The Miracle of ALife

I don't only think about masturbation, I am in fact a PhD student (although the two aren't mutually exclusive). My research is in the field of evolutionary ethics, a weird hybrid of philosophy, biology, sociology and computer science. I design, implement and experiment with computer simulations to study ethics, in particular, biological altruism. Or, as Jodi says, I make numbers have sex. This is useful as it's particularly hard (and most likely unethical) to do these studies on real people. My simulations are abstractions of the real world, where things are a little (that is, a lot) simpler (e.g. they don't have to wear pants). ALife (i.e. Artificial Life) is a subset of artificial intelligence (in the same way that real life is a subset of natural stupidity). I realise that this topic is potentially (in fact, inevitably) a little heavy for a blog, although I'd like to think I'm capable of making it (sorta) light.

Most definitions of art require a liberal definition. My studies are concerned with emergence. That is, with my simple simulation rules (A sees B, C eats D, and E bonks F), the simple, mindless, rules of evolution, I see the emergence of complex, albeit mindless, social behaviour. I was working recently on the visualisation of my results on speciation, taking the lead of Darwin and his famous "Tree of Life" diagram. That is, at the root of the tree you have the oldest, most primitive organisms (e.g. Australian politicians) and over massive stretches of time, and countless reproductions, we see the great diversity of organisms today (obviously, there is, otherwise, no real progression, as we still have the politicians). Anyway, Jodi thought my upside down "Tree of ALife" looked pretty (not a prerequisite of art (c.f. expressionism), but still a good indication of it), like a weeping willow, and suggested that I post it here:


I'm excited by these results because they demonstrate the idea of Punctuated Equilibrium, which I'm not going to get into here (actually, I lie, the idea of Punctuated Equilibrium is that all biological change occurs in rapid bursts, during speciation events, and the rest of the time sweet FA happens. If you're interested, I recommend you see a shrink and a book by Daniel Dennett called "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" chapter 10, section 3 "Punctuated Equilibrium: A Hopeful Monster"). Anyway, it got all this special attention because the creationists thought it was a denial of evolution and therefore scientific proof of the existence of a creator (aka god). I'll spare you the suspense (all ye worried about going to hell for spanking the monkey last night): by the time everybody was clear on what they were saying (Gould, one of the originators, being notoriously unclear), it was clear that the controversy was all a bit premature on the behalf of the creationists (who should worry about spanking the monkey). Of course the idea of conserving semen serves the purpose of both god and genes, which both, in a sense, propagate themselves via their offspring (i.e.memetics).

Another thing I'd like to share, a common bug in my simulations, is the evolution of necrophilia. A consequence of my mate-finding algorithm: when an agent is sexually mature it looks for a mate in its local neighbourhood (they are genderless, so everybody's fair game). If it is unable to find one, it puts up its hand, which is more like a flag that says yes or no, and waits for the next agent to come a knocking (on their abstract door). As an aside, this hand waving puts me in mind of "traffic light" parties, where red means "stop", green means "go", and amber presumably means "if you're good looking enough", perhaps this is where that all illusive "free will" demonstration can be found (calling all philosophers). When two agents eventually find each other, the loving begins, resulting in the production of an offspring. (There isn't much room for romance, perhaps a consequence of the lack of necessity of pants removal or record players to play some of Marvin Gaye's "lets get it on"). Anyway, occasionally an agent would put its hand up, requesting a mate, and then promptly kick the bucket, leaving an erect extremity to indicate an insatiable undead virility, (hellooo, mills & boon!) unbeknownst to any would-be lover, who proceeds regardless with the "getting dirty".

PS - After looking over my last two posts, which seem to suggest an inability to stop sexualising things, I started this blog entry with a clean break in mind. What could be less sexual than science research? Therefore it pains me to note that there is no less than two references to sexually deviant acts in this entry. Now, I like to be romantic about the whole sex thing, but I worry, given the common criticisms leveled at my gender of killing the romance of love.

Tweemo

As if the individual music genre terms of "twee" and "emo" weren't confusing enough, Adam and John had to coin the amalgamated concept of "tweemo". Twee, originally intending something excessively or affectedly quaint, and emo, short for emotional. Twee was originally derogatory and emo has become derogatory. Perhaps this photo, taken on a recent trip to the beach, of the two masterminds behind the word demonstrates its necessity:


A large part of the weekend involved the invention of twee porn titles (e.g. barely eightween). The story line, repeated across the genre, with minor variation by unimaginative twee porno directors, goes: a boy and girl, both wearing cardigans, meet (perhaps he's an effeminate poet and she's a librarian). They sit, mostly turned away from the camera, looking over a beautiful dandelion meadow (Belle & Sebastian is playing). The girl's cardigan slides, ever so slightly, down her shoulder. The boy reaches out to take the girls hand in his own. They turn to face each other, and stare into each others eyes as the sun sinks below the horizon between them and they slowly get old together. THE END.

