sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXVI

 The latest batch:

book review: Dogs of War

Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Dogs of War.
Head of Zeus. 2017

---

In the near future, genetic engineering has led to bioforms, animals with increased intelligence, size, and strength, bred for war. They have embedded obedience chips, so they can’t go rogue. But what happens when they are obedient to a war criminal? Who is to blame for their actions? Will a terrified public demand they be destroyed? How can they fight for their freedom without terrifying the public even further?

This is an excellent view inside the minds of uplifted beasts, told from the point of view of Rex, a dog-form, in charge of a group that includes a bear that is rather more intelligent that she should be, a giant lizard who prefers lying in the sun to shooting enemies, and the hive-mind Bees. There are lots of plot twists just when you think you know how things will play out, and a view of humanity whose only salvation may lie in the hands, or paws, of its own creations.

---

For all my book reviews, see my main website.

book review: Adam's Task

Vicki Hearne.
Adam’s Task: calling animals by name.
Akadine Press. 1986

---

This is a book about taking domesticated animals seriously: training them, respecting them, and treating them as creatures with their own complex, non-human internal lives. It provides a deeply fascinating account of how domesticated animals relate to humans, and of our responsibilities to them. It is mostly about mostly dogs and horses, told through a series of in-depth stories of particular animals Hearne has trained, plus a chapter on how different cats are.

It is also a book about building a philosophy of communication with domesticated animals. No behaviourism or anthropomorphism or sentimentality, but instead a deep understanding of their existence and differences.

This is a difficult book to summarise, but it is an engrossing read. I was completely hooked, and devoured it in just two sittings. It is an inspiring view into minds simultaneously alien, and yet co-evolved with our own, so that we can communicate meaningfully, if we take the time to learn how.

---

For all my book reviews, see my main website.

don’t read before flying

Read the whole thing.  It makes for terrifying reading, if only because it’s going to happen again, and again, and again...

How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer

So Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No. 1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737’s dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3.

I believe the relative ease—not to mention the lack of tangible cost—of software updates has created a cultural laziness within the software engineering community. Moreover, because more and more of the hardware that we create is monitored and controlled by software, that cultural laziness is now creeping into hardware engineering—like building airliners. Less thought is now given to getting a design correct and simple up front because it’s so easy to fix what you didn’t get right later.

It is likely that MCAS, originally added in the spirit of increasing safety, has now killed more people than it could have ever saved. It doesn’t need to be “fixed” with more complexity, more software. It needs to be removed altogether.

fleshly material-semiotic presences, anyone?

Continuing strange recommendations by Amazon include a book who’s description includes the phrase "dogs are fleshly material-semiotic presences in the body of technoscience". Don’t judge a book by its blurb?

---

For all my social networking posts, see my Google+ page

sequestering carbon, several books at a time LXXVI

The latest batch:

---

For all my book reviews, see my main website.

canine freestyle routine

I think this is one of the most life-affirming things I’ve seen.  Certainly serves as the perfect unicorn chaser to the news lately.

[via BoingBoing]

---

For all my social networking posts, see my Google+ page

film review: Inside Out

11-year-old Riley and her family move from their home in Minnesota to San Francisco. Riley leaves behind all her friends, and her beloved ice hockey. It is an emotional time for her.

Like everyone else, Riley is guided/controlled by her five emotion homunculi: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Fear. The young Riley is mostly governed by Joy, and is a cheerful child. But Joy has a hard time keeping her human happy after the move. Then disaster strikes: an accident sucks Joy and Sadness out of headquarters, and they become lost in long term memory. Now Fear, Anger and Disgust are left in charge, and Riley turns into a surly brat. Then it gets worse: in their attempt to help Riley, the remaining emotions get locked out of their control panel, and now Riley can’t feel anything at all.

