An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by Cornell psycholinguist Michael Spivey got Slashdotted and mentioned in a few news sources yesterday. The first paragraph of the stories tended to sound like this:

The theory that the mind works like a computer, in a series of distinct stages, was an important steppingstone in cognitive science, but it has outlived its usefulness, concludes a new Cornell University study. Instead, the mind should be thought of more as working the way biological organisms do: as a dynamic continuum, cascading through shades of grey.

The claims of the article are actually a little more modest. Basically, they are able to conclude that the brain begins processing morphemes (words) before waiting to hear them completely. They also show that a particular mathematical model of the decision process, using dynamical systems and attractors, accurately accounts for the data obtained.

What I don't understand is what this is supposed to say about the relationship between brains and computers. At the very lowest level, my impression was that we were already sure there were no 'bits' and no clock forcing the brain to perform operations in 'cycles', as in a CPU. At higher levels, there's really nothing tying computers to representations which utilize discrete states.

The fact that the data fit the dynamical system so nicely is very interesting. Which is to say, I'm slowly building a stack of reasons to be interested in dynamical systems. I've checked this book on dynamical systems out of the library twice now, and only read about a chapter. But the source of my interest has been artificial intelligence -- a professor convinced me that to do anything interesting in neural nets I would want to know dynamical systems. So the applicability of these mathematics to cognitive science isn't news.

The news is that language processing specifically does not involve a process whereby some system in the brain discriminates words and releases the results to other systems only when a complete decision is made. This is a pretty cool contribution to an understanding of language and cognition, but you wouldn't know it from reading the news articles. You wouldn't even really understand the conclusion.

Unfortunately, the headlines which the paper generated do little but reinforce silly misunderstandings. The best way to think of a brain is still as some sort of computer. The example at hand is the process by way of which the brain takes input from the ears, and through some process ends up with a representation which causes the subject to press a button. No one seriously believes it's a digital computer, or uses a von Neumann architecture. It's not an interesting statement to say that a brain acts 'like a biological organism', and it's not meaningful to oppose biological organisms to computers, because the relevant notion of computation is much broader than that which applies specifically to the Dell on your desktop.

I just don't feel right dedicating an hour to crafting something interesting.

I can, however, bring you links.

A man in Weare, New Hampshire is seeking to use the precedent set by Kelo vs. City of New London to acquire land to for a development project called "The Lost Liberty Hotel". His claim is that his hotel will bring in tourists and tax revenue, which will benefit the town more than the building currently on the property: Justice Souter's home.

The hotel "will feature the 'Just Desserts Café' and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America." However, the best part is that "Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel 'Atlas Shrugged.'" (via Obsidian Wings)

I'm working from home today, which means that I'm susceptible to diversion. I was doing well, until Ed Felten brought me a bunch of Grokster links. Dr. Felten is worried, others believe the court simply punted back to the lower courts, and industry lawyers love it.

The Christian Science Monitor doesn't seem to get it:

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2001 that Napster could be held partly liable for copyright violations by those using its file-sharing program. The court ruled that Napster officials could have policed the illegal downloading activities through the company's centralized servers, but instead ignored the lawbreaking.

To bypass such legal liability, Grokster and StreamCast decentralized their servers, making it impossible for them to monitor how their file-sharing programs were being used.

Right. Not because maintaining central servers is needlessly slow and expensive, but because they're sneaky.

Forbes.com has a more encouraging take:

Why not compete with free download services on their own turf? Companies such as Apple Computer, RealNetworks, Napster and others are making a go of selling music online legally. They have a long, long way to before they even come close to the number of pirated downloads, but the early results are encouraging.

Make the media companies compete, and they'll find a way to innovate on their own. Give them an excuse to start suing entrepreneurs with new ideas, and they'll just become more complacent than they already are.

Leave it up to competition? That makes way too much sense.

I haven't read the decision yet (I need to get back to work!), and I don't know a lot about the law, but it seems to me that all is not lost for Grokster. My understanding is that this means there will be a trial in the Ninth Circuit, where Grokster will have a chance to show that they did not engage in inducement.

Meanwhile, there was also another relatively important technology decision today.

I know several of my cobloggers are big fans of The State. For them, I bring a Michael Ian Black sighting: a very funny McSweeney's piece called What I Would Be Thinking About If I Were Billy Joel Driving Toward a Holiday Party Where I Knew There Was Going to Be a Piano.

Two posts from P.Z. Myers for those of us waiting for test-runs of web-crawling scripts to complete on a Friday morning:

• The origins of booze describes the process through with ancestral yeasts evolved the capacity to produce alcohol.
• Life imitates art as an eight-year-old boy is suspended for pledging allegiance to the "United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species" and PZ responds with a Matt Groening comic.

Does anyone remember the scene during the beginning of Star Wars Episode II when Anakin and Obi-Wan chase a bounty hunter in a futuristic bar? As in any such establishment, there is a television behind the counter, showing what appears to be a game of football. Only the contestants are funny looking robots. It's a small, cute joke.

