Skyler Crossman's blog

what ifs... demonsional gods

     It's late at night, and my brain is still working. Usualy, at times like this, I have my most inspired ideas. The problem is, inspired doesn not neccicarily mean good, or even basicly intellegent. It's the one-man version of brainstorming- you get some really neat concepts, but with a lot of deadwood you have to weed out. I normaly wind up with a 1-in-15 ratio, bood to bad. So, with that preamble, here goes.

     One of my long-standing reasons for wanting to work in the field of proggraming is an iterest in Artificial Intelegence, first inspired by Jane (O.S.C.'s Children of the Mind series), then by Asimov's Robot Dreams. This is mostly because of a strange and, as far as I know, unique interpritation of human scientific advancement. I think the science age began when humans began to emulate God. In fact, I think that that is the point that humans became 'Human', gaining what can only really be described as a soul. The first emulation was emulating the job that God had created Humans for. (at this point, the religion I am working with becomes clear. it's a christian, protestant/cathlic view of it, and I work from this because, whether I agree with it completely or not, it's the one I was raised with, so that's the pattern that's in my head. It's like the first dog you ever knew. when someone says "dog", that image pops into your head. In my case, it was a rotwieler. I know that there are other dogs. but that is my default assumption, my first dog, if you will. To me, all other dogs can only truly be apprieciated for the ways that they do not resemble an aging rotwieler. Chuiwawa people may hate me for this, but there you have it.) The first emulation was of the lever, because the first purpuse God gave man was lazyness. (Now I've made even the Rotwieler fans angry!) Man was created by God in order to care for all the animals. God could have done this himself, but he didn't want to. He was lazy, and tired after four 1/2 hard days work. So the first emulation was of using something else to do work. the first use of animals. maybe hunting dogs, maybe plow horses. Then there is (I'm skipping a lot here, just picking out the most obvious connections.) the invention of fire, not so much for the cooked food or the heat, but for the (let there be) light. God put the moon in the sky, and we put our satalites in the sky. Not as grand, nor as amazing, but the same idea.

     If we create an artificial inteligence, it will be limited compared to us. We would be able to move from PC to PC without them seeing us, and our monitor could show us everything. We could record things, even reset the program and change something, that in the computers point of view would look like changing things in the past. We would be omniscient and omnipowerful, having created life, presumably in our own image, but limited, less than us. This begins to look familer. (When I was little, I played the game Creatures, and named one of the norns after my, his brother after my brother, recreating as much of my family as I could. My mom said "aww, how cute." she didn't get the joke.) Someone once said that the world was a comedy for God (I think the actual quote was "the world is a stage for God, but for the life of me I cannot tell whether it be a comedy or a farce." At least I think that's what it was.), but I think a little diffrently than that. I think WE are God's version of artificial intelegence. An extraordinarily complex one, by our standerds, but then, how would our artificial intelegence know what our world looked like? But of course, the A.I. might create and A.I., and so on and so on. Or the other way, that God was created by God's God, and on and on and on. Gods to the nth dimonsion, where n=x+1, and x=y+1, and on and on and on.

 

Okay, rambling done. I'll take a look at this in the morning, and see if it is too crazy to keep. I might leave it around though, if it is interesting madness. I should probubly add a disclaimer of sorts though. Something like, "the author of this post does not neccicarily belive in the above text, nor encourages others to belive it in violation of their own beliefs. the author did not write the above document with intention to offend or step on the toes of anyones sensibilities, and would like to apologize to any who were offended or stepped on, and extend to them this messege:"if you do not like it, go read someone elses blog.""

times when the world is in flux

"There are times when the world is in flux, and the right words at the right moment can change everything. it isn't my fault that that time is now, and I'm still a child."
Perter Wiggin. (alright, Orson Scott Card if you insist.)

