Month: November 2014

Quick spin up to Mt. Tabor this morning in the wind and sleet. I pulled out the racing snowshoes in expectation of a few inches of snow on the ground. But alas, disappointment; freezing rain and sleet, but no snow.

http://www.strava.com/activities/218859212

Every chance I get, I run up my little mountain.

A photo posted by Chris Rivard (@chrisrivard) on Nov 11, 2014 at 9:05am PST

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I was ice climbing in Smuggler’s Notch, Vermont – the year of the massive ice storm. My partner and I climbed frozen waterfalls all day and then bivy’d in a tent pitched in a snow pit we dug with our shovels. I remember approaching the climbs in a deep stillness and when the wind blew, the sound of ice encased tree limbs clinked and clanked against one another in harmony – an unforgettable experience.

Todd and I skinned up Hood and skied out the same day that 9 inches of rain fell per hour, melted the snowpack and caused massive flooding on the Sandy river.

This day:

[vimeo 18921387 w=500 h=281]

Sandy River Flood from alexandra erickson on Vimeo.

Unforgettable.

I have nothing to say.

A photo posted by Chris Rivard (@chrisrivard) on Nov 11, 2014 at 7:14am PST

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Principles for the Working Product Designer

Slides posted here.

That was fun.

http://www.strava.com/activities/216046074

Night run through Tabor last night. It’s been exhilarating following a cocoon of light from my headlamp on the dark trails. Last night was warm and the cloud layer far above the city lights. From benches at the top there were wow views of the city skyline before I ducked back into the woods and weaved my way down the trail to the reservoirs.

Massive halo around a nearly full moon last night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22%C2%B0_halo

Trails in Forest Park are getting muddy and slippery and I’m on a string of zippy runs since last week. I feel like I could start to do some double days with a night run in the evening if I want to bump up to 40 miles/week.

31 miles last week was a good load. Everything was dialed. My cycling commute is reduced to nearly half of what is was and I haven’t been riding the Mundo – it leaves me with more capacity for runs and still gives me some cycling recovery during the week. Bueno.

Saving daylight.

A photo posted by Chris Rivard (@chrisrivard) on Nov 11, 2014 at 5:30pm PST

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I’m on the lookout for a fall trail shoe.
8oz or less with some medial posting and small lugs for the trails (and smooth enough for my passage through the city to Forest Park). Maybe it’s a unicorn shoe.

http://www.strava.com/activities/215575332

Jotting this down because I think it’s an idea worth exploring and I was considering adding it to my talk for Thursday but it doesn’t really fit.

I was going to mention that a great resource for re-learning how to communicate is Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg and I started to ponder Elon Musk’s recent comments on being wary of AI.

So the idea is this: how do we think we’re going to design benevolent AI when the language of our culture is war. Meaning… we’ve been at war for all of my adult life, about 20 years. We use adversarial language to communicate. If AI is going to be programmed by us, and this is the way we communicate, why do we think it’s not going to be like us?

The other thought is that maybe we should think about AI more like nuclear weapons. We haven’t had a nuclear war because we know that the destructive scale would be immense, and there is the aspect of mutually assured destruction that prevents anyone from turning to nuclear weapons.  The issue with this is that the destruction from a nuclear weapon is tangible – physical things go away. In AI, the changes would be behavioral and slower moving and we could pass a point where understand the outcomes of our decisions.

Some links:

http://www.livescience.com/48481-elon-musk-artificial-intelligence-threat.html

Slate articles have gotten so terrible it’s not even funny.
The comments in this one are better than the actual article.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/10/elon_musk_artificial_intelligence_why_you_shouldn_t_be_afraid_of_ai.html

“I don’t need your civil war.”