iPandora

McCain has restored a great deal of hope to me.

Coworkers who don’t necessarily agree with my politically are even calling the election for McCain-Palin.

I am hard pressed to think of another person who could actually bring a history and actual person of outside-Washington strength.

Obama-Biden are two pols, one young and inexperienced with anything besides Chicago-style corruption politics and one old and seasoned in the ways of Washington lies.

Palin has actually run something, stood up to corruption in her own party, and is in touch with ordinary Americans in ways that nobody else running this November are: she hunts and fishes, has children, including one with Down’s Syndrome (Hat Tip: Sol).

Welcome aboard Mrs. Palin.

And you know any strategist recognizes this is also about someone challenging Hillary in 4-8 years.

Andree Seu, a favorite author of mine in World Magazine, encountered what we might at first blush call a freak accident or narrow escape but which God considers another chance to glorify Him:

Lawrence and Nancy’s 3-year-old son fell out of his second-story bedroom window

I’ve been dealing with the loss of a good friend and did not immediately connect the significance of God’s work reaching across these two incidents because Lawrence and Nancy’s son, Sammy, lived. But God did. And speaking through Andree to me He revealed even the smallest and most indirect part of His plan is so very perfect:

…(Y)ou might ask why, if God is so amazing, He didn’t stop Sammy from falling out in the first place. There you got me. All I know is that people were mobilized to pray and cook and watch Matty, and so it seems that God was giving lots of folks an opportunity to love in ways they wouldn’t have otherwise. And that’s the best I can do with that.

It’s been 43 years since artificial-intelligence innovator Herbert Simon claimed that in 20 years machines would be capable of doing any work that a man can do.

Hollywood thought it would be done by the year 2001.

Mankind is a curious being, full of inconsistancies and unacknowledged frailties.

On one hand we are so very full of our own ability, claiming that we can create intelligence equal to our own. On the other, we have such a dim view of ourselves, claiming an intelligence equal to ours can be created, by us.

Defining artificial intelligence as non-organic, human-created machines capable of independent thought, cognition, and self-awareness, we find ourselves woefully short of our stated goals and claimed abilities.

Network World magazine, June 23rd 2008 edition, says that while the whole dream as one realized entity, a truly intelligent robot, is still far off, many of the individual parts and technologies are already developed. But with a very telling by-line perhaps you’ll see the issue:

The grand promise of intelligent machines underestimated the complexity of reproducing human cognition.

The irony is heavy surrounding this.

The last two centuries have been a progression of the understanding of human cognition. From the age of reason through the psychoanalysis of Frued and Williams, we have broken down our own minds and thought processes until we believe them to be simply incredibly deep chains of logic switches. We put lots of logic switches on silicon wafers and fed electrical pulses through pathways signifying instructions and found our creations could process commands: input and output.

We made them faster and faster until we thought that with the proper instructions these processing cores could, with the proper instruction sets, become artificially intelligent.

We assumed that human kind is simply a more evolved animal with deeper instruction sets, more complex preprogrammed responses. But with each new iteration of technological improvement, we are becoming more aware than ever of the gulf seperating us from our machines.

I will go out on a limb here and state that even if we had forever, humans will never build a machine that is artificially intelligent.

We will make things seem to be intelligent, but they will all boil down to increasingly complex instruction sets compiled by humans and limited by the very myopic view of our existence which leads us to believe we can actually create intelligence, and will fail in our ultimate goal.

The reason is that we are not solely the result of random processes creating complex logical structures around an organic adapted structure. But we are beings which exist here and hereafter with logic, yes, but also with will and emotions and moral reckoning.

There will always be a gulf between us and our creations: we cannot breathe life into anything.

Overheard by my wife in a restaurant where we were eating a late breakfast Thurday morning. A little girl, maybe 8 or 9 years old, asks her mother how she knows Barack Obama is not just saying things to get himself elected, and how she knows he’ll keep all his promises if he is elected.

Bravo, little girl. You’ll do just fine in life.