    Card has a way of making his characters very lifelike; so lifelike that all of his characters, you can go "aha! I'm like that!" But I think that the character that fits me, almost scarily accurately, is Peter Wiggin. Arrogant. Brilliant. Self conscious. not so much agnostic as it's just that the question doesn't matter. Driven, but not internally. I could go on and on. Heck, the love/hate/gray area-relationship between him and Andrew is what I think my relationship with my brother is. not perfect, but closer than I could get. So I can't help but wonder, should I do the same ting he did? The world is clearly hurting. I don't have the impetus that the buggers provided, but I wonder if I could possibly achieve what he achieved. I think that reaching the end goal that he did, the world united, himself at the head, is a bit much. But I wonder, and ask the question: how far would I get? Could I get myself published? Undoubtedly, I think. But could I do it with a pseudonym? The I.D. centralized world that I live in is definitely constricting.
    "But we don't think like other children do we Val? we don't act like other children. most importantly, we don't write like other children." Of course, the problem is "on the nets we're clearly labeled as children, and they treat us like mice."
    My father says that the only people that the authors of the American Constitution forgot to protect was the ones too young to vote, because we can be taxed without representation other than our parents, a proxy at best. I think he's right, but there is no right answer to that because clearly you can't have five year olds voting.
    Why do people require you to list your age on so many things? I entered a writing contest a while back, and they asked for name, gender, and a copy of the writing I was submiting. The gender thing is up to another to get mad over, but I thought the age thing was just annoying! I mean come on, you have the writing! Are they going to say "we'd like to publish this, but you're too young"? I just don't get it.

Masterpieces

I got a book a while back, that only now am I really getting into. it is called Masterpieces, and is an anthology of short stories in science fiction that defined the genre, as edited by Orson Scot Card. and some of the stories... wow.
    I've read some stephen king books, and thought they were gory, disturbed. but when I read Sandkings, by Goerge R.R. Martin, I got scared out of my pants. seriously, I didn't sleep for hours. he did in thirty pages what King wasnt able to do in something thicker than the average textbook.
    I like time quandrys. I enjoy them. the guys I play D&D with have said I'm not allowed to use them, as it gives them migraines. I've seen paradoxes to the threefold without problems. but All you Zombies, by Robert Heinlien, was twisted. five people within the story were the main character, and one was aware of nothing, three were aware that the first was him, and the last was aware of all of them. that last one deliberately messed up his own life so that he would create the circumstances in which he would join the time travelers, then recruited himself as a replacement for him so he could transfer. in the process, he gave birth to a clone of himself. and that was the simple version.
    I mean, wow! those were two that stuck me particularly, but the whole book, four hundred + pages, was just as good. it's like watching little league all my life, then going to a pro game. but that disparages one of the masters I have seen. Orsen Scott Card himself. my teachers say my style is heavily influenced by him, but I don't think it's nearly as good.  reading him was like watching one of the pro dudes bat in little league.
    I wonder... (those words strike fear into the hearts of my friends. it's kind of like someone standing in a nuclear silo saying "I wonder what this button does." not necessarily a bad thing, but do you really like to take that risk?)... if you get influenced by who you read, as I was by Card, Pratchet, and all my other heavy reads, do we pick up everything? is my writing different after reading Sandkings? and if so, is it to become more like that story? because if it works that way, then you would want to pick one style and stick to reading only that. that way you would keep your style pure. mine is humor. if I start incorporating the dread of the sandkings growth, then there are going to by some very sick stories coming off my keyboard. plus, it was a real treat to read Sandkings, well worth the nightmares. and the nightmares themselves were kinda cool too. all about being locked in, the world just ends, and there are others nearby, but we unite against a common threat. (that'll make more sense if you read the story) the man thing that makes me think that the unistylistic thing might not be so bad is Card. he doesn't really have a style anything like anyone else I've read. but there are elements in it that seem very familiar, and it seems to change slightly every time he writes, sometimes even in mid book. someday, I'd like to talk to him and ask him about that.

   the book title is Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century. pick it up. it is well worth it.

geek games

is the name 'Fatal1ty' familiar to you? probably not. almost definitely not.

Lance Armstrong is a biker. Tiger Woods is a golfer. and Fatal1ty is a gamer.

there are competitions of videogames. E3 is more news oriented, but there are others. PAX, for example. there are even (if you do not like videogames, prepare for a shocker) turniments. and of course, any online MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) worth its lags has a PvP (Player vvs Player) mode. but what I didn't know was this: some of these turniments give money to the winner. I assume oyu pay an entrance fee, then the winner gets more money than he paid in. Fatal1ty does this for a living. here's his site.

http://www.fatal1ty.com/

this guy has a job that some I know would kill to get. come to think of it, depending on who the killee was, I might follow their example. Gaming for a living? for me, that would be a little like getting paid to breathe. I do it anyway, so why not get paid? I found out about this guy through the Yahoo new things. I normally ignore them, but the caption grabbed me. 'Pro gamer: paid to play". that kind of thing can get a fellow's attention, you know? but there was a very interesting poll underneath the video. "should video games be included in the Olympics?" I answered yes, of course, but the results it showed me were interesting. 33% were in favor. not a majority, but a good chunk. of course, the survey was probubly skewed, as it was on a link called "Pro Gamer", but I wonder if there are better, more accurate polls. does anyone know of any? or should I just set one up here? who is in favor of gaming Olympics, who is against?

