robot guy

still alive and kicking

2009-07-28T16:29:00.002-06:00

I'm still here, really. I've been working 100 hour weeks for the last couple of months, and have hardly spent any time at all on the internet (my email inbox is a nightmare). I'm still writing the AI 101 series - part 3 has been in about 6 rough draft forms, and parts 4,5,and 6 are in various stages of completion. I anticipate that regular posting should resume at the end of August or the beginning of September.

Artificial Intelligence 101 - part 2

2009-03-27T23:22:00.003-06:00

Why AI?

Now that we have established what Artificial Intelligence is, let's look at why we would want to create such a thing. There isn't much point in creating something if we don't know why we would need it at all. We already have natural intelligence - human beings. What sort of advantages do we gain by developing artificial intelligence?

intelligence in nature

To help us answer this question, we first need to know what intelligence is used for in nature. The physical implementation of intelligence in nature is performed by neurons, so it is safe to say that any creature without a nervous system is incapable of intelligence. The simplest animal with a nervous system is Caenorhabditis elegans, which has exactly 959 cells in its body. 302 of those cells are neurons. All the other bodily functions - digestion, respiration, excretion, reproduction, circulation, and locomotion - are handled by the remaining 657 cells. This is an enormous portion of the animal's body being used to sense its environment, make decisions, and trigger actions, more than 31 percent.

Clearly this control system is important to c. elegans survival. Its nervous system is a third of its body, and hence demands a third of its nutritional requirements. So, why is such a large nervous system worth so much to c. elegans? The animal needs to feed on bacteria, which are unlikely to be right in front of its mouth all the time, so it needs to find those nutrients and get to them. To do that, it needs to sense its environment and find and eat its food. It needs to move its body around up, down, left, and right through the soil. It needs to sense damage to its body and move to avoid the source of the damage if possible. And it needs to perform certain automatic functions within its body, such as flushing waste from its system. These behaviors and capabilities allow c. elegans to survive within its simple environment.

C. elegans has a nervous system. Does that mean that it has intelligence? Well, it certainly makes choices (left or right?). The environment provides it with immediate feedback, which then subtly modifies the connections between and firing patterns of neurons (and this makes c. elegans useful for the study of nicotine dependence). Finally, such properties are not inherent in a single neuron, but only emerge when a group of neurons work together. Therefore, according to the definition in part 1, c. elegans has intelligence. Not a lot, and not particularly smart, but it is there. It uses that intelligence to allow basic behaviors such as controlling movement.

If we look at some larger animals with more complex bodies and nervous systems, we start to see animals with brains - a localized cluster of an enormous number of interconnected neurons. At each evolutionary step, much of the structure of the brain is retained (as long as the parts remain useful) and new capabilities are added. These larger animals have more complicated environments than c. elegans, as they operate at a different physical scale. They are forced by evolution to add adaptations like predation and mating calls and so forth, each of which are controlled by new neural structures and combinations of structures in the brain.

Over a long period of time, those structures which enable survival spread as species evolve and diverge. For instance, we all have a portion of our brains which are "reptilian", inherited from a long-ago ancestor, which controls basic functions like rage or fight-or-flight. Human beings have a far more complicated brain structure than any other animal. While we have retained the reptilian brain, a lot more stuff has been added over evolutionary history. With each new addition, a new set of capabilities emerged as the new structure interacted with the preexisting structures.

This is true for all the macroscopic animals. Each has evolved over time, sharing some structures (both within the brain and within the rest of the body) from remote ancestors and sharing others only within their genus or species, or unique to the animal itself. Each new structure, when integrated with the old structures, provides new behaviors, such as flight or echolocation. Each contributes to the intelligence of the animal and hence the capabilities of the animal.

So, we have a partial answer: in nature, animals use intelligence to enable them to make choices and have various capabilities and behaviors which they would be unable to have without intelligence. And, we want to give our machines the ability to make choices and to have various capabilities and complex behaviors.

automation

Next, let's look at the "Artificial" part of AI. Although we could make our AI with any computational device (even Tinkertoys, Legos or Meccano), for simplicity we'll use computers. Whenever we create anything which performs some process in computer software and hardware, we are by definition automating that process. Why would we want to automate intelligence?

To help us answer this question, let's first look at some examples of automation. If we require some task to be done exactly the same way over and over, then it makes sense to build a machine to perform that task automatically. If we want to explore the surface of Mars, and it would be expensive and dangerous to send a manned mission first, then we send a machine to perform that task for us. If we want to control traffic signals, then it is far more efficient to automate the process, rather than having someone manually controlling all of the signals in a city. If we want to decelerate a vehicle on an icy road, then anti lock brakes automate the process of rapidly pressing and releasing the brakes much faster than any human can.

Human labor is expensive compared to automation. While it is possible for a team of people to control all of the traffic lights in a city, people get bored or sick or take vacations, and they need breaks for lunch and cannot work 24/7. A machine that controls the traffic signals can operate continuously, never takes a sick day, and never needs to be paid. Automation makes sense for that task, and indeed traffic lights have been automated everywhere. At first, the control systems were simple timers, but that can lead to problems like cars sitting at red lights for unnecessary lengths of time, poor synchronization between signals causing traffic jams, and so on. Over the years these systems have become more sophisticated, with pressure sensors embedded in the roadway monitoring traffic flow and providing feedback to the control system. Ideally, all of the traffic lights in a city would be operated in such a way to maximize the flow of traffic and minimize delays, saving all commuters time and gasoline. A control system with more intelligence controlling those lights would allow traffic to flow with fewer unnecessary red light delays and with a smoother flow than a simple timer system.

As machines become more complex, direct human control is possible only in the broadest sense. The driver of a car can steer, press the accelerator or brake pedal, operate the gear shift, and control the lights and signals to other drivers. The driver cannot directly control such things as the timing of the firing of the spark plugs, the fuel to air ratio, the angle of the steering wheels, how much power to apply to each wheel, and how much force to apply to each brake pad. On older cars, that was all handled by indirect mechanical means, which meant such things as skidding on icy roads or losing control in corners. On modern vehicles, those indirect controls are handled through the car's computer. Besides the control signals from the driver, these vehicles have additional sensors throughout the car, which monitor the car's environment and use that feedback to directly control the vehicle's wheels, steering and brakes. This layer of automation between driver and vehicle allows such things as anti lock brakes, traction control, and other features like airbags. Each of these systems improves the safety and efficiency of the vehicle, but requires simultaneous control of multiple systems many times per second. That is too much information to process, too many repetitive decision to be made, and too many things to control at once for a human driver, so the process has to be automated. The smarter the vehicle can be made, the greater the improvements in safety and efficiency - at least theoretically, assuming people don't make bad choices while driving.

What can we learn from these examples? Generally speaking, it is desirable to automate some function if it is too expensive, repetitive, tedious, complicated, or dangerous for humans to perform directly.

so, why AI?

A machine must be controlled in order to be useful, and without control a machine is dangerous - imagine an uncontrolled semi during rush hour. Some machines are simple, and simple software can be used to control them. Other machines, like the aforementioned semi, are more complicated and operate in a complex environment, and so (for now) they require human control.

Everything that is automated already has a control system. These range from simple mechanical controls (like a thermostat with a Mercury switch) to highly sophisticated electronic hardware and computer software. In nature, there is obviously a range of intelligence between species and within a species. It isn't a simple linear scale, as each new capability in effect provides another axis along which to measure intelligence - if a new application of intelligence isn't different in degree, then it is different in kind. And with automation there is obviously a range of intelligence required to operate our machines, with simple machines needing very little or no intelligence and more sophisticated and complicated machines requiring more complex control.

However, even the simplest of control systems can be improved with the application of artificial intelligence. Let's take the thermostat in your house as an example. In older thermostats, the furnace blower would come on if the temperature fell below a certain value and would turn off again above some other value. These values were determined by a set point on the dial; if it was a few degrees colder than the set point (moving the Mercury switch one way) then the furnace blower came on, and if it was a few degrees warmer than the set point (which would move the Mercury switch the other way), the furnace would shut off.

That isn't a particularly efficient way of operating the furnace, but it works. This can be improved, though, with some simple electronics and software. The problem being solved by the control system is well-understood and easily simulated. Causal relationships and the interrelationships between variables are well-understood and precise mathematical relationships can be derived and programmed into the control system software in the factory, long before actual use of the control system. Indeed, the vast majority of non-mechanical control systems do not use artificial intelligence, as much simpler PID controls will suffice. The Proportional/Integral/Derivative control system would allow for more precise adherence to the set point while using less energy to do so than the mechanical switch; indeed, PID controls are useful in an enormous range of applications and are ubiquitous.

In contrast, a fuzzy logic (this will be covered in AI101 part 5) control system on a thermostat allows for much smoother control of the furnace, turning the furnace blower on and off in a very slightly more efficient manner than PID. The gain in efficiency in use of the furnace can lower the heating bill by a significant amount. Of course, for trivial applications using an AI control system could be considered overkill. Most thermostats work just fine with a strictly mechanical control or PID control. If the cost of the AI control system is more than the savings due to the efficiency of using AI, then it doesn't make sense to use AI at all.

But what if the system being controlled changes over time? In that case, a mechanical or preprogrammed control system may not work properly and may act inappropriately. In such cases, the control system would need to recognize that its model of the system is in error and adapt its model by changing various constants it uses in its calculations - which brings us right back to the feedback part of the definition of artificial intelligence.