After a slow start with a lot of info-dumping about how the interior world works (as a sort of cross between a child’s fairy tale and a cognitive neuroscience text), things ramp up once Joy and Sadness are lost, and trying to get home. The adventure is wildly imaginative, with memory stores, dream sequences, imaginary friends, forgetting, the subconscious, abstraction, and trying to catch the train of thought. In the end, Joy learns an important lesson about Sadness, becoming a more mature emotion, and Riley grows up, as her homunculi’s control console is upgraded to parallel working.

At several points in the internal journey, Joy feels some Sadness of her own, and also Fear (or at least Alarm). Embodied emotions having emotions! Does this mean that Joy has five even smaller emotion homunculi in her own head? My brain kept trying to infinitely regress at several points.

This passes the Bechdel test: Joy and Sadness are female, and spend nearly all the time talking about Riley. In the external world, Riley’s teacher is female (although I don’t believe she is named?), and speaks to Riley, asking her to introduce herself; also Riley video chats with her friend Meg back in Minnesota about their hockey team.

Yet there is a curious asymmetry here. During the film we see inside three other human heads: Riley’s mother and father, with more mature homunculi, and briefly a boy of Riley’s age, whose juvenile homunculi are freaked by being close to a girl. The end credits give us views into a few more people, a dog, and, hysterically, a cat. All these other homunculi are the same sort as their “owners”: five mature females guiding the mother, five arguably less mature and somewhat stereotypical males for the father, five young males for the boy, five very cat-like cats in the cat, and so on. Yet in Riley, although Joy, Sadness and Disgust are female, both Fear and Anger are portrayed as male. If the film had a boy main character, would any of his emotions have been portrayed as female, I wonder?

Overall, after that slow start, this is a marvellously imaginative romp through a brain, and it is interesting that the obligatory happy ending is one of growing up and the realisation that Sadness is important.

---

For all my film reviews, see my main website.

spot the connection

What do Data’s cat and Hell’s dog have in common?

They’re both called “Spot”!

The name “Cerberus” is a Latinised version of the Greek Kerberos. The etymology of this name prior to Greek is disputed. It has been claimed to be related to the Sanskrit word सर्वरा sarvarā, used as an epithet of one of the dogs of Yama, from a Proto-Indo-European word *k̑érberos, meaning “spotted”  [wikipedia]

---

For all my social networking posts, see my Google+ page

pet food by post

I was trawling through the latest recommendations Amazon have for me, when I came across

The perils of low sample sizes, I thought: someone bought Grimm 3 and dog food in one order, so now Amazon thinks I want dog food.

A little later I saw

Oh, I thought, they bought bird food, too.

But wait!  This wasn't the Grimm-loving dog-owner, this was instead a Feist-loving bird watcher.

I’ve had some strange recommendations before, but this was just weird.

they know you're a dog

The way the world has changed, and changed again.

---

For all my social networking posts, see my Google+ page

gopher tuna

I've posted about alternative lyrics to Carl Orff's O Fortuna before. However, I recently came across another version, and realised there are alternative alternatives.  There are several versions on YouTube, with their surreal lyrics (but little more so that some possibly drug induced lyrics of real songs) made even more surreal by the accompanying pictures. (A few pics may be mildly NSFW, depending where you work, but they are uniformly wonderful.)  My favourite version (which is the one I stumbled across today) has hand-sketched internet meme figures.

Realising that there are several versions, and that some extremely different readings seem to fit just as well, made me look up the original medieval Latin lyrics, and do a compare and contrast:

