On Saturday, I was ranting a little about the little publicized conflict brewing between Georgia and Russia (through Abkhazian separatist proxies). I also mentioned that there was footage available of a Russian Mig29 shooting down a Georgian recon UAV. There are further Abkhazi claims concerning the downing of six other UAVs, but these are denied by the Georgian government.

The video below includes this footage, as well as discussion and a presentation of the evidence of Russian involvement by a Georgian officer.

I think this conflict will prove quite interesting - it's the first time I can recall in a while that a major power other than the US has bullied another sovereign nation in such an obvious way. It seems that Georgia is actively seeking international attention for this conflict, presumably because they can't hope to win militarily against Russia, and therefore are hoping for a diplomatic victory. By testing the willingness of the UN, US and EU to confront Russia over this, this conflict has the potential to shed light on the current balance of international power.

I'm getting my news on this conflict through the trawlings of Chirol at Coming Anarchy. Has anyone seen much other news of this? A quick review of Google News reveals little..

The response to this idea was flabbergasting. At most, I was expecting maybe a couple of people - I guess I underestimated your geekiness. Regardless, it's great.

From comments and discussion, then, here's the consensus:

• Unsurprisingly, you can't agree on a night. Thursday is most popular, but some of you can still only make Tuesday. Some people even suggested Sunday.
• You envision a variety of styles, from sitting around chatting, to something comparatively formal with a set topic, moderator and speaking times.
• There's no clear winner for venue - some concern was expressed about noise, and I've had suggestions of people's lounges, bars, and rooms on campus. No consensus, though.

Some more of my thoughts: I like the idea of a pre-set topic; I also like the idea that people should bring along a relevant topic / news item of their own. I like the idea of an informal moderator - someone whose job it is to break deadlock and keep things vaguely on topic, but I don't want a formal debate. I'd still like to find a venue that's not someone's lounge, but I'm not specifically attached to cafes - anywhere that's warm, has sufficient space, and not loud would be good. Food availability & net connectivity are good options, but not necessary. Any other suggestions?

Anyway, since these things have to start somewhere, let's have our inaugural get together this coming week:

• When: Thursday 15th, 6:30pm till late.
• Where: To be decided; scouts will determine a suitable location early in the week.</p>
• Suggested main topic: Organ trading - should it be legal for individuals to accept money for their kidneys? It's legal in a few places (Iran!), and a strict libertarian view says it should be, but there's strong objections throughout most of the world. If you have any suggested reading on this, post in comments..
• Try to bring one topic or news items that you think is interesting and worth discussing.
• Finally, I'd like to talk a bit more about format, frequency and other practical things.

Please note!! The day is different from that which I've been telling people - it seems Tuesday is not actually the most popular day..

I hope to do this relatively frequently - fortnightly or weekly, and on varying days so everyone gets a chance to come along. Unlike some groups, there's no expectation of regular attendance, merely an opportunity for those who are interested. I'll talk about this more on the night, though.

So, I keep thinking it would be neat to have a regular brains and coffee night.

The idea is that a bunch of relatively learned, not too egotistic, but still opinionated people get together and discuss some topic to a depth a little beyond that reached in normal social discourse. I've read, mostly in blogs, about this sort of thing in all sorts of forms, but outside of technical interest groups and other more specialized forms, I haven't come across anything much like this in Christchurch.

Here's my motivation: I frequently encounter ideas, articles or books that I'd love to talk over and think about in a bit more detail, but very rarely do I get that opportunity, except, perhaps, when they're coincidentally relevant to something else I end up talking about. It's not to say that I don't get this sort of opportunity sometimes, so much as that I have little control over when it happens, and I'd like more of it in my life. I can read and think alone to my heart's content, but one's thoughts are not truly tempered until they are tested in argument.

I have ulterior motives, of course - one thing I'd love to experiment with is brainstorming ideas about the future; for example, ethics, current affairs, social evolution, and, yes, even technology.