Ender's Game Wikia

Ender's Game Wikia

http://endersgame.wikia.com/wiki/Main...

check out my entry on Eikia. this is what I spend my time on.

Wikia

most frequent flyers on the information superhighway are familier with Wikipedia. but there is a whole new level to this open source phenominon. Wookiepedia is almost identical in purpase and apearence to wikipedia, but while Wikipedia gives a few pages of info on the movies and actors of Star Wars, Wookiepedia has pages and pages of information, all in universe. what ewok culture is like, where sarlaacs live, the diffrent forms of lightsaber combat. hordes of Star Wars nerds have flocked to the Wookiepedia banner, giving their considerable expertise to it. but then I saw, on the tail end of the Wookiepedia url, where normaly you see .com or .org, it says .wikia.com  

odd, I thought to myself. commercial, orginization, network. wikia? so I run a search on that. wikia. and guess what I found? a site, home to the entire wiki library. I looked in the lists of wikia, and found a massive list.if I was to print out the list, I would bet good money that it would be thicker than my encyclopedia. I have a Dell Dimension 4400, running windows XP. and loading the list took twenty five minoutes. that, my fellows, is BIG.

I searched for my favorite book, Ender's Shadow. (that's right. the LIST of wikia is big enough to require it's own search engine. that's like haveing so many search engines, you get to a list of them, and use a search engine to find google.) and I find that the Ender series is put together in one thing, Wigginpedia. the feeling I had as the main page loaded was simeler to a christian entering through the golden gates,  or a zen follower begining to go into his first true meditation. I was about to enter an online Ender centrial, where everything was open source, and the edits had to be made in code, with a tutorial that was also open to editing. I was about to face Trolls, vandels, and ogres. (this is tech lingo, not the hairy green giants and graffiti artists) heck, wikis even have user pages! with your contributions listed! I get to give my knowledge of geek, with my name perminatly attatched to it, and others can correct/praise me. heaven? close. very close. and if I die, and I do go to heaven, then wikia is going to be in it. maybe even be the whole thing. just a bookshelf, a computer, and a ethernet cord, sinking into the clouds. I wonder if the mortals will be able to see my changes?

is this pointless? I could be doing work. I have everything I need to do done, but I could do something. this is as pointless as it gets. I'm not even writing fiction. I'm not even reading fiction. I'm talking about it. disputing stuff on it. but this is some of the best fun I've had in years, and i've only been on it for a few days. I spent three hours after I finished the last of my work for the week working on a geneology of the Wiggins and Delphikis. (they are related, tenuesly, and that link took a while to fit in.) then anouther hour trying to fit the Os Venerados in. (haven't managed it yet, but I will!) I don't spend this amount of time on anything. ever. I only spend two hours a day on video games, maybe three hours on Dungeons and Dragons, four on weekends. I just spent four hours doing something spontaniously, on a thursday. Am I going crazy?

http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia

but try it. I dare you. the url is right there. just run it, then look up something you are interested in. a book. a technology. a device. a movie. I haven't tried individual names, but I wouldn't be suprised. register, it takes sixty seconds, and do one article. then watch it for a while. someone, sooner or later, will edit it, in a way that you hadn't thought of. then try to stop.

eating my words

I don't know about everybody else out there, but I hate eating my words. I do my best to avoid it, even going so far as to deny small details, but tonight I really had a few paragraphs shoved down my throat.

 

I think that kids are, on average, smarter than adults. I make no secret of it. I think that, stacked against each other, kids will outdo adults in a fair mental compitition. if you think about it, a relitivly small number of kids go to jail each year. adults are definatly on the wrong side of that example. and I think that most kids are more mature than we give them credit for. I have a fourteen year old friend who I think could be left alone for a few days, and be okay. I also know a twenty year old I wouldn't trust unescourted in the kitchen for five minoutes. but today, I saw something that struck me as taking it too far.

