After a bunch more work, I got ash 0.3.6 to build statically against
uClibc. The great news was that it came out just over 100K and -- even
better -- eliminated the zombie problem entirely. So the zombie
processes must have been due to some kind of bug in that older version
of ash.
I'm encouraged by this, and I put up a test version of the new BBC based
on this new boot image.
The test version basically worked properly on my system and on Zack's
system; as often, I found a bunch of things that we need to try to fix
up before the release. BBC development is proceeding apace.
I've been trying to explain to some people who are not free software
geeks why it is that I'm still working on this project if I'm not
working for Linuxcare anymore. It doesn't necessarily make sense to
them offhand. But if somebody said to me that the maintainer of libfoo
stopped working at Yoyodyne Industries, and was still working on libfoo,
well, that would make perfect sense to me. What, do people only work
on technical projects because they get paid for it?
I was about to take some sterile tears in my eyes the other
days. Then I thought that dry eyes are just a symptom of dehydration
and fatigue, and instead of using an enabler such as sterile tears
(eye drops), I should fix the "underlying problem" and get some water
and sleep. But then I thought that simply taking a nap and drinking
some water would just "cover up" a lifestyle problem, and that maybe I
need to change my work or study habits more fundamentally. It's
layered. One person's "fundamental solution" is another's "Band-Aid."
(Sumana, July 2)
What a fascinating exercise it is to try to think of layers on top of
layers!
My arms continue to hurt a whole lot.
People have been setting off fireworks all around the neighborhood.
China's capitalists permitted to join Communist Party (seen in San
Francisco Chronicle, original from the Washington Post)
Ignoring the various biases one could find in that story, it's amazing!
That party really wants to be called Communist, to be called Marxist, no
matter what, come hell or high water.
I'm tempted to send written questions to some people I know who are quite
different from one another, requesting written answers, and then to publish
them on my web site side by side.
This is different from on-line debates because the people wouldn't be
arguing against each other and wouldn't even have an opportunity to argue
against each other at all. They'd just be expressing their views, and
these views would appear side by side.
The kinds of questions I'm thinking of are things like
- Process or product? :-)
- Nature or nurture?
- What is love?
- Why do people commit crimes?
- Why do people have such a diversity of religious beliefs?
- What kinds of considerations figure in good moral decisions? (Is there
such a thing as a good moral decision? Is it typified by being informed
by a particular kind of consideration?)
- How would you solve the mind-body problem? (Does the mind-body problem
exist? Has anyone solved it?) Does consciousness exist?
Do you feel confident that other humans have it? How about other animals?
- What kinds of obligations do people have to one another? How about to
non-human animals?
- What are the biggest problems in the world today?
- What do you spend the most time worrying about?
- Do you trust the police? When would you involve the police in a
situation? When would you help the police investigate a situation, if
they wanted your help? Do you feel differently about different police
forces (LAPD, FBI, BATF, BART Police, UCPD, DEA, Secret Service, SFPD,
CHP)?
- Did you enjoy junior high? How about high school? What made your
school experiences particularly good or bad? Do you typically blame/credit
other students, teachers, school adminstration/facilities/institutions,
the history/demographics/context of your schools, or yourself?
- Is there such a thing as a meaning of life?
- What periods or movements in Western history do you think are
particularly enticing, interesting, inspirational, important, or worthy of
study?
- What periods or movements in Western history do you think are
particularly mistaken, harmful, or emblematic of error?
- Do you care about where you live?
- What is the connection between knowledge and virtue? Is it logically
possible for a person to do something he or she really knows is wrong? Do
you distinguish different kinds of "knowing"?
- To the extent that virtue is some kind of knowledge, is it a knowledge
that be imparted, and can it be imparted to everyone?
- Are some cultures or cultural trends, syndromes, or tendencies better
than others?
- Under what circumstances does it make sense to you to evangelize
for things? For what kinds of things? What kinds of evangelism by other
make sense to you, and what kinds don't? Do you ever feel evangelical
or practice evangelism? About what?
- Does it make sense to you to say that a society is failing or behaving
badly (aside from cases when the society falls apart completely)? What
kinds of things do you think can properly be called "social problems"?
Is a society (sometimes) bad because it has particular social problems, or
only because of the presence or absence of some kind of social behavior?
(What kind of social problems can make a society bad, or, in general,
what kind of social problems "reflect on" a society or on its character?)
- Do you think Nnnnnn is a hero, a villain, both, or neither?
(Obvious sources of controversy in American history -- Columbus,
Washington, Jefferson, John Brown, Haymarket folks, Lincoln, Malcolm X.
Hmmm, how about Martin Luther? Not King, the original Martin Luther.)
- Is there personal survival after death? Does anybody know this (aside
from, perhaps, people who have already died)?
- What is democracy? Is it good (sometimes, always, never; absolutely,
in comparison to alternatives)? Do you think the term is commonly
abused, and, if so, who is it who abuses the term?
