I always try to resist pushing jokes into this feed, because the funny stuff tends to take over over time, but this is really not a joke. Quoted for truth!

The Economist on the human-genome project:

[It may someday turn out] that some differences both between and within groups are quite marked. If those differences are in sensitive traits like personality or intelligence, real trouble could ensue.

People must be prepared for this possibility, and ready to resist the excesses of racialism, nationalism and eugenics that some are bound to propose in response. That will not be easy. The liberal answer is to respect people as individuals, regardless of the genetic hand that they have been dealt. Genetic knowledge, however awkward, does not change that.

These kind of arguments have bothered me for a long time now. Really, is this “liberal” answer the best we have? Is all we can say to proponents of eugenics and the like, that it is uncivil to think what they think? That’s hardly a convincing counter-argument. Let’s keep moral judgement out of the discussion for a moment.

Here’s one deeper problem I see with racial intolerance and eugenicist strategies: they tend to reduce genetic diversity.

Why is that bad? Well, I’m not an evolutionary biologist or anything close to that, but the one take-home message I got from the whole “survival of the fittest” tale is that genetic diversity saves species. One day you’re the cripple bacterium¹ that wastes his energy producing beta-lactamases because, well, you can’t help it. You’re a freak of nature. Everybody else spends that energy reproducing, making you look seriously pitiful. But the next day some guy called Fleming shows up, and changes the rules. “Who’s the fittest now?!! …” So there, evolutionary fitness strongly depends on external circumstances, and diversity just saved your species.

Who will be the fittest of men when an industrial disaster eats the ozone layer, when we finally run out of fossil fuels, when the next ice-age begins, when the big bad asteroid arrives, when the next revision of the flu turns out really effective? Might there be circumstances in which the overdeveloped cerebrum, so highly desired in our information age, would turn out to be an energy-hog and too-vulnerable a liability?

I have had supremacist thoughts sometimes, and I won’t apologise for that, because I know we all do². The thing is, feeling ashamed because it is improper to think what you think doesn’t help to develop or invalidate those thoughts. Instead, whenever you think that you see weakness, you can try to change perspective. Maybe you’re really looking at diversity, at a secure future for humanity. Most of the time, that’s a sunnier perspective³.

This is the first entry in a new post-category of mine, to be organised under the tag “blogroll” (so much for obvious introductions). I was going to create space for this in a sidebar, when I realised I hardly ever look at the sidebar on anybody else’s weblog (if I even get to navigate your pages at all - only if you provide a poor feed!).

So instead, I’ll try to highlight my favourite feeds integrally in my own feed, starting today with rc3.org. I’ve never met or been in touch with the author, Rafe Colburn, and I can’t remember when or how he ended up in my feed reader. All I can say is that he consistently posts snippets that interest me. That’ll have to do as a recommendation.

With regard to patents, VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free.

I guess the thing is, H.264 never was the problem. The problem is simply that the Americans entertain such a thing as software patents at all.

This is quite interesting. I bet all the free-market zealots will have clicked away after reading about one-and-a-half paragraph, so let me quote this bit from somewhat further down in the article:

The obvious downside of this approach is that no other wireline competitors will likely emerge to challenge the government-controlled fiber network. On the other hand, there’s not that much competition right now; only 20 percent of Australian homes can get cable service, and most others are left with lines from Telstra (which does resell to numerous ISPs, but it retains control of the access network).

I guess it’s not quite as bad on our end of the world, where there’s usually a choice of at least two wireline networks, but that still isn’t any real competition. A public, open-access (open to any service-provider, that is) network doesn’t seem such a bad idea at all!

I’m weeks behind on all the news feeds (no withdrawal symptoms, strangely), but was glad to catch this bit of news today (via).

I suppose I’m now expected to append some personal opinions on the subject, but, as with code, reusing the work of others should generally lead to higher quality. Therefore, let me just link to one of Bruce Schneier’s better essays on the topic: there.

Important call from my buddy wzzrd (click through for English, too):

wzzrd:

Als je nog nooit van ACTA gehoord hebt, wordt het tijd dat je er iets over leest. Echt. Zoveel tijd is er niet meer. ACTA kan in potentie een groot deel van de verworvenheden van de laatste 50 jaar…

Funny and weird and entertaining and interesting. And it sounds like it would actually work.

Some good news, via wzzrd: Google Puts Weight Behind Theora on Mobile.

Between Apple’s crusade against Flash, or Android, or their own app-developers, and Google’s sponsorship of a patent-free codec, I see a bright future for HTML5-apps. Frankly, I don’t care what noble and/or misguided motives these companies may have; I’m looking forward to frustration-free web browsing, and rich-media websites that actually work for me for a change.

I just bought Beverley Craven’s new album (well, it was released last year, but I’m slow to pick up on such things, so it’s still new to me) from Amazon’s MP3 store (no, that’s not an affiliate link). I almost ordered the disc, being a recovering obsessive-compulsive donottrustanyripbutyourown lossless-audio nut, but in the end I really must start to accept that that is a waste of time and resources¹. I have to keep telling myself this.

(“Listen man, it would be wasteful. Seriously. … Hey, stop entering your shipping address!”)

Relapse

It’s been a while since I bought MP3s from Amazon. I got a few albums from them when they first opened the MP3 store in the UK, but then I had a relapse into buying CDs and ripping them myself². Anyway, according to encspot³ Amazon still use Lame 3.97 like before, with a “vbr-old” pre-set, so they’re a little bit behind on the state-of-the-art, but it’s certainly not bad.

(“I know, I know. If you had a lossless backup you could re-encode with new super-duper settings. Yes, that would also future-proof things for when you’re finally getting that digital parametric equalizer. But really, aren’t you simply enjoying the music right now? You are. So? IT’S NOT BAD.”)

Software habit < hardware habit

One minor downside to downloading the album is of course that now you can’t slip in a nifty new Firewire audio-interface with your shipping order.

(“Dude!! Does your laptop-output sound distorted? No. Does it drive your headphones well? Yes. How much are you saving by not getting that thing? Twenty, thirty albums-worth? Right. Also, it would just end up as e-waste. Now STOP entering your shipping address.”)

Day one

That’s right, today was a little triumph.

Oh, and Beverley Craven sounds wonderful, as on her earlier albums⁴.

Marco Arment knows good UI-design.