Author Archives: Steve Mays
IBM Watson User Modeling Service
“The IBM Watson User Modeling service uses linguistic analytics to extract a spectrum of cognitive and social characteristics from the text data that a person generates through text messages, tweets, posts, and more.”
So I took one of my longer posts and had it analyzed. It identified my “Big 5” as follows:
Openness – 50%
Conscientiousness 4%
Extraversion 65%
Agreeableness 54%
Emotional range 86%
Then it breaks each of these broad areas down further. Continue reading
How to Be an Expert in a Changing World
“It seems to me that beliefs about the future are so rarely correct that they usually aren’t worth the extra rigidity they impose, and that the best strategy is simply to be aggressively open-minded. Instead of trying to point yourself in the right direction, admit you have no idea what the right direction is, and try instead to be super sensitive to the winds of change.” — Paul Graham
True Size of the Universe
Dog eating at table (Please pass the rancid squirrel)
A typical work day for Stephen Colbert
The interview below might just be the best interview I’ve heard. (Listen to the Real Stephen Colbert Explain How He Maintained his Flawless Character for Nine Years) Plotz asked really good questions and they were short (I hate long, windy questions).
It was like meeting Stephen Colbert for the first time. I hardly recognized the voice or the person speaking. He takes us through his working day and it was fascinating. And grueling. Difficult to imagine doing this 160 times a year (1400 total).
I’m gonna miss the character but it feels like the right time to stop. Maybe as it was for Seinfeld. I’ll record Late Night (as I did The Colbert Report) once Colbert gets behind the desk. I’m a little nervous about it. Like discovering your wife of twenty years is really a deep cover mole for a foreign government. Will I like the real Stephen Colbert as much as I liked the character I’ve come to know?
Alan Watts: Think of Nothing
Be Right Back (Black Mirror)
An online service that creates a virtual presence for a departed loved one, based on all the photos, videos, Facebook posts, Tweets, etc etc. I’m sure I’ve posted on that several times over the years, eagerly anticipating some digital immortality. Once again, Charlie Brooker has changed my mind with the Be Right Back episode of Black Mirror. If you’ve recently lost someone close, you might want to skip this one (or wait a bit)
Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War
I’m not sure how anyone can have much hope for the future of America by the time they get to the last page of this book. Every institution fails. The military. Congress. Our courts. The White House. The Free Press we were once so proud of. Greed and corruption, up and down the line. Risen introduces us to some good people who tried to do something but they all paid (are paying) a high price and the bad guys are still winning.
People tell me we live in a democracy or a republic or something and we can change things at the polls but I don’t think I really believe that. Thousands (or millions?) of Americans in the street might make a difference but I’m not sure how. Maybe if they took to the streets and just stayed there, but I don’t see that happening. A meteor that takes out everything inside the Beltway?
I wish I could imagine a happy ending. If you can, please share it. I’d really like to hear it. And you know what I’d like to see? I’d like to watch the faces of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as they read this book. Each in a room by themselves, sitting in their favorite chair. Just a close-up of their faces (from a hidden camera across the roo). I could watch an hour of that.
Pick a line
There’s an image in my head of two long lines of people, stretching off in different directions. In one line are the people who believe torturing our enemies is okay. And that police officers who shoot unarmed black men are just doing their job. The people in the other line — let’s call it the Sob Sister line — think differently.
Few things in life are black and white but it seems I can only stand in one of those lines so here I am in the Sob Sister line and as I look around, I don’t recognize most of the people in this line. But there are so many familiar faces in that other line. People I grew up with. People I worked with. Of course I think I’m in the “right” line, but so do all those people in the other line.
Up and down the line people are shouting back and forth, pretending to have a “conversation.” (Boy, I hate that word) But that’s not what’s really happening. Here’s what I think is really going on.
If the people in the Other line are right, then I must be wrong. Being wrong about really important stuff like torture and shooting people goes right to the core of who I am. Scary stuff.
Here’s my dilemma: I’m having trouble meeting the gaze of people I know in the Other line. They want to talk. To explain why I’m in the wrong line and persuade me to join them. But I smile awkwardly and look away, convinced nothing good can come from such “conversations.” Ideas, and the words we use to express them, are losing their power and meaning for me. They’re just sounds. Like those dogs whose owners think they can speak or sing. I’m focusing more these days on what I do. Actions seem like real things to me.
Am I being cowardly? Maybe. And I haven’t pefected my Stand Mute strategy yet. It’s difficult to be silent. To be still. But here I am in the Sob Sister line, hands in my pockets. Lips tight, eyes straight ahead.
UPDATE: My analogy is flawed. We need more than two lines. Not a third line, maybe, but a place for people to stand who aren’t comfortable in the two lines I described above. Picture that big infield area at the Indy 500.
These folks believe there are times when a police officer might have to shoot (12 times) an unarmed suspect. You have to look at the facts of each case and try to put yourself in the shoes of the officer. And clearly there are time when torture is justified. If a kidnapper has buried your family alive out in the desert and the only way you could save them was to torture the guy, wouldn’t you do it? Of course you would. So, see? You have to take each case on its merits. I don’t belong in either of your lines. Life’s not that cut and dried. Now. What did I miss?