The thermostat has only two variables to deal with, the temperature and the set point. What if the system being controlled is not so well understood or easily simulated? What if there are a large number of variables whose interrelationships are nonlinear or otherwise unclear? It may not be possible to preprogram a control system in that case, and instead such a system needs artificial intelligence in order to learn those interrelationships.

And what if direct, real time human control is not possible? A robot can be sent to the bottom of the ocean, but seawater absorbs radio waves and so the robot must be tethered to the surface, and the robot cannot explore very far - and on its own, not at all. Robots have been sent to Mars, but the light-speed time delay forces ground controllers to guide the robots in small, incremental movements, and then wait three quarters of an hour for feedback - and those robots spend the vast majority of their working lives waiting through these light-speed communication delays. If instead the robot was equipped with an artificial intelligence that would allow it to safely maneuver about and do science on its own, then the ground controllers could give much more infrequent, general commands and spend most of their time downloading data.

bringing it all together

We want to control our machines so that they perform certain complex behaviors and possess certain capabilities, and for many applications simple control systems work just fine. However, if there are changes to the machine over time, if efficiency is at a premium, if the system is extremely complex or otherwise poorly understood, or if the environment is complex and changing over time, then we need artificial intelligence to get the desired behaviors from those machines.

In part three of AI101, we will look at some of the history of AI, from Golems to Perceptrons. Then in parts four, five, and six we'll look at some of the more promising strategies for developing artificial intelligence: neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence 101

2009-03-04T13:50:00.005-07:00

part 1: what is intelligence?

When building an artificial something, it helps to know what the natural version of that something is. For example, when building a prosthetic leg, having an idea of what a natural leg is, what it is used for, how it interfaces with the rest of the body and so on is critical; without that information, the artificial version of a leg might have wheels or a knee that bends in all directions or so much mass that walking becomes impossible. There are details which are important to our purposes (such as the placement of the big toe, which is essential for balance), and details that are unimportant (like the exact number and placement of hairs on the leg) - and we need to figure out which of those details are important, to incorporate them into our artificial device.

However, "intelligence" is an abstract concept, not a concrete object like a leg. It cannot be weighed or measured with a ruler or touched. Instead we need to describe what we know about intelligence and how it is used. Moreover, we need to be able to evaluate our attempts at creating artificial intelligence, so that we can compare approaches, make improvements, and ultimately decide whether what we have made is indeed "intelligent".

Dictionary.com defines intelligence as

capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc...the faculty of understanding.

That's pretty broad, and it requires knowing what we mean by such words as learning, understanding, meaning, consciousness and so on - concepts that themselves are all interlinked with what we mean by intelligence in the first place. Marvin Minsky wrote in The Society of Mind that

it isn't wise to treat an old, vague word like "intelligence" as though it must define any definite thing. Instead of trying to say what such a word "means", it is better simply to try to explain how we use it.
Our minds contain processes that enable us to solve problems we consider difficult. "Intelligence" is our name for whichever of those processes we don't yet understand.

Neither of these definitions really helps us to decide if whatever artificial intelligence we make is actually "intelligent".

Each of us is conscious of our own intelligence, and we infer intelligence in other people based on our observations of their behavior and our past interactions. And it isn't only in other people that we observe intelligence; we see it in animals, too. Dogs can certainly exhibit intelligence, as any dog owner will tell you. Chimpanzees can learn to communicate with sign language. Dolphins are pretty darn smart. If animals can exhibit intelligence and some degree of consciousness, then this implies that there is nothing mysterious or magical about thought, consciousness, emotion, creativity, learning, empathy, or any of the qualities of the brain that we call "intelligence". Indeed, intelligence is rather common, in various forms and degrees - and there is nothing magical required to reproduce that in a machine.

So what would be a useful definition of intelligence, something we can use as a working model of thought for a machine?

It is probably counterproductive to define intelligence too narrowly. As early as 1958 is was predicted that "within ten years a digital computer will be the world's chess champion" - and on May 11, 1997, Deep Blue beat the reigning world chess champion, Garry Kasparov. Today, Kasparov is deeply involved in Russian politics, and Deep Blue ... can play chess.

Alan Turning proposed a test in which

a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are placed in isolated locations. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test. In order to test the machine's intelligence rather than its ability to render words into audio, the conversation is limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen.

Anyone who has been fooled by a chatterbot, however briefly, would probably concede that Turing's test has likely been passed on numerous occasions - and dismissed as "not really artificial intelligence".

The challenges of playing chess at a world-class level or chatting over the internet do require intelligence in human beings, but defining such tests as indicative of intelligence in and of themselves is too narrow of a definition, and solving only those narrow problems doesn't tell us anything about the nature of intelligence in general. Within their very limited domains, they work fine - but take Deep Blue out of the 64-square universe of chess and it is lost.

In the late 1980s, researchers began to put forth the idea that in order to show true intelligence, the machine needed to have a body, to interact and deal with the real world. As Rodney Brooks said, Elephants don't play chess. It is the real world that presents the challenges for survival to an animal, and a choice made by that animal can mean the difference between reproducing and being something else's lunch. And if an artificial intelligence has a body and must deal with the real world, controlling itself and avoiding obstacles and so forth in real time, then its control system must be a more robust version of AI than is required to deal with any simulation.

In the real world, intelligence is a quality of the animal mind that allows it to make choices and perform actions that enable it in the short term to consume food and acquire the other necessities of life while avoiding lethal situations, and in the long term to survive enough short-term needs that it can live long enough to reproduce.

OK, so that definition is still pretty broad, but it's a good starting point: intelligence is the ability to make choices that enable survival.

A rock rolling down a mountainside cannot make choices - it simply moves where its own momentum, friction, and gravity dictate. A plant slowly twisting to track the sun isn't making any choices - it only points towards the strongest light as it is forced to by its own structure and the laws of Physics, and it would follow a more intense artificial light if one was present. When you burn your hand on a stove and your reflexes cause your arm to jerk away from the heat, you're not making a choice either - a direct connection in your neural wiring leads from your pain receptors to the spinal cord and back to the muscles of your arm, and the laws of Physics force the movement of your arm.

In the above examples, the action taken in response to a stimulus is completely dictated by the laws of Physics. Does that mean that the ability to make choices somehow exists outside of those physical laws? Do we need to invoke something supernatural in order to explain consciousness or intelligence or free will?

No, we don't. Everything that happens in this universe happens according to the laws of Physics, without exception, whether we realize it or not. Everything we do, every thought that we have, every choice we make, is dictated by the laws of Physics just like a falling rock's path.

So what is the qualitative difference between a falling rock and, for instance, me choosing which word to type next? From the perspective of the laws of Physics, there is no difference.

Layers of Abstraction and Emergent Properties

A proton is a proton is a proton. Every proton in the universe is exactly the same as all the others. The behavior of every proton is exactly the same as every other one. If a proton is removed from the nucleus of an atom, and immediately replaced with another proton, then the atom is exactly the same as it was before. There is no difference.

Likewise, every neutron is exactly the same as every other neutron, and every electron is exactly the same as every other electron. Each always follows the laws of Physics, in particular the conservation laws of mass/energy, momentum, angular momentum, and charge.

However, protons and neutrons and electrons do not exist in isolation. Each contributes to the electromagnetic field and gravitational field, each occupies some region of spacetime and each interacts with all the others.

When protons, neutrons, and electrons are proximal, then they combine with each other to form atoms - a positively charged nucleus containing protons and neutrons, and a negatively charged cloud of electrons bound to the nucleus through electromagnetism. The interaction of the electrons with each other gives certain regions of the atom that can combine with similar regions of other atoms, sharing electrons between the two atoms and forming a chemical bond. This allows molecules to form, and the interactions of molecules with each other gives us all of Chemistry. Specific patterns of molecules give us things like RNA and DNA and adenosine triphosphate and hemoglobin and ribosomes and all the other compounds necessary for life.

That falling rock is made of the same protons and neutrons and electrons as exist in your left hand. There is no difference whatsoever between a proton in that rock and a proton in a molecule of your hemoglobin, and those two protons could be exchanged without there being any difference to either the rock or your blood.

The building blocks are the same. The rules are the same. If there is no difference, then how come that rock and your left hand look different, behave differently, and have different capabilities?

The difference lies in the way that those fundamental building blocks are arranged. At a basic level, they are merely identical protons and neutrons and electrons, but go up a couple of levels of abstraction and they are arranged into different molecules with different behaviors. Each of those molecules still follows the laws of Physics exactly, but because of the way that the atoms are arranged in each, new properties of the molecule begin to appear.

A property like viscosity or temperature does not exist for an isolated atom, but go up one level of abstraction, where the fundamental building blocks combine to form molecules, and those properties emerge. Go up another level of abstraction, where the molecules form cells, and you get new properties emerging such as cell division. At still higher levels of abstraction, as cells combine and specialize to form a multicellular organism, we see still further properties emerging, like respiration and excretion. Go up another level of abstraction and still more properties emerge, such as the flight of a bumblebee. At a higher level of abstraction we see still more properties emerging, such as the density waves that occur in rush-hour traffic.

