George Rebane
Forcible female mutilation is again legal in America. “A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that the U.S. law banning female genital mutilation was unconstitutional and dismissed charges against several doctors in Michigan who carried out the procedure on underage girls as part Muslim sect’s religious practice. … U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman ruled that Congress had no authority to enact a law that criminalizes female genital mutilation (FGM). “As despicable as [FGM] may be… [Congress] overstepped its bounds” by banning the procedure, the judge said.” (more here)
Two things – imagine, if let stand, the precedence this ruling sets for all kinds of primitive practices if they are claimed in the name of this or that religious practice (and focus on the ‘forcible’ part); also, did anyone notice that it was FN that broke this news, while it was totally eschewed by the likes of lamestream’s MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, … . Begrudgingly, 24 hrs late, leftwing outlets such the NYT started reporting on it. But the news doesn’t fit the Left’s pro-Muslim narrative even though they should all be enraged at the anti-woman implications of this barbarous practice. It’s tough making such choices when you have a dysfunctional ideology that you must then promote with an incoherent narrative.
Women in world class chess are not very prominent. Today the unequal and asymmetric roles of women are much in the news and an entire politically correct protocol has emerged about how we should think about women viz men, and how we should speak about such things. The ongoing world chess championship match between reigning champion Magnus Carlsen and challenger Fabiano Caruana (here) is renewing interest in the questions of ‘where are the women, and why aren’t they represented in such matches?’ Well, there are all kinds of answers. An interesting one is presented by Alisha Mathewson-Grand who argues (here) that women’s chess needs more coverage than current interest warrants, and that they are not as good as men because an insufficient number of them play the game to create enough right-tail outliers in the game’s skill distribution (admittedly tech talk). My view is that instead of creating some artificial demand for women chess players, women should just play the men in normal tournaments and beat them to generate broader female interest in the game. Overall, I think this gender stuff in chess is a non-issue, a nothing-burger if you will. (I wonder how a transgender woman champion will be viewed by the politically correct population.)
Man vs Machine. My real interest in human championship chess actually resides in a new class of interests for me. How should we humans think of continuing to compete in activities in which our abilities are clearly outclassed by machines. Ever since Kasparov was beaten by IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, the best chess players on this planet are no longer humans. Continuing matches like the current Carlsen/Carauna contest are strictly Junior Varsity. No human chess master today would take the time and make the effort to be publicly humiliated by a better chess-playing machine. The same dethronement happened recently in the even more complex game of Go. It all reminds us again of the lore of John Henry, the steel-drivin’ man (here and here), that introduced America to the notion early in the industrial age that bit by piece man would be bettered by machines as time went on. Is our (waning?) interest in human world chess championships a harbinger of how pre-Singularity humans will continue to compliment themselves in various endeavors in which they have been bettered? And will they persist in these self-adulatory activities as the daily advance of technology outdoes them in skill after skill that require advanced cognition, sensing, dexterity, speed, and strength? Can we also start augmenting our own bodies in these pre-Singularity years (jumping the gun in becoming trans-humans) with advanced embedded processing, memory, connectivity, prosthetics for sensing, mobility, and manipulanda, …?
Border security and judicial bias political? That's what the media claims that President Trump brought up politics in his Thanksgiving calls to our troops. First, I don't think so. Border security is a non-partisan issue that the anti-American Left has made political in its opposition. Judicial bias in the US is blatant and unabashed, and it has been so deemed by all sides in their turn. Chief Justice Roberts spoke out of the wrong end when he created the latest batch of fake news by bloviating that America's judges, once empaneled, are hardworking, unbiased jurists. Nothing could be further from the truth, else neither side would so readily sacrifice honesty and honor in opposing the other side's picks. The president was on the mark and correct in pointing these out during his calls; and BTW, he's their CIC and gets to do that all day long if he wants to. The last thing he should be guided by is the hate-Trump sentiments of his political enemies.
[26nov18 update] Why Nevada County indeed? Russ Steele, NC native and RR contributor, writes a letter to The Union in today’s edition that nails the particulars behind that question. Here it is in its entirety –
Erika Kosina wrote in Digital disruption: Tech, entrepreneurial ecosystem paves way for growth, "All we need to do is connect the dots."
Yes, let's connect the dots, all the dots.
Dot #1: Lack of affordable housing for young families fleeing urban blight. According to Joel Kotkin, millennials with family are looking for single family homes with a safe yard for their children.
Dot #2: Young families with children are looking for communities with quality schools. Nevada County has the Ghidotti Early College High School with a small number of students, but the recent Common Core testing indicates many Nevada County Schools would not make the competitive cut.
Dot #3: The work-at-home population needs to have high-speed internet access, and broadband in Nevada County has some severe limitations.
Dot #4: The target populations are prolific smartphone users and expect robust cell phone coverage, which can be a challenge in Nevada County.
Given the lack of affordable single-family homes with a yard, a high-speed broadband connection, with robust cell phone service, all near top-rated schools, why would a young family choose to move to Nevada County, when there are more competitive options in other states?
Scattershots – 2sep23
George Rebane
‘How the AI Revolution Will Reshape the World’ is an essay in the 1sep23 issue of Time that presents an excellent summary of how the advent of generative AI is launching “the greatest redistribution of power in history.” Not only is this new wave of technology based on large language models sufficient to found the greatest revolution in human civilization all by its lonesome, its redistribution of power will be abetted by accompanying technological breakthroughs in synthetic biology, quantum computing, and “abundant new sources of energy.” Having understood all this, it is remarkable that today “this is the most underappreciated aspect of the technological revolution now underway.” What’s more, previous technological leaps were reserved to the capital rich elite or national governments. That’s no longer the case. “We are facing a step change in what’s possible for individual people to do, and at a previously unthinkable pace. AI is becoming more powerful and radically cheaper by the month—what was computationally impossible, or would cost tens of millions of dollars a few years ago, is now widespread.” For the sanguine among us, snooze on at your own peril. (H/T to reader)
Blinders on black governance. It’s with some trepidation that I offer this observation motivated by the recent slum apartment building fire in Johannesburg that killed over seventy poor immigrants to the Union of South Africa. (more here) Over the last generation (i.e. post-apartheid) that nation’s largest city has turned from a crown jewel of Africa into the country’s, perhaps the continent’s, largest favela. And here is the observation to which no one dare give voice – are there any black-governed countries in Africa, or anywhere for that matter, that compare favorably with first-world nations like those in Europe, North America, and Asia? To carry this observation even deeper, the same may be asked of black-run cities in the United States. Instead, these questions remain unasked and unexamined. From an academic or demographic perspective such enquiries remain on terra incognita, and their causal factors define one of our culture’s growing number of forbidden territories. Anyone daring to even explore whether there is any truth to the basis which such questions imply is immediately tagged as a racist or worse. As evidence, I offer the comment stream below.
Posted at 01:09 PM in Culture Comments, Our Country, Our World, Singularity Signposts | Permalink | Comments (13)
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