A new beginning...

Watching the layoff tweets is taking me across a whole spectrum of emotion.

I’m watching it all trickle down my screen in real-time, like a digital scythe.

Behind every line a person, a story.

How long will it be before my career is summed up in 140 characters or less?

My officemates all just got laid off. It doesn't make any sense.

bummer, friend of mine was just laid off at Microsoft

I'm not near a phone, but shit, did you just get laid off?

Didn't get laid off today.

I just got laid off. How fucking awesome is that?

Laid off. I would love working at @starbucks again... How do I find out about open positions at stores in my area?

Got laid off today. Looks like a good day to have a #beer . Also? Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

my mom just got laid off right before she is about to schedule her brain surgery. (I shake my angry fist at the sky)

Being laid off ain't so bad. No alarm clock, commuting, boss, meetings. I may need a few months of this to really get a good taste for it.

So if I get laid off before I even start working at MSFT, does my severance package count negative-days-worked so I owe *them* money?

getting laid off is almost as good as getting laid. my life is mine again. Yes!

It’s always an eerie feeling when people get laid off. Some are crying and it’s against company policy to hug them, but I do it anyway.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Rock

Recently, I watched a special about the future of our space program.

I know it's not something that's at the top of the public's mind right now, given everything going on in the world, but I'm a sucker for space geekery in every form, and I always have been.

When I was a child, I can remember wanting to be an astronaut, a fireman and a cowboy, in that order. In the heyday of the shuttle program, before the Challenger, I would look up to the sky at night and wonder what was going on in the brains of those astronauts as they were doing whatever it was that spacemen do.

Those were special moments, out there under the light of a billion stars. I would get up early in the morning to catch a glimpse of the shuttle on my telescope, a prized possession during my childhood years. I felt it my civic obligation, my very duty to my fellow astronauts, to watch over them diligently.

I used to imagine that I could just build my own shuttle (mostly thanks to the movie Explorers) and go up there and explore with them. To see what they could see, hear what they could hear.

I got a rare glimpse into that world, today, and I could not be more delighted.

As some of you may know, astronauts do not wake up to an alarm clock, they rise to the sound of music- a tradition dating back to the days of the Gemini program. I discovered that many of these playlists are freely available on the Wikipedia mission pages, many with links to MP3 versions of the songs!

Here is the entry for the latest one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-124#Wake-up_calls

To get the playlists for any other mission, replace the number "124" with the number of the mission you are interested in.

I never did end up becoming an astronaut (or a fireman or cowboy, for that matter), but my fascination with space exploration has never waned. 20 years later, I sit under the same stars, listening to the music they listen to as they wake up to the brilliant rays of a sun unobstructed by earthly bindings.

Although I see the world now through the bitter, cynical eyes of adulthood, this experience has nourished a deep-rooted hunger inside of me- a yearning for knowledge so deep that it thrusts me viscerally right back into those moments of my childhood.

I hope you enjoy.

They Come in Peace

It's no secret that I'm not the biggest fan of robots. Much to my chagrin, I often find myself the butt of practical jokes and derision at the hands of my technology-savvy friends. The girl even likes to give me a good fright by taking on the voice of a robot and saying nefarious things, such as "We're coming to get you, Michael". My friends constantly remind me of the time I was obsessed over the song "Screaming in Digital" because of its similarities to my recurring nightmares of the collective robot intelligence destroying all humanity.

I used to take this very seriously. I would point out, using any number of sources, the danger of inserting artificial intelligence into critical human behaviors. I would tell them of the time in 1983 when a Soviet colonel single-handedly prevented WWIII by deciding not to launch nuclear missile attacks in response to what appeared to be incoming missiles from the United States. This was against direct orders and defied the concept of mutual assured destruction.
I would point out the time a fuel calculation glitch cost the lives of 110 in an airline disaster in the early 1990's. I would provide many such examples, avoiding the pop-culture for cold, hard fact.

Speaking of pop-culture, humanity has been obsessed by the idea of robots for a very long time. I won't go into all the details, but I'll focus on where robots started to go wrong.

