A friend pointed me to PersonalDNA's personality test.

 

 

Two completely unrelated pieces of good writing I've come across recently:

 

My favorite car writer talking about the new Ford Mustang:  http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12529-1794313,00.html

 

and Dave Winer, in a rare piece critical of Google:  http://archive.scripting.com/2005/10/08#When:8:18:32AM

 

In each article my interest in the subject matter is only peripheral (I like cars, I am interested in software...but I'm not interested a Mustang or Google's RSS reader)...but I just enjoyed reading them. 

Scary, detailed story about the changing situation in Iraq:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1572812,00.html

Some of you may have heard my speculation that humans aren't actually intelligent.  It's a humorous way of introducing the question of what a really hyper-intelligent being would be like, a topic that is going to become germane eventually as the technology develops to either enhance human intelligence or create artificial intelligence.  As I mentioned in my last post, any speculation on this part is akin to household pets speculating about advanced areas of human thought...but it is still interesting to ponder, at least attempt to put some boundaries around the question.

 

The easy part is the quantitative stuff:  hyper fast thought and learning, immense calculating ability, parallel thoughts, perfect memory, complete consciousness....etc.    You can imagine the tricks of such a brain:  learn every human language fluently, prove Fermat's theorem (the short version) while solving Chess and composing a hyper-symphony for 1000 instruments.  But what are the topics it would consider?  And what is the role of will in this?  Reason alone is purely contemplative.  What about motivation?

 

There's a book in this topic.

My friend Kavi and I have been exchanging book notes, in particular both of us recently read "Singularity Sky" by Charles Stross.  Kavi said I sounded bored by post-singularity fiction, which he finds exciting.  Here's my reply:

 

I have long had my own definition:  Morals are absolute value judgements, usually derived from dogma (a religion or philosophy); while Ethics is the guide to conduct predicate on Morals.  As a mathematician I like the division because it is analogous to that between Axioms and Theorems.  Morals (Axioms) must be assumed, whereas Ethics (Theorems) can be derived from Morals.

 

I've been reading Russell's History of Western Philosophy and my definition doesn't seem to match those used by professional philosophers. 

Certain authors seem to almost officially represent their nations:  Pushkin for Russia; Dante for Italy; Goethe for Germany, while others such as Shakespeare and Tolstoy are more global.  I've always thought Victor Hugo played that role for France, but I've never read anything by him.  It was hard to find good English language books in Scandinavia this trip, but I picked up the "Hunchback of Notre Dame" in Copenhagen the last day and read most of it on the plane back. 

 

It both is and is not what I expected.  The basic story is well known, from Disney if nothing else.  But the book is much darker and more romantic than I expected, and includes both comic and philosophical digressions that redmind me a little of someone like Melville (the quintessential American author?).  I think I'll try to read Les Miserables now.

One day we hiked and climbed along the rocky bits of the coast near Kungshamn.  Here's one of the views.

I was tempted to title this post "Typical Danish Boat".  Actually, Larry Ellison's new yacht the "Rising Sun" was in Copenhagen.  According to "Power and Motoryacht" it is the largest private yacht in the world at over 450" in length.

 

Compared to the ocean liners in town, it was small...

 

 

Okay, not really.

It is hard to imagine a nicer place to live than Scandinavia.   Between my two trips I've now spent about 7 weeks here, and have visited Oslo, Stockholm, Goteborg, Malmo, Copenhagen, Malmo and a number of smaller towns.  Universally the towns and cities are clean and beautiful (the same could be said of the people).  The landscape is lovely and in Sweden there is a lot of it (it's bigger than California but has only 9 million people) and the climate is temperate despite the northerly latitude.   THe cities are beautiful, transportation is easy, and the countries are full of successful, innovative companies and world-class universities.

 

"Ah", asks the canny American "but what about the taxes?"  Whatever your political beliefs and what you may have read about the social system and tax rates (highest in the world), please suspend judgement unless you've travelled here and spent some time with people who live here. 

 

There is a inescapable feel of affluence in Scandinavia.  Houses are large and well appointed.  People are well dressed and the stores are full of stylish, high tech goods, and people drive nice, new cars. 

 

I almost hate to emphasize this, because it sounds like the ugly American (or 19th century Brit) who expects the rest of the world to be a pestilent hell-hole.  But it is worth pointing out because of the regular stories one reads in the American press about the failures of the Scandinavian system...for example this bilious nonsense from Instapundit.  Being in the country, it just makes you laugh...Jacki and I developed a running gag everytime we'd see a nice Porsche or Mercedes:  "Oh, the poor Swedes toiling under the oppression of socialism.  That poor fellow couldn't afford a Ferrari..."

