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National Day of Remeberance
[ 9-14-01 ][ 2:37 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Addenum (8:31 p.m.):
I've selected what I perceive to be an appropriate Song of the Week for this special occasion. Don't worry, it's not another Weezer one. Click!

Today, let us begin the healing. Put aside your grief and confusion, and stand boldly defiant in the face of terrorism and all that is evil. Justice and freedom will prevail. America will prevail.

Please Take a Moment for Those Who Have None Left.

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.

Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts.

None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.

The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans.

I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane.

Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10?

If so, why don't they fly them?

Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes?

Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon?

You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon-not once, but several times-and safely home again.

You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them.

When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose.

Both are still broke.

I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble?

I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around.

They will come out of this thing with their flag high.

And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."

Stand proud, America!" -- Gordon Sinclair, 1973

HO-LY CRAP
[ 9-11-01 ][ 10:28 a.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Terror in the stratosphere.

The death of one is a tragedy. The death of many is a statistic.

This is one of those events where you will never forget where you heard the news. It's the Pearl Harbor of our generation; the worst act of terrorism ever on U.S. soil. For me, I was driving to work this morning, listening to Staind on KROQ and awaiting Kevin & Bean's morning show to resume when the KROQ's "Doc on a Roq" grimly reported a fire in the Pentagon. I thought, "Big deal, so someone screwed up microwaving." Little did I know, the next few sentences out of Doc's mouth will forever live on in infamy.

"This is in addition to the ongoing attack on the U.S. when earlier two hijacked jetliners deliberately crashed into New York's World Trade Center, and have collapsed the twin towers."

My jaws dropped and spittle dribbled out of my mouth. Even now, it still feels surreal. If you click on the photo above, you'll find I've linked to a Real Video of one of the crashes caught on camera. It's like something pulled right out of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. Only there are no stuntmen, no props, at a real location, with real casualties. People wandering the streets aimlessly and weeping, covered by cement ash from the toppled skyscrapers. A scene that brings back memories of citizens who did the same at Hiroshima nearly six decades ago.

My mind is a mess. I can't think of a way to conclude this update gracefully, so I'm just going to end it here. God bless the victims and their loved ones.

Around The Rice
[ 9-8-01 ][ 5:27 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

"Gerry" has been updated: Click!

On Friday, my boss, a collegue, and I went to In-N-Out in Westwood for lunch. This wouldn't have been an overly significant event worthy of a frontpage mention, except they introduced me to their "Protein-style" burger they regularly order. Consequently, it changed my life. Let me tell you, I ain't going back to a regular In-N-Out burger ever again.

When you order one protein-style, they replace the buns with fresh, juicy, crispy lettuce. Sounds odd, I know, 'cause I had my doubts at first, but it tastes great! Ordinary buns are dry and requires a coke to wash down, but with the lettuce replacement, it's like a water slide for the patty and everything else to sail down into your stomach. I was able to finish a hamburger completely without even taking a sip of my softdrink inbetween. Man, I'm getting hungry just thinking about it again. Trust me, next time you go to In-N-Out, order your double-double protein-style. Just give it a shot, and you won't regret it.

Ah, let's see, what else...

Summer's end is closing in pretty fast. For many, it's already back to school, but since I'm lucky enough to be attending a university on the quarter system, I have 2 and half more weeks. I must say, it's been a kickass break for me. First, Gerry's family and mines went on the most luxurious cruise ever, then I lounge around the house all day doing nothing but relaxing for about a month. After that, I found a decent paying job that is not only near UCLA, but allows me to sit in front of a computer with an ethernet backbone, not to mention the great people I work with. And THEN I use my first paycheck for the sweetest electric guitar I can afford. Man! I feel so blessed. I gotta go, before I break down in tears and ruin my keyboard. =)

Cheers.

A.I.: Will It Take Over The World?
[ 9-6-01 ][ 10:57 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Renown British professor Stephen Hawking sure thinks so. And when someone of his caliber lays down his opinion, who are we to say, "You're wrong"?

From Ziff-Davis:

In an interview published on Saturday by the German magazine Focus, Professor Hawking argues that the increasing sophistication of computer technology is likely to outstrip human intelligence in the future. He concedes that the scientific modification of human genes could increase the complexity of DNA and "improve" human beings.

The best-selling author of A Brief History of Time says "we should follow this road [of genetic engineering] if we want biological systems to remain superior to electronic ones."

For those of you unfamiliar with Hawking, he's generally considered the most brilliant astrophysicist alive right now. He's also straddled with Lou Gehrig's disease, which has left him paralyzed. You've probably seen him on magazine covers before. He's the real weird looking geeky dude strapped in a wheelchair. For people that watch Fox's Dark Angel, he's not much different than Sebastian, the paraplegic technogeek friend of Logan who communicates by banging his head around a sensor.

I'm sort of curious on what people's thoughts are regarding the whole artificial intelligence taking over Earth deal. It's been popularized in countless movies, most notably the Terminator series and the Matrix. Most of them depict a dark, brooding future where humans have fallen from the top of the food chain, giving way to their fearsome mechanical creations.

My beef with Hawking's theory is that although it's true computing power has been scaling exponentially, software programming isn't, which is essentially the core of AI. Moore's Law has held up remarkably for ~20 years now, but as the saying goes, a bigger, badder monkey is still just a monkey. A 500GHz computer will still do what WE tell it to do, albeit a gazillion times faster than a 2GHz box. As far as I know, we still have no idea how to program anything to "learn". And even if we did, we wouldn't be dumb enough to program a computer with power hungry desires to overtake mankind.

