Sunday, June 25, 2006

Rocks, Art, and Photography on the web

Bo Cowgill, of Google's prediction Markets, asked if he could put the photos I had posted from a Prediction Market event up on Flickr. I had no problem with that, so some of them are now on flickr, presumably getting more exposure than they did on the CommerceNet site, where I originally posted them. (Notice who's missing in the set that Bo reposted?)

I was a little surprised to see that when I looked at Bo's posting of my pictures, that there weren't any tags evident, or any ability to add tags. I had thought that was the allure of Flickr, without ever using it myself. So I decided to try it out to see what the advantage is. (It turns out that you can tag your own pictures and others can see your tags. They just hadn't been tagged yet when I looked.)

I had some photos I'd been meaning to organize and post for a few weeks, so I used them as fodder. Janet and I were in Southern Utah a month ago, and spent some time looking at petroglyphs. We were directed (by someone at the BLM office ) to a good area west of town that had a lot of petroglyphs. When we got there, we found out that there were two groups of students from BYU, one surveying and cataloging petroglyphs, and the other excavating an ancient Indian settlement. The ones studying the petroglyphs had marked all the art they had found with little flags, making it much easier to find the often subtle art.

We also spent a while talking to the grad student leading the dig. They had found a large circle of dwellings, and said that they were surprised that the individual buildings were circular. Apparently when the Indians in that area first started grouping buildings together, the buildings maintained the round outlines they had when they had previously been built as separate dwellings, but over time, the residents had learned to square up the corners in order to fit them together more tightly. The archeologists had expected this to be a later settlement, and were surprised at the circular outlines.

Then a week ago, we were in Southern Oregon, and dropped back into California to visit Lava Beds National Monument. Crawling around in the lava tubes was a blast! We've been in a few commercial caves before, so it was a different experience to be able to wander around on our own. Anyway, this is relevant because Lava Beds has a separate section of the park called Petroglyph point. The petroglyphs here aren't nearly as interesting as those we saw in Utah. It's all very abstract, and quite worn. The brochure spends 6 pages to say "we don't know who did it, we don't know why, we don't know what it means."

Anyway, to get back to the photos, here's my Flickr slideshow on Petroglyphs. How does it compare to what I've done in the past, with only a little more work?

As far as I can see, Flickr is good for sharing and finding, but if you have a place to store pictures already, and you want to arrange their display so people will be able to look at your collection of pictures the way you want to arrange them (if you want to tell a story), there's no advantage. Flickr certainly makes it possible to display a collection of pictures, but they appear in Flickr's arrangements, mostly without commentary, or in ad hoc collections out of context. I can see why this is useful, but I'm probably going to stick to my ideosyncratic presentations

BTW, I haven't given many details on where we were in Utah, because I noticed this article about vandalism while finding the BYU anthropology department. I recognize the rock in their photo. The article came out about a week before we were there.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Cool Tools

I was looking at the longbets site, and followed some pointers and ended up on Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools page. As a certifiable tool hound (cf. my " Tools I Use" occasional feature) and follower of Kelly's Whole Earth Review and CoEvolution Quarterly, I was captivated for a couple of hours. He has them nicely categorized, so I could skip a couple of categories and concentrate on the good stuff. I bookmarked four items on Delicious, and added one to my wish list. That's a pretty high rate of return for a single site.

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  • Sunday, June 11, 2006

    Space Elevator Challenge: Moffett, August 4

    The Spaceward Foundation is trying to encourage development of tools and technologies to enable development of a space elevator. Their goal is to demonstrate feasibility (or lack thereof) by 2010. In pursuit of that, they've started a series of annual challenges to build long strong cables, and climbers to ascend such cables. The competition cables will be suspended from cranes or balloons.

    This year's contest will be held at the NASA/AMES Research Center at Moffet Field here in the valley on August 4th. Sounds like an interesting day.

    UPDATEThe challenge has been rescheduled and relocated: It will be in New Mexico in October.

    Saturday, June 10, 2006

    Levee Breaks

    We went to the USGS (US Geological Survey) open house a week ago. The first thing we noticed was the sparse crowds. Hard to tell whether it was a lack of advertising or infelicitous scheduling as one scientist told us.

    The best part of the open house is that the scientists-the lead investigators-are standing by their posters, eager to talk about the details and the implications. Janet and I talked for quite a while with a woman whose poster was about invasive species in the Sacramento delta and their effects on the levees. She was impressed by my story from Science News about an approach to controlling the zebra mussels but pointed out that it wouldn't work in open water.

    She has been tracking the spread of the mitten crabs. They're a fresh water species, so the spread has been coming overland. A few miles at a time. Occasionally by intentional human intervention. The people trying to hold the crabs back currently have a line drawn, and seem to be holding it for now, though it's not clear how long it will last.

    We also talked about the robustness and stability of the levee system in the delta. The delta is an unusual system, since it's a mix of fresh and salt water. The tides push the salt water in an out a certain distance every day. Above the level that the salt never reaches, but still within the delta, is where the aquaducts (which feed the central valley and LA) start. If the levees break above the aquaduct feeds, the increased water draw could pull salt water further up into the delta in a way that would be impossible (or at least horribly expensive) to repair.

    The most surprising thing she told us was that the farm land behind the levees has subsided. (See the Delta levee breakgoogle or terraserver maps for a browsable view of the delta.) The land here was originally peat. As it has been farmed, it has gradually lost a lot of volume. When the levee system was built, the farmland was at or above the level of the river. The levees were built a few feet high to hold back the water. But the land has now subsided up to 20 feet in most places. (Janet and I drove through here, geocaching, on our way to visit her father a few years ago. We saw that the levees were much higher than the farmland, but didn't realize that the water was close to the top of the levees.)