 

So, given the taxes rates...how do they do it?  Take home incomes are undoubtedly lower than in the US, housing and energy are expensive...  Part of it is surely misleading statistics.  Drop the very, very high earners out and I suspect Scandinavian incomes are very competitive with middle class Americans.  Further, they pay taxes for health and other benefits Americans must pay insurance on, and I wonder if they don't save less for retirement as they can depend on a better state retirement benefit.  Worth doing some research.

 

We were WOIA (WithOut Internet Access) for a few days, so I'll try to summarize.

 

Ann Marie's parents live in Kungshamn on the west coast of Sweden, a beautiful rocky coast area that reminds me somewhat of the Pacific coast, but more of Nova Scotia or Maine (places I only know from pictures).  I'll post pictures later of the hike we took.   After a couple relaxing days (punctuated by spectacular home cooked meals courtesy of Ann Marie's mother Gerd), Jacki and I said our goodbyes and drove a rental car down through south central Sweden.  After a few hundred Ks of forest lined lakes we ended up in Vaxjo, which turns out to be a rapidly growing "InternetCity" with a new university (founded in 1967, but expanding rapidly now) and a vibrant little downtown. 

 

Vaxjo is in the center of Swedish glass and furniture country, so the trip would not have been complete without visits to Kosta and Orrefors.  I found a glass artist I really love:  Goran Warff.  It's a commercial site, but you can see some of his stuff here.

 

We need to return the car to Malmo on Sunday, so we started back towards the Denmark coast on Saturday afternoon, and had some trouble deciding on where to stay, finally settling on the university town on Lund.  Lund is not a very car accessible town...which I normally love, but since we were saddled with a vehicle, getting to a Hotel was no picnic.  The central town is full of one-ways and streets that dead end in pedestrian routes which can't be determined from the map.  We never did find the hotel we were looking for, but pulled into the lovely Grand just before exploding in frustration. 

 

Sunday morning we did a walking tour of Lund, which is just a lovely set of cobblestones and twisty ways (lovely when walking...), then made the short trip to Malmo, also a pretty city.  A quick train trip brought us back to Copenhagen where we stayed Sunday night in "the house of minor annoyances" a Comfort Hotel across from Churchill Park.  The annoyances included but were not limited to:  a bathroom that smelled ever so slightly of sewage; a very aggressive shower curtain; a TV that turned itself off and ON randomly until we unplugged it; and the 20 minutes it took to checkout because the desk was only staffed by a single trainee.

 

Monday (yesterday) we did a little touring of Copenhagen, had dinner with Michael and settled back in at Birkerod.  Today is our last full day...we're back on the plane tomorrow at 3:50pm.

Karlskoga is home to the Bofors Company, a name I recognized mostly from WWII history.  The Bofors gun was an anti-aircraft gun I associate with the British Navy, though it was designed by the Swedes.  As I found out today during a tour of the Bofors Company Museum, the Bofors gun was licensed widely at the end of the 30s and the United States made some 600,000 of them during the war.  They were heavily used in the defense of London as well as by various navies.

 

Further, I did not know that Bofors was owned by Alfred Nobel.  Nobel started with his own company, but did so well after inventing dynamite he was able to buy Bofors (which was founded in 1646!  if you can believe it) and it became central to his business empire.  Karlskoga has a Nobel museum including his laboratory and one of his main homes (later in life he lived in Paris and eventually spent his last years in San Remo). 

 

Karlskoga is a company town with a Bofors school and a Bofors hospital and many of the older housing complexes were built by the company.  Business is declining however, and Jani says people have been slowly moving away for decades.  But don't start mental images of Flint.  Karlskoga is a beautiful place, with well appointed homes, well-dressed inhabitants driving nice cars, wide streets and all those other signs we associate with affluence.

Jani made sure we didn't get too thirsty at the races.  In addition to some nice northern European Pilsners he had "Gin-n-tonic-inna-can" which is really quite a fine idea if you ask me.  I'm kinda surprised it hasn't made it stateside yet given the beverage innovation wave we seem to be in currently.