O Fortuna (O Fortune)	Oh, four tuna // Gopher tuna
velut luna (like the moon)	Bring more tuna
statu variabilis (you are changeable)	Statuary on his knees // Statue of big dog with fleas
semper crescis (ever waxing)	Some men like cheese // Cement like cheese
aut decrescis; (and waning;)	Hot, temperate cheese // Hot Democrat cheese
vita detestabilis (hateful life)	Vimto can taste of kidneys // Green chalk can taste like hippies // We took a taste of me knees
nunc obdurat (first oppresses)	Lukewarm two rat // You caught two rocks? // Look up, you brat
et tunc curat (and then soothes)	Bet too cool, rat // Pet two cool rats // That took cool rat
ludo mentis aciem, (as fancy takes it)	You don't get cheese or chicken // Luke don't make tea. Sore chicken
egestatem, (poverty)	Bend chips all day // Play chess all day
potestatem (and power)	Hot and salty // Hold his sock tip // Poke Tess all day
dissolvit ut glaciem. (it melts them like ice.)	Dip sore feet. Good, hot chilli // She sold me good, hot chicken
---
Sors immanis  (Fate - monstrous)	Saucy codpiece //  Saucy hot peas //  Saucy mommies
et inanis,  (and empty)	Ate spleen of neice //  Get me cod, please //  Get in on knees
rota tu volubilis,  (you whirling wheel)	Brought up too full food in me //  Rock talk to boy who believes //  Broke up to follow minis
status malus,  (you are malevolent)	Suck juice from moose
vana salus  (well-being is vain)	Fun with some goose //  Fun, handsome goose
semper dissolubilis,  (and always fades to nothing)	Second these so rude big knees //  Cement pizza? Noobie please! //   Second this, all who believes
obumbrata  shadowed)	Open bra top //  Open bar tab
et velata  (and veiled)	Get them loved up //  Get him locked up
michi quoque niteris;  (you plague me too;)	Leaking foot when near cherries //  Leaky aquariataries
nunc per ludum  (now through the game)	Look, they look good //  Look there! Fruitloop! //  Look, them look dumb //  Look there look good
dorsum nudum  (I bring my bare back)	Dogs sure look cute //  Don't sue YouTube //  Hot soup look good
fero tui sceleris.  (to your villainy.)	Farewell to knees and berries //  They wrote teh dictionary //  Farewell to ancient berries
---
Sors salutis  (Fate is against me)	Salsa cookies
et virtutis  (in health)	Windmill cookies
michi nunc contraria,  (and virtue)	They'll give you gonorrhea! //  They gave you gonorrhea!
est affectus  (driven on)	This octopus //  This know is loose
et defectus  (and weighted down)	Let's give him boots //  Let's cook this goose
semper in angaria.  (always enslaved.)	Send him a carburetor //  Send him to North Korea //  And give him half a pizza //  Send him a car or pizza
Hac in hora  (So at this hour)	Lovely Torah //  Ow, paper cut! //  Monkey, Dora
sine mora  (without delay)	Send me more of //  Sandpaper, ahh!
corde pulsum tangite;  (pluck the vibrating strings;)	Potato soup and chicken
quod per sortem  (since Fate)	What mess again? //  Go taste the dip! //  I miss old friend //  Hot mess all day
sternit fortem,  (strikes down the string)	Sing it, ugly //  It's made with cool whip!
mecum omnes plangite!  (everyone weep with me!)	Be good for Peace Monkey's sake //  Make room for a piece of lovely cake //  Be good for a piece of cake

Clearly these alternatives aren't all independent, but there's enough variety to be amusing. Most of the variation seems to be around lines that nothing fits very well.  Also, once a variant has been used, it appears to affect nearby versions: once you have rats in your head, they stay around.  I suspect that a trained historian could work out a family tree of which version influenced which.

Listening to any of the recordings whilst reading the original words is interesting: in some cases the words really being sung appear to fit just as poorly as some of the alternatives.  Presumably this is a combination of a large choir singing not quite simultaneously, in a foreign language, filtered through a non-perfect sound system.

Knowing what to listen for makes all the difference.  Once you are listening for "Vimto can taste of kidneys", it's easy to hear.  But then so is "Green chalk can taste like hippies".  These surreal lyrics are much easier to hear than alleged mumbled satanic phrases in rock music played backwards (but for the very same reason).