www.ComicCovers.com - Your source for weekly comic book cover scans.

www.ComicCovers.com - Your source for weekly comic book cover scans. ahh, this is heaven, and very useful incase I have another dream inspired search for comic book covers.

I have two concerns about this:

1. considering my post earlier this week on hypergnosia, there may be some reason to doubt my grip on reality.

2. the database contains 50,000 covers. Considering that I have, conservatively, owned 1,000 comics over the years and read more, it would seem that 50,000 isn't that many.

EDIT: and they don't have the cover to the immortal Devil Dinosaur. This says something about me, and its something I didn't really want to know.

Hypergnosic Moments

This morning I'm having a hypergnosic moment that I'm trying to break.

For many, a hypergnosic moment is when the implicate order of the universe is revealed and the oneness of being is made apparent.

For me, a hypergnosic moment is when I make the comic book guy character from the Simpson's look well adjusted. In this particular case, I set out to take some notes on my "thinking about technology", by which I mean "trying to have something relevant and interesting to say". So, while I was trying to get up the courage to continue writing my paper on
the use of blogs in a philosophy class . This lead me to be reading a some other books speculating on technological development, specifically K. Eric Drexler's book Engines of Creation. The book consists of many weak analogies, appeals to ignorance and irrelevant anecdotes. But one of those anecdotes really set me off.

He described how Douglas Lenat entered of his heuristic experiment, EURISKO, into the Trillion Credit Squadron competion in 1981. I was familiar with Lenat's work but not with EURISKO and I had managed to miss the Traveller connection.

Traveller was what I did in high school, probably instead of both homework and dating. I don't say it kept me off drugs because the biggest dealer in my high school was a regular member of my group. I may have felt a strong social pressure not to experiment with drugs because this individual put a higher value on his role-playing games then his drugs, at least until sometime senior year. Traveller had many cool features that would seem fresh, even cutting edge today. Two features in particular: it was modular, you could use just a core set of rules, or any of a large number of independent supplments (far more modular than Dungeons & Dragons ever was, modules or no) and it didn't have an experience point system. The first was great for supporting organic roleplaying groups who could fill in their own galaxy with either a little or, a great deal, of detail already established for them. Later variations of the game became more integrated and more dependent on a continuing backstory and lost my interest as a result. The no experience system was a great feature because it took away the pre-programmed plot that most games have. Instead of a constant upwards arc of power and competence, the players could lose what they had gained, be rich and powerful one moment, impovrished the next. It made for more interesting interaction since there was a greater range of valuables to be gained or lost.

Trillion Credit Squadron was a supplement to the game which focused on the space-ship design rules. In this variation, the players were each given a trillian credits to design a fleet which would then compete with other fleets players had constructed. My own group was pretty heavily role-playing, rather than strategy, oriented, so the number crunching aspects held little appeal and I was left to explore this dimension of the game on my own. But I guess that it was something of a big deal at some point in 1981.

Drexler makes this game out to be a futuristic naval simulation. This set me off on the trail of how this particular game was understood by people since. This became a trek which offended my nerdiest instinct for purity, but it also seemed to continue unfolding until I found that I had grasped a thread was closely enough tied into the story of how the 80s and 90s unfolded that it literally lead anywhere.

BANG!

Hypergnosia.

I'm beginning to come down now, I've started to concentrate on those details that might help me get some work done.

Apparently, Lenat's program did make at least one interesting variation on a centuries old naval planning problem.

First conclusion, there is a significant overlap between the set of people writing about artificial intelligence and those who have experience with early 80's science fiction themed role-playing games. Second conclusion, spelling check has not solved everything as "traveler" (with one l) and "trillion" (with an o) have both been pretty common in sites I came across while developing this entry. On closer examination, this is probably because English spelling is not quite as standardized as we have often been told.

Why use good design when bad design sells better.

