The Long Horizon

Asteroids

2011-11-24T06:20:00.005-05:00

Internet Poster's Question:

I understand (drag etc) why the asteroid would disintegrate, but that is something different from actually exploding which, to me at least, implies that there is some kind of internal energy reserve which is released causing the asteroid to fragment violently from the inside. This is different from breaking up due to external forces (equivalent to the difference between how a bomb exlodes on hitting the ground and how a china teapot disintegrates on hitting the ground).

If I hit the water at 100 miles an hour I would, indeed, splatter quite unhappily, but I would not actually explode.

The Siberian example given by the speaker features an asteroid actively exploding, not just burning up. How does that happen?

My Answer:

The explosion is not a chemical explosion but a pressure-wave induced explosion. Take a look at this high-speed camera footage of a bullet going through an apple and a banana:

Inside the apple and banana, if the bullet were traveling slowly, it would just enter and exit leaving a hole-shaped burrow, much like slowly jabbing a pencil through chocolate cake. Because of the bullet's speed relative to the resistance of the medium, the bullet creates a pressure wave as it passes through.

This space.com article talks some more about asteroids exploding in the atmosphere.

An explosion can be triggered by expanding gas, as with nuclear bombs that heat the air and cause it to expand, or with TNT which chemically combusts to create CO2 and O2 gases that expand from denser, solid matter (and heats the air since it's exothermic). But an explosion can be any shock wave moving outward from the center.

When an asteroid hits the hard rocky surface of the earth, an explosion occurs as the kinetic energy is transferred to the surrounding rock as shock wave energy. That's why a room-sized asteroid can leave a mile-wide crater.

Similarly, if an asteroid is moving fast enough, the atmosphere will seem "hard" enough for much of its kinetic energy to be converted into shock wave energy (and heat from friction). When a smooth asteroid fractures and breaks off into numerous jagged non-aerodynamically shaped objects, further shock waves are created as these non-aerodynamic objects suddenly transfer even more kinetic energy into shock wave energy.

P.S. Regarding your teapot v bomb analogy: If your teapot were moving at 3,000m/s, it'd have the explosive power of a kilogram of TNT (4.1 megajoules). Remember, kinetic energy = 0.5mv^2, so something moving 100 times faster has 10,000 times the energy.

parallax

2011-08-26T03:58:00.019-04:00

I was reading a certain xkcd comic talking about how large the clouds in the sky are and yet how difficult it is for us as humans to recognize their size. In the comic, the feat was accomplished through a marvelous use of technology, utilizing HD cameras kept 100 feet apart to achieve the depth perception needed to appreciate the true scale of these giants floating above us.

Well, that started cranking some of my now aged and beleaguered neurons into remembering about an epiphany I had as a small child.

I was four years old and it was my first night out, literally. I had until then never experienced the night's sky, the stars, or the moon in all their splendor for any more than a glimpse, courtesy of getting tucked into bed each night. Well, this particular night was different; I was ushered into a car and, as per usual, wasn't told anything. Not being told anything actually had its advantages -- it meant I grew savvy at eavesdropping, though listening at that age generally led to more confusion than clarity. From bits of conversation, I gleaned that this was a long road trip. I disliked confined spaces, and I especially disliked confined spaces that hurtled down the monotonous roads so nauseatingly.

It was late, I was tired, but I was too excited to sleep. The night was so mysterious. My nose was practically pressed against the car window as I tried to soak in the strange new world. A bright glowing creature seemed to be hovering and following us, though. At first I wondered if this was some new insect or animal I hadn't known. None of the adults seemed to pay it any heed. It behaved very strangely for an insect, though. It seemed to follow and keep pace however fast we went, yet if we stopped, so did it and it seemed to keep its distance. It didn't seem like an insect; if it were interested, why did it not fly straight into the car? If it were not interested, why did it follow? Why did it not chase any other cars; why was it fixated on us? Moreover, insects fly forward, and thus would chase us from behind; this creature seemed just as content to fly sideways, hovering outside my side window. Then, something strange happened; we turned at an intersection and this creature rather than hovering to our side was hovering in front of us! This was either some devilishly clever creature trying to play tricks on me, or, as was made increasingly likely as we turned at more intersections, it was a fixture in the sky!

I marveled at it. It seemed so near and tangible like a fruit fly but now so very distant. I trained my gaze to probe it, to study it. It was the most inspiring object I had seen in that short little life I led. After some time we meandered through the small streets and intersections and hit a large, straight, road. The glowing orb was still outside. The car picked up speed, the pavement whizzed by in a blur, the grass across the shoulder of the road sped by as well. The trees in a distance danced along, and even the faint outlines of mountains in the extreme distance crept. The glowing ball stood still -- it stood perfectly still! This was astonishing to me. A tree was large, and a mountain gigantic; what did that say about this glowing ball? Well, it was no ball at all, it was a planet!

And for the next four years I believed the moon was the largest object in the universe, bigger than Earth or anything else that had ever existed.

Patriarchy, Patrilineality, and Primogeniture

2011-05-03T22:04:00.030-04:00

With movies such as the King's Speech recently out on DVD, and the media showering attention at the wedding of a bald bloke named Willy and his air hostess bride Katy, one can't help but be cognizant of the English hereditary system.

In my case, I was additionally reminiscent of conversations I had in college regarding the distinctions between the English and French systems of heredity. The English system confers all status and privilege to the eldest male born; by contrast, the French system distributed status and privilege among all male born. Both systems employed patriarchy and patrilineality, but only the English system additionally employed primogeniture. It seems like an inconsequential difference, but, as with mathematical fractals and chaos, any iterative rule-based system takes subtle deviations and manifests them into mammoth ones.

With the English and French rules of heredity, the English fiefdoms were never divided upon inheritance, whereas the French fiefdoms were continually divided and subdivided leaving a patchwork of ineffective plots of land ultimately conquered by another, not to mention the severe inflation French titles underwent as a result. This ultimately led to the French lords losing their grasp on power, as there were simply too many of them trying to uphold the standard of living meant for a much smaller group of their ancestors.

Well, my train of thought continued along this line, and yesterday I pondered, is there an even better iterative rule-based system for consolidating power? I envisioned the Medieval society, so it had to conform to patriarchy and patrilineality. However, I decided to bend the definition of patrilineality to non-contiguous patrilineality. That is, instead of a father bequeathing to his eldest son, let him bequeath to his eldest grandson. Seems like a subtle difference, doesn't it? But, as was demonstrated earlier, subtle differences in the rules can lead to large scale differences in impact.

Let's play it out, shall we? Suppose a man from the Montague family and a woman from the Capulet family form a union. If their son is the eldest among all his male cousins, on his Montague side as well as his Capulet side, then he would be twice-inherited, creating a merged Montague-Capulet colossus!

If the English system proved superior to the French system because estates were preserved rather than divided across inheritance, this new hypothetical system may have proven even more potent in this Medieval society by actually consolidating estates across inheritance. Noble families often intermarried to form alliances, but under the proposed hereditary system, you wouldn't get a mere alliance, but an actual consolidation of two families' estates into a single heir.

In fact, this phenomenon did occasionally happen in English noble society, but more by accident than by systematic forethought. Every so often, a couple was left with no male heirs, and in such cases their son-in-law or grandson could become twice-inherited. This happened with rarity, however, and was generally avoided because the maternal grandfather had the unenvious distinction of generally not being accorded by English society any influential role over either his son-in-law or his matrilineal grandson. By contrast, a hereditary system that specifically inherited across a more removed relation — from a grandfather to his eldest grandson — would confer far greater influence to such a grandfather over such a grandson.

media hype and bell's theorem

2010-07-26T09:04:00.059-04:00

So, I found the following e-mail dated 2007-08-24, in which I replied to an e-mail forward titled "FW: We Have Broken The Speed Of Light". The forward was regarding physicists from the University of Koblenz demonstrating quantum-entanglement, but the reporter chose to refer to that as "We Have Broken The Speed Of Light".

It's just a misleading headline, and the German scientists have done nothing new. The news agencies are renowned for pulling this sort of stuff -- ignoring scientific progress which inches along like a slug on the pavement, and then after decades of ignoring this, some news agency realizes that the slug has moved far enough from where the public was last informed it was, and the agency now declares this a "leap" in scientific understanding with a sensationally misleading headline and complete misunderstanding of the fundamentals. Unfortunately, most people do not grasp quantum mechanics and so any reporter can rise to fame with whatever sort of babble he writes.

The public would be more skeptical if, for example, the reporter claimed that the new Toyota manages to draw their new cars with 2,000 actual horses. That's not what a horsepower is, and people know that. We know that horsepower is a unit of force approximately equal to the output of one horse. This is important because the output of one horse is not the same thing as a horse, because one is a unit of energy per distance (force) that can be produced by a reasonably small device, and the other is an equestrian creature that needs to be fed and when in quantities exceeding twenty will occupy all lanes of a typical highway and would struggle to fit inside the average consumer's garage.

Physics isn't the only realm where "new"s is really "old"s repackaged under the mantra "if you haven't seen it, it's new to you." Remember 9/10/2001? The summer was all about shark attacks, and every news agency jumped on that band wagon because shark attacks went un-reported so long that it became new and terrifying. Of course, the little known fact was that 2001 witnessed a below average incidence of annual deaths due to sharks. That's right, a year with fewer shark attacks than usual fueled a media frenzy over each and every shark attack.

Take, for example, these headlines:

Why Can't We Be Friends? A horrific attack raises old fears, but new research is revealing surprising keys to shark behavior
(TIME magazine, cover, 2001)
A Scary Jump in Shark Attacks...Could Threaten the Sharks (Businessweek, April 23, 2001)
Expert confirms surfer was bitten by shark (CNN, July 20, 2001)
Boy dies after shark attack (CNN, Sept 2, 2001)
Man killed in N.C. shark attack; woman hurt (CNN, Sept 3, 2001)

Any many more..