Likewise, a bit is a bit is a bit - to a computer, it doesn't matter whether that bit is stored within RAM or on a hard drive or a CD or is transmitted over the internet. It is either a logical 1 or a logical 0. By itself, a 1 or a 0 isn't particularly interesting. It is logically equivalent to a light switch on your wall - when it is a 0 the light is off and when it is a 1 the light is on. However, those ones and zeros can be combined, and new behaviors can emerge when we take them to a higher level of abstraction. For instance, two such bits can be combined in a digital logic gate, like a NAND gate. In a NAND gate, the output depends on the state of the two inputs: if both inputs are a one then the output will be a zero, and if either input is a zero then the output is a one.

This NAND gate might not seem particularly useful, by itself. However, by linking together NAND gates in a network we can create any digital circuit. These arrangements of NAND gates represent a new level of abstraction, and as such new properties emerge. Depending on the way that these gates are linked together, they can act as a group to form a frequency generator, or a flip-flop, or a binary adder, or a shift register, or a comparator, or a latch. These circuits can be optimized - they don't need to be made from NAND gates, although they could - and themselves combined in a new level of abstraction into such things as microprocessors and RAM and peripheral interface circuits. These have new capabilities which emerge, such as running a machine-language computer program.

The individual machine language that works for a particular microprocessor will not work for another microprocessor whose circuits are arranged differently. So, a higher level of abstraction is needed, where programs can be written in a common, higher-level language like C++, and then compiled into the appropriate lower level machine-language program. And once again, at this higher level of abstraction new capabilities emerge: operating systems, web browsers, games, spreadsheets, databases, file sharing, websites, search engines, blogs, and so forth.

One particular computer program can illustrate this point further. In 1970, John Conway proposed a game he called Life. In this game, a display grid is made up of pixels, each of which can be either ON or OFF. Each pixel has eight neighbors: above, below, left, right, and four diagonal neighbors. The rules are simple - if a pixel has fewer than two or more than three neighbors in the ON state, it goes OFF at the next clock cycle. If it has exactly three neighbors ON, then the next clock cycle it goes ON. And if it has exactly two neighbors ON, then it is unchanged on the next clock cycle. The behavior of the system is entirely dictated by the initial states of the pixels in the grid and by those simple rules.

Now, we take it up one level of abstraction, and observe the behavior of a group of pixels over many clock cycles. When the pixels are interacting with each other as a group, each affecting all its neighbors, we begin to see patterns emerge. One group of five ON pixels arranged in a particular way acts as a "glider", which re-forms the original five-pixel pattern four clock states later, shifted one pixel diagonally from the original position. Over time this glider acts like a photon, moving in a straight line at the "speed of light" for the simulated universe of the game, one diagonal pixel every four clock cycles. Other structures also become apparent, such as the Glider Gun (which produces gliders one after the other) or a Breeder (which creates a series of glider guns). Starting with a "universe" and applying simple rules at the lowest level of abstraction, we see higher-order behaviors and structures emerge as we observe higher levels of abstraction.

In all these examples, each time we look at a higher and higher level of abstraction, we find new properties emerging - each still following the laws of Physics, each property dependent upon the properties of lower levels of abstraction, and each property emerging only as those building blocks at lower levels combine to form a new structure with properties not possible at the lower level of abstraction.

And so it is with intelligence. The components that make up our brains, from the fundamental building blocks to the atoms and molecules and the neurons themselves, each follows simple rules ultimately dictated by the laws of Physics, but each exhibiting emergent behaviors as they are linked together in higher and higher levels of abstraction. The individual neuron by itself is not intelligent, but combine neurons together and they start to form functional groups. Each group is capable of performing some specific computational task, and each is, by itself, unintelligent. However, if we go up another level of abstraction, these functional groups combine and interact with each other and new properties emerge, such as controlling your heartbeat. And as we continue to increase the level of abstraction and combine less-capable structures together in different ways, still more new properties begin to emerge, like the fight or flight response.

So we can now say this about intelligence in general: functional groups of neurons, each unintelligent by itself, combine with each other to introduce new capabilities at a higher level of abstraction - and taken as a group, these emergent properties are what we call intelligence:

Intelligence is an emergent property of the combination of unintelligent functional groups.

This doesn't mean that we can create these functional groups and simply stir them together in a pot and pow intelligence appears like magic. There are an infinite number of possible functional groups, and an infinite number of ways to combine these lower-level functions into higher levels of abstraction, and we don't have enough time to try them all.

Fortunately, we don't have to try them all. No animal has to try every possible combination of neurons in its brain in order to exhibit intelligence - the physical structure of the animal's body, with its inherent capabilities and long-term stability, forces the formation of long-term structures of neurons specific to its body. The connections between these structures are themselves other neural structures, which can be used in the same way as the lower-level structures but which perform higher order tasks. The structures are not randomly connected in all their infinite number of possible combinations; those which are useful are retained, and those which are not useful are not retained.

feedback

So, back to the development of our definition: how do we go from combination of simple unintelligent structures into higher levels of abstraction, to the ability to make choices?

The decisions an animal makes have immediate consequences. Imagine a pack of wolves hunting a deer. As the deer runs, the pursuing pack limits the options of the deer's movement, and so does the terrain in front of the deer. Suppose the deer sees a tree directly ahead. It has a number of options available: turn to the left, turn to the right, stop, or slam into the tree. Whatever option the deer chooses, the consequences are immediate - the deer either manages to escape for a few more seconds or it is caught and killed by the wolves. If the deer makes enough correct decisions, then it may survive long enough for the wolves to catch another deer and lose interest in our deer.

It is the deer's interaction with the real world that forces it to make decisions, over and over and over again. The deer's mind has functional structures, some preprogrammed by genetics and others learned over the deer's lifetime, and the interaction of these structures - in our example, the structures responsible for sight, smell, heart rate, respiration, and muscular control - which allow the deer to recognize the pursuing pack as a threat, the tree as an obstacle to be avoided, and so on. Good decisions lead to the temporary survival of the animal, and a poor decision leads to the animal's death.

In other words, the real world provides immediate feedback about the effectiveness of decisions. If a decision doesn't kill an animal - suppose it instead receives a minor injury - then that feedback allows the animal to evaluate its decision and make modifications to the connections between functional groups or to the functional groups themselves so that same decision is less likely to be made in the future. Positive feedback - anything that gives the animal pleasure, such as a full belly - also modifies the connections between functional groups in such a way that the structures that led to the decision are reinforced, so that a good decision can be repeated in the future.

Over the animal's lifetime, with the millions of decisions it makes over and over again, and with the real-time feedback provided by the animal's environment evaluating those decisions, the functional structures within its brain and the connections between those structures are constantly modified.

bringing it all together

Let's summarize what we know about intelligence:

1) Intelligence requires the ability to make choices
2) Intelligence is an emergent property of the combination of simpler, unintelligent functional structures
3) the real world provides immediate feedback to evaluate choices; that feedback then changes the unintelligent functional structures and the connections between them

That's it; that's all we need for a working definition of intelligence. With whatever AI we create, we can ask ourselves: is it making choices? are properties emerging from our simpler building blocks? are those choices evaluated and modified by interaction with and feedback from the real world?

In the next installment of Artificial Intelligence 101, we'll look at why we want to create artificial intelligence, and examine past attempts at doing so.

just giving it all away

2009-02-26T13:06:00.005-07:00

From about 1990 to about 2003 I spent most of my spare time working on artificial intelligence research. The last few years I have gotten away from that to work on some other interests, but lately I have been looking through and re-reading some of the thousands of pages of notes and tens of thousands of lines of code I wrote back then. And, I've been thinking, it would be a real shame if all of this work were to simply be lost, if I were to not work on it anymore and nobody else knew about it.

So, I've been giving serious consideration to simply publishing all that work right here on this blog, and letting others have a look, critique, and take whatever they find useful for their own work.

This raises some serious questions for me. Is it dangerous to let just anyone have access to something with the potential to be used as a terrible weapon? Is it even ethical to do so? Would I have spent over ten thousand hours working on what amounts to my masterpiece, only to have nothing to show for my efforts except a series of blog posts and a stack of notebooks?

Well, after a lot of thought on the matter, I have decided that the ethical questions are irrelevant - what I have created is merely a tool, and whether others use the tool for good or ill is up to them. And as for personal reward, well, while I was doing it the work was reward in and of itself, and if the ideas I came up with spread to the right minds then it is possible that everyone's life will benefit. Hey, it could happen.

So, I'm going to do it. I'm going to just give all my AI research away on my blog.

Since most of my readers would have no idea what I'm talking about if I just dove into the middle of it, I'll start over the next few weeks with some of the history and basic concepts of artificial intelligence. After that, I'll start putting forth my own work.

When is a recession not a recession?

2009-02-18T12:33:00.004-07:00

For several months now, I have heard plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the supposed recession. But is it really happing?

First of all, let's start with the definition of a recession: two consecutive quarters of negative growth in the economy. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper conceeded that Canada could be "technically" in a recession, he was absolutely right - that could indeed be the case. He could have said the same thing two years ago and still been right, even though the economy was booming at the time. When you are in the middle of a recession, there is no way to know for certain if you are or not - it is only by looking back at the previous two quarters that one can say with certainty that a recession has occurred.

So without that data, how come the press has been screaming "recession!" for several years?

Yes, the housing market took a beating over the last six months or so, but the housing market is not the entire economy. Anyone paying any attention to the housing market over the last few years would have seen that the housing prices were well above the actual value of the homes, and would put off buying until the housing bubble popped. Yes, GM and Ford are treading water and slowly sinking, but does that have anything at all to do with today's economic conditions?

