Farm News 11-25-07

Sunday morning, after chores,30°

It's been a busy week and I haven't written much.

Barn News

Hooray! I gave away two cats, Four-ten, Shotgun's daughter, and another as yet unnamed Shotgun daughter, both Calicoes.

Interfaces

William Calvin has proposed quite a few interesting ideas, but I am most taken with his Darwin Machine. A Darwin Machine is a set of patterns, and a mechanism for replicating those patterns. Calvin proposes four more requirements, but I've written about those before. The set of all the genes on earth, along with their ability to replicate themselves, constitutes the Darwin Machine with which we are the most familiar: Life. Life has come up with a set of collections of genes called species, and some of those species are endowed with an Immune System which in itself forms a Darwin Machine. It has been proposed that the set of Human Ideas, along with Humans, who replicate them, form a Darwin Machine. I have proposed that the set of lines of code in Open Source Software form a Darwin Machine.

One of the interesting features of this line of thinking is that all these Darwin Machines, the Immune System, Human Ideas, and Open Source Software, all intersect in Life. The Immune Systems of humans, Human Ideas, and Open Source Software all rely on humans for replication. That does not mean, though, that there has to be any hocus-pocus anywhere in the collection of Darwin Machines. We can observe and predict the behavior of the set of Human Ideas and the set of Open Source Software code without recourse to anything in human intelligence other than to say that humans act as the replicators for the two sets of patterns, no more than we are required to bring in the operations of our own intelligence in describing the operation of our Immune System.

Darwin Machines create complexity. They replicate, making tiny errors occasionally, and, if a copy with the right kind of error comes along, it is replicated more than other patterns of its type. Very quickly patterns will evolve which tend to combine with other patterns to form a super-pattern, a species, which improves the rate of replication of all the individual patterns which define it. The patterns will rapidly fill the environment in which they exist and, after that, constantly improve upon the density of their occupation of that environment. They increase the density by creating the best possible fits between species and environmental niches, creating such complexity in the process that it is hard to describe the organization of species without retreating to some idea of an Intelligent Designer, or, in the case of Open Source Software, Intelligent Programmer.

Open Source Software has yet to produce a species, a program, which can become aware of the existence of an Intelligent Programmer, or have any way to utilize that awareness. Human Ideas, on the other hand, has produced a species called Memetics which might be said to be aware of the Intelligent Programmer and might find ways to utilize the awareness.

I keep thinking all the above would come together and make sense if I would just smoke some good pot some evening.

Blogged with Flock

Farm News 04-08-07

Sunday morning, after chores, 23°

Global Warming
The parts of the garden that are planted are now covered with floating row cover, a lightweight protective sheet. Supposedly the temperature underneath the cover will be about two degrees higher than the air above the cover and it will protect the plants from frost. Keeping the plants two degrees above the air temperature is very helpful, even though it doesn't sound like much. On clear nights the heat radiated by the ground is not reflected back, and the surface temperature of the plant leaves can drop lower than the air temperature.

That is how frost is able to form when the air temperature is below 42° but still above 32°. The air must be still and the sky clear for frost to form. Saturday morning the temperature was 23° and the sky was clear, but there was a very slight breeze, enough to keep frost from developing.

The temperature this morning is 23°; the record low for this date is 20°. The sky is clear and there is no breeze, so, yes, there is frost.

Goodbye Goats

Sally goat, who was born last year, had her first kids this year, a buck and a doe. The buck failed to start and died when less than a day old. The little doe, named Silly, has been growing rapidly. Sally, unfortunately, figured out how to get through an electric fence without being zapped. As I have said many times, intelligence is not a desirable trait in most domestic animals. Last week I had finally had enough of Sally nibbling on the fruit trees, so she and Silly both went to the sale on Saturday. It was cold and breezy, resulting in very few buyers who were willing to stand outside and bid on a goat. The pair of them sold for $32, about half of what I would normally expect to get for them. Now, though, they are someone else's problems.

Bunnies Visit Cardiologist

Thursday, two of Suzette's bunnies went to visit the Cardiologist. It was an exciting trip for them. First, we stopped at the Oskaloosa State Bank, where the bunnies learned about money. Each of the women working in the bank made the mommy sound, a long, warbling, “Ohhh,” when they saw the bunnies. The bunnies were very nice to them and didn't pee in anybody's hand.

After the bank they stopped at a convenience store, where I purchased coffee, and the young woman at the cash register held one of the bunnies while I felt around in my pocket to find money for the coffee. She also made the mommy sound. The bunnies didn't ask for donuts or pop, being a bit young for junk foods.

At the Cardiologist's office each of the front desk clerks looked at the bunnies and made the mommy sound. Even the Cardiologist made a shortened, deeper, version of the mommy sound when he saw them. The bunnies' hearts are in good shape, so it was a pleasant visit for them.

On the way home we stopped for a cheeseburger, my reward for visiting the Cardiologist, and the young woman at the drive-thru window made the mommy sound when she saw the bunnies.

Making the mommy sound seems to be a universal female response to cute little mammals.
Some years ago I read a book in which the author insisted that a pet monkey was necessary for a thinking man's well-being, and that a pet rabbit was necessary for the monkey's well-being.

Monkeys, he said, can get cold in the night, and benefit from having nice warm rabbits with which they can snuggle. This makes me wonder if there is an equivalent monkey mommy sound that female monkeys make when they see a baby bunny.

Maybe Dr. Alexander, who did the very clever study of young monkeys and toy preferences, will shed some light on this question. I am still puzzling over her study of monkeys and toy preferences by sex.


E-mail Subscribers: To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so. Farm News is now a blog at idfafarmnews.blogspot.com