currency, economics, and trolls

I recently read on the Pirate Party of Canada forums that the EFF has begun accepting donations in the form of Bitcoins, a form of digital currency that's seen some steady growth of late.  I read a little about Bitcoin when it popped up in my newsreader in the summer but having little understanding of either cryptography or economics my interest wandered quickly.  When I read through the replies however it seemed some people had strong concerns about such a currency being widely adopted, and one vocal protester seemed well informed on the subject so I began "discussing" it with him.  My mistake.

(the troll, do not feed it!)

After a bit of back and forth it became clear that my troll was either unwilling or unable to provide a sound argument for any of his positions that didn't eventually fall back on ubiquitous corporate evil doing and one world governments.  Still interested, I took my curiosity to another forum I frequent hoping to find some well reasoned opinions on the matter.  During the discourse that took place there I was directed to an interesting paper describing the failure of gold backed currencies, educated about the Nixon Shock, and the foolishness of engaging trolls.  (A friend who works in parliament messaged me on Facebook later to advise I run and don't look back "They're all kooks. Flee!").

Normally the story above wouldn't wind up here, but I've included it because since then with a bit of economy on the brain I've been paying more attention to such topics while surfing.  There seems to be a lot of interest in alternative open economic models lately that strike me as interesting if a bit over my head.  For the curious, here's a brief overview of some of the concepts, a short video about money, wealth, and creation of value including links to several projects in the problem space, and a free book + wiki "The Wealth of Networks" about the influence of social production on markets.

Also worth checking out; DYNDY.  I still haven't worked out exactly what it is, but they seem to be sniffing out and examining all manner of alternative and complementary currency systems.  Check out this post for an overview of a presentation about themselves at a recent conference in Amsterdam.

I really have no idea what all this buzzing might mean if anything, but I do find it intriguing. If you have any suggestions about reading material pertaining to backed vs fiat economics or alternative models please drop a comment. I am vastly under informed on the topic and would like to change that.

space isn't just big, it's weird too

Today I found myself reading about Zarmina and how people might one day fling themselves toward it at a large fraction of c by sticking a firecracker worth about 1.8 x 10^25 Joules of energy on the end of the ISS and lighting it up.  Cool beans.

This lead me to an interesting clickfest at Wikipedia where I hopped from current and upcoming exoplanet surveys, to finding distances and pinpointing objects with various coordinate systems where I had a flash back to the movie Contact (yes I read the book, of course it was better). I then wound my way round to the bigger items of interest like the age of the universe and the size of the observable universe where I found something crazy. It was so crazy my mind stumbed, fell, got up and dusted itself off then immediately fell again and stayed there in the dirt for a moment trying to decide what to do next.

Now to preface this I should say that I read some time ago that it is thought by some that when travelling the universe, as when travelling the surface of the Earth, you could pick a direction and travel in it and eventually if you kept at it long enough you'd find yourself back where you started.  Conceptually it makes sense to us on a planetary scale but I suppose you need a certain amount of years seated before a blackboard discussing planes and vectors and toroids and so on before it starts making sense with the whole universe.  I took it at face value that it was one theory that smart folks had given some thought to and went about my business. 

Then today I read this:

"It is also possible that the (physical) Universe is smaller than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated the Universe. It is difficult to test this hypothesis experimentally because different images of a galaxy would show different eras in its history, and consequently might appear quite different."

Roll that thought around your noodle for a while.  Weird right?

Anyway the article goes on to say that this idea was disputed this summer by some very clever sounding folks in their article "Observable circles-in-the-sky in flat universes".  If it makes any sense to you by all means please direct me to a pre-chewed version, I haven't the chops for such stuff.

sound reasoning

Some friends and I were chatting while bringing a few things from their car up to their apartment last night, and having a heated debate when suddenly, shit got real.

him: Oh yeah?

me: Yeah!

him: Wanna bet?  How much?

me: Umm ... no?

her: Ohhhh, suddenly he doesn't sound so sure!

him: See as soon as there's money he thinks I'm right.  Surprise surprise!

me: Whoa hey wait a minute, I never said I think you're right.

him: So, let's put some cash on it big guy.

me: No see because I suspect I may be wrong, that's not even close to thinking you're right.  Different things entirely.

him: You're an idiot.

her: *nods*

I stand by my flawless logic.

rob salmond? omg i know that guy!

