The Sleeping Gardener @thesleepinggardener - Tumblr Blog

Could this be spring? #NowPlaying Graceland by Paul Simon

Wishing you all a happy new year with this flamboyant song. Let’s all be overconfident as we cross into 2015!!

http://open.spotify.com/track/4IdIs1ugvlGHzQ8JCq1UBl

While I abhor Christmas, New Year's Eve is totally my thing, and the few days leading up to it are filled with energy. Let's focus on the future. Let's listen to Yeah Yeah Yeahs. http://open.spotify.com/track/0XSeFCEy8vK5k2c1R82oej

#yeah yeah yeahs #pin #new year #christmas

Every Tuesday I would wash my clothes. I remember, because with the living arrangements I had back then, doing laundry involved a bit more than it does now. It was a process, and I loved that. Every Tuesday I would bring my two small laundry baskets to the top floor of what I endearingly called the ugliest building you’d ever see, load the machine and put in two 100 yen coins. Then I would wait, usually in my room. Its 9 square meters, crammed with a small desk, a bed, and a TV I never used, weren't luxurious by any standards. But it was enough for me, and I knew it was at the very heart of where I wanted to be.My guest house didn’t have a dryer, so I would bring my damp clothes and a book, about philosophy or physics or something, a few blocks down a busy street in Shin-Okubo. Had it been snowing, the sidewalks would be covered with a layer of slush, because snow never stays for long in Tokyo. I always stopped by the vending machine on the right to get a bottle of hot lemon tea, for two reasons really. I would end up with the appropriate change for the launderette, and it could keep me warm while I was waiting for my clothes to dry.Every Tuesday, with my laundry tumbling behind me for a good 50 minutes, I would sit on the fire escape, drinking my hot tea, reading my book. I don’t remember what I would listen to, but I bet it was Bon Iver. The album he wrote for Emma, forever ago. The one I listen to right now.I’m not sure why with the first snow, unmistakably and every year, the memories of those days reappear.

Found this on my phone. Can't remember when I wrote it, nor if it was finished. ---- When it comes to separating artificial life forms from the genetic, there’s something very appealing about the Turing test. Whether or not one subjectively can tell the difference between man and manmade is somehow all that matters, seems to me. Of course there are administrative issues: Just who decides what is living and what is not in, say, legal cases? How many tests are needed to reach a definite conclusion? In the end it must all come down to an educated guess. But then again, aren't most verdics just that? In either case, many of us have probably been victims to the infamous “captcha” tests, sometimes rendering us no more human than a simple bot. Now imagine a similar test but with far greater consequences than “Please try again.” Then, once you’ve identified those “different” from us, there’s the issue of where to go from there. As a race we’ve not yet encountered a species with as advanced mental capabilities as ourselves, and thus have never had to deal with that kind of questions before. Soon enough though, this is all likely to change. Following the creation of artificial intelligence we must ask if we’ve also created artificial life in the process. If you’re a believer of the soul the exclusion is simple, but to me that seems like cheating. Then what? Do we treat them differently? What laws dictate who to include in our declaration of human rights, and who to subject to Charles Darwin’s “ survival of the fittest?” Most of us are comfortable eating other animals. In the future we’ll have to examine exactly what makes this okay.