presto-chango

Slate magazine reports on group of researchers in London that hope to gain insight in how artificial intelligence operates by letting it try its hand at prestidigitation and see how a computer algorithm might optimise a classic card trick. The thought is a little bit arresting, since it seems to allow robots into that human weakness and even yearning for deception.

Since we can be bemused and delighted by sleight-of-hand, maybe, unbeknownst to us as role-models, we’re sending the message that the appearance of sentience is good enough for us the gullible. One of the goals of this exercise, however—aside from any extraneous and unexpected findings it might yield in the fields of the human and machine psyches, is to learn and hopefully teach the difference between deliberate and unwilling deception—to not be too vague, demurring or confusing. What do you think about robotic magicians? Are we already dazzled too easily by the refined and rarefied interfaces of technology that hides the circuitry—or squirrels running in wheels?

tinseltown or economies of scale

Looking through a gallery of creative, outlandish weapons—which were mostly theoretical and not battle-tested, including a massive aircraft-carrier whose landing strip was made of ice, bat-bombs and a so-called gay-bomb that was to pheromonially encourage soldiers to make love, not war, I was reminded how I was admonished that the actress and sex-symbol known as Marilyn Monroe was first discovered in 1945 while working in a drone assembly plant in Van Nuys, California.

This hobbyist factory for radio-controlled planes was purchased by an enterprising British actor and World War I fighting ace to produce re-purposed models for the US War Department. Although these planes were initially limited to target-practise, they did already possess all the modern hallmarks of that we think of as proper to drone warfare, with the ability to deliver a payload and conduct surveillance runs—however, graciously the technology was withheld for seventy years, and at least not made available to hobbyists until recently. Los Angeles was also of course an ideal place to be discovered, with the motion picture business established there since 1912, having gone West originally to escape the jurisdiction (or to at least be as geographically separated as possible) of Thomas A. Edison’s industry-breaking patents held on distribution, film, cameras and projectors—oftentimes independent productions being halted on the East Coast with litigation and thugs. Though a different studio-system took root in Hollywood as well, creativity was allowed to flourish with new ideas and fresh-faces allowed in.

currency accords

The occupying powers of Germany after the end of World War II certainly came into that mandate with different perspectives and ideologies, the French, Britons, the Americans and the Soviets all having had unique experiences of the horrors of war and differing native political compositions. While it was very challenging to achieve any sort of consensus on how the caretakers ought to govern the different sectors, there was no real outward animosity or the carving of boundaries until the introduction of the new Deutschmark.
With it out of the question that the old Reichsmark should continue to remain in circulation with its old symbols and associations, each sector minted its own occupation money, and indeed monetary reform was prohibited under treaty terms, the governors not allowed to take steps that might strengthen the German financial system, and reconstruction was hindered by this foreign script, not be conducive to neither trade nor investment, with most of the economy gone underground and people resorting to barter. Frustrated, in June of 1948, the Western Allies decided to act alone and began issuing the Deutschmark without consulting the Soviets, and it was this decision that first sparked the Blockade of Berlin that eventually led, in quick succession, to the physical and sociological partition of Germany, with a defensive wall erected at the frontier.
Of course, in the West, the Bonn Republic, the unilateral decision seemed to work out well—inflation staved off and reemergence of the nation as an industrial and economic world-player. The East struggled in relation to its neighbour but also came to prosper with the foil of the Ostmark and command-economy. Meanwhile, the former German parliament building, the Reichtag (long-form Plenarbereich Reichstagsgebäude, the Hall of the Plenary Imperial Diet) sat disused just meters on the wrong side of the most heavily guarded borders of the Cold War—having fallen into ruins since the arson of the Nazis in 1933. The capital of the West was in Bonn and the East Germans razed the old Prussia Berliner Stadtschloss to build their capitol, the Palast der Republik, itself razed in 2008 to rebuild the city’s palace. With Reunification solidified in 1990, due in no small part to the controversial and economically punishing gesture to integrate the Ostmark with an exchange rate parity (eins für eins) to the Deutschmark, the capital of the united Germany would be brought back to Berlin. The neglected, crumbling Reichstag did not even register to the citizens of the city as a part of the skyline and the idea to once again use that building as the seat of the government seemed folly—or at least did not garner much interest or excitement. The clever and ambitious work of two artists, however, captured the public’s imagination and made the new Bundestag an object of affection, pride and hope.

First in 1995, the artist Christo and collaborators draped the old building in a shimmering silver fabric, sort of like a cocoon and people started getting interested in that invisible ruin. After the chrysalis was shed, work began on the restoration and transformation, overseen by famed and prolific British architect Baron Norman Foster, who embellished the original class dome copula as an elevated walk-way for visitors to the observe proceedings below. Scars of the building’s past are also preserved as reminders. The Bundestag (the federal diet) convened there for the first time in 1999, the Eurozone single currency having come into effect also that year—virtually at least, with electronic transactions denominated in the euro, while national banknotes and coins of the founding members remaining in circulation for another three years.

sunday sküle

Via the outstanding Dangerous Minds comes a peek inside the The Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities that is being distributed along side biblical pamphlets and fast-food fantasyland characters storybooks in and around the religiously contentious lands of Orange County, Florida. The author investigated further and found the lessons presented were on the whole positive ones, imparting the virtues of inclusion, tolerance and personal responsibility—as well as subtly advocating for the separation of Church and State. I wonder how this outreach effort has gone over and what fire-and-brimstone is being rained down on those satanic values mentioned above. What do you think?  Is this equal-time or indoctrination?