Contrast that media hype with academia trying to bring people to their senses:

"GAINESVILLE, Florida, February 18, 2002 (ENS) - Despite the prevailing perception that 2001 was a banner year for shark attacks, actual numbers were slightly down, a new University of Florida study shows." -- University of Florida (ufl.edu)

" 'Falling coconuts kill 150 people worldwide each year, 15 times the number of fatalities attributable to sharks,' said George Burgess, Director of the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File and a noted shark researcher." -- Daily University Science News (unisci.com) May 23, 2002

Dubious Data Award 2001: "The frenzy was remarkable. According to the NEXIS database, there were a mere 58 stories about shark attacks in the US print media in June. This increased tenfold in July to 592, and it rose again in August to 684. September was the month the story would have consumed all others, with 624 entries up to and including September 11. The advent of another dangerous but unseen villain stopped all that. ... During the 1990s, when only five people were killed by sharks, 28 children were killed by falling TV sets. The Times editorial mentioned above concluded from our data that, loosely speaking, 'watching Jaws on TV is more dangerous than swimming in the Pacific.' " (stats.org, Jan 1, 2002)

Right, so we've thoroughly exposed how most of these headlines are useless "old"s repacked with bad math and poor editorializing to shock you as "new"s. Why is the faster-than-light article misleading? Well, first, we need to delve into what speed is. Speed is distance per time. What is distance? One might answer "the distance between A and B is the length of a straight line between those points". But that's not quite right. A straight line is the definition of distance only in Cartesian space, but in other geometries where the straight line is sub-optimal (longer than the shortest path) or impossible (shorter than the shortest path), the length of a "straight line" is not the distance. So what is the distance? It's the length of the geodesic -- which is just a math term for the "shortest possible path". Aha! So now we're making progress - that means that I can travel at a speed (distance per time) slower than light but arrive sooner by reducing the distance! But of course we all knew that -- we find "short-cuts" to drive to work, often traveling on slow back-roads instead of fast superhighways yet still arriving quicker.

So how do these spatial short-cuts work? Well, there are all kinds of spatial short-cuts, because physicists have long since known that spacetime is heavily warped with many microfissures like quantum entanglements peppering the universe as well as with large fissures made by gravity wells such as blackholes, neutron stars, and wormholes. Physics of the very big (astrophysics) is only a looking glass, but physics of the very small (quantum mechanics) prescribes us experiments which are feasible to undertake. Specifically, the easiest way we can warp spacetime is through quantum entanglement -- which is far more than just a theory since Bell's paper shook the scientific community in 1964 with results which we will eventually get to in this email.

Okay, but what is quantum mechanics? Back in Einstein's day, it was centered on one notion: that a particle could be indeterminate -- that is, not only is its state unknown by you and me, but its state is unknown by even itself and the universe and, if we want to drag theology into this, God. Einstein famously exclaimed "God does not play dice!" to ridicule the notion of indeterminate states. Who were Einstein's intellectual nemeses? Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the two who came up with what became known as the Copenhagen interpretation while working together in Copenhagen, 1927. Essentially, Bohr and Heisenberg believed that sub-atomic particles were probabilistic and not deterministic. Einstein believed that probabilities were merely mathematical constructs on paper but actual things in the universe were deterministic.

Unlike a purely philosophical disagreement, this disagreement was scientific. If particles were determinate, they would behave like you would expect. If particles could be indeterminate, then some peculiar things can be done: particle X can be at A with 50% probability and at B with 50% probability -- which is a very different thing from saying X is at A 50% of the time and at B 50% of the time. To illustrate the difference, suppose I am (A) dialing my apartment number with my cell phone with 50% probability and I am (B) dialing my cell phone with my apartment number with 50% probability. There is just one (My Name – edited out), so you would expect either the apartment phone to ring or my cell phone to ring. However, that interpretation (Einstein's) would assume that (A) happens 50% of the time and (B) happens 50% of the time but never both. Under the Copenhagen interpretation, you would sometimes hear the apartment phone ring (A), you would sometimes hear the cell phone ring (B), and you would sometimes hear a busy signal (A+B)! That third possibility is highly important -- it means that both (A) and (B) occurred simultaneously and interacted with itself. How on earth can I get a busy signal by calling one of my phones from the other? You can see why there was a lot of debate - quantum mechanics does not sound reasonable. The scientific community was split.

All this is purely theoretical at the time (1920s and 1930s), but people were intrigued. So what is quantum entanglement? Well, "entanglement" was a term Schrodinger used during his debates with Einstein after the 1935 EPR paper (a paper written by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen showing bizarre conclusions derived from quantum mechanics, a thinly veiled attempt at demonstrating the absurdity of such a view in a rational universe). Shortly put, these indeterminate states can be determinate by entangling with it. Schrodinger famously used his "cat in a box" thought experiment. We start with a single radioactive atom with a 1 week half-life, which means that it will decay in the first week with equal probability that it will not decay. Second, we add an execution machine which releases poisonous gas, triggered by alpha/beta emission (radioactive decay). Third, we add a living cat. Fourth, we seal them all in one impenetrable box. The cat's fate is entangled with the fate of the radioactive atom. If the atom decays, the cat dies, else the cat lives. However, because of the how the psi wave function works (the mathematical function calculating probabilities for indeterminate states), only the act of observing will collapse the wave function into a single determinate state, but for only the observer and no one else. The cat is observing the execution machine (through being alive or dead), and the execution machine is observing the radioactive atom (through being triggered or not). Therefore, the radioactive atom is in a determinate state for the machine and the cat. However, we the people on the outside are observing none of this, so the radioactive atom is in a quantum superposition of both states. Therefore, the cat also has entered quantum entanglement, because it observed the quantum particle yet was not itself observed. This means that the cat is also in quantum superposition, one involving both living and dead states. If we observe the radioactive atom, we make determinate the state of the cat; similarly, if we observe the cat first, then we make determinate the state of the radioactive atom. This is entanglement.

The Copenhagen interpretation says that such a thing is possible. The classical approach, endorsed by Einstein, says such a thing is impossible -- that it cannot possibly be that only when the box is opened the atom and cat decide to be either decayed and dead or non-decayed and alive. The classical approach suggests that this decision happened, that either it was fated that the atom decay and the cat die or it was fated that the atom not decay and the cat remain alive. The classical approach could never accept that a cat dead for one entire day could be decided now at the time of opening the box to have died yesterday. The present affecting the past is considered counterfactual, and this was the crux of the EPR paradox showing how quantum mechanics is in direct contradiction with a rational universe.

As reasonable as the classical interpretation is and as absurd as the Copenhagen interpretation, and quantum mechanics along with it, sounded, the mathematics was inescapable and particle physicists had known since the Thomas Young double-split experiment in 1801 that physics of the very-small behaves in absurd ways. While the rift within the scientific community lingered, exacerbated by Einstein's obstinacy at pursuing a feud with quantum mechanics, many bright minds and leaders of the community flocked toward quantum mechanics. In many ways, Einstein's opposition was a bit hypocritical. His own theory of special relativity, and later general relativity, battled against classical Newtonian physics, and the new theories of quantum mechanics did not jeopardize relativity -- in fact, quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity can coexist side by side perfectly without contradictions. The dispute was academic, it was abstract, it was about the philosophical nature of reality. It was, that is, until 1965 when Irish physicist John Bell released a paper which thundered through the community shaking classical beliefs down to their very core and proving beyond any doubt that the "rational universe" envisaged by classical notions was what was fake, rendering any classical notions of local realism illusory.

Specifically, Bell's theorem proved how local hidden variables cannot explain the phenomena observed at the quantum scale. It sounds like a benign statement, unless one realizes what local hidden variables are. In the example with Schrodinger's cat in a box, the classical approach would suggest that whether the atom decayed and the cat died was hidden, not indeterminate. Classical thinking states that this special impenetrable box merely hides what happened, but all the events still transpired and are not in an indeterminate state. Bell's theorem shows that however reasonable such classical thinking is, it is wrong, hidden local variables do not work. The theorem is simple, and involves setting up an apparatus to empirically verify how our universe isn't a rational universe, one which could be explained merely by local hidden variables.

The remainder of this e-mail is devoted to summarizing Bell's theorem:

Bell's theorem begins, if local realism is true, then there is no impact of a distant actor's actions when measuring a local particle's spin. The phenomenon where two particles under quantum entanglement can have perfect correlation when measured at identical angles (let X be this angle) is a phenomenon that can be explained under the model of local realism by employing local hidden variables, as follows: A deterministic mapping could be programmed into these entangled particles at the time they were entangled, which is feasible because at the time they were entangled they were proximate to each other. The deterministic mapping, call it m, would map an angle, from 0 to 360 degrees, to spin, -1 for counter-clockwise and +1 for clockwise. Therefore, even if these entangled particles are now apart by great distances, one actor measuring one of the particles at angle X would see a spin m(X) and a distant actor measuring the other particle at angle X would also see spin m(X). Since m is a local property carried by each particle, nothing non-local affects the measurement.

While local realism seems to work at explaining entanglement, Bell's theorem devises a situation where it fails. Let Q and Q' be two angles the distant actor can measure at, and R and R' be two angles the local actor can measure at. Therefore, we need concern ourselves with only a reduced m, one which doesn't handle 0 to 360 degrees but instead only four angles, Q, Q', R, and R'. Since m is deterministic, there are only 16 possible mappings it could be -- e.g. m(Q,Q',R,R') could be (1,1,1,1) or (1,1,1,-1) or (1,-1,-1,1) et cetera. Let M be the set of these 16 possible mappings. Let s be the spin the local actor observes and let t be the spin the remote actor observes. We can decompose E[s*t|Q,R], the expected value for the product s*t for when angles Q and R are chosen but m is free to be anything in M, into "sum p(m)*m(Q)*m(R) for all m in M", where p(m) is the probability of m occurring, which may be 1/16 if all 16 mappings in M are equally likely to occur, but we place no such restriction on the distribution.

