Wednesday 14 November 2018

co-educational

On this day in 1968, for the first time since its founding in 1701 as an academy dedicated to the study of theology and liturgical language, the Yale board of governors and trustees voted to approve the admittance of women students for the following academic year, referring the matter to faculty for ratification. The resolution passed with near unanimity, with only one vote against out of two hundred senior professors. At the same time, the university’s sister institution, Vassar College (founded as a women’s only school in 1861) announced it would start matriculating male students.

Tuesday 13 November 2018

cutting-corners

Via Kottke, we are confronted with a rather though-provoking, collaborative list of ways that artificially intelligent systems have managed to “cheat” and by-pass their programmers’ intentions in the name of efficiency and seeking the path of least resistance.
To paraphrase the words of a cognitive scientist—because I think the statement has far broader applications (e.g. confirmation bias and the reproducibility crisis in the social sciences) than our current range of experiments and fetishizing: no one will bother with an assigned task that’s more of a challenge than exploiting its reward-function, transforming a bug or loophole into a feature. The findings include: creatures instructed to evolve for speed through re-enforcement learning instead of working on their limbs or other, novel means of propulsion they simply selected to grow very tall and reached high speeds as they fell over, others became indolent cannibals or flatly refused to play at all to avoid losing. Like with all our exposure to pedantic wish-granters in fiction, I hope seeing these sort hacks take place in the sandbox prepares humanity for when it’s time to entreat the genie in earnest.

there is no emoticon for what i’m feeling

Courtesy of Boing Boing, we are having far too much fun with this custom emoji-builder that allows one to mix elements from different glyphs into something new and with a degree of specificity that might be otherwise lacking.
We’re especially enthralled with the randomised feature that generates expressive chimera that rather defy a straightforward definition. What occasions would the pictured suit?  Give it a try and show us what you come up with.

straรŸendorf

By virtue of geography, our village is a linear settlement, running along a ribbon of road that transverses the valley and bordered by the pastures and the baronial wood—which itself has been preserved in deference to much later political developments and the partition of Germany.
There is a clear centre (not always the case) around the ensemble of buildings that form the chapel, castle and keep—in keeping with the original sense of village, the support-structure for a villa. Another common layout is referred to as an Angerdorf—from the Old High German word for a grassy commons (Am Anger is a common street name even if the place has been built over), usually containing a stream or pond.

Monday 12 November 2018

requiescat in pace: douglas rain

NPR reports that accomplished Shakespearian actor Douglas Rain passed away, aged ninety in Ontario, with an illustrious career with many hundreds of credits to his name, both on stage and on television, working alongside countless veteran actors—but perhaps the role that Rain will be remembered and appreciated in the widest sense for is that of voicing the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer that controlled the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft on its voyage to Jupiter in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (previously here, here, here and here). Rain’s calm and measured tones became something menacing and unforgettable, to have lost agency and the ability to countermand a machine. In 2010, HAL is rebooted and Rain reprises his role, this time alongside his twin, SAL 9000, voiced by Candice Bergen.

frauenwahlrecht

Following the November Revolution that ignited with the abdication of the Hapsburg and German emperors and subsequent truce, this day marks the centenary of universal suffrage in Austria and Germany with both women and men aged at least twenty (down from twenty-five from prior to Great War) being able to vote and stand for public office in any and all elections.
For the people of Germany, this pronouncement was legally ratified on 30 November 1918 and was to shortly thereafter be tested in the field and at the polls with federal elections called for the Weimar Republic in January 1919. Austria held Constituent Assembly (Konstituierende Nationalversammung) elections in mid-February. Though activists all over had been working towards the enfranchisement of women for years and the struggle for equal representation continues, political will acquiesced in part because so many millions had perished in the fighting and constituencies were more and more reliant on the votes of women to confer confidence and mandate.