 

my cousin is around seven years old. he just barely comes up to my waist. and I don't mean to imply that he's imature, but enough is enough. when I got a ride with my uncle (the 7-year olds father) my uncle said, before starting the car, "do you have your cell phone?"

on my way home from school, I've seen other kids that age or about with cell phones, often chatting with them. I always assumed they were older, but just short. I don't have a cell phone. I do have one, but I don't have a daily need to use the telephone. I use it, say, once every three days. I don't know, maybe these kids have a bunch of connections they have to do, maybe they are stock brokers in their spare time, maybe they have to call a taki. but I doubt it.

I have heard that a cell phone is useful if you get lost, or if you are in trouble. *snort* I live in the suburbs. lost? most kids I see live less than ten blocks from the school. in trouble? jeez, there are houses everywhere. you have to jog twenty minoutes from the school just to get away from them. what do the the parents think the neighbors are likely to do? "oh, look Marge, some of the school kids just got run over by a drunkard in a semi. no, he doesn't seem dead yet- oh, you mean the kids? thier wounded, but they might live, if the get an ambulance. maybe we should- what? the show is starting? forget it, lets watch." if you need a phone, you walk up one of the sidewalks and say so. why do they need a cell phone in grade two?

Trick. treats too, but a trick.

its halloween. I standerdly hand out the candy. today, I heard a story from my anthropology teacher about what he used to do for halloween. he said he used to dress up in gloves and a coat, then put a paper bag with a face on it over his head. he would put the candy in a bowl by his feet, and then put sign next to it that said "just take one and say hi to the scarecrow." when people stoped for the candy, he would wave or something like that. I thought it was a great idea, and decided to try it out for myself.

 

an interesting phenominon occered. in total, 8 sets of people came, in bunches from three (at all times there was at least on adult) to 7. I can't see them through the bag, but I can hear them. I can tell the diffrence between the kids and the adults. in three of the sets, the adults recognized thatI was "real" and advised there kids acordingly. in the other five, the adults reapetedly told their kids not to be scared, its just a scarecrow. one went so far as to kick my foot. "see?" he said. "its fake. not real. just grab your candy." being in a odd mood, and with my foot smarting, I said "he's right you know. I'm as fake as they get." okay, so I didn't realy, but I wanted to.

 

the interesting bit of this is that in every case, the children saw though my costume. every time, without fail, there was little squeaky voices saying "its real, mommy, it's real!" what gives? kids are better at this than adlts? or maybe the adults just don't look properly. something like that.

a little math.

This is a little math equation I found.  If you feel like it, do it out on paper, but whatever you do don't skip ahead and to see what the answer is. To understand it you need to know math at least up to algebra one, but if you don't understand it, ask somebody to explain it to you.  It won't be as funny though. (note: × does not equal x, it is a multiplication sign. my computer does not have the dot for algebra and so I use the pre-algebra thing. if someone knows how to put a dot in there then tell me and I can change it. I also can't do exponent symbols, so you'll  just have to bear with me. instead I sized the number down but... if you have truoble interpriting it, tell me, and I can try to explain.)

 

a = b

 

×a  ×a

 

a2 = ba

 

-b    -b

 

a2 – b2 = ab – b2

 

factor

 

(a-b) × (a+b) = b(a-b)

 

÷ (a-b)               ÷ (a-b)

 

 

what is the answer?

 

 

a+b = b

 

consider the ramifications of this for a moment.

 

if a = 1 then b therefore equals both 1 and 2. thus, 1 = 2.

 

  head hurting yet?

you can't be serious!" what, ever?

what is with all these strange sayings that I've been hearing lately? like, "that is/was too dumb" what do you mean, too dumb? is there this kind of dumbness limit, and after that its illegal to be any stupider? and how about"easy as baking a cake"? I can't bake a cake, can you? "that's just weird" so... that is nothing but weird? THESE THINGS MAKE NO SENSE!!! "you're freaking me out"?!?! a freak is an abnormality, so if someone is getting you out of an abnormality, isn't that a good thing? "that takes the cake" wtf? where do these things come from? did some master thief pull off a daring heist and stole a cake? and how about "its impossible to read as much as you do"? it is phisicly impossible to do what I just did. wait.... if I just did it..... ARRGH! talk sense folks, realy. It's just too easy to talk sensibly. just look at me.