Sixty percent of the economy is consumer spending - everything from home furnishings to beer to bubble gum. Housing and cars and other big-ticket items are not part of that. So, if enough people finally start to believe that there is in fact a recession, then their spending will drop and you will indeed get your recession. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, as long as the press screams recession! long enough and loudly enough.

So is there really a recession going on? For the answer, we'll have to wait at least until the end of the quarter. But, until then, I think that one needs to look at the "canaries in the coal mine" of the economy.

If there is a recession then the ones who will go bankrupt first are the ones who live the closest to the edge of bankruptcy all the time - farmers. Go for a ride in the countryside and look for the "For Sale" signs. How many do you see? I have driven thousands of kilometers around the countryside in my area over the last few months, and I have seen a grand total of two for sale signs.

Another canary to look for is trains. Count the number of cars in the next train you see. Compare that to the number of cars that trains were hauling two years ago. See any difference? See any difference from 1981? I sure do - back in '81, there were a lot fewer cars being hauled at any one time, and there were fewer trains. The last train I saw a few nights ago was pulling over a hundred cars. Can a railway afford to do that unless there is demand to move that amount of goods? Does that sound like a recession to you?

One more canary is the Help Wanted ads. Here in the Edmonton Alberta area, there are so many jobs available - good jobs - that many companies have taken ads out on the radio advertising positions. Not just oil companies either, but all sectors of the economy. Is that a recession?

What are the canaries like in your area?

Evening update: I am betting that you are seeing the same things that I am - very few farms for sale, lots of cars on the trains, plenty of jobs available. That doesn't look anything like a recession to me. It certainly doesn't look like the recession of '81, when over half of the farms in this area were for sale, trains were pulling 40 cars, and there were no jobs available.

So, why has the press been screaming recession! for years? Who benefits from frightening consumers? Who benefits from ramming an $800 billion "stimulus" package through Congress and the Senate, and similar bailout packages in Canada and other G7 countries?

Well, it certainly isn't average people. That stimulus package is costing every man, woman and child in the USA $2600 apiece. There goes a big chunk of your kids' college fund, poof gone. And where is it going? To prop up GM workers making overpriced union wages and benefits, which will sink the company in a few years anyhow? To expanding the power of government over your life, in the amount they will increase your taxes and regulations controlling your life, to adding to the debt load the baby boomers are leaving their great great great grandchildren?

The people of the USA (and by extension the people of every country with economic ties to the USA, in particular Canada) are being frightened and swindled and glibly accepting the most massive intrusion into their finances in history - all based on a supposed recession for which there is no evidence until the end of the quarter. Who benefits? Who has a vested interest in frightening average people and forcing through this huge increase in government spending with little debate?

Look for yourself, check out the canaries in your area. Has the press been telling the truth about the economy? Or have they been telling you deliberate falsehoods in order to benefit their friends in the unions and Leftist political parties?

I'm back

2009-02-11T12:41:00.002-07:00

I've kept pretty silent over the course of the US and Canadian federal elections. Often I've thought of something that would make a great blog post, but just didn't sit down to do it for one reason or another. Time has been a factor, of course, but so has my frustration - I didn't want to sit down and write anything about the American election in particular, for it was obvious what was going to happen, and no amount of reason or logic would change the result.

At any rate, I'm back now and will be posting regularly again.

the Retroencabulator

2008-06-17T06:32:00.000-06:00

Engineers have a sense of humour, too.

Related: the MSDS datasheet for dihydrogen monoxide.

barrelling down the slippery slope and gaining steam

2008-06-10T22:51:00.004-06:00

The Human Rights Commissions in Canada are under the microscope right now due to the Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant ~~trials~~ (to call them trials, even though they take place in buildings with the word "court" written on the door, is preposterous) proceedings. And while public attention is focused on those two, there are still other proceedings going on all the time. The latest ruling, in the Rev. Stephen Boissoin case, states in part that

Mr. Boissoin and [his organization] The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. shall cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals. Further they shall not and are prohibited from making disparaging remarks in the future about Dr. Lund [the complainant] or Dr. Lund's witnesses relating to their involvement in this complaint. Further all disparaging remarks versus homosexuals are directed to be removed from current websites and publications of Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc.

The ruling goes on; it is fascinating reading, if one is fascinated by venality.

The ruling admits that "...there is no specific individual who can be compensated as there is no direct victim who has come forward seeking redress", and yet Boissoin must pay Dr. Lund $5000 because "Dr. Lund, although not a direct victim, did expend considerable time and energy and suffered ridicule and harrassment as a result of his complaint." [emphasis mine] Boissoin is also on the hook for up to $2000 of the complainant's witness's expenses.

Boissoin said some nasty things in his letter, but did not incite violence; he did not shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater where no fire was present; he did not write that homosexuals ought to be killed; he did not do anything but express his opinion in a letter to the editor of a small-city newspaper. And for that, he is not only out of pocket for up to seven grand to someone who was not harmed in any way by his words, but he is forever prohibited from exercising his right to free political speech. If the text of the ruling is followed to the letter, then if Boissoin even says in private email correspondence that "Lund is an asshole", Boissoin will go to jail for contempt of court!

These Human Rights [sic] Commissions are an abomination in a liberal democracy. In these hearings there is no presumption of innocence; truth is not a defence; fair comment is not a defence; freedom of speech as guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not a defence; all costs for a legal defence are borne by the defendant but the costs for prosecution are borne by the government; no harm must be demonstrated in order for a conviction and subsequent financial compensation to the complainant; no rules of evidence apply; the cases may be tried in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously (Mark Steyn was exposed to of all things triple jeopardy, being tried in Ontario, BC, and soon in the Federal HRC); the complainant need not reside in the jurisdiction where the proceedings take place, nor even show up for the proceedings;"expert" witnesses do not need to have expertise in the field in which they testify, nor must their testimony actually be relevant; and the tribunal "judges" need not have any legal training at all, nor apparently any familiarity with the rule of law or the operation of a courtroom; there is no such thing as a speedy proceeding (Ezra Levant's case has been ongoing for over 800 days; Boissoin lost his case in November and the ruling came out on May 30). These HRCs are nothing short of kangaroo courts.

At one time, the HRCs were charged with redressing discrimination in things like housing and employment, but like a cancer they have spread to suppressing free political speech: Steyn's, Levant's, Boissoin's, and potentially even my own (I published the Danish Mohammed cartoons, like Levant, as well as an image of the Piss Christ "artwork"). Once, just once, I would like to have the slippery slope argument proven wrong. I won't hold my breath.

Taking the long view for conservatism in America

2008-05-28T02:24:00.005-06:00

In discussing the upcoming US elections, Rachel Lucas exhibits some short-term thinking:

I do not believe you’re going to teach anyone a “lesson” by sitting this one out or writing in Fred Thompson or Sunny Lucas. I believe that way too many people are ignoring the forest for the trees and that in doing so, they’re going to have a hand in electing Obama. Some say that’s fine because if the country’s going to be “ruined”, better that it’s ruined by a Democrat, and somehow magically we’ll come up with a fantastic, “real” conservative in 4 years even though there is no one like that on the horizon and everyone knows it. Like I said, I think that’s a super-crappy plan.

This is perfectly reasonable, but only if one is operating from a certain set of axioms:

1) there are now and will only ever be two viable political parties in the USA, the Republicans and the Democrats

2) given the choice between a greater evil and a lesser evil, it is better to choose the lesser evil (or at least to try to prevent victory for the greater evil)

Joining the argument is Francis Porretto:

Shouldn't we act to preserve as much freedom as we possibly can, even if it means voting for Republicans who've collaborated in the expansion of the Omnipotent State?

In a word, no. The tipping point is upon us; further support of the GOP in its present configuration will produce net damage to what remains of our traditional rights. The idea that supporting the lesser of two evils is somehow morally obligatory has never enjoyed less logical or historical support.

...If conservatives want to compel the GOP and its candidates to conform to conservative principle, they must defeat the party's strategy. That means defeating the party overall [Porretto's emphasis], not merely any one candidate. Nothing else will get the party's kingpins to question their strategic decisions.

In response to those conservatives who are considering sitting this election out, and letting Obama (or God forbid, Hi!!ary) win the presidency, there are those who point out short term possible losses, such as a precipitous pullout from Iraq or immigration amnesty or the signing of Kyoto (by the way, the latter is extremely unlikely, as the Senate unanimously(!) voted against that during Clinton's last term in office) should the Democrats win this election. They also point out medium-term possible losses such as the appointment of left-leaning judges to the Supreme Court.

Those fears are valid, but shortsighted. America has been a slowly-boiling frog for the better part of a century, and one election is not going to reverse the bad decisions of the past century; certainly none of the major Presidential candidates inspires hope for a change of direction away from disaster. As far as I can tell, each of them will merely heat up the water a little more.

Instead, take the long view: if you have young children, what sort of America will there be by the time their children start voting? If Americans continue this gradual slide into larger "entitlement" programs, more intrusive governmental control over their daily lives, more artificial impediments on the economy, more porkbarrel spending, higher and higher taxes, more and more assaults on Constitutionally-protected rights - then their great-grandchildren will inherit a bankrupt country where freedom is something that their senile great-grandparents kind of remember but of which they cannot even fathom.

Continuing to reward the major political parties for their ever-leftward tilt, by continuing to elect them to office as the lesser of two evils, does nothing to prevent the nightmare scenario for your grandchildren. In fact, it assures that outcome.