Next, let W = E[s*t|Q,R] + E[s*t|Q,R'] + E[s*t|Q',R] - E[s*t|Q',R'], which decomposes into "sum p(m)*(m(Q)*m(R) + m(Q)*m(R') + m(Q')*m(R) - m(Q')*m(R')) for all m in M". We know that any expression S of the form qr + qr' + q'r － q'r', where q, q', r, and r' are real numbers in the closed interval [-1, 1], must be a real number in the closed interval [-2,2] due to algebra. (Explanation: qr + qr' + q'r - q'r' is linear in all four variables, in other words, the partial derivative of S with respect to any single variable is an expression lacking that same variable; so, S must take on its maximum and minimum values at the corners of its domain. Thus, some integer inputs q, q', r and r' each in { -1 , +1 } must yield the expression's min/max bounds. Either employing further algebra or applying brute-force on all the 16 possible integer inputs, we find -2 and 2 are the bounds.) Therefore, W is bounded by "sum p(m)*S_m for all m in M" where each S is an unknown in the interval [-2,2]. Therefore, W is in the interval [-2,2]. (Explanation: p(m) are weights that sum to 1, and a weighted average of values in an interval must yield a result in the same interval.) This inequality, -2 ≤ E[s*t|Q,R] + E[s*t|Q,R'] + E[s*t|Q',R] - E[s*t|Q',R'] ≤ 2, is the BCHSH inequality, which gives us a formal mathematical constraint when believing spin is determined by local hidden variables and not a distant actor.

Bell's theorem concludes, this time finding a constraint for W using quantum theories. The wave function in quantum mechanics simplifies E[s*t|A,B] to cos(2B-2A) for any real angles A and B. By letting Q = 2pi/8, Q′ = 0, R = pi/8, and R′ = 3pi/8, then W simplifies to cos(-pi/4) + cos(pi/4) + cos(pi/4) - cos(3pi/4), which is approx. 0.707 + 0.707 + 0.707 - (-0.707) = 4 * 0.707 = 2.828, thereby violating BCHSH. This is perfect, it places contradictory mathematical constraints, between [-2,2] with local hidden variables and 2.828 with the wave function, on W.

Due to the law of large numbers, the running average, obtained by repeatedly rerunning experiments, rapidly converges to the expected value, meaning we can empirically measure E[s*t|A,B] for any angles A and B at arbitrarily high confidence levels. Current empirical evidence shows with high statistical confidence that the expected value is above 2.7, easily violating BCHSH and approaching 2.828 predicted by the wave function.

There is a caveat about Bell's theorem I had omitted from the above e-mail. A hidden variable could exist at the time of the universe's creation. Let's call this variable U, for universal simulator. If everything in the universe were proximate at this time of creation, then all particles may share this variable U, and any new particles may copy U whenever it comes across a U-carrying particle. Thus, all particles with high statistical confidence are U-carriers. Now, since U contains all information from the time of the universe's creation, then, if everything in our universe is pre-determined, we can know seemingly non-local information by merely querying the local hidden variable U, which, as a universal simulator, knows everything about our universe if events are pre-determined from initial conditions. Therefore, two entangled particles may "know" about each other from U and conspire to yield strange results.

Rather than a gaping loophole, this is a minor caveat because such a universe that conspires so maliciously to deceive us is akin to the ones imagined by philosophers of antiquity when they questioned whether the universe may have arisen only now, with every particle perfectly in place with the right momentum to trick us into believing there was any history at all when none existed. Were such celestial malice present, it would be impregnable to philosophy, science, and studies in general. Therefore, by reductio ad absurdum, if we wish to study, we must study the alternative, the scenario in which the universe is not so malicious.

Re: Imminent U.S. Attack On Iran?

2009-02-07T22:23:00.032-05:00

Continuing on the theme of dredging up old emails in lieu of posting anything new, I found this reply I gave to my mother who had forwarded to me a widely circulating email. The circular suggested an imminent U.S. attack on Iran while hypothesizing false-flag operations would precipitate the event and referencing a film called "Terrorstorm". She asked what I thought, if investments need to be protected, and if I had heard of the film. My reply, posted Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 1:14PM is as follows:

It's unlikely that anything large-scale is imminent. Moreover, it's extremely dubious that any administration can plan and execute self-injury to its own naval vessel.

This is not to say that were accidental injury to occur that the event would not be propagandized mercilessly in an opportunistic manner. The Spanish-American war of 1898 precipitated in large part due to the sinking of the USS Maine on February 15, 1898. While the cause of losing the vessel was deemed inconclusive both by independent experts of that time and by those today, the U.S. Govt. under strained relations with Spain decided to spin the event as a deliberate attack by Spain. The rest is history. Current theories as to what caused the USS Maine to sink agree that the ammunition magazines in the ship exploded, destroying the vessel. The theories then diverge from there, one believing the vessel detonated a Spanish mine and that ignited the magazines and another believing the high-temperatures of the coal-engine ignited the magazines. Despite the theories, it is widely agreed that Spain desperately wanted to avoid any confrontation with the U.S. because it was more than aware of its naval inferiority to the newly industrialized U.S. Why a nation aware of the certain defeat it would suffer if engaged in a war with the U.S. would precipitate one stands against reason; yet, in 1898 the U.S. Govt. played Spain as the aggressor and emanated its views across all distribution channels.

One thing to note, however, is that the U.S. Govt would never explicitly execute injury to one of its own vessels because the gravity of that act would be so earth-shattering that it could simply never be kept under wraps. Too many individuals would need to be involved and the risk exposure too high. Passive negligence is the successful modus operandi, as some suspect Roosevelt employed with Pearl Harbor. The passive negligence Roosevelt is suspected of is in concealing and not relaying in a timely manner information pertaining to an imminent strike on Pearl Harbor, in the hopes that a successful Japanese strike, even if on a remote outpost in the Pacific, would engage the American public in furor. Of course, as witnessed with the slow information pipeline under the Clinton administration regarding the 1998 Pokhran-II tests, it seems reasonable that inefficiency and lack of readiness is caused by bureaucracy and not by malicious intent.

All that said, is an invasion of Iran imminent? The option of passive negligence is always available and it would inevitably lead to a confrontation of some kind with an enemy of the Govt.'s choosing, presumably Iran. However, I do not think our current administration would exercise such an option for two reasons.

The first reason is that the military command structure has built-in shortcuts to bypass sending every decision to Bush. If reinforcements or some other defensive precaution is needed, the military can carry out the needed tasks without involving Bush. The only time the president is necessary is in transforming intelligence provided by the CIA into action carried out by the military, and the president can choose to delay this process as some claim Roosevelt had. While the CIA may provide vital information which Bush has the ability to be passively negligent of, the strong presence of the U.S. military forces in the middle-east supply the military with a self-sufficient source of intelligence, effectively diminishing the utility of the CIA and removing opportunities for Bush to be negligent.

The second reason is that Bush's political capital is extremely low, both with allies as well as with ordinary folk, and I doubt he would successfully manage to convince everyone that stretching our military thinner than how extremely thin they are already stretched is a good idea.

Of course, it's likely that Ahmadinejad's advisers have made similar analyses and will try to push the boundaries of what the U.S. will allow them to do. This could spiral into brinkmanship. As of yet, there hasn't been any serious news of Iran testing the patience of the U.S. Without properly testing our reactions to various, minor infractions of internationally acceptable behavior under the current settings, Iran would not be able to triangulate a clear enough landscape of permissibility. Thus, even if they are aware that the landscape of permissibility has expanded due to an emaciated Whitehouse and depleted spare military power, they are in the dark as to the exact boundaries of this new permissive landscape. So long as they are uncertain what our reactions will be, Iran will not take any path of major consequence. Of course, I could be over-estimating Iran's prudence and they may decide that venturing into an unknown landscape is of high enough value to merit the risk.

Still, should investments be protected? Of course. But the advice is no different than it always has been: a well-balanced portfolio. Equity, currency baskets, funds, etc. I don't think anything in particular needs to be done whether or not we invade Iran. In the extreme case, the Govt. might issue higher-interest bonds to summon additional, immediate spending power for war-financing, thus reducing the price of existing bonds currently trading at lower yields and reducing the price of mediocre equity. The impact on stocks would not be as dire as one would think. If war-financing is conducted through the issuance of bonds, the US Dollar will weaken further, having two effects: firstly, better exports to Europe; secondly, cheaper labor and higher inflation. Traditionally, such devaluation has a positive effect on the economy because the mood of the consumer revolves around nominal wages. Thus, if they make 45,000 now and 52,000 next year, even if purchasing power has diminished, they tend to be giddy with joy at, yes, earning less, but receiving more currency units. This consumer confidence acts as a steroid, bolstering demand for almost every product, and helping stocks perform.

No, I haven't seen "Terrorstorm", but I now quickly googled and read reviews about it. It seems to be done with the theme that the govt manufactures a perpetual state-of-war in order to subdue domestic freedoms and attain maximum centralized power in order to perpetuate status quo and concentrate wealth to an elite class. It's a bit like the elected chancellor in Star Wars who manufactures an enemy to help receive enough votes to assume dictatorial control, legally, so as to manage the war effectively. "Terrorstorm" seems to be a mix of 1984 and Machiavelli's The Prince, done with a collage of news events. I think it assumes a higher degree of cohesion and capability than exists in reality, even if its assumption that greed and self-interest fuel most administrations is probably correct. However, even if most top-officials are corrupt and greedy, I think it would be disingenuous to assume that the corrupt and greedy are mostly top-officials. There are plenty of corrupt and greedy people acting purely on self-interest at all levels, from high-school dropouts at the lower rungs of the UCLA campus police to various mayors of small, insignificant towns.

