Free Play is all You Need

Little dragon really loved to play. His parents allows him to play both in the water and in the clouds. He loved belly flopping into the water making huge waves. He loved flying head first into a cloud and then summersaulting to break it into many small pieces. He does it 100 times a day because it was just so fun.

One decade, a town was experiencing terrible draught. No crop grew for many years. It became so dry that grass doesn’t even grow. The sheep and cows has nothing to eat and made no wool or milk. The town finally decided to send a brave young man to seek the help of a dragon. The young man braved the long travel to arrive at ocean’s edge and asked the ocean to bring a dragon king for him to speak to.

The ocean looked at the scrawny young man who came with no offerings, it looked at the young man’s small town with no temple to welcome dragon, and it looked at the small number of animals and people impacted by the draught, and the ocean said to the young man, “mmmmn, okay I’ll bring you a dragon.”

The ocean brought the little dragon who loved to play. The little dragon asked what the young man wanted. He explained that his people needs the dragon to produce rain for his town so that they don’t starve from the draught. The little dragon thought a little bit and said “okay, can you wait here for a moment?” And ran off with no explanation.

He got home and cried in nervousness to his father: “oh dad! I spent all my time playing when I should have been working on my dragon ways. I don’t know what to do when they need a real dragon.

“What do you mean?” Said his father, “you are a real dragon!”

Little dragon whimpered: “no I’m not big dragon, I’m just little dragon… all I know is how to play in the water…”

“O-M-G,” said his dad, “oh son, my poor boy, you are a real dragon. Your sneeze and tear is a huge storm for people. And if you don’t sneeze or cry when you need water, just play like you normally do, that’s rain for them too.”

“Oh!” Said the little dragon, wiping his tears, “oh…”

He went back to the little man, still tearing, and to his bewildered surprise, said, “okay, let’s go.”

The little dragon sneezed as soon as he got to the town, the draught has removed much of the nearby ground cover and huge dust storms were blowing. But the sneeze rain lasted a good six hours of rain.

“Oh no, it’s too much water! The land is not protected by vegetation, so the heavy rain is causing mudslides!” Yelled the young man, “can we take a break from this rain?”

“Sure, said the little dragon,” still sneezing and tearing. He looks around and find a a large dried lakebed. So he goes over and sheds the rest of his tear into the lake.”

After a few days, the land awakens from the rain, but the sun does not shine as brightly as it used to. Nearby factories have polluted the air so much that there is a constant smog looming over the town.

“Can you make that smog go away and rain again?” Asked the young man.

“Sure!” This time the little dragon knew just what to do. He flew into the smog, summersaulting 100 times, just as he did in play, and broke up the smog. The irritating acidic cloud made him cry more into the lake… the environment is so badly damaged, he thought, I’m going to have to do something about this, he thought to himself. Then he splashed and played in the lake he has created, and rained on the town again. The plants and livestock and people of the town was enlivened by the little dragons rain. They too came out side to play in the water.

The town was saved. The young man thanked the little dragon. On this day, the little dragon learned: All a real dragon need is play.

Forced Control

So… If one were to have control over ones children, what would one wish for? A few things come to mind. You probably want them to have along and meaningful life. High and steady quality of life. Educated and learned so that they could face what you did not fathom they would face. You want hem o live the good life. Some people wish their children are nice people in addition to good people. This includes a lot of things, like not tripping siblings, not pulling chair from under classmates, cleaning up a mess on the side walk just out of the niceness of their person, to things like not being part of a Nazi party, maybe not killing, maybe not causing other people to kill, not hacking computer accounts or networks, not lying or deceiving, not taking property from others unjustly, having no excess powers,… etc. Along these lines.

Honestly, in this day and age, it’s hard to decide what one wants. There are a lot of (apparently) bad and (apparently)nasty(not nice) people who have (apparently) exceedingly high quality of life, learned, and definitely doing very meaningful things. The paradox of orthodoxies arise. Many schools of thoughts regarding what a truly good life should look like from many many aspects of life.

The old ones are still around.