Who'd be interested in this sort of thing? There's not a lot in the way of pre-requisites other than a desire for coffee and good conversation. Topics are hardly difficult to come by - at minimum I end each week with a long list of things I want to have a yarn about.

Assuming I get at least a couple of interested folk, I'll arrange something for next week, probably on Tuesday or Thursday night. If you're keen, let me know which is preferable. Finally, if you've got any suggestions of a good cafe in Riccarton, let me know that, too - the key criteria is that they not have loud background music.

R2-D2 at Maker Faire 2008 - courtesy of the R2-D2 Builder's Club. Photos and more on the website.

Know what's going to be totally sweet? When Robots meet Open Source..

For those who like pretty astronomical pictures..

ESO has a press release out with several photos of interesting solar phenomena, including the rare green flash and even rarer blue flash, both caused by the earth's atmosphere acting as a prism when the sun's light hits it with a very low grazing angle at sunrise or sunset. More in wikipedia

They've also got photos of the zodiacal light and Gegenschein, both caused by solar light reflecting of interplanetary dust..

For those not so fascinated by astronomy, here's a bunny.

I'm surfing a rather strange mood right now. I got home from gaming 20 minutes ago, feeling strangely bemused and disappointed with the world, largely for broad social and political reasons than for anything one particular thing.

I've been grappling a little of late with the troublesome conflict between ideas of social fairness and communal action versus libertarian ideas of avoiding coercion and maximizing freedom. Both sides offer attractions, but both have drawbacks - freedom and self-determination are desirable, but do they trump the Rawlsian desire for fairness and equality? Always? Never? Sometimes? Where do you draw the line?

Obviously, compromise between the extremes of these positions is necessary, and I know thinkers out there have formulated amalgamations that seem to offer a way forward. My concern is that society at large doesn't seem able to follow sophisticated hybrid policies, and tends to leap to extremes - we're either ignoring a problem, or flooding it with ill-considered, wasteful solutions. While the barely competent rule of the fickle crowd is perhaps measured and appropriate for some issues, it seems foolishly slow and indecisive for others.

However, this isn't all that's bugging me. Rather, it's a contributing and compounding factor in a mangled mass of disappointing trends I discern - the tragedy of the commons wrought large on global resources. What happens next?

It seems my attitude towards the future ranges from measured optimism to resigned pessimism. I guess this to be expected - we live in truly interesting times, and I really can't tell if that's good or bad.

Maybe I just shouldn't listen to essays about existential risk when I'm tired..

via George

You may have heard me rant about these in the same breath as cochlear implants, but, well, seeing is believing. Video contains a news article about bionic eyes being implanted into fully blind patients in the UK; current versions provide an image of about 30 or 60 pixels directly through electrical stimulation of the optic nerve.

via Coming Anarchy

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

The headline says it all, really..

Think your Guitar Hero performance is pretty awesome? Check this out:

And, another video, this time with the quad guitar, a device which takes guitar wank to new levels of awesome.

via George,

An amusing take on what entertainment might be like 50 years from now.

How plausible is full sensory experience and interface like this by the date offered in the video (2062)?

Right now, it might look like far future fiction, but I'm fairly sure that's not the case. Enabling technologies necessary for virtual reality of this level either exist already, are in development, or are at least theoretically possible.

The nanomachines necessary seem almost inevitable, particularly as the necessary components for these (antenna, propulsion, power) are in development, with experimental devices either complete or nearing completion. Similarly, the computing power necessary also seems easily achievable.

So, to me, the main remaining obstacle is complexity. That is, while we can create the necessary devices, and produce the necessary content, can we string these all together into the necessary engineered systems? We're pretty awful at this sort of thing when it comes to building large scale software solutions, largely because of the need for rapid change and adaptation. It seems that brain interfaces of this fidelity must adapt quite precisely to the neural topology of the individual, and it would seem that these must vary widely at the level of neurons, meaning that any engineered system interfacing with the brain must be heavily customizable to accomodate this.