It's not disconcerting that greed and corruption are pervasive, since that's an unfortunate reality; what is disconcerting is that the central govt., which is best suited to "policing the police" is instead distracted with imperialistic dreams abroad and is inattentive at home, or, worse, an enabler in granting an oversupply of power to domestic bureaus and state law-enforcement with little to no oversight. While the '60s showed a central govt. willing to act for civil liberties by stepping in with U.S. Marshals and other federal forces to ensure that black students were permitted into white schools in the South, despite opposition from the Southern governors and local police, it now no longer seems conceivable that the new central govt. would use forces to protect citizens against rogue police. The path currently taken seems to steal focus away from domestic abuse and onto foreign affairs, leaving local forces with a carte blanche in using newly conferred powers. With the evaporation of habeas corpus and other guarantees to prevent abuse, there's less and less apart from per-capita income that differentiates the U.S. from a stereotypical non-democratic regime.

Love,
(My name)

Re: high school graduation speech

2009-02-05T09:39:00.014-05:00

Walking down memory lane with my gmail archive, I found an interesting email I sent in response to Paul Graham's graduation speech. I had emailed him on Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 3:57 PM, the following:

Hello Paul,

I hope you're not being inundated with slashdot readers writing their feedback. I'm certainly not lessening the effect by writing, but I feel I should write since I enjoyed reading your graduation speech and am as dismayed as you that it couldn't be delivered. I'm not in highschool anymore, but mentoring highschool students in my free time I know your advices and anecdotes to unveil reality are good ones. I've even forwarded your webpage to my younger cousins who themselves are in college but still very curious about life, the division between childhood and adulthood, and the "point of life" - to stay upwind as you put it.

Apart from my compliments, I also have a suggestion, which I'll get to after a short anecdote of my own. I was very mathematically inclined as a kid and delved into software more than most I knew. All along, I had only one friend whom I could learn from and he equally learned from me. Even my father who was a software developer was uninterested in the murkier topics of computer science theory, such as lambda calculus, frequency analysis, and feistel networks, as the practicing world cared more about programming libraries. Needless to say, it was a difficult journey to learn and a lonely one at that. I knew college would be better, but that's eons away when you're in eighth grade. I stumbled upon linux, open source, and a community working on things without monetary purpose nearing the end of my tenth grade. My first email communique outside of my highschool was to Andrew Tridgell, then the sole samba developer. I had my vague notions of tcp and udp and OS datagram frames but in one email response he clarified questions I would've spent the next year analyzing. Instantly, solitary learning where I learn from my mistakes like an ape became human learning where I stood on civilization learning the past mistakes of all. It was incredible, and I wish I hadn't had to have stumbled on that revelation.

I'm not saying open source is the answer to everyone's grade school intellectual doldrums, even if it was my answer; I'm saying that a useful community will inevitably exist outside college, and highschool students impatient for that college life can tap into it earlier. The key element is people. Most students, including both the academic ones trying to learn and the non-academic ones trying to be popular, will benefit from the idea that there are more people to know and learn from than those in their own school. I know of far too many students who never communicate in email or chat beyond their school classmates, and parents unfortunately find that comforting. The concept I couldn't grasp was how many 6 billion people are and yet how only a few dozen people would be interested in samba in 1995. As a ratio, it's astounding. However, these non-popular -- distinctly separate from the unpopular -- projects are bastions of clever lonely people, the perfect type for a student with little to offer besides attention and a lot to gain such as knowledge.

Ergo, my suggestion. I believe it would be highly useful to impress upon students how they should look beyond their region - that while their home town may be the only place in the world to know certain inside jokes and terms, there are things far grander in the world and fractious enough as to make the individual teams small, closeknit, and meaningful. While being trendy and knowing the latest, local, and popular things can make one feel good about oneself, the eclectic, esoteric, and historical things are longer lasting benefits which compound with themselves in value over time. To be eclectic, however, one cannot be content with what is provided. I was very distrusting of supposed quality, and knew the world contained a spectrum of quality far greater than I could contemplate. Far too many people cling to the first anchorman, reporter, or developer they meet if they're interested in that subject. I suggest exploring and discerning whom to emulate.

Being mindful of history is necessary in order to be eclectic. Old news tends to be overlooked, or be seen as unprofitable, making it somewhat immune from the noise of limelight seekers' premature ideas and from marketing propaganda. There's money in making software, not in writing a taxonomy of comparisons between, or meticulously documenting the concepts wielded by, different software. There are even taxonomies on taxonomies, each level becoming less popular and less profitable and taking longer to complete, thereby missing the slim window of public interest. However, by sitting in 1995 and reading tcp/ip lessons in 1994 about lessons from 1991 etc., dating back to the release of the cornell worm in 1970, one could learn a lot more than if one had only read some arbitrary book circa 1980 focusing purely on unproven and trendy '80s paradigms. I've given the following advice to many: we should look at the thirty year topics that are still alive today, even if barely, and trace the discussion back to their origins. By learning from the collective discussion, any contemporary incident can be seen through the lens of a learned person, yielding an amalgam of concepts surviving a darwinian massacre of preceding years' ideas. Once the lens has been shaped, it serves as a crude tool to craft finer tools. Apply that lens on another, more recent, incident, and repeat the process until you're looking at present day situations with an extremely well-pruned, eclectic corpus of knowledge with which to interpret anything you choose. This strategy works tremendously well at solving the problem of "noise" -- too much nonsense posing as quality work; and, interestingly, this same approach is taken by bayesian spam filtering.

Sorry for writing as much as I have - it was originally meant to be two or three short paragraphs. Pardon me for any typographical errors.

Cheers,
(My name)

Fun with Number Theory: Guessing Your Age

2008-04-22T00:53:00.117-04:00

Take the last digit of your age, multiply it by 2, then for every decade you've lived add 1 to it. Color this result Blue in your mind
Think of your favorite digit, any digit at all, multiply it by 11.
Add the last digit of your age to the previous result.
For every decade you've lived subtract 1 from the previous result. This is your Red number.

Alright, now tell me your Blue and Red numbers and I will guess your age!
© 2008 by Thoreaulylazy. All Rights Reserved.

Spoilers:

Are you sure? It could be a lot of fun to figure out the trick yourself...
Yes, I'm sure.

Don't say you haven't been warned.
I won't.

You're very persistent. Are you sure you don't have any psychological problems?
Just show me the spoilers already!!! AARRGH.

I tried to warn you earlier, remember?
Sigh.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

I don't know

10 meters per second

African or European?

Spoilers:
Why did you waste your time like this?
For starters, I was sick and bedridden for the day, so it wasn't as if I had many productive alternatives. Secondly, I was inspired through the sheer level of disgust the trick "Your Age by Eating Out" instilled in me. To save you the trouble of reading about that other trick elsewhere, I'll give you the gist of it. It's a puzzle that makes you compute (2*randDigit + 5)*50 + (bdayThisYear?1757:1756) - DOB. Yes, I was rather aghast at having to subtract my date of birth, especially from a number that differed by one depending on whether or not I had my birthday this year. What sort of 'puzzle' is this when it's the spanking facsimile of how age is normally computed? Unfortunately, if you view the google hits when searching for that puzzle, you'll find – almost without exception – glowing reviews of how amazing the puzzle is. I needed to right this travesty of mathematics, and so I devised a puzzle that could baffle nearly anyone who wasn't a math or cs major, and managed to successfully validate this claim on a sample of well-educated engineers.

How did you get my age?!
Well, age = ( 77*(Blue div 2) + 770*(Blue%2) + 133*Red ) % 209

77, 770, 133, 209? .. Where do these numbers come from, and why do they work?
Well, I first picked a number theory topic. A popular one is the Chinese Remainder Theorem, which states that, for an unknown x, if x % p_i is known for each prime p_i in some sequence of primes p, then x can be solved in the domain 0..Π(p)-1. This is powerful because the domain grows factorially: an innocuous sequence of small primes, like 11 and 19 can solve an integer in the range 0..(11*19-1) = 0..208. That is, if I knew what the modulo of someone's age was with respect to 11 and 19, then I can solve their age for anyone aged between 0 and 208. I chose 11 and 19 because 10 ≡ -1 mod 11 and 20 ≡ 1 mod 19, which means I can easily harness people's comfort with base 10 to extract information regarding their age modulo primes 11 and 19. Moreover, such simultaneous congruences are fun because they're very similar to a system of linear equations, except middle schoolers are well-acquainted with solving SLEs whereas simultaneous congruences are tackled usually only in math and computer science baccalaureate curricula. In order to read the text below, you should understand modulos and the totient function.

Blue = 2 * (age % 10) + (age div 10)
Red = 11r + (age % 10) - (age div 10)

age % 19 ≡ age - k₁*19 ≡ age - k₁*20 + k₁ ≡ (age % 20) + (age div 20) ≡ (age % 10) + (age div 20) + 10*((age div 10)%2) ≡ (Blue div 2) + 10*(Blue%2) mod 19

age % 11 ≡ age - k₂*11 ≡ age - k₂*10 - k₂ ≡ (age % 10) - (age div 10) ≡ Red. mod 11

We can express age in terms solely of Blue and Red:
age = Σ_{∀p_i∊p}( (age%p_i)*(Π(p)/p_i)^φ(p_i) )
= ( (age%19)*(Π(p)/19)^φ(19) + (age%11)*(Π(p)/11)^φ(11) ) % Π(p_i)
= ( (age%19)*11¹⁸ + (age%11)*19¹⁰ ) % 209
= ( (age%19)*77 + (age%11)*133 ) % 209
= ( ((Blue div 2) + 10*(Blue%2))*77 + Red*133 ) % 209
= ( 77*(Blue div 2) + 770*(Blue%2) + 133*Red ) % 209

astrology in the modern world

2008-03-10T17:30:00.011-04:00

Below is my comment left on a Slashdot article regarding astrology. I was replying another poster who wrote something along the lines of "astrology is 100% wrong."