New ones may talk about it like math equastion: being characterizable by certain bounds within which one is good: minimum income, minimum number of sex partners, minimum degree, maximum calories per day, minimum steps, networth, number of kids, donations to charity, amount of social activity and the depth of social relationships, diversity of income and investments, etc… So many views…

If one maintains those metrics, one is good.

For people who think about it, this may be an open problem or it may be a closed book.

It is interesting to think about one in a while. But honestly, it always seems too great a problem when you try to solve it, and it alway seems like the world’s most urgent problem when you encounter nastiness and badness.

So, if we refer to the Moral Hierarchy, one can see that we can perhaps distinguish our desire for nice and good behavior in my own weakness. This does not mean that we necessarily require that we, ourselves, are Strong(within out strength) in a nice/good way. Case in point, let’s have nukes to enforce world peace.

But, in the same breath, to keep peace with the pc-monitor, it is quite conceivable that a practically implementable stable society everyone has largely symmetrical strengths and weaknesses. Meaning, in the real world, if you want others to be nice to you you pretty much have to be nice back.

The little fairy

Once upon a time, a little fairy was born. She had a great time being whirled into existence Ina. Mist of sparkle and bell-rings. The little fairy is a happy little fairy.

After a while, a social worker fairy came to visit her.

“So, little fairy, have you decided what you’d like to do?”

“I love to have fun and fly around the world.”

“Sure, I love doing that to. But what kind of fairy would you like to be?”

“What kind of fairy?”

“What kind of fairy, like tooth fairy, or earth fairy, or fire fairy?”

“Oh, those are cool! What else is available? What are you?”

” Well, I am a social worker fairy. I help fairies who can’t find a job to find out what they want to be.”

“So… What else can I be?”

The social worker whips out a foot-thick book out of her fairy backpack, which is to say no one really knew where it came from.

“I’m glad you asked. Here is volume one of two hundred and fifty six. Take a quick look.”

And so, the little fairy sat down. And reviewed the first book of fairy tales to see what kind of job she wanted in life.

“I don’t like any of it.”

“Okay,” said the social worker fairy,”no worries, let’s take a quick look at volume two” and just as magically as she produced volume one, she put away volume one and produced volume two, some where from behind her back.

“No, I don’t like any of these either.”

And so on and so forth until they have reviewed all two hundred and fifty six volumes of fairy tales.

“I don’t like any of them.”

“Well, dear…” Social worker is now a bit exhuasted and exasperated. “You have to be some thing. A fairy can’t just go around being nothing!”

“Can’t I just be a fairy?”

“Well…”the social worker did not expect to have to have this talk with the young fairy. “So, it’s time you knew the truth. The fairies have a rule, that each fairy must have a job. If a fairy cannot hold it’s job, the fairy will lose it’s fairy wings… And then it will be a fairy no more.”

The little fairy is mystified and scared at the same time. She has never felt such emotion in her short life.

“So… I must work at a fairy job in order to be a fairy? But what if I don’t want to work?”

“Your wings well fall off and your magic glitter glands will cease producing magic. You will drop to the ground. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, some times it turns into a rock, or a puddle of goo. Some times, the fairy turns into a mealworm or sloth or snail… It is quite unpleasant I can assure you.”

“Ohh… ”

“Yes dear, can we take one more glimpse at this book to see if anything might interest you?”

“Sure…”

“Can I be a fairy queen?”

“That’s already taken, my dear.”

“Can I be a tooth fairy?”

“That’s really popular, and all roles have been filled ”

“Can I be a wind fairy?”

“Yes, but you have to be air fairy for a century before you can be a wind fairy.”

“Can I be a naughty fairy?”

“Which one?… Wait, I think naughty fairy roles are all full. And plus I don’t think a pretty one like yourself will be a good fit for any role as a naughty fairy.”

“Not a good fit?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s human HR terminology.. You can be anything you want to be dear! But let’s move on shall we?”

“Can I be a secret agent fairy?”

“Errrr…no. secret agent fairies are a special breed, and you are not one.”