- What kinds of questions are meaningful? What kinds of questions have
a right answer? What kinds of questions have a right answer that some
people can know? What kinds of questions have a right answer that some
people can know and can teach some other (willing) people to know?
- Which of the following exist? A pen (go find a pen so that it's a
particular pen); the idea of a pen; the number 7; the fact that 2+2=4;
truth; beauty; justice; happiness; love; countries; national borders; the
law; unicorns; the color green. How about truth versus the idea of
truth, beauty versus the idea of beauty, justice versus the idea of
justice, love versus the idea of love, the number 7 versus the idea of
the number 7? Do all ideas exist? Do all things about which there are
ideas exist? Is there such a thing as a false idea (as opposed to a
false belief or false statement)?
- Do you agree with a particular school of thought in the history of
mathematical philosophy? (I might have to mention some of them for
the benefit of people who haven't heard these arguments...)
- What social classes exist in America? (Are there any?) Who belongs
to each? Do members recognize themselves or others (as members of social
classes or as something else)? How can people move between them?
- Are families (nuclear or extended) fundamentally good (or
necessary), overrated, or just one of many arrangements that could
work well? (Are there any other arrangements that are as good as
families? Many?)
- How about marriage? (Same questions as above.) Same-sex? Plural?
Should civil marriage exist at all? (I.e. should a government recognize
some things as marriages, and not others? Should marriage be, as it
currently is, different from a private contract? If not, should contracts
with the same legal effects as marriage be legally allowable, as
they currently are not?) If so, what arrangements should be recognized
as marriages? What should legitimate reasons for the dissolution of a
civil marriage be?
- Would you be (or would you have been) more or less likely to get
married if the rules for civil marriage were different? (E.g. if no-fault
divorce didn't exist, if you were allowed to marry people of the same
sex, if alimony/custody rules were different from what they are, if it
were more socially acceptible and legally convenient to "marry" for a
term other than life, if marriage were in some way more connected
with or less connected with child-rearing...) Is there a possible
"marriage reform" that you personally would really like (i.e., that would
make marriage much more appealing to you)? Is there one you would
really dislike (that would make marriage much less appealing to you)?
- Is there such a thing as a social contract and are you bound by one
(is a social contract the ultimate reason that you shouldn't do certain
things which otherwise would be legitimate for you to do)?
- Is there such a thing as something everyone should know? Is this
for practical reasons (people will be harmed if they don't know X),
for moral/aesthetic reasons, for other reasons?
- Is there a responsibility to know about particular things? Is there
a responsibility to go to school? Why does it stop at a particular age,
and what age should it stop at? Are societies without truant laws
failing in some way? How about societies without free compulsory
public education? Before free compulsory public education was invented,
were societies deficient because they didn't have it?
- Should schools (at what level?) have a particular curriculum? How
should it be determined what is part of that curriculum?
- Should people
major in something? How come people in Russia and Germany start an
academic majoring (so to speak) around junior high but traditional
liberal arts students didn't major (so to speak) in anything at all?
Why do people in America choose majors in college, but not before (and
not later, like grad school)? Are there practices in American junior high
or high school education which are related to majoring?
- What is literacy? Who is illiterate? How do you feel about phrases
like "scientific literacy", "mathematical literacy", and the recent
"computer literacy"? Do these terms bother you? Do you think that what
they refer to can be said to be as important as reading? How about
"numeracy"?
- Do you like to speak about certain things being "invented" or
"discovered"? Does it matter what kind of things?
- What is the status of children? What responsibilities do biological
parents have to children? (Absent an agreement to the contrary, are the
responsibilities the same for each gender of parent?) What rights do
children have against their parents? What kinds of things is it not
wrong for parents to try to force their children to do? What kinds of
things is it not wrong for children to try to do, knowing that it's
contrary to their parents' will? Is it wrong for children to run away
from their parents, knowing this is against the parents' will (always,
never, or under certain circumstances)? Is it wrong for other children
or other adults to facilitate this?
- Can you do wrong in how you treat yourself? Is it possible that
volenti fit iniuria? Are you doing wrong to yourself or others
if you don't live up to some kind of potential, or if you "drop out"
of a society you were previously heavily involved in?
- Can people own land (aside from on account of Cal. Civ. Code,
Division 2, Part 1, Title 2, Chapter 1)? Suppose
some people go to live on Mars; can they own parts of Mars (and which
parts, and how)?
- Are people making progress in general? (Toward what?) Is there a trend
according to which things are getting better or worse in general? What is
the most significant way in which things have been getting worse recently?
- Is it good or bad to take psychoactive drugs? Under what circumstances?
- What do you think about recent theories about learning styles? Learning
disabilities? Multiple intelligences? Are the attacks on traditional
education as unresponsive to human learning diversity justified, or are these
attacks just masking other problems?
- Do you think there is such a thing as general intelligence? Is this
a myth (perhaps a myth that was made up to serve particular interests)?
