Brett Rants

Anti Authority

Being 'Against Everything' and 'For Nothing'.

Because every idea needs its own logo.

And because every logo needs a few like minded friends.

Anti Authoritarian

A philosophy which asserts, 'One's own way is the best way.'

And/or a collection of thoughts regarding society and my place in it.

Classical Music

I like the idea of shunning popular music and sticking to only that which is copyright free.

But as much as I like the idea, I like listening to popular music even more.

And from here, the ideas may get a bit more skittish. Oh, I like them and all, but what they have to do with the Greater Good (and/or Anti Authoritarianism, is there a difference) may be harder to discern.

So, um, another Brain Dump post, if that's not clear.

The Monetization of Life

The successful entrepreneur engages in government sanctioned theft. Eh, maybe not truly. Maybe not in every instance. But I have come to believe this is the right mindset if one wants to become fabulously wealthy: one must think like a pirate. Wait! Far more appropriately, one must think like a Privateer, as any savagery will be sanctioned as long as the Crown gets its cut.

Adult to Child Ratio

How many adults it should take to manage (and/or care for) a:

Newborn Child	1
Nursery School	4
Baseball Team	10
College Lecture	1000
Mentorship	5

Variable Monetary Policy

First off, all currency comes pre-equiped with a serial number, so this would be easy to implement in our current high-tech environment.

Second, the idea is simple enough: money should not have a fixed value, but a variable value (upwards or downwards) based on the current monetary needs of society.

Want folks to spend more? Have inflation kick in and money is now worth a little less each and every hour.

Want folks to save more? Increase the value of all money over time with cash being as good as a Money Market Savings Account for the purpose.

Such a good idea, so easy to implement, and so well hidden in the morass that is the Internet.

Fracturing of Truth

Dissipating Truth into its constitutive parts.

To each, according to their desires.
From each, according to our needs.

Research as Recommendation

"As follows, please find the 'stepping stones of the mind' as have yielded results for me."

Or in other words, there is more than just the data, conclusion, and analysis in a research paper. There is also the wherefore and the why.

The Difference

Programmers make programs. But the folks down in CompSci understand how they run.

Viewing vs Doing

A course of study can only be justified for careers that are based on study, say as a legal researcher. If one wishes to go into tech, then hands on lab work is best.

It's Absurd

I hear tell that there are 2,500,000 patents currently in force (in the Good Old US of A). I need no further evidence beyond this to conclude that The Government and The Market are one.

The Air Gap Solution

The only sure fire anti-virus is known as the Air Gap. As in, to protect a device from infection, the only sure fire methodology is to keep an 18" gap (or more, technology is advancing all the time) between said device and the Internet (and likely as time goes by, to any outwardly facing circuitry, say, the power cord, just as a for instance).

Qoheleth

In Ecclesiastics in the Bible their is a whirlwind that speaks with the voice of God that goes by the name of Qoheleth. I think this fact needs to be known by far more people.

Scale...

Words that Non-Programers Use

As in, I didn't get very far on this particular project.

'I have a passion for programming and bringing things to scale,' the candidate said with a straight face during the interview.

Code Fragments

Posts like these tend to come from my notes. I think of something and want to save it. Often it's story ideas or those great Eureka! moments. But other notes are simple thought paths that I wish to go down (and more than often than not, have subsequently abandoned).

And one of those ideas is what do Code Fragments look like (and/or feel like). I find the idea interesting. And the work thus far seems rather rudimentary. Which means, either there's plenty of opportunity or it's a dead end.

Perhaps some day I will re-read this post and wonder why I never pursued Code Fragments.. and/or be re-inspired and start on the inquiry anew.

Code Fragment: the underlying binary that makes up a computer file; a program's constituent zeros and ones (or ASCII representation).

Intelligent Design

As we all know, White Noise (call it static) is what the Background Radiation of the Universe looks like. And as we all also know (so, clearly, this is just a refresher course), an optimally compressed data stream appears (to those who do not have the proper decompression algorithm) as static.

Thus, I propose that the Secret to the Universe^™ was encoded by God in the residue of the Big Bang (call it Background Radiation) and that a person who could decipher this stream of information would Know All.

Of course, this may well be circular, in that, one may well have to Know All to decrypt said data stream in the first place. But now, I'm simply repeating myself. And there is no room in this Stream of Text for something as banal as that.

Management School for the Rest of Us

"Get your numbers up or we won't be having this conversation in a year."

One year later. "Get your numbers up or..."

Slash and Burn.