"Soapbox: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really!" by Richard Bartle is really interesting, if only because of his unstated premise. Bartle's argument is that the design of virtual worlds, or other on-line games, is filled with poor designs. His argument is that these choices are demanded by players. That is, people tend to play games which incorporate certain design mistakes.

So why would anyone want to design that didn't incorporate these poor design decisions, after all, that's what your customers want?

The answer has to be, because he wants to build the best virtual worlds that he can, judged by his own standards.

I find this refreshing.

Kenan Malik's debate with Steve Fuller on the Sokal hoax

Kenan Malik's debate with Steve Fuller on the Sokal hoax A link to go with my last post.

on the other side of the circle

The conservative movement seeks to change science curricula by opening them up to considering alternatives, Intelligent Design and more extreme variants of creationism. In doing so, they put question the status of science as a unique method of truth production. Competing "narratives", such as the Genesis narrative could be considered.

This has struck me as a surprising variety of relativism. Even more so since, it seems to at least superficially lead to alliance of the conservatives and the anti-science left such as those who would argue that in post-colonial days, the hegemony of western systems of knowledge needs to be broken up.

While surprising, this parallel makes some sense, American conservatism, in many ways, reflects the interests of, and gives voice to, groups in American culture which are all but looking at the rest of the culture as if they were forces of some colonial power.

the day after the day after

It's raining pretty hard, I can't see much activity over at the construction site, but I can hear something, so there must be a lot of work going on.

The world shows no signs of imminent doom, but its certainly no better than it was 48 hours ago either.

Election Day 3

A vote mob representative called me about an hour ago to let me know that one of my students might be late for my 5:30 class. He'd apparently already been in line for an hour. I certainly can't fault the student, its seems that he'd set aside three hours for voting, which is a reasonable amount of time.

Now the student in question is pretty engaged with the class and a good sense of humor, I wouldn't put it past him to have the volunteer call-in just because he could, when they first put phones on planes people would call home just to say "guess where I am".

Still that's a long line, and that's real news from somewhere close to the front lines.

The bamboo is still doing well. Night is falling, I can't really see much of the hill at this point. You know that's where the national guard stood back in 1970?

Election Day 2

The Bamboo plant is still watered.

When my friend Geoff came to help out with the election, he brought me his copy of Black & White , I think that may replace the Radiohead CD.

The construction crew made it back from lunch, but its raining now, so they're not doing much at the moment.

The hill is still there, I can see parts of now that they knocked down the old dorms, my view will disappear again when the new ones go up.

Election Day

I'm situated high above the intensely contested battleground state of Ohio, my extensive readership no doubt awaits my insightful analysis of what's occuring here.

Well, the sky is grey, the crew at the construction site across the street seem to have taken a break for lunch and my bamboo plant has been watered. Also, I'm listening to Kid A, but mostly out of apathy. Maybe I'll put on Boards of Canada a little later.

Meanwhile, somewhere just over the next hill, the world teeters on the abyss. I just read electoral-vote.com 's just a little too speculative account of what could happen if the election goes back to the courts and Rehnquist isn't healthy to preside.

More as the day develops. My prediction: the bamboo will have ample water and Boards of Canada won't make it into the rotation.

POW 1

Last week, the philosophy department here at Kent State held a POW,
short for Philosophy on Wednesday, that was a round-table discussion
of philosophical issues that might be relevant to tommorrow's
election. Prof. Norman Fischer had recruited two members of his
political philosophy class to present on each side. The student
prepresenting for the Democrats was a true representative of the
wonkish wing of the party, all policies and numbers. While I think we
need more of this attitude, the conservative did make a more
interesting subject of study.

He was interesting mostly because I had to work to understand what he
was getting at and how his positions could be interpreted as a
coherent position. So I reconstructed a Conservative from the signs
and clues that I could find in his speech. This was a lot like
reconstructing the achievements of a lost civilization from bits or
pottery. Hence, I won't name my subject, since this reflection isn't
really about, its a reconstruction of sorts.