The little fairy is starting to feel sad…

“Oh dear, come, this is supposed to be the funnest time of your life! Choosing your job that will lead you to a fun and full filling life, doing all kinds of magic and flying and fun!”

“Can I be match-making fairy?”

“You don’t have the magical organs for that”

“Can I be a train fairy?”

“Oh dear, I think trains are a bad bet… High-speed in America may not make it, and plus they kind of stink.”

“Can I be an internet fairy?”

“Full, and plus nobody trusts internet fairies, there’s too much fake news on it.”

“Can I be a fairy fairy?”

“You mean… Oh, hahaha, you mean a social worker like myself?”

“Yes.”

“No. Hahaha, I am the social worker. If you do my job, what could I do? No, no, you certainly don’t want to turn me into a puddle of goo, do you?” The social worker chuckled quite nervously… “No, no, no, you want some thing else, I’m sure of it.”

“Can I be a dream fairy?”

“Hrmn… No, that’s full. And plus you have to have five centuries of experience as a sleep fairy.”

“Can I be a sleep fairy?”

“No…” The social worker caught her self

“Wait.. yes, sleep is not a very popular activity right now, I think I can pull some fairy strings and place you as a sleep fairy!”

“Place me? What does that mean?”

“Ohh, sorry, I don’t actually work for the fairy queen or fairidom itself. I am an independent recruiting contractor. We lobbied the fairyland laws to classify us as social workers, and we have a union.”

“Can I be an independent contractor fairy?”

“Oh dear … You have to have a lot of experience to do that. Let’s stick with sleeping”

The social worker is visibly tired… She slumped into a heavy slouch… “Phewww” the little fairy heard her sound from a fairy hole.

“Now then, sleep fairy puts people to sleep, and so they are a precursor for dreams.”

“Okay.”the little fairy is now bored out of her mind.

“I can see you are bored of sleeping like many young people. But sleep is good for you.”

“Okay, I’ll be a sleep fairy…”

“Good, so it’s settled. You will be hearing from my aide who has all the paper work. When can you start?”

“Before my wings fall off and my body turns to goo I suppose.”

“Great! Welcome aboard.”

The Tiger Ate Mom

Once upon a time, there was a mother who did not care for her children. She did not feed them when they were hungry, she did not water them when they were thirsty, she did not comfort them when they were scared and she did not sing lullaby to put them to sleep. Her children were thin and pale.

A fierce tiger came to town to find food. It found the family of kids and did not feel like eating any of the children. They were too scrawny. The mother, who took little effort to take care of her family, was fat and juicy. So the tiger ate the mother.

He looked at the kids, and took them one by one, nape in mouth, to their father. He roared: take care of them or I will eat you before them!

The father dutifully took care of his children. They grew big and strong. One day, they were playing in the yard and saw a big cat. So they toyed with it, and finally killed it for the skin. They made a nice winter coat for their kind father. But little did they know, they also took revenge for their mother.

The love our world has for us is amazing.

Why we exercise (not for kids please)

This is not for kids to read, another warning.

There is a bit of work obsession that American have with anal sex. Like, what’s with it? Why would any sane person want to engage in any activity near the exhaust port?

Speaking from the anus being used. It seems that perhaps human experience some amount of pleasure from excreting waste. If it wasn’t pleasurable we may avoid it entirely. One could almost imagine that there is some exit-bonus, speaking in modern HR euphemisms, that we are rewarded for excreting. Larger amounts, larger volumes, larger chunks, although unpleasant at some point, seems to result in relief, comfort and joy when they drop.

One wonders if this rewarding pleasure sensation is built into a healthy human being that it is necessary for a fully happy person. You have to eat large meals some times and you have to risk eating some hard to digest foods, oily foods, some times, that the stool they produce, can then cause said requisite pleasure.

Without it, we feel incomplete.

Now, due to modernization of our world, including extreme approaches to healthy diets. We always have well processed, easy-to-digest food. We have the luxury of eating and drinking enough to produce stools of consistent consistency.

We lose that sporadic experience and perhaps that’s why some people yearns for passage of objects through the anus rectum into or from the bowels.

