Monthly Archives: November 2015

Apt-Get

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Some packages could not be installed.
Unable to correct problems; you have held broken packages of ideas.
This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation,
Or if you are using the unstable distribution,
That some required packages have not yet been created.

The following information may help to resolve the situation.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
Justice, Safety, Innocence (>= 1.8), and the notion that one is suitable,
likely, or prepared to receive that which is appropriate to one's moral
standing, depend on an ordered universe maintained by sufficent force of agency
to perceive, understand, and carry out the operation of the moral law.

But it is not going to be installed.

Still Yet Another Idle Wish for a Future Star Trek Series

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(Previously, previously, previously on An Algorithmic Lucidity.)

"The next thing we need is a secure way to communicate with our contacts on Bajor," says Maj. Kira during Act One of Deep Space Nine Season 6, Episode 3, "Sons and Daughters", planning the secret resistance to the Dominion's occupation of Deep Space Nine ... at a table in a public bar?! Who writes this stuff?

It's too much to retcon, but since we're getting a new series soonish, I'm going to hope for an episode where, as a plot point, some people (not necessarily the protagonists) use cryptography with their universal translators to evade would-be eavesdroppers: you'd stop speaking out loud and configure your universal translator to translate your subvocalizations into noise that can only be decrypted by one of the private keys in your friends' universal translators.

Traffic Koan

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"I'm behind schedule this Monday morning," said the engineer, "but it'll be OK as long as the train isn't late."

The train was late. In that moment, the engineer was enlightened.

Wu's commentary: As one train door opens, another fails to close. The fool curses police activity at West Oakland. The wise person swims across the bay.

Wu's poem:

The doors are closing;
Please stand clear of the doors so
The train can depart.