He was obviously preplexed by the world and the state in which he had
found it. Some of his confusions could have been easily corrected,
perhaps they were even affected for the sake of sharpening his
message. For instance, he expressed great surprise that a blue collar
region shouldn't be conservative in nature. Of course, the reasons why
blue collar workers don't flock to conservativism are pretty clear.
Among other reasons, American industrial workers have benefitted
greatly from union membership and American conservatism has not
enthusiatically embraced the unions. The coolness of that relationship
isn't mysterious either. The unions have often been of as the leading
edge of socialism, which still haunts the sleepless nighttime hours of
many on the right.

My conservative subject had a deeper confusion. Most of his arguments
were supported by constrasting either the current situation or a
Democratic proposal with a well-developed sense of "the way things
should be", as if the justification for his vision should have been
entirely obvious. I think he was confused that others couldn't see
that his imagined America was the true America.

He had difficulty providing other principle on which either this
vision or the road to could be justified. When an audience member
suggested that conservatives tend to utilize principles of individual
autonomy and responsibility, he jumped on this as an important
principle, but I don't think that he would have come up with it
himself. "The ways things should be" didn't seem to have much room for
a robust sort of individual freedom.

He's going to need some decent principles to develop his position so
that others could see it as well as he could. Even accepting the
explicitly stated principles of "the way thing should be" would not
work to bridging the gap. (Unless of course, one were to accept the
reliance on traditional religion in just the manner that he meant it.)
The typical liberal isn't a fan of huge, monolithic, or overbearing
goverment or really of any significant weakening on limits on the
application of power. Most liberals I know place a pretty heavy on the
limited and deliberate use of power.

Since they've already come up, unions act to insure that the power of
corporations (or other employers) is appropriately limited, and unions
do it while minimizing government exercise of power. The government
could fill the same role, but no one really wants that. Of course, a
conservative could argue that the market is the appropriate regulatory
mechanism for wages. This would, however, be evidence that they simply
weren't paying attention. Assuming labor is a resources just like any
other, which it isn't, aggregation leads to effeciency, and is
unavoidable in any but a tightly controlled market. Unions are a
market-driven solution.

How "things should be" without large-scale goverment or strong
unions. One could imagine it to mean power concentrated in large
corporate interests acting without significant limits or balance. I'm
not so sure that my conjectured conservative subject would agree that
that was his vision of "the way things should be". There were definite
signs that family and religion should provide the structures within
which people would be able to lead orderly and meaningful live. This
idyll constrasts sharply with a socialist idyll in which comradeship
and goodwill would cement and energize the bounds of community at a
much more abstract level than that of family or parish. They are both
similar however, in that bonds of affection and loyalty are considered
the skeleton on which a culture is constructed.

The democracy envisioned by the framers did not involve a government
of the scope of the current American government. They also didn't
envision the telegraph, let alone the airplane, superhighway,
computer, etc. These larger scales of organization are not things from which
we can effectively back away.

Marx was on to something when he observed that the the means of
production determine patterns of social organization. One thing he
did not foresee was that the means of production would not remain
static at the stage of the early industrial revolution, they would
change and change and change again. The socialist state becomes just
as irrelevant as a Jeffersonian Democracy because they have been left
behind by the increasing scale, complexity and plasticity of human
organization.

In the case of "how things should be", the idyll would require finding
our way to a world in which there were no large scale organizations
that were not firmly entrenched in smaller, more local, stable
structures. Family and church, without union, government or
multi-national, clearly with no organization coordinating human social
interaction somehow higher than the nation-state, seems the core of
the conservative vision. However, it doesn't seem any more attainable,
or even approachable than the socialist one.

How should things be? Well, I haven't a clue, which is part of why I
had to try to get into the mindset of my conservative subject. What
does seem clear is that the balanced and deliberative limitation of
power allows for human thriving. The large the scale on which power
can be exercised, the large the scale at which the limits and balances
must be pursued.