I think you meant to say astrology is 50% wrong, because if it were 100% wrong, it would have perfect anti-correlation (akin to scoring a perfect zero on a T/F test, and is just as difficult as scoring a perfect 100). If astrology is 50% wrong, it therefore is 50% right, and depending on the brain chemistry of the person, happy memories may get weighted more than unhappy memories, and therefore the weighted average of astrology working can be significantly higher than 50% - assuming a person who adheres to astrology derives happiness from when it is correct. In fact, for such a person whose happy memories are weighted more than unhappy memories, any catalyst for increased variance will lead to a happier life, including a coin-toss on whether to drive or walk to work. If astrology is a method to higher variance in the day to day experiences of its adherents, then so be it, it results in a happier life among those humans who benefit from high variance. Conversely, for those whose brain chemistry weights unhappy memories more than happy memories, lowered variance in day to day experience is the best method for maximizing happiness. The world needs both people, those who enjoy variance and are willing to eat a mysterious berry, be it a sweet, tasty berry or a bitter, sour berry, and those who hate variance and will only eat the safe, known berry. The risk-takers help society learn about new, tasty berries, and the risk-averse help society continue the species in case the berries were poisonous after all. Astrology is merely a shrub blooming random berries, half of which are sweet (+1 correlation), half of which are bitter (-1 correlation).

Re: Oscar's

2008-03-02T20:53:00.006-05:00

Below is my comment left for a Time.com article about Barrack Hussein Obama and the tale of Gaydolph Titler's unsucessful 1940s presidential bid retold at the Oscar's by Jon Stewart:

As an octogenarian, I remember vividly when I was at the voting poll having to decide whether to vote for Gaydolph Titler or not. I recalled the numerous positions Titler had held and while I agreed on his stance on nearly every issue, when it came down to pulling the lever and casting my vote, I just couldn't in good faith vote for Titler. It was a shallow decision which I have regretted to this day. Now in my ripe old age, I worry far less what others may think of me, and this time around I shall cast my vote for Barrack Hussein Obama with my chin held high, or at least as high as my Osteoporosis permits me.

My Workplace (cont'd)

2007-05-30T23:52:00.000-04:00

My Workplace

2007-05-30T22:48:00.001-04:00

The Culture Divide

2007-05-26T19:03:00.009-04:00

The following is my reply to someone over the topic of anti-intellectualism.

I agree with you that there's a growing culture of living under a rock, more so since the end of the Cold War and the discontinuation of civics classes.

I think part of the problem is cultural – it's "cute" to be dumb, but "loserish" to be unathletic. A good deal of my classmates in university were foreign and I was amazed how in their societies, the school celebrities were the 4.0 GPA guys going to math olympiads and the dudes playing sports were simply dismissed as loserish. Part of it comes from the fact that in most societies, but not ours, all exam scores are published on "The Wall". The Wall is a powerful tool in controlling social hierarchy. Anyone listed at the top becomes Alpha, by definition. Somehow, in our society, we stopped publishing exam scores, fearing that studies were becoming too competitive instead of collaborative. Yet, sports scores continued to be published, as were individual highschoolers' sports statistics. Therein undergirds our "jock culture". I truly believe that cultural differences are the consequence of social engineering and not historic reasons; the culture of a country can be changed on a dime, through informed govt. policies in social engineering or an uninformed govt. random walk.

I think another part of the problem is socio-economical. When the U.S. was poorer, certain professions were more valued. That is, the higher paying professions of doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, and bankers were seen as intrinsically more valuable than the lower paying professions of cashiers, hairdressers, and performance artists. This stereotype was reinforced at all levels, from politics to media to family values. Quite a few families in the '70s would sit down with their three to four kids and have "the talk" about which one of them the family can afford to send to college. To impressionable youngsters, this sort of separation of the wheat from the chaff can have a profound impact, perhaps exaggeratedly so, on the value of education. In many countries, this "talk" continues; many families still can only send one child to college, and it's important enough that it offsets the ostensible fairness of sending none of the kids to college.

More on socio-economics: I think the rise of nuclear families has divided our country along ideological lines. We nowadays choose our inner circle, presumably with toady fawners reinforcing our own world views, whereas with family, "you get what you get" – and this means dealing with, listening to, and respecting, a sundry of siblings, cousins, uncles, et al. who probably can never agree on anything other than that family must stick together through thick and thin. The level of compromise and empathy a few decades ago relative to today is phenomenal. With financial independence, an individual in 2007 has gained a lot of freedoms, but has lost, I believe, many of the qualities of interdependency that are necessary to broaden our horizons and to form a cohesive society. Not only that, but when failure is impossible or near impossible, as is true with our advanced society and fondness for safety nets, the Darwinian evaluation of people's choices disappears; all choices pass Darwin's test, and the new arbiter on which choices are "good" or "bad" no longer becomes survival, it becomes the echelon of pundits, priests, and other demagogues using the most specious of justifications.

There's a lot to be said about the power of heterogeneous families in removing barriers between cultures. Although too heavy handed by today's standards, Alexander of Macedon was a shrewd social engineer when ordering his generals to marry Asiatic wives to form Macedon-Asiatic offspring who would bridge the cultural divide. Ataturk ordered his subjects in Turkey to shave their beards and adopt European styles to stem the growing rift between Islam and Europe. There was a brief period when NASA and space research captured the awe and imagination of the nation, so perhaps there is hope for a cohesive future.

a dark descent

2006-10-03T19:45:00.000-04:00

Watching The Aviator, a film contrasting the multiple faces of Howard Hughes, I am reminded of a certain dark, humorous claim. The claim goes, "the only difference between madness and eccentricity is that the mad are poor and the eccentric are rich." The truth is, while the manifestation is often difficult to distinguish, there is often an overlooked, fundamental difference -- that being the difference between the loons who live outside any conceivable reality and the disturbed who obey sophisticated scripts and codes of behavior from a nightmare, a nightmare in which the sole exit door becomes increasingly difficult to open and, eventually, to even find.

To fully grasp this difference, one needs to examine why, and how, nightmares are highly prevalent among dreamers. The capacity to conceive and envision often seems to dominate wishes to steer such untethered freethought toward constructive endeavors. More tragically, those with seemingly unbounded motivation and drive are motivated and driven by the same fuel on which the monster of insanity feeds, the fuel of self-programming, of mental constructs, of illusions.

Many credit adrenaline and various chemicals and hormones coursing through our veins as the fuel that drives us. While such biological assistants no doubt play a role, their effects are temporary, and their potency limited. In contrast, the truly powerful fuel is one that irreversibly reshapes our very perception of reality. Such discrete alterations to the psyche are rare, but many people know of them, and call them epiphanies. The brilliant are often blessed, and cursed, with far more epiphanies, and at such rapidity as to knock the psyche about until it loses the concept of stability.

This state of uncentered flux is not ominous; it is often transient, a time when men and women rediscover their being and contemplate on a redefinition of themselves. While the majority of people may redefine themselves once, twice, or thrice, in their lifetime, a few seem to harness the power of a mind that has lost a stable center on which to crystallize new thoughts predictably. A mind not allowed to solidify will remain in the unstructured, malleable state; this is the state in which young children live, in which they will believe what is told, in which they are programmable.

Of course, an adult mind cannot remain completely unstructured; the harsh realities of life would devour someone who exhibited neotenies like naïveté or ignorance. This results in a subconscious agreement of sorts, an agreement to keep the mind naïve and programmable only to itself, while keeping the mind highly wary and skeptical of others. This protection that seeks to guard the susceptible kernel of a malleable mind can exhibit itself as paranoia, sometimes at the healthy levels of a shrewd businessman, and other times at unhealthy levels of delusional proportions, both witnessed in the portrayal of Howard Hughes.

The ability to program oneself is a very peculiar one. It is an ability to alter the will of the subconscious with the forethought of the conscious. It is an ability that can lead to greatness. Many who know of the effort, diligence, and zeal required to attain success would envy anyone who possessed the ability to muster with merely a thought those same attributes while simultaneously banishing the psychological impediments of hedonism, lethargy, and timidity.

However, gaining such ultimate governance over oneself comes at a terrible price. While attuned thoughts of achievement can propel the pliant mind into attaining lavish goals, morbid thoughts can just as forcibly subjugate the pliant mind into vulgar obedience. The surreal quality of starkly teetering between unprecedented success and unprecedented dementedness only further stokes a fascination with crossing the boundaries at each end. At a certain point, the descent into dementia takes its toll on attaining further success, and instead of teetering between the two, one is plummeted into severe dementia. A normal mind would have dissenting opinions from within when an extreme action is contemplated, not so with someone suffering dementia. The seriously ill mind is under the control of a tyrannous dictator who brooks no tolerance for dissent. Even the most peculiar thoughts must be obediently carried out, not by an army of peasants, but by a single servant, the ill individual.

Fortunately, Howard Hughes' predicament isn't as bleak. While rumors and speculations of his mind's unraveling were rampant on account of his reclusiveness, Hughes managed to keep his wits intact long enough to become the nation's wealthiest man by 1966. Unavoidably, his world-famous eccentricities seemed to have caught up with him near the end years of his life, a time when his hedonism prevailed and he forwent the responsibility of caring for his own body. The claims that Hughes stored his own urine in bottles lie unsubstantiated, but history has substantiated claims that Hughes stopped brushing his teeth until they all fell out, that he let his hair and fingernails grow to grotesque lengths, and that he developed an insatiable desire for candy and brothels as his mind began its final, dark descent.

Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum! I smell the blood of an English data miner

2006-07-04T20:17:00.005-04:00

Oh, how I love engaging in quackery on the once noble field of statistics! I found in my gmail nest an email to myself, dated 18th of September, 2005, containing a dictionary analysis using the venerable turd-machine, Google. In the email were my dataset and its associated scatterplot piccies, as was a Google Ban™ screenshot which I shall forever keep with me as a data miner's evidentiary badge of honor. No one need fret, as a simple dhcp release and acquire is all that's required to set one's ipv4 address straight, and, in retrospect, to poison the address pool with a bum addy that cannot even 'oogle... Hmm...

Fig 1. Google Ban™ screenshot through IE; 13,400 queries made in the span of approximately two hours

The datasets are partitioned by the host which I told Google to search within. I originally contrived an idea that I would somehow compare and contrast BBC, LiveJournal, Blogspot, and the general English corpus, but because of the nuissance posed by the wide fluctuation in the wordcount per webpage, I grew weary of trying to formulate insightful commentary that the data would support. The lazy bastard and quitter that I am, I shelved the idea of writing about the findings - or lack of findings - until this very epiphanal moment when writing about such a thing became the least boring in the long list of nauseatingly boring things I could be whiling away my time at.

Fig 2. x-axis represents frequency rank, 1 being highest; y-axis represents frequency in units of webpages per billion in domain-specific corpora as measured by Google; dataset contains 3,500 randomly selected words from the 1913 Unabridged Merriam-Webster dictionary queried against each of 4 domains

The horizontal axis represents the ranking order of a word by descending frequency. That is, x=1 represents the most frequent word for each particular dataset, which may be "the" for one set, and may be "an" for another set; and x=383 represents the 383rd most frequent word for each particular dataset. The purpose of keeping things in descending order of frequency is to form a Zipf curve, which is visually smooth and tenders brownie points for allowing me to mention Zipf.

The vertical axis represents the search results returned by Google, multiplied by a coefficient that lets us pretend the most frequent word of any dataset has 1 billion search results. This multiplicative shifting was necessary to make the superimposition of datasets in a single plot less jarring. Unfortunately, such arithmetic jugglery creates jagged artefacts near the tail-end of the curves, as the words become less frequent. This unsightliness is the graphical pronouncement of integer search results multiplied by what was necessary to make the most frequent word show up as 1 billion. Under a log scale plot, there is little difference between y=1023 and y=1024, but quite a bit of difference between y=1 and y=2.

Fig 3. unscaled version of Figure 2

A notable, consistently reappearing anomaly is a discontinuity in the curves. This discontinuity, what I would dub The Google Chasm were it not for my vanity insisting on it being called The Thoreaulylazy Plunge, shows a steep dropoff in search results once the search results reduce to a navigable amount, which is 1,000 if you ever care to try to navigate to further and further pages in the google resultset.

Fig 4. asymptotic region requeried the following week to check for reproducibility; plausibly inflated results multiplicatively deflated through division by 10 (approximately)

As a logical being, I would exhaust all avenues of explanation before spouting off fervently in an accusing tone. That said, I am baselessly laying the blame squarely on a Google conspiracy to inflate search results by a factor of ten once the results are no longer navigable and hence no longer easily verifiable. At some point, I should access the Google APIs under the free academic license and find out once and for all what this crevasse is all about. A mosey down into yahoo-land and a repeat of this data mining escapade may also prove fruitful as ammunition in my Google conspiracy claim. Ah, who am I kidding, I'm not persistent enough to furnish any evidence.

highly frequent words in the english lexicon

	universe	bbc.co.uk	blogspot.com	livejournal.com
1	and	and	and	not
2	home	home	that	add
3	site	help	not	help
4	information	policy	home	and
5	that	skip	they	site
6	help	not	no	ask
7	policy	that	site	information
8	not	e	don	lost
9	e	responsible	see	yahoo
10	see	site	them	e
11	no	see	very	press
12	program	they	today	policy
13	press	edition	old	legal
14	they	related	big	that
15	related	northern	every	every
16	science	watch	place	kind
17	them	pictures	help	no
18	today	science	found	don
19	network	no	though	anyone
20	skip	them	photo	looking
-5	direfrench	gristmill	galopade	meruit
-4	vorspielgerman	congeries	exaltee	appurtenant
-3	grstorgegr	enthymeme	conferva	inexpugnable
-2	slipstickcoll	nosce	pegomancy	livraison
-1	metrongr	federalize	solecize	chronogram

a biennial anniversary of a stillbirth

2006-06-20T03:41:00.000-04:00

I stand in amazement - figuratively, since I am seated, but if I were... ah, there, I momentarily stood up so now my initial statement is quite appropriate. Amazed at what, you might ask - again, figuratively, since I have no readers, thus there is no "you" to address. Rummaging through the gmail graveyard of my self-sent emails, I found a cornucopia of files, tips, and hyperlinks that date back to the inception of my gmail account in 2003. In one of these time capsules, I found a story I began to write, a story I could not even recognize as my own!

The sense of suspense, the idea of even having suspense at all considering I read my own words, was exhilarating. Each new sentence drew me inside an exciting story world, so much so that had the story kept going, I would be dedicating an all-nighter just to reading it. Alas, it abruptly ended, mid-sentence no less! It was written during a time of transition, when I moved from California to Connecticut, and the date of my self-sent email, Friday, June 18th, 2004, was precisely the day I packed my computer for transport. Quite a shame, really. The story had such marvelous potential, and now it lies stillborn.

I feel a slight, incestual dirtiness loving a story I myself wrote, but considering I had absolutely no recollection nor reminding artifact of it for two entire years, I could not read it with the cruel criticism I otherwise would. Below is the full content of what was written:

“Ha ha,” Quincy ran in with that usual mischievous look to which Tom and Amanda could only greet with a gulp of trepidation. “You two absolutely have to come and see this!” he continued. “Well, put on your boots,” he chirped at the two, puzzled at their longer than usual stupor at being asked to go. The only thing more predictable than going on unknown expeditions with Quincy into the forest landscape surrounding their cottage was the certainty one would be beaten to a pulp refusing to go with him. He was the usual tall and husky kid, the type not to know his own strength when shoving his younger brother and sister into the dirt until they give in. It wasn’t as though Quincy was all bad – it’s just that Tom and Amanda have never seen him when he wasn’t. “Let’s get our boots Amanda,” Tom wearily slurred as he went to fetch them. “Hurry up!” echoed Quincy’s voice as the two emerged fully set for the outdoors.

* * *

“We’ve been out here for two hours; aren’t you going to tell us what we’re going to do this time?” Tom softly spoke in a resigning way. “Stop. We’re here!” Quincy’s voice bounced. “And,” Quincy turned to Tom with a sinister smile, “it’s not a question of what we are gonna’ do. It’s a question of what it will.” Tom could feel Amanda silently tightening her grip on his hands, to which he tries to reassuringly squeeze back. “Okay Quincy, let’s see it then.” Tom had a brave face on. “Oh, but first we have to have it see us,” Quincy added mysteriously, reaching into his jacket pocket to reveal a small hand mirror. After a bit of side-straggling, he positioned himself under strong rays of sunlight that managed to pierce through the treetops. He took the mirror and redirected focused light to what now appeared to look like a cave entrance, only it was so dark before no one saw the entrance apart from the adjacent rock. “Now we wait, it will come to us.” Almost as soon as he spoke, bats poured out of the cave like a flash flood, littering the entire sky with their dark fleshy wings and horrific shrieks. “Wait, just watch. Ah, yes, I can feel it rumbling in the air.” Oddly, Quincy didn’t seem interested in the bats; he had his eyes intent on a different place of the sky. “We’re not here to see those bats?” Tom questioned. “Shut up; of course we’re not here to see shitty bats. They’re food for it.” Amanda let out a muffled gasp, trying not to outright scream, her face now buried in Tom’s sweater with only one of her eyes peering out into the sky.

Everyone could now hear a rumbling in the air. At first it sounded like a dam breaking, but unlike a dam burst this rumbling was incessant. The bats shrieked louder and scrambled haphazardly in every which direction. No one was paying much attention to them, however. Quincy and Tom were gazing at the silhouette of a creature now growing larger as it came closer to the earth from the sky; Amanda peered occasionally at it while intermittently covering her eyes again with Tom’s sweater sleeve. It was majestic, yet ominous. Were it not for two faint shadows of wings to its side, it could easily be mistaken for a meteor. Then it dove faster, piercing the air and leaving a stream of what could only be plumes as it came into vision.

Its body was shaped like a griffin, and it would easily measure seventy feet in length. “A whale of the sky,” Quincy whispered in deference. The remnants of twenty or so bats could be seen held in the talons of this behemoth. It was close enough that all three, Quincy, Tom, and Amanda could feel the air and earth tremble under the thunderous flaps of its wings. It was otherworldly to see, as Quincy put it, a whale of the sky, dance as it did in the air, ensnaring some more of the now dispersed bats. “AEhh…” Amanda panted and Tom took notice of what she was panting at; some bat carcasses were dropped just yards from where they stood. The bodies were mutilated with nothing left for recognition. “This is dangerous and disgusting, Quincy; we …” Tom stopped; he couldn’t find Quincy nearby. “I want to go home.” Amanda was nearly crying. “Yes, I’m sure Quincy won’t mind if we do. He’ll find his own way back.” Tom led off, Amanda following him, still tightly clung to his sleeve.

* * *

The steamy broth being prepared at daybreak filled the cottage with a moist flavorful smell to which Tom instantly woke. Amanda’s bed was well made and Quincy’s was still horrendous looking with bits of grass strewn about it as usual. It was a Tuesday, the day when fresh produce is available in the nearby village, and in preparation Tom dressed in his finest. He slicked his hair back, wore his father’s brown leather boots, stuffed with leaves to fit, a cotton sweater without any large holes, and a trouser with no stains except at the knees. Yes, indeed, Tom was looking his best, and he grinned at the mirror. After finishing admiring

Quite a cliff-hanger. Oh well, one of these days I ought to finish it, assuming I can ever write that alluringly again.