Also, a merely symbolic abstention from voting on the part of a small but significant percentage of conservatives in this election isn't going to change the calculus. In four more years, after whatever havoc that either of the Democrat candidates may wreak, the Republican conservative base will find itself right back where it is today, with a choice between one or another set of crooks. Porretto's idea of shaking up the Republican Party by handing them an electoral defeat isn't enough in and of itself - they've suffered electoral losses before. So has the Democrat Party, including some huge losses, and they're still around.

However, all is not lost, at least not yet. The axioms that I inferred above from my interpretation of Rachel's point of view are not immutable laws carved in stone. Francis Porretto has a point about the invalidity of the second axiom; and indeed, if that first axiom is demolished then the second one has no validity at all - the choice would no longer be between the lesser of two evils.

So, to invalidate that first axiom, let's look at a little history. In the mid-1800s the Whig Party (whose members included Daniel Webster and a young Abraham Lincoln) candidate became president on two occasions, in 1840 with William Henry Harrison and in 1848 with Zachary Taylor. Obviously they were a major political party, capable of attaining the Presidency - and the Whigs are gone. The Republican party rose out of its ashes - two years before the Whigs were wiped out.

More recent history provides another example: let's look at what happened in Canada from the late 1980's to the present. The Progressive Conservative (how's that for an oxymoron) party had been sliding further and further left for decades, and was becoming indistinguishable from the Liberals. In the West, a new party - the Reform Party - was established as a grass-roots effort to restore true conservative principles to federal politics.

Reform's first MP was elected in a byelection in 1989, and support continued to grow as the party outlined and stuck to its conservative principles. By 1993, Canadians had had enough of the Progressive Conservatives, and obliterated the party at the polls - it dropped from 151 seats in the House of Commons down to 2 seats. Reform went from 1 seat to 52, nearly all in the West, and vote splitting between the PCs and Reform in Ontario handed control of the government to the Liberals. It took 13 more years, and some coalition building with the remnant rump of the PC party (which involved the merger of the two parties into the Canadian Alliance Party, and later into the Conservative Party), but in 2006 the Conservatives won a minority in the federal election.

In all it has taken nearly 20 years for the process, from a leftward-lurching-and-gaining-speed "conservative" party in power to a more rightward-leaning (and thankfully much friendlier to the USA) party in minority power; it is entirely possible that there will be a Conservative majority Parliament after the next election.

Of course, the analogy isn't perfect; the existing Conservative party is still to the left of the Democrat party - which should tell you just how far left the old PCs had swung. However, it can be done. It takes a lot of hard work to do it, and there are growing pains which involve weeding out some really extreme fringe elements that tend to latch on to new political movements.

But, it can't be done by a half-hearted effort, which is where I think that first axiom has tripped up Porretto - it isn't enough to defeat the Republicans to make them change their ways, you have to defeat them utterly and also have a conservative alternative waiting to take over the Republican base - you can't wipe them out and "fix" them, expecting a long term change, you have to wipe them out completely and be ready to start over before they are wiped out. If the conservative base in the Republican party actually wants to have a conservative representation in Washington, then they will have to form a conservative party and drain the lifeblood out of the Republican party. It is too late to do that before this election. However, if they start their grass-roots movement now, then by 2012 they will make serious inroads into the base of the Republican party.

The hardest part is convincing people that the nominally conservative party has truly abandoned its conservative base, and that a fresh start is needed. After that, you have to keep people's attention long enough, and consistently apply conservative principles along the way, to build your new conservative party up into a party that stands a chance of electing a President and/or a majority of seats in Congress and the Senate. If the USA follows Canada's example, that could take twenty years or more. Even if it takes two generations, the results for your grandchildren will be worth the effort.

Liveblogging Mars Phoenix landing

2008-05-25T17:33:00.014-06:00

4:35 pm PST: The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has started the software that will allow it to track the Phoenix during Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL)

4:37 PST: expecting the MRO to start receiving data in 2 minutes 30 seconds

4:38 PST: why the hell is Mike Griffin at the JPL mission control, wearing a blue t-shirt and looking like he's doing something?

4:39 PST: cruise stage separation, a UHF signal has been received by ~~MRO~~ Mars Odyssey.

4:43 PST: MRO now has signal as well. Atmospheric entry in 1 minute 35 seconds

4:45 PST: by the way, all these times and signals received are about 20 minutes late due to light speed delay. If the Phoenix landed safely, then it already happened and we just won't know until 20 minutes after the fact. all those folks in JPL aren't actually doing anything right now, they're just watching

4:48 PST: peak heating, and yet we are still seeing a signal from Phoenix via Odyssey, even through the plasma generated by the ablation of the heat shield

4:50 PST: parachute deployment. The next big thing is separation of Phoenix from the parachute and ignition of its landing rockets

4:53 PST: it's plummeting

4:54 PST: touchdown signal detected. The numbers being called out by the guy at mission control suggested that it was falling much faster than it should have been, but so far it looks like it didn't lithobrake.

selling space, part 1

2008-04-23T22:03:00.006-06:00

It's funny how conversations can migrate from blog to blog. Over at Space Politics five days ago, Jeff Foust got the ball rolling by noting "that space ranks pretty low on the list of priorities of the general public (and, thus, fairly high on the list of government programs they would be willing to cut)". In the comments for that post, commentor James summarized why this is so:

Those who support the current lunar program often forget the opportunity costs. There are better ways to spend the same money on developing space. I’m 24 - with the current Constellation program plan, I’ll be in my mid 30s by the time we get back to the moon. If we operate the system for a decade or two after that, as is likely, all I can expect in my career is to see 4 people land on the moon twice a year. That is not exciting - nor is it worth the money. Maybe by the time I retire we’ll be looking at another "next generation system".

What’s the point of any of this for someone my age?

Then Jon Goff of Selenian Boondocks picked up on this point and expanded upon it further:

If our current approach to space development was actually putting in place the technology and infrastructure needed to make our civilization a spacefaring one, I’d be a lot more willing to support it. Wise investments in the future are a good thing, but NASA’s current approach is not a wise investment in the future. It’s aging hipsters trying to relive the glory days of their youth at my generation’s expense.

Patience is only a virtue when you’re headed in the right direction and doing the right thing. If Constellation was truly (as Marburger put it) making future operations cheaper, safer, and more capable, then I’d be all for patiently seeing it out.

While Constellation might possibly put some people on the moon, it won’t actually put us any closer to routine, affordable, and sustainable exploration and development. I have no problem with a long hard road, just so long as its the right one.

Now the conversation shifts to SpaceRef, where yesterday Dennis Wingo argued that NASA has done a terrible job at selling space to the American people for forty years:

There is a principle in the entrepreneurial world that if you present a business plan to an investor that does not meet their criterion for funding, you dont get funded. The same principle applies to government spending with the congress, executive branch and the people fulfilling the role of the investor. Our national space agency has been trying to sell a business plan to the American people for almost forty years that they have continually decided not to fund. The investor has continually given feedback to the NASA entrepreneur with little or no indication that NASA has listened.

...It is quite clear to those of us who have been involved with NASA since the beginning of the SEI era that its successor, the VSE is in trouble. The fact is that NASA ignored both the president and the executive branch organization (OSTP), that helped to come up with the VSE in the first place. The problem is not the rocket, it is the plan of what we do when we get to the Moon. While there are many who would strenuously argue that the transportation architecture represented by the ESAS study as implemented with billions of dollars of taxpayer money is the wrong one, in the end, this argument misses the greater point.

The point is that there is virtually no plan at all to carry out the truly remarkable plan to use resources derived from the Moon for further exploration. The epitome of the divergence from the vision as laid out by the president is the statement by the NASA administrator that all we need is a good map, to get back to the Moon. There are statements that encapsulate all the problems of a plan, and this statement is the one that made it clear that NASA has no interest in carrying out the VSE as envisioned by our elected leadership and why in the competition for federal resources, NASA is losing.

And this brings us to a piece written earlier today by Mark Whittington:

The main problem with Wingo's critique of the way VSE is being pursued is that it fails to understand the proper role of government in opening the space frontier. It is not the role of NASA to build the infrastructure that would take him, you, and me to the Moon and beyond, no more than it was the job of Lewis and [Clark] to build a transcontinental railroad. Government agencies are not very good at building transportation infrastructures. The history of the space shuttle should give pause, if nothing else, to those who think otherwise.

Instead it is one role of NASA to help to enable that infrastructure. How does VSE do that? The answer lays in a NASA program that Wingo fails to mention: the Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems (COTS) program. For a modest [sum], COTS seems on the verge of leveraging the ISS to enable the establishment of a true commercial Earth to Low Earth Orbit transportation industry. Companies like SpaceX, Orbital, and even Lockheed Martin are actually building space craft that will take cargo and people to and from LEO. Even the sub orbital barnstorming efforts (i.e. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, etc) are bending metal and testing actual hardware.

So, using the COTS model, it would seem very reasonable to suggest that ten or fifteen years later, someone would suggest a similar proposal for NASA's lunar base. If private industry by that time already has years of experience going to and from LEO, it would not be much of a stretch to suggest that we could shortly see private flights to and from the Moon.

Of course, with this kind of conversation going on I cannot help but to throw in my two cents.