Words to truly live by: “Hakuna Matata”

Yes, I’m really off my rocker this time: words to live by courtesy of a Disney movie? Of course!

I’ll take my wisdom where I can find it.

In the news today there is a mea culpa without the “mea culpa” bit.

The media can make or break a story: report a sensational bit of blood however far-fetched it is and the Evening Alphabet Soup can lend credence to the slimest of fabrications.

Take HPV and the vaccines released recently: overnight there was a frenzy about how every young girl needs to get these vaccines. Especially the part about government knowing best: parents who did not want to have their little girls inoculated against sexually transmitted diseases (because every father who loves his daughter is a pervert) were considered worse than priests in the ‘dark ages’.

I don’t have daughters (yet) and I would be against inoculating for any sexually transmitted disease. It’s not that I want them to contract them, it’s that odds are heavily against their needing such a vaccine. Your children may be animals without self-control, but that’s no reason mine should be too.

Well, the media loudly proclaimed that every little girl needs a lollipop and Gardasil, and now they can eat it: the efficacy of the drugs are being questioned, seriously.

I’m not too concerned about one little dust up over some popular (and cash-cow if it were mandated) drug. I’m concerned about the idea that anything good must be rushed.

From the innocuous: Anybody watch “The New World” and like it? (raises hand) I loved the fact that this movie takes it’s time to tell a rich and moving story. Sit down and watch it. Turn off your clock and turn the DVD player around so you can’t see the time. Forget your appointments. You’ll have to. And you’ll find yourself enjoying it almost like you’d enjoy a good book. No instant gratification here.

To the important: The environment. Important? Yes! Jump to seeding the entire sky with silver oxide to force moisture accumulation to jump-start carbon dioxide processing? Not on your life. It will not be over today or tomorrow (despite what the Evening Alphabet Soup’s favorite movie says. We have time to work together to increase our energy efficiency and continue our amazing work managing this amazing planets incredible resources better than we have. That is one thing this nation has done better than anyone else.

To the political: Change for change’s sake. Heh. Have I got some excellent ocean-front property in Kansas to sell you.

So, while all y’all are running about like chickens with your heads cut off screaming about how the sky is falling while rubbing the lump the tennis ball left you. I’ll be over here getting things accomplished.

Quiet please! I’m enjoying this thunderstorm.

Also on StopTheACLU.

Matthew Kelly
December 14th, 1984 to August 20th, 2008

A man who loved God and sought to bring glory to Him.

…and he wore cool hats.

I don’t like it when the government takes 40% of my money or nearly 50% of others’ money.

I do not care for presidential candidates who plan on taking more of my money. And if they promise to give more of it back, my first question is: “why did you need to take it in the first place?”

And so I do not like Barak Hussein Obama as presidential candidate.

Barak Hussein Obama’s tax policies are untenable, immoral, and will tip this nation into financial ruin.

When it is hard to make an honest living, it is easier to make a dishonest one.

We are responsible for the the results of our ideas: Barak will be to blame for the worst recessional economy in America, he will be responsible for making America a little more like he thinks it is now: dirty, vile, unworthy.

And so, just on principle, I oppose his candidacy.

A request:
A good friend of mine and a closer friend of my wife, Matt Kelly, shot himself in the head in what appears to have been a freak accident.

He is not expected to live.

Please pray with myself and others around the world for the peace and comfort of God to be upon all the Kelly family (father, mother, and sister) and upon the friends (including my wife) who are gathered as they remove his life support in the near future and prepare for what is very likely to be a funeral soon.

He is a young man, recently graduated from Moody Bible Institute. He was planning on returning to Moody for his graduate work in the next years and then going on to the mission field in Romania.

God is always in control. He is the One who lays out our life before us and His thoughts and plans are usually incomprehensible to us in the current moment.

But we His children can trust Him to continue to, as He always has, work all things together for the good of those called according to His purposes, and to His glory.

UPDATE: The shooting was accidental. Evidence at the scene seems to indicate the gun was discharged away from Matt and the bullet only struck him after it ricochetted off of the fireplace.

Watching a British humor bit on politics and the education system (a real gem you’d get a laugh out of along with some insight on how to argue for school choice and a minimized Department of Education, read on for the links), it struck me that the great American Education system is an exercise not in excellence or even equality, but mediocrity.

Pushed upon us with the rationale that forgotten corners of America would be educated, that a standardized system would raise all schools to a uniformity of excellence and achievment on par with the best schools in the nation.

Instead, the poor and those who don’t care languish in the scum of poor teachers and poorer facilities, while those who care and those who can, pay for private schools to do their best upon their children.

There is no basis within a non-competitive system for any to excel. Teachers are protected by Unions from having to strive for real excellence and can instead coast on ignorance while their pupils languish in the squalor of low expectations and high bills.

The centralized system is capable only of moving quickly only in the direction of untested and untried educational philosophy promoted by pawns and peons of pop-culture, and is incapable of modifying itself to special circumstances and situation unique to each neighborhood and city.

The monolithic education system is shown to be a false hope by the very awards it offers. Principles, administrators, and teachers who buck the system, go far beyond the call of duty (or their contract) to achieve real results are rewarded instead of expected. The system has not helped them and only pay lip-service to their triumph over it.

The solution? Privatise and allow competition to take over the system. It may be (slightly) humorous, but the truths you’ll hear in the four videos linked below will encourage you.

The National Education Service – 1 of 4
The National Education Service – 2 of 4
The National Education Service – 3 of 4
The National Education Service – 4 of 4

Great minds think alike, right?

I was mulling over different things about marriage and contemplating writing something, when I went to ipandora and saw that Matt had already beat me to it.

So while some of this may be similar, here are thoughts on marriage from the wife’s perspective.

I tell Matt I love him often. Telling him that is not enough for me, I have to think of ways to show him that I love him.

Sometimes that is very hard to do. Like Matt said, you realize how selfish you are in marriage.

I’m a pretty independent person, so it definitely takes some work on my part.

I have to consciously think of how I’m going to show Matt that I love him.

Sometimes that is by watching a movie I don’t think I’ll enjoy because he wants to see it. (and I found out that I did enjoy the movie)

Or by realizing that he has been working hard, too, and that some time playing computer games is what he needs to relax and unwind.

Also, it’s better to give him something concrete to do to help you, rather than just inwardly fuming over him relaxing when you are working. Don’t expect them to read your mind on what you need done.

This morning, for example, I was fixing Matt’s lunch. I had a jar of tomato sauce that I couldn’t open, so I brought it to Matt and handed it to him.

It was fun to watch the smile he got on his face when I handed him the jar. He quickly opened it, no problem.

Now, I could have stayed in the kitchen and pounded around the lid the end of a butter knife (this really does work, by the way) until I could open the jar, but I didn’t. Matt likes to feel needed and this was one small way I could do that.

He feels loved when I need him. Even if it’s just to open a jar of tomato sauce.

Then there was the realization that even a selfless act can be selfish if it makes him feel bad.

Matt has been sleeping by himself on the queen bed for months, and the other night, well, I guess he forgot he had someone to share it with now.

He was taking up a rather large amount of space and by the time I realized it, he was already fast asleep. (I envy his ability to fall fast asleep in two minutes…) I had just enough space and so decided to deal with it instead of waking him up.

Well, over the next two hours, he edged himself closer and closer to my side of the bed. I tried to gently push him back and he didn’t budge. So when it got to the point that I was about to fall off the bed, I took my pillow and a blanket and moved to the couch.

I didn’t wish to wake him because he had to be at work early and needed his sleep. However, I didn’t think about how he would feel when he found me sleeping on the couch the next morning. He felt horrible and would’ve rather had me wake him up.

If there’s a next time, I’ll have to think of some ingenious way to wake him up. [evil grin]

So there are lots of lessons to be learned in marriage, and I know I have just barely scratched the surface. The next 50 years should be interesting, so stay tuned for updates!