This, by the way, is my general concern with some of the technology ideals before us - I trust our ability to invent and create devices, but I don't trust our ability to coordinate them.

Some of you might be interested in this video of one of the last thylacines, or tasmanian tigers. Check out the jaws when it yawns at the beginning.

Plundered from the inimitable Mr Gaiman

Finally, it is time to rest.

Last Wednesday, I randomly wandered in to visit sethop's office, where he'd just discovered a design competition for applications using Google's new programmming environment for smart phones, Android. He had an idea of sorts which turned out to be similar to something else I'd been working on, and was keen to enter if he could find people to help write it. It sounded like fun, and I figured it would be nice to learn a bit about the toolkit. Details of our effort are in his blog.

Long story short - after about 70 hours of coding across four days, we submitted our entry this evening. If, through some miracle, we're in the top 50, we get US$25,000. If not, well, I now know a great deal more about Google Android than I did before I started.

That wasn't the end of the madness, though - after finishing work on it at about 5pm today, I raced off to the new and improved Christchurch Game Developer's get together that I had organized with the help of Jeff Nusz from Zodal. Turnout was awesome (20+ people for an event I expected 5-10 at), and the response was great. I led a design discussion talking about Aquaria(review) and ran a panel of sorts talking about the games industry in Christchurch, the ways in which events like that could inspire people and grow a community, and then a bit about how we could eventually start to market the group and lobby government for industry development support. There were several volunteers to host the next one, so hopefully the ball will keep on rolling.

Now, though, I'm going to sit down, watch a few episodes of Yes, Minister, and decompress. Tomorrow's another busy day, so rest sounds pretty good right now.

misplaced_ice and I are planning on going to see a production of Chicago, the musical, during its run in Christchurch over the next few weeks.

We're planning on going along on Friday 25th April (7:30pm), and will be sitting Gallery A, as the tickets there are $39.50 (rather than $60), and the view is still pretty good. If others are interested in coming along, please contact me by midnight Friday, and I'll buy tickets*. It's on every night from the 18th through the 26th..

• Website - if you're curious
• Ticketek - if you want to buy your own ticket

* Tickets will cost about $42-44 each, depending on how many I order, as there's a delivery surcharge. If you ask for a ticket, you're agreeing to pay regardless of whether you show up. It's also your responsibility to get the ticket from me in advance. If I'm left with tickets in hand on the day, I'll be waiting at the theatre doors 15 minutes before the show starts until 5 minutes before with them. If you're late, I'll try to leave them at the desk, but there's no guarantee they'll let me. Don't be late!! It's probably a good idea to make sure you get them from me beforehand..

I've been sitting in on Robert Kraut's online communities course. He's a visiting lecturer from CMU with a background in social psychology, and consequently the course is heavy on theory and empirical studies. In it, he discusses how theories of social psychology can help us understand and build online communities.

So far, we've covered community structures, motivations for contribution and ways of encouraging it, the ways in which newcomers assimilate into the community, and the ways in which relationships can form within a community. We've also talked a little about groups within communities, for example as sources of motivation and social loafing, shared identity and discrimination.

Recently, while talking about the last of these, discrimination, someone mentioned 'Blue Eyes / Brown Eyes', a lesson taught by a teacher, Jane Elliot, to classes of 3rd graders in Iowa during the years following Martin Luther King's assassination. In it, she teaches them about discrimination by dividing them into brown and blue eyed groups, then praising one group and criticizing the other.

Try this experiment. Read the following passage, once only. Then, click through and read the rest of this post.

With hocked gems financing him, our hero bravely defied all scornful laughter that tried to prevent his scheme. "Your eyes deceive," he had said. "An egg, not a table, correctly typifies this unexplored planet." Now three sturdy sisters sought proof. Forging along, sometimes through calm vastness, yet more often very turbulent peaks and valleys, days became weeks as many doubters spread fearful rumours about the edge. At last from nowhere welcome winged creatures appeared, signifying momentous success.