zero is a fragmented, non-linear story about a possible future. it contains many voices and ideas that can't easily be contained in the confines of a 16-song album. by creating content outside the context of the album, these voices and ideas can be fleshed out more fully. additionally, they give more power to the narrative, partially because elements of the story don't seem dissimilar from current events. it's not that hard to extrapolate to the grim future Reznor imagines (although i think it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances to get there). YZ has created an unsetling simulacrum; with at least two of the YZ web sites (Free Rebel Art and Open Source Resistance), the line between fiction and reality was blurred pretty heavily, to the point that i wasn't quite sure whether it was a real or fictional call to action. all of this allows reznor (and whoever else is involved) to express a broader set of ideas (while simultaneously creating viral interest).

as a game, it's interesting to see the dynamics of groups coming together to solve the in-game puzzles, to discuss the music, to create an ephemeral network. the game's content is entirely political, so a natural outgrowth is heightened political awareness on the part of some participants, discussing it in the context of the game or otherwise. by writing this blog, i participate in that process, maybe inciting a reader to think differently, act differently (either positively or negatively).

finally, at a higher level, if you buy the argument (mine and trent reznor's as well) that everything surrounding and including the album is part of a coherent whole, then what is that whole? do we have the words to describe it? MetaArt? AggArt? InformationArt? InfoPorn? what do you call something that combines:

• 16 songs, neatly packaged
• 30 web sites with related audio and video content
• telephone recordings (and callbacks)
• the story told by all of the above
• an emergent social network of gamers, fans, and OCD ARG freaks
• the heightened political awareness generated by this collective phenomenon

i don't know what to call it, but i think it's a fascinating reflection of the times in which we live, even if it's all "just marketing."

final thoughts

the digital world that supplants our day-to-day existence is weaving itself into the tapestry of our lives; among other things, we've created freely available tools to support widespread information sharing, political action and resistance where necessary. conversely, governments and others may use these tools for the purposes of surveillance, monitoring and occasionally repression, all with the stated goal of maintaining our safety and security. control of this precious digital resource (in the sense of maintaining neutrality, transparency, standards, and openness) is critical for human rights and a free society, and for maintaining the balance between the right to share information and the ability to monitor it. the internet is not a toy any more; the information flowing through its veins is part of the lifeblood of our society, and it will only grow in importance. there will come a day when many literally cannot live without it; we should be thoughtful as we prepare for that day. Year Zero is only one possible outcome.

YZ taken as a whole is disturbing and scary for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its shadow similarity to our world. with a few negative twists and a well-placed dirty bomb or two, our world could be transformed by fear. the tragic events of 9/11 have shown how fear-mongering can be used as a tool for political ends; it's not hard to imagine more events like this leading us to a place where we give up more and more control to governments, religions, and corporate entities that supposedly represent our best interests. in many cases they do, but we should always remember that these organizations are run by human beings, inherently flawed, hungry for power and control over others, and endlessly thirsty for things that satisfy our far-flung prurient interests.

Posted: 06.09.07 at 4:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

blog upgrade

file under: about this blog

ladies and gentlemen, your captain has turned on the fasten seat belt sign. the software for this blog has just been updated, and we're expecting some turbulence. please let the captain know if you hit any particularly rough pockets of air. we thank you for your patience and for occasionally flying with docrpm.

Posted: 06.09.07 at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

June 8, 2007

where we were yesterday

file under: my life , travel
tags: leisure

elaine and i just got back from the beach...hard to believe that only yesterday morning, we were sweating in 85 degree heat on a fabulous stretch of sand in playa del carmen (on the yucatan peninsula). today we're back in the fog and cool breezes of a chilly san francisco summer. did we really take a vacation, or are those someone else's feet on that beach lounge? i guess i have the photos and memories to prove that it was us, but it's so easy to slip back into the routine of daily life as if these global excursions never even happened.

Posted: 06.08.07 at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)