    When the levees break, the water rushes in, and can be infeasible to pump back out. Look at the satellite views again. The large areas the same gray as the river were inundated in the 80's, and after a short struggle, California gave up on trying to dry them out. The narrow green line surrounding the newmade lakes but inset from the edges are the old levees. Current worries are invasive species undermining the levees, general lack of maintenance, and the assurance that eventually there will be an earthquake.

    Saturday, June 03, 2006

    Stephen Brust: The Lord of Castle Black (and an aside on morality)

    I just finished Stephen Brust's The Lord of Castle Black. It doesn't end at all conclusively, and the general comments I made about The Paths of the Dead apply here, too. It's just as long-winded and tiresome. Luckily, 400 pages is enough to get through the significant middle part of this story. But I'm going to leave a review until I find and finish the final volume: Sethra Lavode. For now, I'm going to go off on a tangent about morality, ends, and means. The context is a series of conversations Brust has his characters act out as they are all preparing to enter battle (on various sides). In the first conversation of the sequence, Grita (amoral schemer) and Lieutenant Tsenaali (high-born) discuss their mutual enmity, and what they each might do about it. The Lieutenant is worried that she might have him stabbed during the battle, though they fight for the same side.

    Grita chuckled. "Am I to be insulted by this?"

    "There is no need to waste time with such pretense."

    "You, however would never do such a thing to an enemy—dispatching him with guile?"

    "I would never achieve a victory at the cost of my honor; that is the difference between us."

    "Is that it? Do you think, perhaps, that there is also this difference: I am determined?"

    "And I am not?"

    "You carry out your duties as well as you can, being certain that you are never required to do anything on a certain list, a list of things a nobleman wouldn't do. Whereas I intend to accomplish what I have set out to accomplish, and I do not let obstacles deter me—whether the obstacle is imposed from without, or is only in the mind."

    This sets the stage for a longer, more explicit conversation about ends and means. The protagonists are preparing to enter battle, and Roanna wonders whether it is moral to use sorcery, since they have access to a special magic (recently reactivated) that their opponents can't use. Several of the party are consulted (in the long-winded fashion of this book, so I won't recite all the details.) Aerich says it's moral, because they're working to restore the empire.
    "The defense of the Empire is a gentleman's first duty, at all times. To attack the Empire, as those people are doing, is to commit a grave moral crime, which goes beyond a matter of statute. Any aristocrat can declare this or that thing illegal—but to commit a crime is to do something wrong, and to oppose the Empire is to commit a crime."

    "And so the method by which this is accomplished is not important?" said the young Dzurlord, looking rather dubious.

    "Important?" said Aerich. "Very! Is is of supreme importance. It is through the means that the goal is accomplished. If the goal is important, how can the means not be?"

    Roanna isn't sure she understands, and Piro steps in to continue the questioning:
    "Are you actually saying that, if the goal to be achieved is noble, we are permitted to use ignoble means to accomplish it?"

    "Not the least in the world," said Aerich. "Those who say the ends justify the means, and those who say the ends do not justify the means, are both wrong."

    Aerich then has to explain that the question is wrong, and that,
    There is a relationship between means and ends, but it is neither one of justifying, or of failing to justify. It is one of prescribing and proscribing."
    His example (which direction do you travel along a road to reach a known destination?) shows that all he means here is that you choose the ends that will achieve your goals. He claims that it's a matter of efficacy rather than justifying. Piro sums up with
    "If one finds oneself using dishonorable methods to achieve a goal, it would follow that the goal, itself, is dishonorable? Or if not dishonorable, in some other way flawed?"
    All the characters seem to find this a satisfying conclusion to the argument, but it seemed completely wrong to me.

    A good friend of mine often says "There are no ends, there are only means." I think she's trying to make a similar point, which I've always interpreted as saying that ends don't have moral status. You will be judged (if you believe in judgment) not on what goals you pursue, but on whether the actions you take (in pursuit of whatever goals you chose) are acceptable. Immoral actions don't reflect badly on your goals, they reflect badly on you.

    Grita has no morals: she serves her own ends, and doesn't care about other people.

    Tsenaali elevates honor above all. If the code he follows is consistent with morality, he will act morally. But we don't know enough about what the code says about a large number of issues to judge for certain.

    Aerich comes very close; he's correct that good ends don't justify the use of ignoble means and that important ends ought to be pursued when feasible. (Aerich has already said that he believes defense of the empire is a moral duty.) But Piro's summary leaves out a crucial point. Ends and means are not absolutely moral or immoral, standing on their own. Their moral status is justified within a framework of values.

    Each of us has to construct this framework of values on our own. In it, some values serve others. If you think you must use methods that seem wrong in order to pursue a goal you value, it's time to reexamine your values more generally. Your goals fit into your overall sense of value. Their pursuit is justified within the framework of your values. Your framework of values is also what gives you the sense that some means may be unacceptable.

    To compare the moral status of desired goals and questionable means, you have to find where they each sit in the overall framework, and decide whether your values are better served by recharacterizing the means as justified or the ends as valuable but out of reach.

    The possible outcome which many people fail to consider is that sometimes valuable goals are out of reach. Achieving that goal using those means would be an overall detriment to your sense of value. In those cases, ends don't justify means.

    Unobjectionable means don't require good ends for justification. It takes extraordinary ends (ones worthy of reordering your priorities) to justify ignoble means. If you reorder your priorities at that level very often as an adult, people will judge you either flighty or amoral. If you never compare the moral status of ends and means, you will seem as stiff as Tsenaali.

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