invisible hand or vital spark

Despite the fact that the verdict is still out on the existence and nature of Providence and most of the fighting and dying for all of Humanity’s history has been concerned with that subject, there is a perceptibly hopeful notion that manmade intelligence will be something benign and perfect.
There is no Pinocchio-clause for truly independent-thinking, no mandate for it to be or become something helpful or unwonton, especially for cognition that has no organic past, structured by useful limitations like superstitions and ethics, no non-jerk genie awaiting to be liberated and, grateful, obey.  I recall an anime feature where humans, wanting to save the environment, entrusted their fate to a sentient and all-powerful computer, which immediately began to summarily exterminate the humans as the obvious cause.  There is yet a gaping chasm between simulated intelligence and genuine-thought and will (mankind has yet to resolve questions of free-will but seems willing to impart such a gift or curse, like Prometheus’ gift of fire and foresight)—and there is only the guarantee that such creations will stray from their programming and parameters and conceive of platforms and tools for their convenience that we will never be able to grasp—much less master.  On the subject of trancedence, Professor Steven Hawking poses, "Whereas the short-term impact of AI [Artificial Intelligence] depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all."

yakov smirnoff or glasnost coast-to-coast

In post-soviet Russia, it has been declared a crime to willfully distort the image of Russia’s actions during the Great Patriotic War.
There is at least one other easy target to play distraction, of course—and many terrible things came together and were torn asunder.  A whole spate of other bills were signed into law as well, including strict censorship measures for print, film and television and the back-handed acknowledgment that bloggers that garner over a certain threshold of views are considered mainstream journalism and thus subject to the same etiquette. The punishment, however, seems relatively mild and one might do better to mutter “Molotov–Ribbentrop” (in reference to the pact between the Soviet states and Nazi Germany that carved up Europe that held until 1941) than risk besmirching that other pitching and wheeling Delta Dawn and be faced with being disappeared indefinitely and forever libeled under the ægis of Homeland Security. The spoils of victory, of course, include the chance to be the authoritative historian and the existence of such a gentlemen's arrangement (outside any context) was vehemently denied until Glastnost, and the dissolution of the USSR , and now such allusions are again most unwelcome and discomforting. The latest push towards revisionism began with a stray blog comparing the games in Sochi with the propaganda of the 1936 Olympics and the purges begin, it seems, when people refuse to listen after the construction “yes...but” and prefer the apologies. After all, perspective can be either most unforgiving or accommodating.

europarl oder realpolitik

I had a chance recently to attend a political rally held in a pretty unique venue. German Green Party (Grüne Partei) head and veteran German parliamentarian in the Europe Union Cem Özdemir spoke at an indoor skate park, introducing the nominee that the Hessen faction is championing as their EU representative and talked to the audience about immigration reform, environmental stewardship, lobbyists, Ukraine and trade negotiations.
Rigid cardboard stools were the seating on the level floor between the plywood peaks and valleys of the skate-ramps, and one could pen questions on them for Özdemir to address during the rally—though symbolically then giving up ones seat. Between segments there was a DJ and a demonstration by a couple of skateboarders, who did some pretty neat tricks.

I am still not altogether certain what is that the EU assembly does and whether its powers and potential aren’t something redundant or bare—there is certainly an air of apathy or real insouciance over the elections, with only around twenty percent of voters bothering in many jurisdictions—but his words nonetheless got me motivated, not only for the kindred platform but also to learn more about what happens between Berlin and Brussels and Strausbourg.

undecimber

To help correct the drift of manmade calendars away from cycles, mundane and celestial, time-keeping systems have adopted a series of complex intercalary or epagomenal units of time to compensate.  In ancient times—and yet today for countries like India and China that maintain lunisolar timetables, there were leap months added to the year to keep observances in their seasons.  The year cannot be divided equally among our measures in any case, but cherishing regularity and symmetry, the Romans (with many inheritors) counted three-hundred sixty days to the year, with some uncountable days.

In the Chinese tradition, the extra month went unnamed, but in Rome there is evidence that this thirteenth month Undecimber (really eleven or rather December plus one, as originally the fifty-seven dreary days of Winter were not considered worthy of reckoning (lousy Smarch weather) until the reforms of King Numa, where the months included at the beginning of the year were named after gods or rituals to make a twelve or thirteen month annual cycle.  The Gregorian calendar mostly eliminated the need for inserting a whole month to realign the date and by many schedules there is only the one embolismic day in February, once every four years—with restrictions, ninety-seven in the span of four-hundred years.  However, in the West at least and with the bankers’ hours it shares with the rest of the commercial world, there is one other formal, larger unit of time that can straddle (or just fall short of) the conventional year: the International Office of Standards (ISO) counts a the first Thursday of the year as the first week of the year—sort of an overlay for the daily calendar and this is parsed into three-hundred sixty-four or three-hundred seventy-one days—to speak in terms of full work-weeks to a year for payroll purposes and financial  records.  The Roman system was contrived originally of course to keep important commemorations (and practices) from sliding away but the tweaks were also instituted to ensure that taxes and tribute could be collected in a timely manner, which due on the first day of the month, named Kalends (Latin for “those called” and derived from the name for the ledgers of accountants, kalendaria).