Robots were initially portrayed as helpful automatons, doing the bidding of their (often wealthy) masters. In fact, in early silent films, they were seen as nothing more than educated slaves. Whether for comic effect or for the value of eccentricity, they became the darling of the silver screen. They hardly, if ever, strayed from the commands of their stern masters.

It didn't take long before they took on a greater intelligence, and developed other attributes.
In the 1930's, Westinghouse created a robot called "Elektro", a robot that could walk, follow simple voice commands, and smoke cigarettes. Mostly a result of the "robot craze" gripping the nation, Elektro garnered a lot of attention, and what came next was a long train of robot presence in the popular culture.

At first, robots would simply insult their human masters with their superior strength and intelligence. This theme was repeated in a string of movies and radio programs for quite a while. The most nefarious attribute in a robot seemed to be arrogance.

All of this changed, however, once America was gripped in it's next greatest phase- science fiction. Suddenly, robots were the creation of mad scientists, aliens from a foreign, clockwork world, or worse, human sentience trapped in a metal body. By this time, robots of all kind were in pop-culture. From the kindly, servant robots of the early days all the way to giant, planet destroying space-robots bent on destruction.

When I was growing up, my earliest exposures to robots were very pleasant. I remember Rosie from the Jetsons, C3PO and R2-D2 from Star Wars, The Transformers, Voltron (I know, I know, technically not a robot), and R.O.B., the robot that came with my first Nintendo system.

I was content in those days. Truly, robots were the helpers of our kind. I pictured a day in the future where robots would fight fires, travel to space and dive to the depths of the ocean to unlock the mysteries of the deep. I was convinced that giant computers would crank away at endless equations, allowing us to discover new life and cure diseases.

I lived my entire childhood this way. I was obsessed with robots. I had all the robot toys, and watched giant robot cartoons on the Spanish channel, because even though I couldn't understand what they were saying, they were far more fascinating than whatever else was on. I used to have a calculator watch that I would pretend was my version of K.I.T.T. from Knightrider. In fact, I had a Knight Rider Big Wheel, and we would go on adventures.

As I grew older, my interest in robots wained a bit, but never truly faded. Never faded, that is, until I saw Terminator.

You see, up until this time, I was truly convinced that robots were benevolent creations of man- something we brought into existence and that operated under our watchful eye. Never, in my innocent youth, had I thought that robots could somehow escape that human scrutiny and become sentient. Despise their creators. Seek to destroy them.

I'm not sure if it was those endless movies about evil robots I saw in my adolescence that formed my distaste for them, or whether it was simply a result of growing up and becoming interested in the deeper, more through-provoking aspects of robotics and artificial intelligence, but it happened all the same.

By the time I went away to high school, I was thoroughly convinced technology would one day reach a point where humans would lose control of it, and it would result in the downfall of man. I accepted this as a simple fact of humanity, and moved on with my life. It was the same as those who accept the fact that one day the glaciers would melt and the continents would sink, or a giant asteroid would destroy us.

I had learned of Asimov's Laws of Robotics, and about the loopholes they contained. I had watched all the movies. Read the books. Seen the advent of artificial intelligence move into our lives. Teddy Ruxpin. Furby. Tamagotchi. Number Johnny 5.

And so, this was the trend in my life- distrust of the robots, distrust of the artificial intelligence and intense dislike for the insertion of that intelligence into our daily lives. That is, until the other day. I listened to a podcast. I was listening to this show called "Buzz Out Loud". They regularly joke about robot overlords, the zombie apocalypse and ninja battles. But it was one caller in particular that got me to thinking.

The guy's an engineer at M.I.T. He works on robotics. He said he was frustrated because of the way robots are portrayed in pop culture. He develops technologies that will one day save lives, and we're all joking about how the robot collective is going to get us one day.

At first, I thought, well, this happens. We go through phases. When I was a kid, I loved cowboys and firemen. Well, firemen are quite popular now, especially since 9/11, but cowboys, not so much, especially since a certain movie came out. Now, cowboys are considered a joke; even though I idolized them when I was younger.