Let's take, for example, HAL9000 from Kubrick's insultingly boring 2001: A Space Odyssey. More specifically, the famous scene when Dave goes out into space to check up on his companion, only to be locked out. "HAL, open the pod bay doors, HAL." / "I'm sorry Dave. I cannot do that." In that scene, HAL locks out his commander because he overheard a plot to shut him down, and thus took action to dispose of his would-be unpluggers.

So let's say HAL's creators programmed it to stay online and never crash. However, wouldn't / shouldn't that be a lower priority than being obedient to whatever command he receives? The argument for HAL internally adjusting the priority level for survival to be #1 doesn't work here, because a computer would have no motive to do so. Sooo, from this, we can draw two conclusions: 1. If a supercomputer like HAL were to be invented in the future, it would never seek to raise itself above its given commands, thereby making Space Odyssey an inaccurate portrayal of how computers will be used in the future. Or 2. HAL's programmers made survival its #1 priority, which in that case will never happen in real life because no A.I. programmer out there can be that stupid. Neither conclusion from this example points to a probable future overtaken by synthetic mechas.

But still, I can see how the threat exists. No one can tell what tomorrow may bring. Think back to the video games of yesteryear. PacMan or Centipede's A.I. is a joke compared to the Godlike bots of Unreal Tournament. Programming has evolved, no doubt, but is it changing fast enough to give us a need to worry in our lifetime? My opinion: not now, nor will any future generation ever have to. For example, I'm sure agriculture was a big hit when it was first discovered, effectively ending the hunter gatherer niche. At first it was just tomatoes or something simple like that, but then we found out we could grow corn, wheat, rice, cotton... heck, even chickens, pigs, and cows! Time went on, and as you know, these days we've more or less milked all we could out of that field. Our seemingly endlessly rising tide of tech advancements will plateau. Stephen Hawking may very well be a genius in astrophysics, but when it comes to computer science, he needs to eat some humble pie.

Rice World Turns Three
[ 9-2-01 ][ 1:33 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

Wesa thwee yeers old naow!

To kick off our 3rd year in existence, we proudly unveil a new section you undoubtly have seen hovering in our content bar for a while now: Gerry's Weird Shit! You will not believe how many incarnations we went through before this one that is gracing its launch. The behind-the-scenes work was pure tedium! Regardless, it's up and running now, and will be updated exclusively by the man himself. It brings a welcome relief to a rather bland (IMO) Rice World. I'm too much of a stiff to be effectively raunchy. So from now on, make sure you check his section regularly for updates. Yes, Gerry's comeback is finally complete! Rice World feels normal and well rounded again. ;)

And on my end, I finally got off my laurels and put up a new Song Of The Week. Heh heh. Bad Rice. Damn slacker. Click!

Oh man, I can't believe it's only been three years. It feels like an eternity. I went back to look at some of the older articles and updates I wrote, and damn, IT REALLY REALLY SUCKED!! I can't believe I was pretentious enough back then to actually post those trash. On the bright side, I'm glad it now serves as a chronology of sorts to the site's growth in both design and writing. Just look back and laugh at how stupid I must have looked back then. =)

Of course, I have to give my usual round of gratitude to all the readers out there. I know most of you are busy busy bees, so thanks for dropping by once in a while to check up on Rice World. Props go to Gerry as the the only writer who stuck with me for almost all 3 of these years and for providing unscrupulous laughs that I can't conjure up if my life depended on it. And last but not least, I tip my hat off to Dan (Kansur.com) for hosting me. It's because of him we don't have annoying banners and/or pop-ups. He forks over $75 a year for the domain name and $10 a month for the webspace and bandwidth, yet refuses to let me subsidize the costs! That is just wrong... in a good way. =)

Enjoy the site guys. Here's to hoping for a 4th birthday next year.

Oddly Enough Counter-Strike News
[ 8-31-01 ][ 2:17 p.m. pst ][ By Rice ]

1. Man dies after playing Counter-Strike all night.
2. Teenager knifes fellow C.S. player for revenge.

Bwahaha! Call me a rat bastard, but those stories are just too funny to NOT laugh at, even though I may be making light of the situations. Forgive me. =P It reminds me of this other situation Gerry told me, where a guy tried to demonstrate the strength of an office skyscraper's window by leaning on it, only to have it give way as he tumbled to his grisly death below. It's sad, but it's so... funny! Can't you just picture it?

Employee #1: "Man, these windows look flimsy. What if something accidentally crashed into it and broke it?"

Employee #2: "Don't worry about it. These windows are built to withstand anything. Watch."

Employee #2 leans on the glass confidently. The glass comes loose. Employee #2 falls off the building, spewing profanities.

Employee #1: "Whoa."

Haha.... Cough. Ahem. Anyways, back to what I was saying. Counter-Strike, if you can't tell already, is an addiction sweeping the world. An addiction I personally never understood. Sure, I dabble in it, but playing it any longer than half an hour becomes an exercise in boredom. I guess I'm lucky in that regard, huh?

There's been a lot of feedback regarding both those articles around the net. Mainly, concerned gamers that worry congressmen will use those stories as fuel on the debate against violent entertainment. While I used to be aboard the gamers' bandwagon and hold beef against people like Lieberman, I've backed off my stance somewhat since then.

Okay, enough of the heavy stuff. I get to leave work at 3 today because my boss is cool and labor day's coming up. Plus I got paid this week. Yeehaw! Not to mention opening day for the NFL, and Rice World's 3rd birthday. Ahh, yeah. It's going to be a good weekend. =) Cheers.