Solving the Wikipedia problem

Today I was reading an AMA discussion on reddit from a Wikipedia admin. Much of the conversation centered around either delitionism (editors and admins on Wikipedia who want to delete lots of pages that they don't consider important) or the creeping vandalism of special interests. I've long thought that both problems could be solved by creating a new service to replace Wikipedia, so let me put my thoughts down in writing.

Copyright again: 15 years may be the sweet spot

It's worth watching this video in general, but I've linked to a specific point (if the video doesn't start at 16:24, then skip forward to there) where they present some really surprising data: in general, book publishers stop publishing books after between 10 and 20 years. What this means is that if you want to find a book published 20-40 years ago, you're probably not going to find it unless it's one of the few books that either was made into a movie or is required for some college coursework. Want to find William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic? Sure, that had some big budget actors in the film adaptation, but Connie Willis's Fire Watch? Yeah so, how about a Kindle version? And that's the lucky ones that are available as ebooks! Many are simply lost.

Spoiler-filled Doctor Who 50th Anniversary episode

Promo Image for the episode from SFX

Let's just jump right into it. First off, this is a massive spoiler-filled review! Do not read this if you have not seen the episode!

Everyone else gone? Okay, let me get the complaints out of the way: I think the fan service was laid on a bit too thick. I love Doctor Who, but man, this made even me cringe at times! There was no real reason for the Doctor to marry the queen. Having Baker appear was kind of strained (though, see below) and I thought the epilogue was kind of painful.

That's really it. I have no other complaints.

The rest of the episode was excellent.

Retiring two blogs, starting another!

I've made some pretty large changes in my life of late. If you've read my other posts, you know that I'm now a Freemason. Big change! I end up attending 3-4 meetings per month (1 is my Lodge's required monthly meeting, and the others are things I choose to participate in) and then I pitch in where I can and attend cool events like our recent historic walking tour of Cambridge. So this means that I have much less time and mental bandwidth for things like video games and some of my spare-time software hacking. Because of that, I'm bringing my two blogs dedicated to those topics to a close. Those blogs are:

ajsgaming.blogspot.com and ajssoftwaredev.blogspot.com

They will continue to exist, but I probably won't post to them any more, and if I do, it will be very, very infrequent.

A Sierpinski tetrahedron
from momath.org

I'm also spinning up a new blog about Freemasonry that I will be trying to update regularly along with this one. That new blog is at:

tetrahedralmason.blogspot.com

The Tetrahedral Freemason is all about my experiences as I explore what it means to be a better man, from working to improve my community to learning about the past to being there for my brothers to the esoteric and philosophical aspects of it all.

If you have questions, you can post replies to my posts there or here, and I'll try to answer you as best I can.

Cambridge Masonic Temple Open House yesterday

Open House at the
Cambridge Masonic Temple

By Aaron Sherman

As I posted on Google Plus and Facebook, yesterday, we had a state-wide Open House in the Masonic Lodges in Massachusetts along with several other states which followed our example of previous years.

To recap the event, we had a good turnout. Lots of folks wanted the full tour and I started to get a sense of what was useful and not useful to cover for someone looking at us from the outside. In case anyone's curious, here's how it went:

Usually we'd start in the basement function hall to grab a snack or drink if they wanted any. We'd hang out there and chat to see if we could bundle up a group and then proceed to the second floor "business room" which is just an informal room with a big table for hanging out and talking before meetings or otherwise having less formal events like our book club. We'd talk about the history: when the Grand Lodge of England was formed (1717), when the Massachusetts Grand Lodge was formed (1733), when the oldest Lodge associated with the Cambridge Masonic Temple was formed (1805) and when the Cambridge Masonic Temple was built (1910).

Obama is not remotely the worst President in US history

By Aaron Sherman

Today, I came across another one of those silly, "Obama is the worst President ever!" claims that you see floating around poorly spelled Facebook posts or Fox News. Usually I brush it off, but tonight I thought it needed a real response. Let me be clear, I'm a moderate who's not always a big fan of Obama. I don't like Obamacare (single payer models are cheaper and more effective) and I'm aghast at the expansion of domestic spying under his and W's administrations. That said, I think calling him the worst President ever is as absurd as any claim I've ever heard in the political realm, and I lived through Reagan claiming that he had no idea that Iran-Contra was going on in his administration and Nixon claiming that he wasn't a crook.

So here was my response, reviewing the past few decades of Presidents.

How to watch Star Trek

By Aaron Sherman

A while back, I did an essay about Babylon 5 that was primarily a guide for those who had never seen the show. I feel that watching it start-to-end is a bit of a mistake at this point, and there are places where you really should take a break and review what you've seen.

Star Trek isn't the same sort of thing. Star Trek is more of a mythology than a story, and as such you can pretty much jump in anywhere and enjoy it. That being said, I have definite opinions on how you might go about this. I recently put part of this together for a Google Plus response to someone who had never watched the series, so here it is (a bit expanded) for everyone: