Category Archives: Me Me Me

我

First flight of the lifetime

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Did you remember the first time you board an airplane and fly?

Boarding Pass

On my flight here from Tokyo, there was a group of young school girls (14-ish) in the middle of cabin. They were extremely excited, chatty, especially during take off, like on-a-roller-coaster excited, literally. I was almost going to walk to the tour guide and ask her to keep their voice down — then I thought, for the most of them, it might be their first time to fly — I should not be in the position to deprive their once-a-lifetime experience. Thankfully, they were pretty quiet throughout the rest of the flight.

I don’t remember the detail of my first flight, but I did keep the boarding pass (as pictured). I don’t remember the exact year, but I am pretty sure I was as much annoy as these young forks. For better or worse, an eventful life awaits.

Tim’s Dream for the Web

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Even before I get myself this username (timdream) and polluted the search result, search result of that term will give you a link to on LogicError, appropriated titled “Tim’s Dream for the Web”. That “Tim” was Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and he imagines the Web to be the powerful means for collaboration between not only people, but machines.

Weaving the Web, credit: W3C.

Weaving the Web, credit: W3C.

Collaboration between people has been closer than ever because of the Web. It have already grew closer thanks to the technologies set branded as “HTML5”, and the technologies will only grew stronger, hopefully beyond the catchphrase. As of the machines, a form of Semantic Web is indeed slowly emerging, but not in the ideal open, collaborative way and in a more top-down, proprietary approach, limited to the centralized design in which many are asked to interface with few proprietary platforms who encapsulates all data.

Invasion of the Data Snatchers by ACLU

It’s a good thing for people to start enjoying what it is possible when the data is linked — yet, having them linked in a more open way while safeguarding our privacy remain the work to be done. This week we saw the 20th anniversary of W3C, and the HTML5 spec reaches Recommendation status — the events themselves are testimony of the rough history of the Web. I remain cautiously optimistic on this one — the organizations rally on this front is largely intact, and people will, eventually more aware of the danger when as they enjoy the convenience of the technologies.

The LogicError page was in my bookmark since a long time ago, like Firefox 0.8-ish, but not until now I realized LogicError is in fact an Aaron Swartz project. The footnote itself, with the name, kind of say something.

核四議題與理工人的傲慢

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核能電廠不是原子彈

核電廠不會核爆。取自經濟部 Facebook 粉絲團。

是，我也知道核電廠不是原子彈，不會核爆，炸毀方圓數公里還冒出蕈狀雲。拿了物理系的學位，雖然成績很差而且還轉行了，這種常識我還是有的。

但具體的，我還是要想要行文，反對核四廠的興建。我不反對核能：用輕浮的比喻來說，如果文明不能有效應用核能，那怎麼發展曲速引擎與星際旅行？核電若能取代石化發電，也能幫助減緩碳排放。但是，我認為，只單純因為對於科學與工程的信念，就贊成核能電廠這個公共建設，完全是一種理工人的傲慢。核電廠，以及這個世界，不是只靠駕馭冷冰冰的物理定律就能順利運作的，社會的法制與有效治理（governance），比物理與工程還要重要太多了。我對我們投票組成的政府在無法確保食品安全、司法獨立、經濟機會平等的狀況下，竟然宣稱它能完善運作核電廠的治理感到恐懼，即便我知道讓核電廠得以運作的科學與工程技術，早在半個世紀前就已經為人所知。

我們所在的時代是複雜的，知識在不同領域與地區的分布是不均的。比起理論物理，政治哲學以及治理可能還停留在啟蒙時代，實作的工程甚至更加落後。科學與工程的發展差異只需要數十年就能在全球的文明中傳播與弭平，但治理需要數個世紀，甚至在某些層次，需要經由本地文化的醞釀，才能完善。去年，But 翻譯了福島核能電廠事故調查報告。這個報告可以拿來探討別的國家治理失敗的過程與因素。引用這份文獻絕對沒有隱含日本都做不好台灣不可能做好的意思，但是作為選民我覺得值得細讀，以及捫心自問，選出的政府官僚以及樹立的制度，能不能避免同樣的問題發生。

回到核能電廠不是原子彈這個廣告。反過來或許可以歸因，會出現「核能電廠不是原子彈」這種澄清，大概是因為有反核團體用反智、製造恐懼的方式在宣傳類似「核能電廠是原子彈」這種謬誤。同類的反核團體還常用類似核能很複雜，人類絕對無法駕馭這種訴諸神秘學的說法來反核。如果社會運動的立論只停留在這個層次，下次真的不要怪政府拿「此方案真的很複雜」、「無法用簡單的幾句話說明清楚」這種宣傳來羞辱人了。

如果您看完這篇拙作，還想要更了解科學與工程之外，台灣不該繼續興建核電廠的理由，請參考全國廢核行動平台的說帖。

Edit (4/24)：刪除理論物理與政治哲學/治理的比較。我的原意是要指出科學方法在自然科學之外的複雜知識的無力之處，而不是字面所指的知識的「落後」。刪除此句對本文的論點（公共建設所需的知識超越自然科學）無礙（正好相反——治理與政治哲學在核能電廠的興建無比重要）。在此對認為有任何不敬之處的讀者表達歉意。