I like twee music. Although, I have to admit the origin of the term is a bit off putting. It figures though, because I'm slightly effeminate and my girlfriend's a librarian. I made her a twee CD, here is the track list:

Music Is My Boyfriend - The Hidden Cameras
I Don't Know Why I Love You - The House Of Love
Bachelor Kisses - The Go-Betweens
The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get - Morrissey
Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby - Islands
The Luckiest Guy On The Lower East Side - The Magnetic Fields
Lovefool - The Cardigans
Let's Get Out Of This Country - Camera Obscura
Sort Of Mine - Heavenly
Build - The Housemartins
Our Lady In Havana - Essex Green
Sleep Tonight - Stars
The Leanover - Life Without Buildings
Wishbone - Architecture in Helsinki
My British Tour Diary - Of Montreal
Just Like Fred Astaire - James
Camera-Shy - The Lucksmiths
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths
Beautiful - Belle & Sebastian
On The Bus Mall - The Decemberists
Listen To My Heart - Steinbecks

Of course, a close inspection of this list will lead some to exclaim "but that's not twee..." when questioned further their main reason will be because they like it. I think that this is, probably, a problem with the original definition, which being negative, implies that all twee must be negative, but if it was then no one would like it.

I don't know about emo. I researched to try and find out which bands constitute emo music. But, I haven't heard of any of them, apart from more recent, post emo (i.e. post decrease in popularity), bands like death cab, which I imagine wouldn't call themselves emo. People seem a little crazy on the whole emo hate thing. I suspect that many of them wouldn't actually be able to list many emo bands. And why does JB have an emo section? Well, what I know is that James Blunt isn't in the emo section so someone else is to blame for his music (which sounds like a cat being tortured). Lets regain our focus, rally the troops and work on the real evil here.

Pants Optional

The title of this blog "Pants Optional" (conceived during procrastinatory moments / hours, during my honours year) was to be the name of my cafe / bookstore. Entirely devoted to science fiction and fantasy literature, the boy waiters would be dressed as Conan (the barbarian) and the girls as Barbarella (queen of the galaxy). A safe haven, where people could discuss Dungeons and Dragons, the Alien movie series and Kurt Vonnegut novels, free of jock oppression and pants. I contemplated the title "Owen's Philosophical Steak House" (concept courtesy of Alan Partridge), where people of all walks of life meet to talk philosophy and eat steak (my own patented vegetarian steak, "mis-steak", for non meat eating friends). Although, I abandoned the idea after realising that a good indulgent philosophical chat can give some people a stiffy (just thinking about it, in fact), which is not desirable in an eating / pants optional venue. All conversations would inevitably deteriorate to the topic of masturbation, which is enough of a problem already without it being exacerbated by, self gratifying, deep-and-meaningfuls.


Here is a picture of Gypsy and Me. Gypsy is a dog. Gypsy doesn't wear pants. (My partner Jodi wanted to dress her up a bit, but I drew the line at pants). I like to think that Gypsy is happier for it (she looks it, doesn't she?). I wear the pants in our relationship. This is not to say that I'm the dominant person. It is just that Jodi gave me a bit of a scare with her "bite the sausage" call to Gypsy as I was entering the shower one time.

I started this blog with grandiose ideas of posting pictures of people, liberated of pants, grinning at the camera, for your vicarious pleasure. Apparently this is also known as going Donald Duck. That is, sailor about the town, a promising bachelor with only his three troublesome nephews, a debilitating speech impediment and conspicuous lack of trousers to hold him back. Perhaps he lost them during some navy initiation ceremony. Of course, ducks don't wear trousers in the first place, so this is just silly. I imagine there would be an imbalance of males in my "pants off" photo series. Not that girls don't lose their pants occasionally (a quick search on the internet shows this to be the case, see www.police.vic.gov.au/hornygirlswithoutpants.html, www.feministpantsliberationfront.edu.uk and www.pantsonpets.com/noway/). It is just that I don't get invited to those types of parties.