First of all, I have to take exception to some of what Mark wrote. "Government agencies are not very good at building transportation infrastructures." The existence of the interstate highway system and the multitude of airports and shipyards across America and the streets and subways within cities, nearly all government-built, suggests that Mark is dead wrong on this. In Canada and many other countries the railroads were government-built, too. Transportation infrastructure construction and maintenance is one of the primary functions of governments at all levels throughout the world. This is done because such infrastructure is an economic necessity: without that infrastructure in place, the transportation of goods and people becomes prohibitively expensive and the economy simply cannot support itself. No transportation infrastructure means no economy which in turn means no tax base to operate the government in the first place. As much as I have railed against governments in the past, and as much as I would like to see an absolute minimum of government in any form, the existence of government-built transportation infrastructure is a fact which cannot be ignored, nor dismissed as Whittington has.

Secondly, I find Whittington's example of COTS to be disingenuous. SpaceX is taking advantage of COTS because the money is available to offset their development costs, however they were going to do what they are doing anyhow, regardless of COTS. They saw that there was a potential for a market in space transportation irrespective of NASA's plans. And when one really gets down to brass tacks, the existence of SpaceX is due to Elon Musk's personal dream of going to Mars. There's something in it for him personally.

And then to bring Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin, who have nothing whatsoever to do with COTS or anything else that NASA is doing, into the mix is rubbish. Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos are not developing suborbital spaceflight because of something of NASA is doing; they are doing it because they think that a market exists, of people who have spent most of their lives watching NASA and the Russians thoroughly explore low earth orbit while their own personal experience in space keeps getting pushed further off into future generations. Bezos and Branson and a lot of others have recognized that people want to go into space, even if only for a period of a few minutes, and they are looking to get in on that market. They have recognized that they can make viable businesses taking people to space - in short they can make money by providing a service that people want. For Bezos and Branson and Carmack and lots of others, there is something in it for them, and they are willing to gamble their personal fortunes based on that potential.

And this brings us back to the point raised by James in the comments at Space Politics. In all of the grand plans that NASA is putting forth, in their desire to maintain the huge Shuttle workforce by developing brand new rockets when adequate commercial alternatives already exist, in their plans to send a handful of people to the moon fifteen (or twenty? thirty? the schedule keeps slipping) years from now, whose goal would be apparently to merely to have repeated history but "on steroids", what is in it for the rest of us?

What compelling reason is there to even justify the continued existence of NASA beyond the fulfillment of the commitment to the international partners in the ISS? Why should American tax dollars go to pay for anything that NASA does? What can justify the opportunity costs if - after the completion of the ESAS implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration - we are no closer to being a spacefaring society than we were in 1972?

If NASA wants to receive yearly increases in their budget, even if only to keep pace with inflation, then what exactly are the advantages to the American taxpayer that NASA's plans provide? How does the expenditure over the next few decades improve anything for American society, in a way that an alternative expenditure of those same funds could not?

Of course, it is not enough for me to simply complain that NASA is doing it all wrong. There are things that NASA could be doing differently, to make themselves relevant and to show the American taxpayers that there is a benefit to the agency's expenditures that greatly exceed the opportunity costs, to show average people that there's something in it for us. However, this post is already excessively long, and so my solutions are going to have to wait for another blog post.

credibility shredding

2008-04-22T18:53:00.005-06:00

There was an uproar in the blogosphere last last week over the senior art project of one Aliza Shvarts at Yale university. She claimed that the art project was the result of nine months of repeated artificial insemination followed by self-induced miscarriage. Apparently her thesis advisor saw nothing wrong with this as an art project, nor did the School of Art director of undergraduate studies.

Now Yale won't allow her to display this "art" at an exhibition unless she admits it is a work of fiction; she continues to insist that it's the real deal.

Let us set aside for a moment the grotesque idea that a university insists that a student lie about her project. Let us also set aside the obvious health and biohazard issues, and the standard requirement for a Human Subjects Committee review of any study involving the use of human subjects (even oneself) which was obviously not followed. Further, let us also for a moment set aside the abhorrent nature of this supposed "art".

Instead, I want to look at how an incident like this affects Yale. This was completely boneheaded on the part of the thesis advisor. It suggests that there are absolutely no standards for the senior art project, presumably a requirement for the degree. This implies that there are no standards required in order to obtain an art degree at Yale. And if there are no standards required for that degree, then of what intrinsic value is any degree from Yale?

This is only one incident, but at Yale recently there have been other examples of appalling lack of judgement on the part of the faculty. Remember when they admitted the Taliban propaganda chief as a student? Stupid, stupid, stupid. And this sort of idiocy is not limited to Yale, either.

There is a reason that parents are willing to shell out a premium to send their little darlings to top schools; those schools have a reputation for top-quality educations, which translates into higher career earnings. However, a reputation is a fragile thing. In order to maintain a reputation as a top school, the school has to actually consistently deliver a top quality education. If this is the sort of thing that passes for an education at Yale, then their degrees are not worth much at all. They are certainly not worth the two hundred grand that Aliza Shvarts' parents paid.

Put yourself in the position of an employer: "oh, you graduated from Yale? that school with no academic standards? Gee... yeah, we'll call you. Thanks for coming." Really makes you want to send your kids there, doesn't it? And to shell out huge bucks to do so, too, right?

carnival time

2008-04-04T14:33:00.003-06:00

The 48th edition of the Carnival of Space is up at Next Big Future.

i'm still here

2008-03-30T21:32:00.002-06:00

Yeah, I'm still kicking about. I've just been super busy this last month; it's been all I can do to post a space video of the day every day at Space Feeds. Hopefully I'll start blogging regularly again soon.

D and D

2008-03-06T00:27:00.003-07:00

Gary Gygax recently passed away, at the age of 69. He was a true innovator in the world of games, and his Dungeons and Dragons is still played the world over. I haven't played the game in many years, but I still have my dice (3d6, 2d10, d4, d8, d20) around somewhere.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the game was making up a character. If you have about 20 minutes, you can answer this survey and figure out what D&D character you would be if you were transported into the D&D universe. Here are my results:

You Are A:

True Neutral Human Wizard (6th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength- 16
Dexterity- 17
Constitution- 16
Intelligence- 20
Wisdom- 15
Charisma- 13

Alignment:
True Neutral- A true neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. He doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most true neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil after all, he would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, he's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. Some true neutral characters, on the other hand, commit themselves philosophically to neutrality. They see good, evil, law, and chaos as prejudices and dangerous extremes. They advocate the middle way of neutrality as the best, most balanced road in the long run. True neutral is the best alignment you can be because it means you act naturally, without prejudice or compulsion. However, true neutral can be a dangerous alignment because it represents apathy, indifference, and a lack of conviction.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards- Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

...thus proving once again that these silly surveys have no bearing on reality whatsoever. Good thing they're fun.

Life, the universe, everything space-y

2008-02-21T19:08:00.001-07:00

Carnival of space number 42 is up over at Chris Lintott's place.

Wishing Their Problems Away

2008-02-19T02:29:00.004-07:00

This New York Times article inadvertently suggests that some of the top level people in NASA are using hope rather than sound engineering practice when it comes to designing the Ares-1 rocket, which will be the US government's replacement for the Space Shuttle.

Still, Mr. Lyles said there would be no need for a full-scale redesign. Additional analysis has indicated the problem is not as severe as first thought, and the two vibrational frequencies may turn out to be far enough apart, more than 10 percent, that nothing needs to be changed at all.
If fixes are necessary, rocket scientists know what to do. A shock absorber could be added between the first and second stages, or the structure could be modified to change the resonance frequency.

Why is this a problem, you ask? Observe this video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Since 1940 this bridge has been an object lesson to engineers of all stripes. It is inconceivable that the engineers at NASA are not aware of this bridge and the issue of resonant frequency. It is further inconceivable that they would assume that a ten percent difference in the resonant frequencies of the solid rocket booster and the second stage would be enough to save them from the same fate as Galloping Gertie.

It is not trivial to change the Ares rocket to eliminate the resonance caused by the natural operating frequency of the solid rocket booster. The shuttle gets away with it because its 4-stage solid rockets are attached at top and bottom to the side of the external fuel tank, which acts as a strongback for the shuttle stack and dampens the vibrations from the SRBs due both to the strength of the materials of the tank and the dual connection points. On the Ares, the second stage is balanced atop a brand new 5-stage solid rocket booster; there really is only one attachment point, a ring at the top of the solid rocket. To damp out the oscillation "by adding a shock absorber" means adding a lot of mass between the SRB and the second stage or (worse) an even larger mass between the second stage and the Orion crew module.

The Ares-1 is overweight as it is; NASA still has to cut a ton from the mass of Orion in order to get the Ares off the pad, even though most of the weight of the safety systems has already been stripped from the design. In some cases the safety systems are single-string. That's brittle design - a single failure equals disaster.

The other option is to modify the design of the rocket to change the resonant frequency. The problem is that such a resonance is inherent to the design of any solid rocket booster. As the New York Times article points out, an SRB is like a pipe in a pipe organ. As the fuel burns, what remains behind is a hollow tube with a lot of air moving through it. No matter what solid rocket booster design NASA goes with, they still have the same issue of a resonant frequency. If they change the booster significantly (and many engineers would argue that adding a fifth segment to the booster is already a huge change), then they end up with completely different hardware than was used on the space shuttle; in other words, an entirely new, untested rocket, with no commonality to the existing shuttle system.