Then I realized that this technology I despised to much, held such disdain for and viewed with contempt- it's already all around me. Everywhere. Embedded in everything. "Fuck," I said to myself. "This shit's even in my passport". However, it didn't bug me.

I had figured it out. This isn't really only about what is in fashion and what isn't. This isn't about what the robots are going to do once we lose control of them, or what they're doing now on their own.

It's about humanity. It's about us. It's about me.

This guy, this engineer, he's doing wonderful things. Brilliant things. He's just as frustrated with the fact that we think robots are a joke as I am frustrated with the idea that artificial intelligence of our own creation would spell our demise.

I remember listening to another podcast called Radio Lab, about a robot used in Japanese nursing homes. The robot will respond if you name it, it learns its own name, and it warms up when you hug it. It was so popular in this one nursing home, they purchased 2 more. The idea still deeply disturbs me, but it helps me understand.

Robots, robotics, technology, artificial intelligence- these things are nothing more than a reflection of us. Our dreams, our desires, our wants, our fears. Everything. They are as capable of love, hate, healing and destruction as us, because they ARE us. Before we ever had the means to create them, robots represented a dream. A dream that perhaps we could extend and enhance our human experience. Strive to do the impossible. As that dream became closer to reality, the inevitable darker side of the dream was exposed- as is the case whenever we learn about ourselves, some truths are ugly, and some are beautiful.

As a child, I lived those bright dreams in my fantasies every day. Perhaps when I was given the chance to see the other side of that dream- the side we were scared of, the side we didn't understand and didn't want to think about, I became so scared as to resent it.

Now I see that the dream is as alive as ever. In fact, our technology is allowing us to do amazing and wonderful things that our ancestors could only marvel at. And, although I remain nervous that we will begin to use these technologies for things that are more scary than wonderful, I realize that robots remain a reflection of us. We're human- and so in a way that makes them human, too.

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto

...

I was checking out the Dropkick Murphy's website to see if any pictures had been posted from their amazing show at the Avalon at the end of September. It was the last show at Avalon before the doors closed forever. It was an incredible show, and I wanted to see what the web site had to say about it.

I found this gem:

"December 5, 2007

On the night of the last show at the Avalon in Boston September 30th a full-size statue of the Venus deMilo was stolen from the alley outside of Axis. It was both valuable and sentimental to the venue owners and it seems it may have been someone who was at the Dropkick Murphys show who may have taken it. The club is asking for the statue back with no questions asked. If you have any information on it's whereabouts please let us know."

Yeah. I know.

I think Mama is Santa!

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

I'll have a whisky, hold the "e"

I was browsing around on boingboing and found this little gem about Japanese whisky ads.

It's a great video and an interesting article. I did end up sending a note to the author to let him know that the Japanese like their whisky without the "e", just like the Scots and the Canadians.

This tradition is due to the fact that Japan owes their entire whisky legacy to Scotland. It is widely accepted that a Japanese man named Masataka Taketsuru is considered the founder of the Japanese whisky industry. But, he didn't do it alone. In fact, he had help from an entire nation.

In the early 1900's, he traveled to Glasgow to study organic chemistry.

From there, he learned at many distilleries all over Scotland. After several years, he returned to Japan and put all of his knowledge to work, forming his own whisky distillery and company.

This was during a time in Japan's history when the government was interested in developing the technology and culture of their nation, but not at the cost of nationalism. Instead of bringing foreigners into the country to help them develop the technologies they desired, they dispatched their own people to other nations to learn and then return and build a better Japanese version.

As it turns out, Japan is wonderfully suited to whisky distillation, for all the same reasons Scotland is. The climate is perfect, there is plentiful water and grain is readily available.

It is no wonder that among the whisky connoisseurs of the world, Japanese whisky is considered to be some of the finest.

But, please, let the Americans and the Irish have their "e". The Japanese are just fine without it.