Homeopathically Unwrinkling My Left Toenail, an Anatomical Treatise vol. 1

2006-06-16T16:15:00.002-04:00

Despite utmost care for, and good governance of, one's own nails, a single careless action can and will render uniform keratin smoothness a dream, a desire, a mere memory of the perfection that was and the imperfection that is. Due to the irreproducibility of such tragic trysts with destiny, the cure to such life-altering ailment has remained elusive since time immemorial – that is, elusive until now.

Firstly, it is of paramount importance to distinguish wrinkled toenails, that is, those with fine chaffing along vertical lines, from toenails with deep horizontal grooved lines that Joseph Honoré Simon Beau posthumously likes to call “Beau’s lines”. While both stem from damage to the nail fold, fine vertical lines affect luster while horizontal ridges are just plain despicable. This treatise is targeted solely towards homeopathically healing the fine vertical lines and the associated chaffing and not the hideous Beau’s lines. The recently wrinkle-afflicted should not worry if horizontal lines temporarily appear soon after injury. Cosmetic damage will eventually be grown out to clippable area; only damage to the nail fold will produce a constant stream of wrinkles which create vertical lines as the nail is grown.

Now, before delving into the cure, let us first harken back to the shrill cries of my badminton-playing self. I had kept my eye on a lobbed birdie, but in spite of its clear trajectory out of court, I had the urge to smash it powerfully with my racquet. That urge for display of power, that very urge to feel the harmonious 'twing' resonate and reverberate through my forearm was my ultimate downfall. As I ran beneath, squinting against the midday sun to see the faintish outline of an inbound shuttlecock, a sharp, excruciating sting permeated from my afferent nociceptors until the entire path of dendrites and axons from my left toe to the dorsal root ganglion affixing my consciousness transcended into a highway of pure pain. Regrettably, I wore open-toed sandals and stubbed my toe into the raised pavement area around a well. On the positive side, the various assortment of insects were presented a feast of blood-drenched sandy pavement. Reparations, perhaps, for my trespass into their court. By cracking my toenail, I became a silent member of the eschewed millions whose left toenails no longer had the sheen, the luster, the polish that makes us entirely whole. I was only twelve years of age, too young to be afflicted with a wrinkled toenail, a haunting reminder of the mistake once made; but the cruel fates confer no mercy for innocence and youth.

Two days ago, a miracle of circumstances occurred. Wearing improperly velcroed house slippers, I spirited up a staircase when three stairs shy of the top my slippers slipped and while I am uncertain of the exact sequence of events, I was left panting and knelt, with my knees on one of the topmost stairs and my two hands firmly prostrated on the ceramic tiles of the floor I wished to be on. More importantly, my left toe seared with blunt pain, the kind associated with blue bruises and an absence of external hemorrhaging. Resuming my bipedal locomotion, I channeled my dedication toward composure and continued on with my day unfazed. Later that night, shortly before heading to bed, I inspected my left toenail and to my astonishment, the blunt force seemed to have unwrinkled the nail plate, shaping it to the smoothness of the tender skin beneath. I now eagerly await as the entire nail replenishes at 0.1mm/day from the now corrected lunula. Preliminary findings support the case that in a couple months’ time the entire toenail will be correctly regrown, erasing all remnants of a wrinkled past.

Unabridged, Unedited Conversation with YVXQXJJ

2006-02-21T23:11:00.000-05:00

Monikers have been replaced with anagrams to protect the insane.

(21:32:55) PLZNYFGDJ: good grief

(21:52:04) YVXQXJJ: hi

(21:56:13) PLZNYFGDJ: how was your day

(21:57:14) YVXQXJJ: not bad. had the day off. we got customer approval on a project I worked all weekend on, so I told the boss I needed a day to refresh. how about you?

(21:57:24) YVXQXJJ: and what was the "good grief" for? :)

(21:57:58) PLZNYFGDJ: my exasperation over people who are illogical

(21:58:32) PLZNYFGDJ: logic just says you don't have a contradiction - it otherwise never places any constraints on how crazy your axioms can be

(21:59:22) PLZNYFGDJ: there are 4 types of people: crazy but logical - great! crazy but illogical - eek. sane but logical - yawn. sane but illogical - good grief

(22:00:11) YVXQXJJ: lol

(22:00:47) YVXQXJJ: my last ex - for all of a month - was the 2nd type.

(22:02:36) PLZNYFGDJ: I just IMed some woman who as far as I know is sane -- hasn't killed anyone yet.

(22:05:25) PLZNYFGDJ: But she got into some cockamamie claptrap about how we all have choice (she doesn't believe in determinism). Okay, I disagree with free-willists, but I enjoy their nonsense so long as they're using logic (and it's one of those philosophical stalemates where two good philosophers, one supporting free-will, one supporting determinism, can never find a fallacy in the other's statements)

(22:06:31) PLZNYFGDJ: So, I decided to egg her on by stating that, well, how come I'm not the prince of england, since I would've chosen to have been born as one

(22:07:34) PLZNYFGDJ: now, this is where she went from just screwball humorous (but otherwise logical) to illogical. She claims that she believes that we do decide whom we're born as, and at some level I wanted to be born as I was

(22:07:47) PLZNYFGDJ: now, on the surface of things, there's nothing illogical about what she siad

(22:08:18) PLZNYFGDJ: however, and I mentioned this to her, the consequences of what she said lend way to contradiction, disproving her premise. The consequences are as follows:

(22:08:48) PLZNYFGDJ: that means more spirits are deciding today to be born, since we have a global population of 7billion and growing

(22:10:03) PLZNYFGDJ: more spirits prefer to live impoverished lives with a 90% certainty of dying of starvation than to be born into a middle-class family (hooray for free-will!)

(22:11:57) PLZNYFGDJ: And, the clincher --- I can envision a hypothetical evil genius who controls trillions upon trillions of human embryos in a matrix, and can decide on the flip of a switch to fertilize them all and can decide just as easily in another flip of the switch to flush them into an abyss. It's against reason that trillions of spirits would decide at a single moment to infuse life into cells just to be flushed moments later.

(22:12:10) PLZNYFGDJ: Those are trillions of retarded spirits, in which case.

(22:13:55) YVXQXJJ: well, yes. most people are retarded.

(22:14:33) PLZNYFGDJ: bleh

(22:14:38) PLZNYFGDJ: defies logic

(22:14:49) PLZNYFGDJ: at least free-will philosophers employ logic

(22:15:20) PLZNYFGDJ: unlike people who "believe" and can't reason their way about why an even number plus an even number cannot be odd

(22:16:05) YVXQXJJ: philosophy - and philosophers - confuse me.

(22:16:17) PLZNYFGDJ: nah, they're fun folk

(22:16:27) YVXQXJJ: heh

(22:16:39) PLZNYFGDJ: they're basically mathematicans but with dumb/inconsequential axioms

(22:17:15) PLZNYFGDJ: but as any mathematican, logician, or philosopher will agree, whether or not an axiom is valid is only determined by whether or not you can infer a contradiction

(22:17:31) PLZNYFGDJ: so long as the system is consistent, you can have two separate systems with opposite axioms

(22:18:18) PLZNYFGDJ: e.g one system where the axiom says "God exists" and another where it says "No god exists" can be completely valid systems within which no contradiction can be inferred

(22:19:05) PLZNYFGDJ: mathematicians just pick more useful axioms, like "Given a Euclidean space (defined by 10axioms), a triangle's inner angles sum to 180"

(22:20:04) PLZNYFGDJ: a philosopher would pick, "suppose our bodies were merely mental projection with no tangible component, ..."

(22:20:39) YVXQXJJ: that's more or less it. one matters, the other does not.

(22:20:59) PLZNYFGDJ: In fact, philosophers so often picked insane axioms that instead of having to prove a contradiction, it was agreed upon that "reductio ad absurdum" was a valid enough counter-example to stop philosophizing over it

(22:21:34) PLZNYFGDJ: essentially, reductio ad absurdum states that if you prove that philosophy is unnecessary, then stop! Change your axiom before we philosophize again!

(22:21:52) YVXQXJJ: the world would cease functioning without math. philosophy... eh. some college profs would be out of a job, and some publishers would take a hit on their profits, but I'm otherwise not affected.

(22:22:03) PLZNYFGDJ: E.g. "what if the universe were created just this instant, with all its atoms and molecules arranged as they are and animated just now..."

(22:22:32) PLZNYFGDJ: that's a famous philosopher's dilemma -- there's no way to prove it's not true -- the universe may very well have been created just now!

(22:22:52) YVXQXJJ: my counter to that is they think too much.

(22:23:10) PLZNYFGDJ: However, if it has been created just now, then all this philosophizing we've been doing hasn't been philosophizing at all -- you and I were just created this instant with the illusion of having had a conversation

(22:23:16) PLZNYFGDJ: In which case, reductio ad absurdum!

(22:23:48) PLZNYFGDJ: Which is quite different from saying the axiom is wrong. Reductio ad absurdum does not say it's wrong -- it just says it's absurd! It's not worth talking about

(22:24:22) PLZNYFGDJ: If the very nature of talking is undermined under the axioms, then it's not worth talking anymore

(22:24:41) PLZNYFGDJ: beautiful, huh? Took thousands of years of bickering to come up with that one gem

(22:24:43) YVXQXJJ: right. my version of that is usually "shut up, quit talking. I don't have time for you, I have email accounts to fix and users to edumacate."

(22:25:56) PLZNYFGDJ: philosophy is a good exercise of logic, sort like bicycling is an exercise for the calves

(22:26:19) PLZNYFGDJ: but otherwise, yeah, it's inconsequential

(22:26:59) PLZNYFGDJ: exercising logic is pretty good though -- it helped usher in the age of enlightenment and all that

(22:28:30) YVXQXJJ: *nods* I've never been interested in philosophy or anything related. I think I've got logic down enough for what I do. I don't need to focus on it - if I don't have moments without logic, my mind breaks.