If you can read Swedish, the official results are here:  http://www.stcc.se/

 

After we went Karting at the outdoor circuit next to the track.  The Karts are 2 engine jobs that are a little faster than I'm used to, but other than one lap where I spun out and got my left rear wheel stuck under the tire barrier, I did okay...only a couple seconds a lap behind Peter who lives nearby.  Okay, 2 secs is pretty huge when we're talking 38 sec laps, but my best lap actually ended up in the top 20 for the day.  I wonder how I would have done if I hadn't had 4 beers in me.

 

 

Anne Marie and Jani live in Karlskoga, and we arrived last night for a stay.  We talked about several agendas, but I (at least) was decided when Jani told me the Swedish Touring Car Championship series was visting Karlskoga this weekend. 

 

Jani's friend Peter picked us up (along with his friend, also Peter, from England) and the four of us went to the racetrack.  The track is quite old, having been a F1 site in the 1930s.  It is a short track, full of tight corners, flat and with excellent visibility.  Most of the day was taken up with qualifying for the STCC championship race, but there was also a JTCC (Junior Touring Car Championship) race of small cars like Suzukis and Citreon C3s, a motorcycle race, a Volvo series made up of S40 and S60s and a Porsche Carerra Cup race (guess which was my favorite).  We missed Formula Renault and Radical races, which were probably quite something to see as those cars are nearly as fast as the bikes. 

 

I had a great time and got plenty of pictures from the pits and show areas.  In addition to the race cars there were a couple of F430s, some new 911s and a Carerra GT on display. 

 

The STCC race itself was dominated by an Audi that started in 1st place, closely pressed by a pair of M3s.  It was clear the M3s were setting a faster pace, but they needed the Audi to make a mistake to pass.  The mistake when it came was on the far side of the track on about lap 15 (of 18)...all I saw was a puff of dust and the 2 M3s were past, only to be overtaken again by the Audi at the next car.  However, he went off again in the dirt and the BMWs went past him and just ran away.

 

The bike race was won by a local from Karlskoga who is called "Crazy Mike".  I didn't understand much else that was said, but every few moments "Crazy Mike" would come over the loudspeakers, which was quite strange to hear...

One of the nice things about vacation is getting a chance to catch up on reading.  I've read "Mind Children" by Moravec about robotics, a terrible sci-fi novel called "Raft" (I actually gave it up before the end), and a couple of Michael's books including part of a Modern Library abridgement of European Philosophy. 

 

In particular I read Pascal's description of his wager and got to discussing it with Jacki.  Basically Pascal makes a purely probabilistic argument for faith.  He points out that the expected return from a wager is the probability of it "winning" multiplied by the size of the prize.  Since the reward for believing in Christianity is eternal bliss if it is true, then no matter how unlikely it is the expected return is infinite...therefore one should have faith.  The obvious (to me) counterargument is what if it turns out say the Norse myths are actually the true ones, and the penalty for not believing them is eternal damnation.  Then the expected return from Christianity is infinity plus minus infinity or some other indeterminate value. 

 

Jacki made an even better point, which I've never read.  What if you made up your own faith that offered infinite reward?  Wouldn't believing it that have the same expected return as believing in Christianity or Paganism or whatever already extent faith?  I like it because it is a reductio ad absurdum of Pascal's central attempt to justify faith mathematically.  On further discussion it points out what is wrong with Pascal's argument:  that if there are an infinite number of possible faiths (ie make up your own) then it is possible some number of them are true while the probability of any one of them being true remains 0.  The expected return is thus infinity divided by infinity...

 

Gotta watch your infinities there, Blais.

We've been staying with Michael and Susan and doing a little touring around Copenhagen and the countryside.  The gallery now has some pictures from FrederiksBorg castle in Hillerod, from Nyhavn Street in Copenhagen, and a great fountain that represents the goddess Gefion and her oxen (sons).  The snake is also from the Gefion fountain.

 

The weather has been spectacular and we've been really relaxed and enjoying ourselves.  On Wednesday, Michael took us to the Football Match between Danmark and England which was won in a huge upset by the Danes 4-1.  The Danish Hooligans are pretty restrained, but it was fun to sit among a bunch of drunken Scandis and enjoy the game, even if we did end up with more beer on us than in us.  Who knew you were required to throw your beer when your team scores a goal?

 

Yesterday we took the train to Hillerod and then to Helsingor to see the castles.  Frederiksborg, especially the gardens, is actually much prettier than Helsingor, but Helsingor is on the sound between Danmark and Sweden...a spectacular location reminiscent of parts of Puget Sound, except with castles.