Funny dialog in s3e1 of catastrophe…. 

American husband: what? You held that guys penis?!?!
British Wife: yes , I don’t know, maybe, it was  tough time! You, me, the Brexit, your new president..
Guy: what?! Don’t ping what you did on me, that wasn’t my fault!

Why don’t you take a vacation at foxconn in Shenzhen ? you’ll get to see all the freaking iPhones in the whole world!!!!

(historical note, foxconn used to make all the iPhones in the whole wide world… iPhone was the most famous and widely used smart phones in the world…)

There come times when you find yourself allergic to some sounds(for example of some people), some expressions of (political propaganda and advertisements) or even some ideas themselves. The general symptom of these generalize allergic reaction, just like pollen allergies, is that of excessive defensive activation.

One may find oneself unable to stop from speaking rudely interrupting a speech–that way one doesn’t have to hear it. One may find oneself blinking or averting one’s eyes at just the time for just the duration needed to not see something. One may even completely miss a hugely important thing due to sudden forgetfulness that one recovers from shortly after, but certainly too late to remedy what ever is missed.

The worst part is that these things happen autonomously. One needn’t think: hey there’s pollen in the air, let’s sneeze it out, it just happens. And similarly, much of generalized allergic reaction are quite subcouncious, the causes sometimes are so subliminal and so imperceptible that it is actually hard to detect both that there was a cause and that one’s own mind caused the reaction to happen.

The symptoms become illness when the entire person gradually becomes less and less adept at living and surviving–the organism is made less fit in the evolutionary sense, and actually, really, the organism is made less fit in the common sense of its society.

The organism is uncontrollably rude and is unaware of it. When pressed to change one cannot make a change because the cause and action mechanism is completely unobservable by oneself or others.

I myself have these gigantic blind spots that occur at the worst times some times. I can walk into huge signs of an odd color at a store if the store overdoes it with use of that odd color.(imagine, for example, an orange sign in the middle of an isle at the HomeDepot where the brand color and shelfing are all orange) Just yesterday I drove my child in the car seat without tying the harness… and that’s not the biggest thing I miss. Some times I skip the most important sentences, sometimes I miss very important portion of a short speech. The only really observable thing is that something very important is made incomplete or tardy or put at great risk. Some times there are clear causes like overuse of colors, other times I suspect foul play by others with clear motive. My current conclusion after a lot of thinking about it is that I have a very bad case of generalized allergies.

Please, tell me there are medicines for these conditions…

Why Life, Liberty and pursuit of happiness inalienable rights?

Life is inalienable because people do not exist without life–it is an existential requirement.

Liberty is inalienable because we believe it is required.

What about the pursuit of happiness? Why is this so important? Let us put aside all that evolutionary mumbo-jumbo about happiness endorphins are evolved to tell us all that is righteous about us… That statement needs as much evidence as God.

One wonders if there is wisdom in the founding fathers declaration? Why pursuit of happiness?

This idea is very foreign to many grand themes, if you look at great documents of high aspirations, do we not always call upon something outside the human conditions, something greater and a priori to us to give support to the ideals?

At least in Asian cultures, the forsaking of selfish needs have always been required characteristics of heroes and leaders. Jesus died for you. He gave his life liberty and happiness in this world… (for one example)… the archetype of most holy worthiness is self sacrifice and suffering of all that is undesirable. I suppose there is Nirvana, which targets a happiness. But keep in mind that the prescription of said doctrine for achieving it involves much suffering and sacrifice, also one needs to be mindful that it is a different happiness that that which we are familiar with. Americans does not claim happiness to be supernatural.

Why then, was America founded on happiness?

And you may criticize me for being extreme and uneducated about the matter, but I will cite dead poet society (movie) for a quote about the maladies of “excessive happiness”–it is quite common place to think happiness is not all that it is hyped to be.

How then, do Americans sustain themselves on happiness (and life and liberty of course)??

I seek an understanding of this.

There seem to be all hese suggestions to develop technology to monitor driver using self-driving cars, for example to check if they are alertness by tracking eye movents, or checking if the head is tilted weirdly(dozed off). I wonder if anybody considered resorting to old-tech.

Why don’t we use the legacy human verification system known as CAPTCHA to confirm that driver is awake and not drunk or otherwise temporarily disabled? Since the car is self-driving, the driver could take a few seconds to solve a puzzle. The puzzles should be chosen to require the perceptive and cognitive abilities relevant to driving the car. In an extreme degenerate case, the test could be to ask the human river to take a drive in an simulated environment. This would detect a driver failure ex machina. If he’s drunk, tired, or on drugs, then he fails and the auto-pilot can take some actions:

1) turn on the flashers. And I think self-driving cars should have special signals beyond the turn, break, parking and headlights to indicate to other drivers that the AI is failing and human is not in control.

2) shine bright lights, blast loud sound or cold air, blast oxygen enriched air, spray very cold water, inject adrenalin, etc. to attempt to revive driver.

3) pull over (AI should slowdown or speed up to try to reach a safe lane to temporarily stop and wait for help)

4) call the cops

5) “phone a friend” by dialing up a remote-ops center to have a trained (human) professional guide the vehicle to safety.

6) call the owner’s insurance company.

7) do all of them at the above at the same time.

I’ll perhaps hate this when implemented, but for now it seems much simpler and more effective than AI passively ascertaining proper driver condition.

P.s. the two birds being AI and human driver.