When Wernher von Braun put astronauts atop the Saturn V rockets, he wasn't guessing that the system would work. Every component and subsystem was thoroughly tested beforehand. With the Ares-1, they have eliminated much of the testing under budget pressure and the assumption that it is all legacy hardware from the shuttle system. Any redesigns to change the resonant frequency of the "Stick" will mean that they basically have to start over with a clean sheet (negating the efforts of the past three years and pushing back the first launch of Ares by that much) and test all components of the system as well as all subsystems (adding more dollars and years to the project). This is the very "full-scale redesign" that Garry Lyles of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center dismisses out of hand.

There are other solutions, of course. For the upcoming moon missions, there will be two launches per mission: one Ares-V to launch the bulk of the hardware and fuel, and one Ares-1 for the crew. If instead the mass of the launches are divided up into two nearly-identical rockets midway in size between Ares-1 and Ares-V, then NASA can avoid the resonance issue by having two SRBs attached top-and-bottom to the sides of the strongback of the rocket and develop one rocket instead of two, using far more legacy (spaceflight tested) hardware. This is the essence of the DIRECT 2.0 proposal.

Another approach is to ensure and even expand the funding for the Commercial Orbital Transportation System teams. In comparison to the vaporware produced so far by NASA on the Ares, SpaceX has actually produced - from a standing start - two new rocket engines, and already started doing test flights. They have spent over the last five years about what NASA spends every eleven days. That's cost effective. Assuming NASA does not choke off COTS, then at the very least SpaceX will beat the Ares to orbit - and they may do so even if NASA kills COTS in the cradle. If that happens, then there will be no need whatsoever for Ares, and NASA will have wasted billions of dollars and years of effort for no actual results at all. And, if NASA assures funding for or even expands COTS, then there will be more than just SpaceX ready to provide rides to orbit for NASA astronauts.

Yet another approach is for NASA to actually do what it is supposed to do as a government agency - develop technologies that are not yet commercially viable but which lead to infrastructure improvements that make space access easier and more economical for everyone. Jon Goff has already written a lot about that, particularly about orbital propellant transfer and other technologies necessary for a spacefaring society.

And finally, NASA can go with existing launch systems like the Delta or Atlas. So what if they are not "man rated"? As Rand Simberg has pointed out many times, that qualification is artificial and not one of the rockets that NASA has ever used to fly men into space has ever met that qualification - "man rating" is simply a cudgel used by NASA as part of the not invented here syndrome.

For NASA, relying on hope that the system will work simply isn't good enough. Wishful thinking is no substitute for good engineering practice.

It is time for NASA to realize that the definition of "hindsight" does not include "inserting one's head in a very uncomfortable place". The Ares-1 "Stick" may be Mike Griffin's pet project, but that doesn't mean that its obvious shortcomings can be ignored any longer.

blood on their hands

2008-02-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

Click on these two images for background information. Is there any substantive difference between these two cases?

Scrolling Blogroll, redux

2008-02-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

A while back I posted the code necessary for the scrolling blogrolls in my sidebar. Recently Rob Singleton had some questions about how to implement these scrolling blogrolls himself. The problem is that he is using different blogging software than I am, and my previous instructions didn't make sense with his type of template. So, I have come up with a simplified version of the scrolling blogroll code, which can be implemented in pretty much any web page at all. To add a scrolling blogroll to your own blog or website, just copy the code in the text area below and paste it into your website or blog template code. In the case of a blog, that would likely be somewhere in your sidebar code, anywhere you like. Then, make changes to the code to customize it for your own site; the comments within the code should help guide you with the necessary changes.

Moving the Goalposts

2008-02-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post directed at Mark Whittington that said:

There is no double standard at work here. SpaceX used its own money for the Falcon-1 tests. NASA is using taxpayers' money for the obviously flawed-from-before-starting Ares. The difference is not subtle.

Mark Whittington replied that

Technically, he is correct that SpaceX used private money for Falcon 1 tests. But it also is using public money to develop the Falcon 9/Dragon launch system. So, using Robot Guy's logic, one ought to gove SpaceX the same benefit of a doubt--or lack there of--as NASA.

Perhaps I ought to have included more of Mark Whittington's original statement, as based on his reply one might think I was making an apples-to-oranges comparison. Here's the full paragraph from Whittington's original post:

Even in the commercial area, technical problems crop up. SpaceX's Falcon 1 have had two launch failures, for example. SpaceX's engineers have ascertained the causes of these failures and are fixing them. It is noted that no one who is having Internet vapors over the Ares is having the same over the Falcon. There seems to be, perhaps because of a double standard, more of an understanding that problems will occur in rocket development in the private sector than at NASA.

Clearly Mark was comparing SpaceX's (self funded) Falcon 1 launches to NASA's (taxpayer funded) work on Ares. He was not referring to the Falcon 9/Dragon launch system (and thus, neither was I), which admittedly is being partially funded by NASA and thus by taxpayers. He was referring to Falcon 1.

So yes, by all means, let us hold SpaceX to the same standard as NASA - or rather, let us hold NASA to the same standard as SpaceX. Let NASA pay for its mistakes out of its own pocket without dinging the taxpayers for its failures... what's that? NASA doesn't have money of its own? Then perhaps we should hold NASA to the same standards to which NASA holds Rocketplane/Kistler.

Whittington goes on to say:

...the bald, unsupported statement "obviously flawed from the start Ares" (I wish someone would offer some actual evidence to support that)

I had left the support for that statement out of my original post because I thought it was so obvious that further explanation was unnecessary. One could look at the Aviation Week article discussing the thrust oscillation problems, which are going to happen with any solid rocket motor first stage. One could point to the weight problems and schedule slippage. One could keep going, but I suspect that anyone who has been following NASA closely over the last four years would have to know about the problems with Ares/Orion. Any other assumption beggars belief.

what's in it for me?

2008-02-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago Leonard David pointed out a National Science Board report which among other things stated that

Scientific research ranks about on a par with mass transit (38%) and well ahead of space exploration (14%) and assistance to foreign countries (10%) in the proportion of the U.S. population favoring increased spending.

Leonard David called this a "kick in the head for space fans".

Well, it might be a kick in the head for NASA, but the U.S. space agency is not synonymous with "space", and the lack of enthusiasm for increased funding for NASA is not synonymous with a lack of enthusiasm for space projects.

At one time, Americans could be convinced that NASA == space, but that time is long past. When the Collier's articles by Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Fred Whipple, and others were published in 1952-54, people paid attention. When the Russians launched Sputnik, people sat up and took notice. And then came Kennedy's speech:

Well, that got people excited. And that race to the moon gave people more than the impression that NASA == space. It gave them hope - hope that one day they too could go to space. How many kids went into science and engineering because of the work that NASA did in the eight years following the Kennedy speech at Rice university? I can't quantify that, but I bet it was a lot. And, in the years during and immediately following the Apollo missions, people were excited about the apparent progress, the seemingly inexorable movement of man into space.

2001: a Space Odyssey showed routine flights into space to a gigantic wheel-shaped space station, multiple bases on the moon, and a manned voyage to Jupiter. In 1968 these seemed plausible enough, certainly not laughable. There were proposals to build enormous space colonies ("L5 by 95!"), and it seemed as though nothing could stop us. We were going to be a spacefaring civilization, and in a hurry. In the 1960s and 1970s kids could realistically dream of a career as an astronaut.

Thirty-five years after the last man set foot on the moon, it seems that we are further than ever from becoming a spacefaring civilization - that is, at least with NASA as a driving force. NASA is in fact going backwards, struggling to recover ground that was won nearly four decades ago after having wasted the intervening period going around in circles. A kid today has a greater chance of winning the Powerball lottery than of being a NASA astronaut. Why bother doing something as hard as science or engineering if the chance of a payoff is so remote?

Why is support for NASA so low? Perhaps it is because one can only rest on one's laurels for so long. One needs to actually do something in order to engage the public and convince them that you are doing something worth their tax dollars. And, if all you are doing is putting a handful of government employees into low earth orbit a few times a year, then convincing people that you are indeed doing something worthwhile is a pretty tough sell.

I have to feel sorry for Damaris B. Sarria. She writes a blog entitled How I Am Becoming An Astronaut - and she's doing it by working for NASA. She's not in the astronaut corps yet, and it is sad to say but if NASA's present course is continued then she will never become an astronaut. The agency already has far more astronauts than it will need for the shuttle program, some of whom will never be launched into space. By the time that the Ares series of boosters is finally developed - the schedule slips by more than a year every year - NASA will have had to defend its funding and indeed the entire raison d'etre of US Space Exploration Policy through several presidential administrations and congresses. At the current rate of schedule slippage, budget woes, and obvious problems with the Ares it is a crapshoot whether NASA will even exist in 2020, never mind be sending anyone to the moon.

But, as I said, NASA is not "space". Robert Bigelow has already done something that no government space agency has ever done: he has two space stations in orbit simultaneously, right now. Elon Musk of SpaceX has developed two completely new rocket engines and begun launching rockets, from a standing start five years ago, using the amount of money that NASA consumes in about eleven days. Burt Rutan has put two people into space (only spending about what NASA spends every 14 hours), and is developing a bigger craft capable of carrying paying passengers into space as early as next summer. Google has put up a $30 million prize for a lunar robotic rover, and private companies are lining up around the block to compete for that prize. There are over 80 private space companies at my last count. And even in the realm of government space activity, the cool cutting-edge stuff isn't being done by NASA; it is being done by the Pentagon in partnership with the Space Frontier Foundation.