There might be other organs involved as well, since it’s so close to sexual devices.

So what does this have to do with any thing?

Well, one question comes to mind is

Whether the practice of tricking the body into believing it is disposing of the remains of nutrition carcass to feel pleasure is healthy and psychologically good for us?

Another question is can it be proven? Can the creation of the pleasure response and it’s effect on humanity be proven some how? Can it be linked to our survival?

Once we can establish it’s necessity and side effects, we can decide if it can it be prescribed like exercise? Perhaps to combat depression?

The better scientific understanding of this pleasure built into human being can give us improved understanding of our laws, our religious believes, and the full history of the act in society.

Lastly, it gets the question how does the human and learn? This pleasure response is pretty far removed from the origination of the consumption producing the excrement. What kind of learning system can be motivated to eat from a pleasure sensation eight or more hours later? And frankly, the really stimulating ones may take far more than the 8-hour scenic tour normal meals take. That is not to mention that the stimulus down below is physically far from the response up top. But I would be reminded if I didn’t add that there is significant regularization to this by way of olfactory feedback. But that feedback is amiss during artificial anal stimulation. Seems equally plausible that the pleasure helps to overcome the discomfort of discharging waste. In that case, it actually is temporally very close to the activity it encourages.

Fascinating!

From Hillsdale Mall to the Atlas

I wanted to write something to complain about San Mateo’s Hillsdale Mall opening a renovated food court with 4 Japanese restaurants out of the 7 establishments there, 5 Japanese restaurant in a mall totalling 10 restaurants.

What happened?

Did Uniqlo buy the mall?

But then I got thinking, this is America, and some non-trivial group of people decided to depend a non-trivial amount of money on this project. It must have been worthwhile. Culturally, Japan and Korea have enjoyed much more publicity, acceptance and commercial success in America than Chinese. Which is okay, no matter how you slice and dice it, Americans find Japanese and Korean culture and products more alluring than those of Chinese. And if Chinese people feel Japanese culture is a thickly veiled but shallow copy of it’s own, and that Koreans’ are not far behind in their admiration, that’s all good. What American like is distilled and westernized version, and that may actually be quite rational and effective. Why dig through thousands of years of history when you can have the pretty and the useful in another culture? I feel I’ve come to accept this fate for Chinese culture in America. And the Chinese don’t need Americans cultural admiration anyways. It’s okay if all he Chinese restaurants in America suddenly vanished, it won’t be missed like sushi, when suffering same fate, will be after a few generations. That’s just where human nature led us, and let’s not fight it.

But a little bit more diversity might be nice, immho.

While watching Ready Player One reinvigorated me briefly last night to the miracles in American creativity, I am drawn back to the gloom news of escalating real, non-cultural, non-entertainment, non-culinary, conflict where by Canada arrests Huawei’s CFO for essentially aiding terrorists against America.

Huawei makes phones that compete with Apple and Android. (They pretend to compete, and has the sales volume on paper, but really, I’ve very rarely seen anyone use one.) It’s certainly possible that it inadvertently supplied terrorist with devices that dramatically increased their terrorizing effectiveness. But honestly, if it is one of the world’s largest phone makers and exporters… Aren’t there a lot of other normal people who uses their phones? Could American and Canadian actions be like all the non-galtian politicians of The Atlas Shrugged, they use ideologies and FUD to maintain their own control–at the cost of global stability and quality of life of all they government, and maybe even at cost of fundamental human rights?

The lack of clarity in fact the lack of evidence of effectiveness of the American government is concerning. I mean, I half expect, mostly joking to myself, this is just a ploy to keep the Fed rate down in December.

The American government distrusts itself. During the Kavanaugh confirmation, we saw senators arguing about whether or not to use FBI reports, and using decade old quotes to imply that the FBI is useless. Like… What the fuck is wrong with this government? I don’t understand, shouldn’t it at least pretend that all it’s parts are functional?

It is, therefore unclear, who in the government trusts whom, (major branches, like CIA reports, apparently being ignored.)