Was a particular kind of intelligence enshrined as "general"
when it wasn't really general? Do you think that most people have a lot
of intellectual potential that they aren't using?
- Do you sympathize with a particular philosophical moral theory? Has
that theory ever helped you make an important decision?
- What does it mean to be at war? Are there different kinds of wars?
Who can be at war? What things are acts of war? What do you think are
the most common causes of wars of the sort commonly reported by the press?
Do you think there are other things that should be called wars that are
not reported that way?
- Do you think it's important to do something for a living that's
meaningful to you? Do you expect that it will be possible? Did most
of your friends have that expectation when you were growing up?
(Also, what counts as meaningful? Is it necessary or sufficient for work to
be interesting? Necessary or sufficient for it to be useful and necessary?
Necessary or sufficient for it to "change the world" or "have an impact"
in some way? Necessary or sufficient for it to be original and accomplish
something new? Something else?)
- Aside from its application to any particular case, does the
ius gentium make sense to you? How about the terms of various
famous treaties that get studied in history classes? Do they make
sense to you in terms of stating principles you think are good, or just
in the sense of constituting a practical solution to a particular
historical conflict or conflicts? (Is there a distinction between these
two in international relations?) For that matter, is there such a thing
as international law that comes from a source other than the hegemony of
particular strong nations? Or does what's called international law just
reflect the interests of powerful nations at a particular moment?
(I won't ask you about the jurisdiction of war crimes tribunals formed
immediately after World War II -- although this is a famous source
of controversy -- but perhaps about war crimes tribunals that are being
convened today.)
- What are universities for?
- What do you think of when you hear the word "natural"? Do you
tend to call things natural to mean that they're good? Or that
they're bad? Or that they're beyond good or bad? Are there any
exceptions? (Is there some context in which "natural" has very
different connotations for you?)
- Are you bothered if someone appropriates a social institution for what
seems to you like a purpose or use different from its original purpose?
(One example for some people is gay marriage, but it is difficult for
most people I know to see this as a relevant example. But the point is
that some people think that gay marriage is a betrayal of the meaning of
marriage -- either in the sense of a travesty or in the somewhat different
sense of a logical contradiction in terms. Although it's likely that you
don't feel this way about same-sex marriage -- if you do, you're supposed
to have said so in response to an earlier question -- are there things
about which you feel in similar ways? That is, are there things that
people want to do with or in institutions you care about, or in or through
traditions you care about, that strike you as a travesty or as a contradiction
in terms? Do you ever feel that an institution is being
misappropriated? How about an ideal? Which ideals do you think
are most often misappropriated?)
- Is an institution or a practice potentially devalued by the
actions of people who are outside of it or who approach it differently?
One example: is sexual intimacy inside loving romantic relationships
devalued by the existence of prostitution?
- Do the universalist tendencies of many of these questions bother you?
Would you prefer to answer them for yourself only and not claim that your
answers are applicable to other people? How applicable do you think your
answers are to other people? What connection does their applicability to
other people have with whether you think they are good answers? (Are
some of these questions questions which have a different answer for
each person or for each culture, while other questions do appear to
have a single general answer?) If you want to qualify your answer to
a question, does that mean that you think it shouldn't be extended to
other people/situations, or just that you personally don't feel comfortable
extending it? For whom do you feel you are speaking when you answer
different kinds of questions, and for whom would you like to speak, or
whom would you like your answers to influence? To whom do you think your
answers should be of interest, even if you don't expect everybody to
agree?
Some of these sound like college application essays, but my point is not
to make people show off their expository writing or creative writing
skills. My point is just to hear about what people think, and to compare
what people think.
See also David
Brin's questionnaire, from which I wouldn't mind taking a few
questions for a project like this. (Gosh, some of Brin's questions are
subtly or not-so-subtly polemical...)
Apparently it was a popular tradition some years ago to send questionnaires
to one's friends or to pass them around at parties. I've actually seen a
couple of on-line versions that are chain letters, and those are very
interesting, but the things they ask are almost always "What is your
favorite color?" or "How many siblings do you have?" or "What is your
favorite animal?" or (shading over into the purity tests, which are an
interesting kind of questionnaire) "How many people have you ever slept
with?". And what I'm thinking about is not really asking about people's
characteristics but about their beliefs and thoughts about social,
political, moral, and philosophical questions.
There are a couple of books of questions in this vein meant to provoke
discussion. But I still feel that I'm not even trying to provoke
discussion, just to examine the extent of contrasts among people I know
(and see what they have to say). If people are interested later on,
they could have discussions.
I lost the domain oath.org because I forgot to renew it. Now I have to
apologize profusely to Olympic Athletes Together Honourably, because I
was going to give them the domain, and I forgot or they forgot to get
the domain transfer form together, and now the thing's lapsed and I
doubt that the group will get the domain easily from its new owner.
Does OATH even exist any more? I did a web search just now to try to
find them and found a lot of old articles about them from last year or
longer ago. But I don't see any contact information.
