SWAPA Extracts

SWAPA is a monthly APA for SWIL. I’ve been in it since, oh, way back when. I’m not sure my memory goes back that far.

I’m gradually collecting tidbits from my old SWAPA zines into this page. Some of them have been rewritten to fit in, or have had new text added. The most popular are in bold.

• remarks - bite-size remarks
• quotes - other people’s mistakes, as opposed to mine

the longer bits

Except for these, most of my tidbits are no more than a few paragraphs.

• the far future - the human design flaws that we will address
• machine writing - who wrote this verse, machine or human?

• Persian Gulf War - 1991
• Kosovo War - 1999

• a call to arms - halt nonlocal quantum effects!
• devil’s advocate for the shy
• Emily Dickinson - the Breakfast of Lampoons (I have no idea why this is popular!)
• future image sensors - the “obvious” upcoming design advance
• genre - arbitrariness as primary
• Green Dam Girl
• human rationality - it’s OK that everybody is above average
• language learning - my thoughts on learning foreign languages
• the simulation argument - the nature of the universe
• squids and fishes - showing the weakness of evolution
• The Word of the Month

views and reviews of books and a film

• Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Contact by Carl Sagan
• Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers
• One Jump Ahead by Jonathan Schaeffer
• West with the Night by Beryl Markham

• The Triplets of Belleville - analysis of the film (with spoilers)

serious... mostly

• 1970’s - an ambitious era
• anything which everybody has to do
• classifying mathematics - a science or what?
• circular photos - and why cameras should make them
• color constancy - why photographs can’t show true colors
• cryptic references in literature
• digital music recordings
• disbelief in marriage
• doing what you love
• existentialism
• exploring writing
• efficient market hypothesis - too vague a term
• for-profit education - how might parents react to school choice?
• future freedom
• George - an obituary of someone I did not know well
• goal constancy - for advanced civilizations
• God’s mind - a puzzle
• ID and security - airport security
• innate knowledge - and how to forget it
• intelligence and determinism - they are not related
• Latin poems - a thought about dynamic shape
• the low end growth curve - 1994 technology predictions; was I right?
• lucid dreams
• NASA Ames - an early 90’s visit
• the nature of mathematics - science and art
• navigation - a little about how people do it
• Neanderthal extinction - one idea
• Neanderthal language - we have the information to eventually infer their language skills
• not an academic talk - nice to the donors, useless to the audience
• nuclear dread - since the Cold War
• quack - my father is a quack
• real virtuality - future computer interface
• salvaging philosophy
• Searle’s Chinese Room
• statistical significance - and scientific publishing
• There’s Nothing Special About X - my take on the Mediocrity Principle
• to understand something - my method
• what technology does
• writing vs. programming

you can’t be serious!

• alien time - the alien clock in 30th Street Station
• Alumni Weekend - I stay exactly the same
• back formations
• bad at food - an anecdote
• the chiropractic - first reform medical practice
• court decisions - then reform the justice system
• disintermediation
• financial crisis - a 2009 economic suggestion
• fixed-width writing - a brief example
• haplology
• humans can’t play chess - at least not any more than computers can
• intercultural etc. - a university fails to understand solstice holidays
• information lifestyle
• jargon
• less different - my answer to an ambiguous puzzle
• liquid paper - its fictional origin
• living near the courthouse - the ants go marching
• manifest destiny - the space age t-shirt version
• nightmare job - compared to a slave labor camp
• Orthotropous Max - a fancy term meaning to overdo everything
• Papa Cow
• a Schiller fragment - with a perfect ending
• sovereign terminology - biologists lust for it
• status symbols
• strangeness - my inability to recognize it
• travel dream
• The Universal Explainer
• vampires from outer space
• view camera poisoning - keep alert against the threat!
• Wafer - the crunchthrough album!
• wizard’s tower - photo and story of a building
• the wrong car - a startling event
• your future success

updated January 2012 with Alumni Weekend * Always Coming Home * bad at food * Contact * disbelief in marriage * doing what you love * for-profit education * fixed-width writing * Galatea 2.2 * George * humans can‘t play chess * human rationality * ID and security * intelligence and determinism * intercultural etc. * Kosovo War * Latin poems * the low end growth curve * manifest destiny * NASA Ames * navigation * not an academic talk * One Jump Ahead * Orthotropous Max * quack * real virtuality * sovereign terminology * squids and fishes * travel dream * view camera poisoning * West with the Night * the wrong car * zygomatic * some remarks from the 1990’s and 2000 * one new quote * added an interview to Wafer