Now, I am of course perpetually mindful of media manipulation, and that much of these may be quotation out of context reported to create an irresponsible looking Republican government. I feel perhaps at least 35% of that. But, Republicans are Republicans, and president Trump is Trump.

But as a citizen, I wish there were some more clear communication regarding what’s real and what’s not. I mean, what’s happening isn’t far from that Atlas Shrugged movie (it has like the least stars of all movies but some how being promoted on Amazon Prime right now. Maybe a lot of people watching what I watch also watched all three movies in the series.), with slightly different dominating political ideology and political mechanisms… That’s a stretch, I know… The main difference is that some one or more very powerful bodies are really lying and doing something at cost to the individual peoples for their own political gain, blatantly.

Okay, okay, I know, I know, I must be feeling like Sherlock Holmes here. How do we go forth in this land, governed as such? In a world, as it is?

PS disclaimer, I am not a terrorist. I neither state nor imply the preferred means of change. Like I wouldn’t want to stop the engines of the world. Or even stop any functioning engines of the world… Well maybe polluting ones, with planned deprecation. But this is getting a little bit too absurd, isn’t it? The suspense is killing. What will China do to retaliate? More worryingly, what if Xi and Trump are actually in bed together every night via an intercontinental hyperloop that they secretly installed, for good sakes. The pillars of the world are crumbling… So very depressingly…

I see why the Atlas shrugged now. It doesn’t know the answer. Do you? <shrug /> I sure as heck don’t.

Congress, Meet De Morgan

Reading this hillarious article, another article, about the Volcker rule possibly does not restrict banks as intended due to the misuse of double negative. The artifcat is well known in logic of Computer Scientists, mathematicians and philosophers. The name I learned of it by was De Morgan’s rule.

Now, I could rant about how I called for more CS majors to go into politics instead of complaining about Trump’s presidency because the government really do need people who can think straight and have practice in highly complex systems.

But really, I think I heard it in highschool math class… So… Those C’s on politician’s tests actually have a practical impact on their performance of governmental duties?? Wow!! I am shocked.

SERIOUSLY, I really really didn’t think governing needs math. I feel that way mostly because the leaders I see and he successes they experience. Didn’t ever look like honesty, and academic performance, and other very Asian values that I have, was really that useful. My conclusion was, don’t do that if you want to keep your values, they’re still great and I am still great, we have our separate peaces. But I am shocked awake!

But even more honestly, I can say that having read a different section of common law recently, I think the “coding convention” of law is… not ideal…. It’s not just this major banking law. These referential links are common in The US Code. Partial inclusion of another section, like “we apply sections I.ii.A of blah blah blah, but not parts e and f” are common. You know e and f are subsections of I.ii.A due to capitalization of a single letter, and context, of course. This lack of firm referential integrity is just one of many many things that make law hard to read for the common people.

The conventional answer to this puzzlement is that one needs professional and expensive legal training to read, write or execute this mess. (Aka Law School)

Or we could just rewrite the law and legal system in more formal and rigorous systems.

Another argument against more formalization is that, in this case, the enforcement is performed by human interpreters who have been applying the law in spirit. The fact of human performance and interpretation of the unclear is by design how the system works. If we formalized it, it would remove the role of spirit in law and that’s not the way we want to do it.

Not something I can argue against lacking formal, expensive, and admission-policy-dependent training in these spirits.

I’ve been watching the Atlas Shrugged on Amazon Prime, and apparently this “and or or” is a thing. It’s amazing what Rand wrote about, one is forced to think about her influences, where are the fine people who made her write these ideas? Where are their descendants and students? Her expressed hatred for political manipulations to impede human technological progress that ultimately enhances our lives. Is this the way we are? Is this an American thing or a Human thing? I mean, Rand would color Musk a hero! Which he is, but I resent that his heroism was made possible in part at my unjustly incurred financial expense.

Do we need to move out of the country or off the planet? Or should we stand our ground? There always have been, and always will be, driven, crazy, rude, manipulative, narrow minded, obnoxious, sacrilegious, and amoral outlaws in any country at any time. America always prides it self in allowing them to roam most happily and most freely by having the most advanced and most righteous government to administer them, and everyone else, each of whom are also kept the happiest and the freest people of the world. Perhaps we Americans should at least try to maintain this advantage, even if only in expectation.

Few ironies of things

1.) The shampoo that hurt no animal or human were probably created after testing things that hurt a lot of animals or people before they found one they works and doesn’t hurt. When they found it doesn’t hurt, they declare that this formulation did not hurt animals.

2.) They public bathroom soap dispenser is a very dirty thing but you have to get dirty before you can get clean. Just think of all the people who had stood where you stood and thought the same thought you thought. The bathroom is one place where we can use foot operated doors, faucets and soap dispensers. Why hasn’t anybody thought of this?

Wow.

That Picard Series

This post is written some years before the series is promised to materialize.

This is a great idea. The one thing I’d love to see is a healthy, vigorous Admirer Picard from the 24th century, happily about in an organization where he is useful, powerful, respected and completes his missions in life.

Kirk had trouble moving on to a desk job. But I feel most people in the world can’t be Kirk, and should progress step by step in life. THE one thing that the future may have a solution for us, is where do people go when they age? Sure, medical science can probably retard aging, but it is probably not to a point that elderly supercede the young in ability. If that were the case, the whole Human kind will have a strange change. I’m not sure where I heard of this idea of programmed death of individuals as a means of ensuring stability of the kind, it supports survival of the genome.

Perhaps in the vastness of space, social cancer is not a problem? Older population can drift into that infinite space and infinite combination. They don’t have to die and they don’t have to interfere with the survival and evolution of our genome.

A related matters is of course social structure. What happens when old people get old? Are they afforded additional power and resources? Or do they decay in their social stature? Or is it dog-eats-dog all the way to the grave? Perhaps Admirer Picard had to wipe out the projects of competitors achieve that position? Star Trek is never one to belittle competition as a driving force of Starfleet success. It surely continues through the ranks.

One possibility is that reproduction is at such a rapid rate in the spacefaring age that it naturally supports aging. As your generation gets older, there are plenty of younger generation that needs your care and attention. The Admiralty ranks increases in depth: Admirer first grade, Admirer second grade…. Each grade guiding a younger grade. The pyramid increases in height and newborns form the base of it. Advancement in case of exceptional work is of course possible. One doesn’t necessarily need to wait for a child to be born to gain a direct report.

Picard and AI would be a vastly interesting conversation. Wow! Like if he had to put down an AI rebellion, (I know I know, yawn, Borg’s done to death) but if he had to fight a human created AI… And end up with a solution that I present repeatedly in this blog: mutual coevolution of human kind and computer kind. (I know I know, look at how borgs turned out…)

Wouldn’t that be worth something to ya?

I shrivel and shriek as I think of all these possibilities. Wow, the future will come, in Trek or not… There will be a day when all these woes are solved. Woohoo!!!

P.s. hopefully this doesn’t look silly at publication tine, it was written Q4 of 2018… So long ago…

Watching Jupiter Ascending

Why do we care about soul? Logically, it serves an axiomatic foundation to subsequent reasoning that distinguishes man from thing.

The Abrasix harvest human body material to create youth serum. People live, happy sad life die, all for the purpose of growing something that someone else needs.

So, let’s see, we grow livestock for meat, bacterium or fungi for medicine, fish for fertilizers.

A group of humans probably feel that the sophistication of our thoughts, the information we have created, is what makes us special. But certainly we write programs, whose natural course of execution eventually produces information that we need. After it produces the information, we literally terminate the life of that program, sometimes killing it using a command called ‘kill’. (And you wouldn’t believe how seriously hot and bothered some people get about programs that don’t die, and about programs that die unexpectedly. There is a great body of literature, written in natural human language, commenting on the life and purpose and mechanisms of programs with a focus of intelligence and passion and devotion and contemplation and conflict that can barely be overshadowed by those committed to humans)

Clearly, we still feel that life process and information process of a human is superior to the same of a cow or a thread of program.

I wonder if that will ever change?

FAMx3