Dvorak Makes Me Happy

I'm learning the Dvorak simplified keyboard. It's an arrangement of keys on the keyboard that puts the most commonly used keys on the home row and distributes the keys such that your hands alternate more often, increasing typing speed and reducing errors.

Technically, it's much more efficient and ergonomic than the traditional wrist-busting "qwerty" layout we were tortured with in school. Invented by Dr. Dvorak in the early 30s, it unfortunately never caught on because people were too used to the other layout and also would have to buy new typewriters. Even today, where practically every operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.) has the option to switch back and forth between layouts, Dvorak is under-used. There's a bit of debate as to why.

I have yet to finish reading the more well-known critique of Dvorak's superiority over qwerty, but this economic interpretation actually disconcerted me quite a bit. In the article, Callahan claims:

...there is no objective yardstick by which to gauge whether some technology is "better for society," other than the profits and losses of the entrepreneurs who choose it.

?! Not only is the argument based on the circular reasoning that $$$ = Good for society, it also neglects common yardsticks such as human health and overall happiness. Granted you can't measure happiness or health objectively, but that doesn't make them so irrelevant that we should ignore them. A friend made an ironic quip: "A nation's wealth is measured by the gross domestic product. The higher the GDP, the lower the wealth." By wealth he meant the social cohesion and general contentment of the populace. Although international surveys don't exactly corroborate his joke, I get his point. America, which is rich, and India, which is poor, scored 1st and 2nd in a worldwide happiness survey, suggesting that amassing material wealth is not the only means to happiness.

Yet most economists still refuse to see anything that's not measurable. I am alarmed that this kind of reasoning is allowed to flourish unchecked in academia. I like to think of myself as a scientist, and as a scientist, I accept that things that are inexplicable with current models can still exist. But there's more. Models do exist that measure human happiness more accurately. I frequent this blog about synergy: solutions.synearth.net.

Fractals

Ever since I was a wee lad of about 10, I have been fascinated by fractals. Barely able to put together my own BASIC program, I typed one into my Mac SE from a source code listing I got somewhere. It was pretty ugly in black and white. Fortunately, lots of nice fractal generators have been written since. I'm using a Linux program called Xaos now. It's just amazing how organic these look.

Can you believe the detail in this? And to think it came from a simple-looking set of equations.

Maybe this is what life on an alien planet looks like. Maybe it's what life on Earth looks like at sufficient magnification.

Looks like a plant that you smoke and start to see more plants like it floating around.

Nerds Go Here

If you are a computer nerd, you might like my computer nerd blog, which focuses on GNU/Linux: http://humanerr0r.blogspot.com/