In an effort to become a proper narcissistic jerk, I recently purchased salmond.ca.  This should help with the very common problem of people mistaking me for a BC lawyer with three kids or a University of Michigan assistant professor of political science.

All the feeds and bookmarks should now be redirecting to rob.salmond.ca, but for those of you who've been finding your way here by googling "phrostuff" (ahem, mom) you'll want to stop doing that.

If you happen to have found your way here by googling your own surname and are interested in contributing your piece of the Canadian arm of the Salmond family, by all means get in touch and I'll be happy to help.

between learning, school, and education

Today I stumbled on to a term I'd never heard before: unschooling. While investigating this interesting concept it occurred to me that I've encountered the topic of education quite frequently in the last few weeks. I have probably shared many of the links in this post on facebook, my shared rss items, and twitter, but I'm going to try to collect them and my thoughts here anyway.

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I very much enjoyed Seth Godin's discussion of the conspiracy behind the creation of a public school system. (4 mins)  I'd never heard any such theory before. I don't know to what extent his books address this sort of issue, if you've read his work please let me know.

Ken Robinson I discovered through his fantastic TED talks (each ~19 mins) on reforming the education system. After watching his latest one a month or so ago I went digging and found this extended version (1h 23m) of it. I have since gone ahead and added a couple of his books to my ever increasing list of Things To Read.

The articles "Consider Dropping Out Of School" a first person account of both doing so and suggesting it to others and "The End Of Men" a fantastic look at the trend of women increasingly edging out men in academia and the workforce both prompted me to get involved in a couple very informative discussions about the value of formal education.

Now, back to the original topic unschooling. There are a couple of good overview articles for those who, like me want an introduction to the idea, but for those interested in the hands on getting the job done info it seems the unofficial go to girl is Sandra Dodd. If you have kids and wish to explore the option give her your ears; you can tell that she speaks with the frankness of a mother who clearly understands the difference between theory and Getting (sh)It Done. Finally if you watch only one video I've posted here, make it Astra Taylor's excellent talk on her experiences in unschooling (~45 mins + Q&A).

I want to say that while I find the concept interesting, in no way do I believe that teachers are somehow doing it wrong. I count several teachers among my friends, including some of my own teachers who I've maintained a friendship with since quitting school. I will say that it seems when I ask these friends about work that the bulk of the conversation has to do with the mechanics of teaching either large groups of kids, or specific problem children. It feels to me that while the work of a teacher is genuinely where the rubber meets the road, in terms of education as a larger system they are not the ones at the wheel.

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I'll finish with this off with one of the most hurtful memories I have of high school.  In my first year I had a cool young math teacher whose opinion I valued highly.  One day he started a discussion with the class regarding a TV special he'd seen about a young girl who could perform astounding feats of arithmetic in her head. "The way she learns", he said "is incredible, it's like she just has to know!"

I immediately blurted out, "I know how she feels, I feel that way too sometimes!" thinking of books I'd read, things I'd researched, experiments I'd done.  I was excited to learn that the feeling was shared by others.

He gave me this genuinely mournful and dismissive condescending look and slowly shook his head. You know the look. The one that smacks of their wisdom and your naiveté. "No Rob, it's not the same". He changed the subject. My joy of learning simply wasn't as good, or as worthy as this savant's was, end of story.

Of course, I did not quit school several years later because I'd been stung by a teachers careless words, I quit because, among other things, I almost never experienced that feeling while I was there.  I'm glad to say that to this day I still find my own brand of joy from reading, learning, and trying to work things out on my own.  Remembering it now though, I wonder how many other students he may have inadvertently snuffed the desire to learn out of, and how many other similarly careless teachers are out there in classrooms today.