Farm News 08-05-07

Isomorphism

Today I received two emails from young, pretty female members of my family, my daughter and a niece. Both of them have surprised me in the past by making me think how much my language was similar to their's when I was their age. Many clues must be out there that begin to show us the organization of cognitive properties we have inherited. Some of us, when we think about a puzzle, think in terms of hierarchies: 'this' is one of 'those', and all of 'those' are magenta in color, so this is 'magenta'. Others think in terms of categories: 'this looks like 'that', and 'that' is green, so this is 'green'. What's next? Heat. Some think in terms of heat: 'this' could the either 'that' or 'other', but I can't decide which.', or 'everything is either 100% yes or no, but most are undecidable. Something is missing.' Some think in terms of cold: 'questioning this would threaten my faith', or 'what is this shit'. Do we inherit preferences for the approach we use in seeing similarities?

In I am a Strange Loop Douglas Hofstadter talks about analogy. Beneath analogy, I think, is recognition of similarities. Isn't that what an analogy does? It says, these two categories of items are similar in these ways. An analogy is an assumption that there is yet another way in which the two items are similar. “These two items have brown, curly hair. These two items have two pairs of limbs. These two items belong to categories whose names begin with 'h'. Pieces of fabric are fitted around parts of the item on the right and the item on the left is uncovered. The item on the left has a penis. Can we assume, by analogy, that the item on the right also has a penis? Not if the categories are 'horses' and 'handmaidens'.

So, is the ability to recognize similarities one of the basic cognitive functions, part of the 'machine language' of the mind?

Farm News Begins New Delivery Service

I have spent way too many hours trying to keep some order in the mailing list for Farm News. Mailing over 100 copies in a week was a total pain in the butt. I could have solved the problems by paying $40-$70 for a commercial bulk mailing program, but I'm a tightwad when it comes to software. Here is how I saved $40.

I took an old Micron tower, installed a cheap upgrade motherboard and some second hand RAM. It has three old hard drives and two old CD drives, which are useless, anyway, as it is setting in an unused laundry room behind an office building in Oskaloosa. Across the alley from the laundry room is the Oskaloosa water tower, and atop that tower, connected by a cable to to the laundry room, is a collection of Wi-Fi antennas. In the laundry room are the Geezernet server, the Ruralnet server, and a router that connects everything together.

I installed Ubuntu Server Linux for the server operating system. On top of that I installed Mambo, a web site tool. On top of Mambo I installed Community Builder, a set of extensions for Mambo. On top of all that is the stuff that makes up Geezernet. Creating the web site has consisted almost completely, to this point, of installing software and filling out a few fields. All of my interaction with the server is via the internet, now, mostly using web pages.

And, there are still more things to install. Geezernet will have a chat system, online bridge and other games, and internet phone services. Basically, Geezernet will be competing with MSN and Yahoo! It is becoming a 'portal', a web page that has links to things you want to do. Geezernet differs from MSN and Yahoo! in that it has features of interest to aging hippies.

The ongoing use phase is now beginning, and I'm being forced to learn even more new skills. This whole thing was supposed to be a piece of cake, and, compared to sitting down and writing web pages, it was a piece of cake. All of the tools are in place, now it is a matter of learning to use them. After a good deal of conversation, Brian and I decided to move all of our email operations to Google's gmail. Google has better spam and malware protection than anything we could install and run on our servers. Their size limits are far greater than what we could offer, and it removes a whole lot of trouble from the operation.

What I'm aiming for is three ways to deliver Farm News: (1) Read it on the web at www.geezernet.com, (2) read the headlines for each week in an email, with links to the stories on the web, or (3) receive the entire text in the email as you do now. The Farm News and Help! Millie! Mailing lists have been merged, and the Help! Millie! Stories will appear more often now on the web site.

To continue to receive Farm News you will have to create an account on GeezerNet. You do that by going to www.geezernet.com and trying to create a new account. If it doesn't work, send me an email at JamesL.Ware@gmail.com. Or jlware@ruralnet1.com, or geezer@geezernet.com, or FarmNews@geezernet.com. All of those email addresses end up in the same place, the gmail server, where all the spam is removed and the rest is sent on to Thunderbird, my favorite mail client. Gmail also works beautifully with Incredimail, which is important because I have a lot of friends who will not give up Incredimail for any reason. The upshot is that you receive a google account as part of the geezernet and ruralnet package. If you don't want to use it, fine, nothing will change. If you wish, though, you can log into your google account by opening a new page in your browser and going to gmail.google.com. At least I think it works that way.

There will be some problems at first, but I'll try to get them fixed. Brian and I are working together on this, so Ruralnet customers can call me instead of trying to reach him, if they wish.