If we end up there in the future, curmudgeonly purists might look back to today, and to a six-year-old girl, as the place where it all went wrong. From the Kansas City Star:

The first two innings of the July 16th game between the Kansas City T-Bones and the Schaumburg Flyers will be played virtually.

Equipped with Microsoft Xbox game controllers instead of baseball gloves and bats, two video gamers will climb into recliner chairs around home plate at CommunityAmerica Ballpark and slug it out on the park’s 16- by 24-foot video screen.

Their scores from playing two innings of MVP Baseball 2005 on an Xbox will stand when the T-Bones and Flyers take the field to finish the last seven innings of the game.

Mike Stone, commissioner of the minor-league baseball Northern League, said the idea “brings new meaning to the term ‘fan involvement.’ ”

The idea for the promotion came from the 6-year-old niece of Bryan Williams, director of community relations for the T-Bones.

[...] T-Bones fans began competing last weekend for a chance to take the field. The two finalists will be chosen after competing for high scores at CompUSA stores in Overland Park and Independence. The competition continues through July 6. A playoff for the top 16 players is scheduled for July 9.

Via BoingBoing.

I'm sure many of you have already heard that the today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of appropriating private property for private development. For anyone unfamiliar with the idea of eminent domain, it is a long established policy to seize private property when there is a direct public need (roads and schools are the typical examples). Apparently, lower courts who heard this case mostly held that appropriation just for (private) economic development is only justified when the property being seized is blighted. But the New London residents in question were fighting this action because the neighborhood "includes Victorian-era houses and small businesses that in some instances have been owned by several generations of families", all of which will now be replaced by "a riverfront hotel, health club and offices."

This decision is rather unsettling to me, mostly because I'm torn by several different legal intuitions. For one thing, I've driven through New London, and it is certainly an area that could use a major revitalization effort, even if the neighborhood in question is itself not part of the problem (although I really wouldn't know either way). I'm also not crazy about championing the cause of property rights, especially at the cost of the economic health of a city. In that respect, clearly John Paul Stevens (as well as Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, who constitute the majority in this decision) agrees with me:

''The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including -- but by no means limited to -- new jobs and increased tax revenue,'' Stevens wrote ... ''[i]t is not for the courts to oversee the choice of the boundary line nor to sit in review on the size of a particular project area,'' he said.

Fine. But I can't help shaking the feeling that this is a terrible precedent, and that instances of exploiting this ruling by developers will far outnumer cases of positive development projects. Justice O'Connor is with me on this one:

''Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,'' O'Connor wrote. ''The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.''

Preach it like it is, sister. And yet, something about agreeing with a decision on which Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas all joined just doesn't sit right with me. Maybe it's simply that the case here is private ownership of land vs. private development of that land, and that Stevens et al. simply believe that when the community stands to benefit (or at least, the local government has determined that it does), the law is on their side. In any case, I haven't yet read the decisions, but I do intend to, and I hope anyone else who is interested will do the same.

JD Lassica, guest blogger at Freedom to Tinker, posts a story from his book Darknet about the terrible muddle that is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The story involves an unwitting violation of the law by Intel VP Donald S. Whiteside.

Whiteside used a short clip from the film "Rudy" in a homemade DVD of his son playing Pop Warner football. In the process, he used a program which needed DVD Jon's illegal DeCSS algorithm.

Whiteside made this admission at a meeting with congressmen interested in technological copyright protection schemes, such as the one DeCSS circumvents.

The point of his demonstration, Whiteside said, was not a mea culpa, but a real-world example of how Washington’s penchant for legislative solutions can hobble a new, flowering marketplace of innovation.

“This is precisely the kind of exciting consumer creativity that should be enabled,” he said. “I don’t claim to have all the answers. Should I have to go clear rights to use ten seconds from Rudy in my son’s video, or does it fall under fair use? Should I have to pay pennies for every second of a snippet? I don’t know. But I do know that we have to figure out a way for consumers to do something creative without breaking the law.

“To me, this episode was a great way to frame the question: Should copyright law permit this or not? Should the DMCA criminalize this sort of thing? Or should the creative community, high-tech community, and lawmakers get together to try to stimulate this kind of innovative behavior?”

Comments don't work yet. I'll get on it, but I have a date with "Hell's Kitchen" first.

I have some advice, should anyone who reads this ever meet a shifty looking fellow calling himself Robert Dunbar.

First and foremost, don't go into business with him, or give him any money.

Secondly, call me. Don't let him out of your sight until I have arrived. I owe him one.

Getting the website back up has been a chore. Luckily (I suppose?) I haven't had much else to keep me busy. Tomorrow I have a meeting, which I hope will quickly become a new job. Meaning this is all back together just under the wire.

Meanwhile, this guide to fonts in Linux has made my life a lot better.