Just like our fore-bearers before us, there is no reason to leave anything for the next generation, because even if we do, you can bet your last dollar, they won't leave anything for those who come after them.

Walking the Labyrinth of the Self

...

Leaning Hard on Others

Is what I do best.

A Special Thanks

On behalf of myself and the rest of humanity, I would like to thank the Galactic Council for not obliterated Earth and all who reside thereon (not yet, at least), you know, on account of this being something they (the Galactic Council) should so obviously do before we (humans) develop interstellar travel and poison the rest of the Universe with our blight.

A Simple Koan

Without desire, there is no love. I desire your love... all of it.

L. Moholy-Nagy

I just saw his exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.

My reaction:

The debris from a lifetime of art.
Endless attempts with so few hits.
The commercial stuff is more interesting. It has the added layer of what is being sold, of what others are paying to see.

Jade Mercury

Is it fair to burden you with half developed fictional characters even though the story for which they were developed has long since been abandoned?

No, you say.

Well, then. Excellent!

Jade Mercury is a robot with red/green eyes, who is struggling to become human (and/or develop the emotions thereof). And as such is the ideal romantic interest... assuming the romance in question concerns itself with crossed wires and/or a man, struggling to bring his emotions under control.

Crazy

In the same way that one who does not question their morality is most certainly evil (complacently with the status quo being inevitable), if one does not question their sanity, then clearly, they are not.

And Furthermore

Abstraction and insanity go hand in hand. After all, the very idea of abstraction is so far removed from reality as to be insane. And those who delve deep enough into its depths, so often never find their way out.

Um, where was I?

Honour

Honour and being a whole person are synonymous. One cannot be true to only a part of themselves.

The Law of the Land

The Supreme Court of the United States concerns itself with what the law is, not what it should be.

Right vs Wrong or Practical vs Impractical are not part of its domain.

The Nature of Money

If cash is fungible and non-traceable, why does every dollar bill have a serial number? Probably because it's all being tracked by The Fed at this point (as it goes into and out of the stream, with all points in-between extrapolated from there).

Celebrating Groundhog Day

It's part of this complete life.

That Old Time Religion

There was a group of Amish (and/or Amish like/light folks) selling baked goods in the train station. I knew they were authentic, because they had iPads to track the sales.

How to Read a Book

Advice for the illiterate.

Start at the TOC.

That's the Table of Contents, you Heathen.

Often, all the key points are spelled out and any further reading would be superfluous.

Watch the Book Tour Video, instead.

Interviews and videos are often more concise.

If it's not important enough to mention in the interview, it's probably not that important.

Plum into the Underlying Journal Articles, instead

A book with a hundred pages of references is derivative of the referenced works.

Jump and skip, read as fast as possible.

Personally, I enjoy reading material that lives at the edge of my comprehension; and for most pop literature, the only possible way to obtain this sense of removal is to go through the entire book erratically, skipping pages, going back and forth, and finishing the entire thing in a single short sitting.

Though, I intended non-fiction when I wrote this (well, every section but the last), I believe it holds true for most fiction, as well.

Also, as a last note (AALN), I don't like acronyms or abbreviations (A|A), as they only serve to confuse and obfuscate (C&O). Get my drift (GMD)?

Doors to History

I saw an art exhibit similar to this, so I'm just suggesting a small tweak.

I like the idea of painted doors, which illustrate historical moments, so a sort of interactive time machine to world history.

The Stroke

I wanted to make a filter that transformed photographs into paintings by building up a list of Brush Strokes (i.e. vectors), so I viewed a wide variety of paintings (all up close and personal like) in order to come to some sort of abstract generalization as to what it meant to be a Brush Stroke. But there are so many different styles of Brush Strokes, that I soon came to the conclusion that this is impossible (or highly impractical) given that I had a hard time saying where one stroke stopped and another started on most paintings.

This in itself may not be that interesting. But it led to another more compelling realization (and/or proposal).

Vision (as in Object Recognition and/or a Computer's Interpretation of a Scene) must be an interactive phenomenon that takes place in both time and space. This in turn means that static learning sets (ala Machine Learning) will never teach a computer to see (unless we are talking about using Machine Learning to uncover the patterns that Machine Learning will need to unravel in order to put together a successive series of levels for the Machine Learning process to work through).

Um, I hope that was clear.

Radial

So, here's my abstract art project that I won't bother painting, but may (someday) make digitally.

Take a canvas (or for me, far more likely a board), pour paint in the centre, rotate board and scrape paint radially outward, infilling as required to cover canvas, creating an overlapping radial swirl in the process.

Viola! Art!

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