Support for space hasn't died; it has shifted from an increasingly irrelevant NASA to the private sector. There is a good reason for that. People can see that the private sector work in space has potential to offer them. There's something in it for them - they once again have the possibility of going to space themselves. They have the possibility of making money on space. And, they don't need to go through an ossified government space agency whose glory days were over before most people alive today were even born. It is no wonder that support for increasing NASA's budget is so low.

Whittington swings and misses

2008-02-01T17:47:00.000-07:00

It was so predictable. Rand writes something that points out some of the shortcomings of NASA's implentation of the ~~Vision for Space Exploration~~ U.S. Space Exploration Policy and Mark Whittington, in his usual rebuttal, gets something completely wrong:

It is noted that no one who is having Internet vapors over the Ares is having the same over the Falcon. There seems to be, perhaps because of a double standard, more of an understanding that problems will occur in rocket development in the private sector than at NASA.

There is no double standard at work here. SpaceX used its own money for the Falcon-1 tests. NASA is using taxpayers' money for the obviously flawed-from-before-starting Ares. The difference is not subtle.

Update: An anonymous commenter (whom I am certain I have met before on Rand Simberg's blog) saw fit to use a scatological rhyme for Whittington's name in a comment on this post. The rest of the comment had some good points, but I simply will not tolerate such juvenile name-calling on my blog. Anonymous, if you choose to re-post your comment without the ad hominem, then I will allow it through moderation. Otherwise, not.

Edith Harsch

2008-01-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

I just received an email from my mom informing me that Edith Harsch died on January 21st. She was 92 years old.

I probably first met Mrs. Harsch in 1974, when I began elementary school. She was my second grade teacher in 1975-76, and attended the same church that my family did. I'm a little hazy on this part, but I think she was my Sunday School teacher for a year or two as well.

She was my favorite teacher, and I want to tell you a little bit about her. From what I recall based on many-years-old conversations with various people, she began teaching at the age of 15. That would have made her a 45 year veteran of teaching by the time I was in her class. I'm pretty sure she continued to teach long past the normal retirement age, too, so I would estimate that she taught between fifteen hundred and eighteen hundred students over the course of her career.

Her name was pronounced "harsh", however she was anything but. She was one of the sweetest ladies I've ever known. And, she took a personal interest in all of her students. I recall missing the bus one day, and deciding to walk home (nine miles - what the heck was I thinking?); I must have been six or seven or eight years old at the time. She went out looking for me, found me, and drove me home. I know that my sister Wendy had a similar experience a few years later, under slightly different circumstances, and I vaguely recall my other sister Heidi perhaps having a similar experience (but I can't be sure).

I was a fairly smart kid when I was in her class, and my buddy Collin was also pretty smart - a lot of teachers wouldn't have known what to do with the two of us. Mrs. Harsch recognized that Collin and I were getting quite a bit ahead of the class, so she made up a bunch of flash cards with multiplication and division questions on them, and had us teach each other arithmetic. We got a year or two head start in math compared to our contemporaries because Mrs. Harsch fed our thirst for knowledge.

Being in the same church and having attended her class, I saw a fair amount of Mrs. Harsch (and vice-versa) during my childhood. When I last saw her three years ago she remembered my name, my sisters, my parents... but I would be willing to bet that she remembered the name of every student she ever had.

That meeting three years ago is something I'm going to remember for a very long time. My mom had asked me to help out with cooking for some church function, and I did. Mrs. Harsch was there, and when it came time to eat she corralled me and insisted I sit beside her to eat.

While we were finishing up eating the meal I mentioned to her that she was my all-time favorite teacher. I don't think I'll forget the look on her face. She positively beamed, and I thought she might even cry. - but rather than crying she took a fork full of the cake from her plate and proceeded to feed me as if I was still a small boy. I let her.

Edith Harsch was almost like a third grandmother to me, and I loved her and will miss her a lot.

new carnival of space, private eye

2008-01-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

Sorting Out Science has the new issue of the Carnival of Space up, and it's awesome.

The HRC must go

2008-01-14T21:36:00.000-07:00

OK, now this has me really pissed off. A couple of years ago, there were a dozen cartoons featuring Mohammed published in a Danish newspaper. A few months later, some imam decided to incite riots over these cartoons, so he added a few more of his own and then told people how offensive they were. Well, the members of the "religion of peace" used that as an excuse to riot and kill a bunch of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with the cartoons. This is absolutely psychotic behaviour.

The Western Standard magazine chose to publish those cartoons, too, just to show people in Canada what all the fuss was about. The cartoons were newsworthy - after all, people were dying because of the riots supposedly incited by the cartoons - and yet of all the newspapers and magazines in Canada, only three other publications published any of the cartoons, other than the Western Standard (and one of those subsequently recalled every copy that they had printed). I myself published one of the cartoons on my blog. Here is the entire set of twelve cartoons (with a tip of the hat to Kate):

That's it. Those twelve cartoons, which are pretty darn tame, are the reason that more than 100 innocent people lost their lives.

The words to describe such behaviour - rioting and killing innocent people over freakin' cartoons - include such terms as barbaric, insane, sociopathic, deranged, idiotic, stupid, and so forth. In short, these people are batshit crazy.

If the Western Standard had not published the cartoons, then a great many Canadians would have had no idea what all the controversy was about - they would have just figured that the Muslims had gone completely off their rocker. But after seeing those cartoons, Canadians could see that it was much worse than that: that the Islamic world was completely insane even before the cartoons were published. But, that is not what has me so pissed off. Instead, I'm angry about the subsequent actions of the Alberta government.

You see, some Saudi imam currently living in Canada took offense to the Western Standard's publication of the cartoons. So, instead of - for instance - writing about or speaking out against the publication of the cartoons, he called the Alberta Human Rights Commission and insisted that this government body force Ezra Levant, the publisher of the Western Standard, to apologize.

Well, one could excuse this Saudi for not knowing about such esoteric concepts as Freedom of Speech or Freedom of the Press. However it is absolutely inexcusable for the government to use its power - to subpoena Ezra Levant, to force him to waste his time appearing before this quasi-judicial commisssion, to force him to pay lawyers for his defence - simply for the "crime" of exercising his political freedom in Canada. And yet, that is exactly what happened. Levant taped his appearance before the commission (in reality, just a single bored bureaucrat - what was that line about the banality of evil?) and posted excerpts on YouTube. Here are those excerpts:

Now, I am an Albertan just like Ezra Levant. I also published one of those cartoons when the riots occurred and republished them all today. Although Ezra Levant is the one sitting before the commission, wasting his valuable time and money on lawyers, I may as well be sitting in the chair right beside him, for I am guilty of the same "crime" as he is, exercising my constitutionally-protected rights to free speech.

You know, I could make up my own cartoon, one which would be so offensive that members of polite society would shun me. That is their right, just as it is my right to make up and publish such a cartoon. The government legally has nothing whatsoever to say about it, and cannot censor me. I even seriously considered making up just such a cartoon (one involving the devil, Mohammed bent over a barrel, and 72 male pigs - use your imagination). However, my readership is low enough as it is, and I don't want it to go to zero. That is the way it should be. I publish what I want, people read it if they want to. If I go too far across the line of good taste, then I lose readers. The government has no say, nor should it have any say, in what I publish.

It is inexcusable that this quasi-judicial body has the power to force publishers like Ezra Levant or columnists like Mark Steyn (who is, by the way, next up before this kangaroo court) to appear before them simply for having exercised their constitutionally-protected and fundamental human right to free speech. It is doubly offensive that this star chamber is presided over by activists rather than judges, that the rules of evidence do not apply, that the motion to dismiss does not apply, that accusers can bring multiple suits and abuse the process with no consequences or cost to them, that the accused cannot choose to have more than one lawyer present - in short, that the rule of law and jurisprudence, not to mention 800 years of common law, are completely ignored.

Look, you want offensive? This is offensive:

That's the Piss Christ, supposed "art" which is merely a crucifix immersed in a jar of urine. Remember the riots, the more than 100 dead, the conviction of the artist in a kangaroo court, due to this craptacular, truly blasphemous "artwork"? No? Maybe that's because people in the Western world understand the concepts of civilization and Freedom of Speech. Maybe it is well past time for people in other parts of the world to grow the fuck up, too. And I know for certain that it is long past time for the abomination of the quasi-judicial Alberta Human Rights Commission to be disbanded - never again should the government use its power to punish people simply for exercising their fundamental rights to free speech. I hope (as does Ezra Levant) that the HRC rules against Levant or Mark Steyn - that way, this case can go to a real court, and be fought all the way up to the Supreme Court. Should it go that far, then the "human rights" commissions are done for, and good riddance.

Finally, here's a personal note to Syed Soharwardy, the POS that lodged this complaint against Levant with the AHRC:

This is how it is done in a free society. If someone writes or says something you don't like, then you write or say something in response. If people agree with you, then you win the argument. If they don't, then you lose and STFU. Using the government to silence your critics is the act of a coward. If I have the opportunity, I will call you a coward to your face. Luckily, I have the advantage of being right - and you'll still be a coward and a weasel. This is our system in free Western societies. If you don't like it, then either run for political office and try to change our laws from within our system, or go back to whatever third world hellhole (and there's a reason that it is a hellhole, while Western societies are not) you came from and wallow in your ignorance and stupidity and fear and cowardice. Jerk.