(22:31:09) PLZNYFGDJ: I need logic, not necessarily sanity, but definitely logic. For example, SG-1 adventures to new planets and everyone seems to speak english yet everyone seems to have mutually incomprehensible written language. Okay, bizarre, but it's not illogical. It's just an axiom of this fictional world, and it doesn't contradict anything! I like bizarre, as long as no contradictions arise

(22:32:31) YVXQXJJ: I just imagine that SGC somehow developed the universal translator and neglected to tell anyone about it.

(22:32:42) PLZNYFGDJ: heh

(22:33:14) PLZNYFGDJ: See, if the authors tried to explain why everyone spoke english (as you just did) rather than it being an axiom, then they might create some contradictions in all that complexity required to explain it.

(22:33:37) PLZNYFGDJ: For example, by trying to explain it with a universal translator, you just created several contradictions!

(22:34:01) PLZNYFGDJ: e.g. then why do they need Daniel Jackson to keep translating all these written works if they have a universal translator

(22:34:46) PLZNYFGDJ: a universal translator is illogical. Leaving it unanswered why they can verbally communicate is the best answer

(22:35:13) PLZNYFGDJ: trying to explain these things just creates inconsistency, and inconsistency is doom for any Sci-Fi would-be story

(22:36:30) YVXQXJJ: it can't translate written documents because the project went over-budget, so something had to be scrapped.

(22:36:54) PLZNYFGDJ: pfft. heh, see you're just adding more complexity and creating even more paradoxes!

(22:38:00) PLZNYFGDJ: Simplicity is key. Only add complexity when you're sure you've thought it through and it makes sense within the rules you define

(22:39:39) YVXQXJJ: something tells me you would hate certain Neil Gaiman novels.

(22:39:53) PLZNYFGDJ: you can define baseball, you can define chess, you can define any fair game and people will like to play with you -- if you create a game where the 2nd player always loses, you've made a pretty lousy game, and a system with a contradiction is a pretty lousy universe to set your fictional story in

(22:40:41) PLZNYFGDJ: it's broken. it's buggy. it's like m$ windows =)

(22:43:06) PLZNYFGDJ: fyi - when I said "the 2nd player always loses", I'm talking about the 'perfect-play', i.e. the players are both trying to win. You can obviously still win as a 2nd player in games where the 1st player must win under perfect play if the 1st player purposefully throws the game

(22:44:00) PLZNYFGDJ: And some bad sci-fi reads like a broken game where some player must win under perfect-player, but the characters are so dimwitted they still manage to bungle and almost-lose if not lose completely.

(22:44:39) PLZNYFGDJ: e.g. in Harry Potter, I near banged my head on a wall when Hermione used a time-travel device. WORST IDEA EVER. Bad, Bad JK Rowling!

(22:45:20) PLZNYFGDJ: I know she wanted to introduce the idea to little children, but she should've mentioned it as a device long ago that was destroyed because it was too powerful. Instead, she gives it to a 10th grader! Ugh

(22:46:23) PLZNYFGDJ: And then she quietly forgets about it. Dumbledore's dead? Time travel back and fix it! Something bad happened? Time travel back and fix it! See, the time-traveller is guaranteed to win under perfect-play! That kills the story.

(22:47:04) PLZNYFGDJ: proper time-travel is like how Sliders portrayed it, where you travel back to an alternate past, not your own past.

(22:48:04) PLZNYFGDJ: and that's also proper multiverse tiling according to Hawking-Penrose models of spacetime

(22:48:17) PLZNYFGDJ: anyhoot. I ranted

(22:48:39) PLZNYFGDJ: thanks for being the anonymous half-listener =)

(22:48:46) YVXQXJJ: lol.. no problem

Odyssey into the terrifying world of one Ms. Recipient's messy and overpopulated Inbox

2006-02-17T19:57:00.000-05:00

This email began with the ambling keystrokes of one Mr. Sender, pressed through the telltale precision of a ten digit wielding writer with vacuous chasms for a brain. No thoughts could churn upstairs, so this email is poorly devoid of worthwhile content. All the same, it occupies space, and oh what space it occupies! Letters and words and sentences, all lined up in sequence in an overt attempt at being meaningful while still without meaning.

If this email could tell its story, it would tell of its communion with the digital gods as it hurdled past scrutinizing network devices, shedded off its outer TCP layers in a desperate attempt at passing on its seminal data to the next transport layer. It would, if it could, tell of its ordeal through Bayesian spam filters and the harsh interrogations thereafter of its header. Oh, if only it could tell these things and more!

This email, however, is quite silent, as all its strength to reveal its odyssey was drained by the very odyssey itself and the maddening hours it spent enveloped in solitude, awaiting deliverance. It clings, nonetheless, with the last ounce of its spirit before it decays into your post-read trashbin, to solemnly deliver, as any duty-bound email would, the laconic message of its author. Therefore, with this email's dying breath, it reveals unto you, oh most valued deity of the Inbox, these words:

Yo, it's me.

'sup? You weren’t online. Msg me when you’re back.

Ciao.

Towels: What Walks with Three Legs at Night

2006-02-03T15:03:00.001-05:00

“Sir, how did you get here?” a boy in rags asked in cautious tone. “Sir? Are you…”

Heaps of towels sloppily providing the comfort of a blanket began to rustle until they were abruptly tossed off, revealing a disheveled, gaunt man beneath. He sat up with a few groans and then faced the boy with his head leaned back so his grizzly white beard protruded and his long flowing locks of white hair kept away from his eyes. Squinting judgingly, he began measuring the boy up before discourse.

“I am Ethikos. What business have you with me?” The message was delivered loud and forcefully but a few ensuing wheezes and phlegmy coughs quickly diminished any effect of grandeur. Without giving a pause and for seemingly no reason, the man, Ethikos, reassembled those stained towels of his and slipped under them again, unconcerned.

“Sir…” the boy spoke with a quiver, puzzled and uncertain how to proceed. “We met a few hours ago. I was thrown in this cell…” but before completing, Ethikos jumped up and shouted.

“Vagrant! Thief!” Ethikos pointed accusingly with a mess of towels now abound and one towel, uncertain how to fall, flapped indecisively on his outstretched arm.

“No… please, sir, try to remember - it’s not like that… don't you remember?”

“How dare they shove a criminal in with me!”

“Please, sir, try to remember, I’m innocent as you are.”

“Lies! Treacherous lies!”

“Sir, you’ve been here a long time… today they put everyone in prisons…”

“Everyone?” Suddenly and unpredictably, Ethikos turned calm. “Yes, they are the sorts to devolve into something devious like this. Imprisoning everyone… as I suspected! No one listened. No one ever listens.” Ethikos reclined and, while still mumbling, groped the adjacent ground for his towels and slowly buried himself in them once more.

ELO: Elven Liver Oxidation

2005-12-01T18:13:00.000-05:00

It all began innocently enough. I started with the 'umble variant of "hello", with an elision of the first consonant and a simplification of the bicameral ll into a softer, single l, but then an absence of a response sparked a desultory monologue that, while of absolutely no worthwhile content, was mildly amusing, at least more so amusing than witnessing myself furthering the art of twiddling thumbs. Sadly, at no point during this reflexive exercise did the party I was trying to contact respond. Below I have copied the text, providing line breaks at each point a message was sent.

ELO

Elven liver oxidation.

It's a debilitating condition for elves arising from overconsumption of alcoholic beverages.

Policymakers are nonplussed at the precarious situation wherein ELO, already admitted by those in the know of certainly reaching pandemic proportions, is the only inhibitor preventing the generally rowdy demeanor of elves from physically manifesting into fisticuffs with those race of bears fondly known to televise "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires."

Republicans announced today a strategy of preemption, gunning down Smokey the Bear and his ilk and thereby cordoning off the one likely outlet for sober Elven fury. Insiders ruminate how Republicans haven't really ironed out how to then get the elves to stop drinking and mitigate ELO's rampage across Elven communities. Insiders continue by stating, "We think the Republicans just want to kill Smokey the Bear. This whole tactic of trying to find an avenue to cure ELO without violent spillover is a rouse to accomplish a long harbored right-wing stratagem to take down Smokey."

Democrats meanwhile protested Republicans' unilaterally decided path and demanded an end to "a blatant witch-hunt against the Smokey Bears who have almost no link with the drunken elves." Voting on whether to take down Smokeys fell fairly along party-lines but a band of anti-Smokey democrats crossed over to help pass the bill through a slender majority. Many Smokey Bears have fled for Canada but one remained behind and allowed itself to be interviewed. When asked what its reaction is to this new crackdown on an otherwise ignored minority community of bears, Mr. Smokey, as it asked to be called, commented glumly, "Only you can prevent forest fires." Mr. Smokey was visibly shaken, demoralized, and obviously under tremendous psychological pain, apparently so much so as to be unable to coherently say anything else.

Elves meanwhile continued their drunken revelry as no government task-force has yet been assigned the pressing issue of ELO. Senior Analyst of Elven Affairs Sean Connery reports, "What we're seeing here is a silent admission by staff officials that elves and alcohol are inseparable. With the Republican aim of cleansing out Smokey Bears, forests are now free to be burned down for mini-malls and prime television ad space previously used by Smokey is opened to new players. ELO was never a concern, and I think now that the party's objective is accomplished, attention over ELO will be redirected to other pressing matters."

Democrats, fuming at having had public funds siphoned for hawkish special interest groups vying for television ad space, staged a walkout from congressional and senatorial deliberations. Democrats then marched into the streets in protest where they were promptly assailed by a gang of drunk elves merrily prancing about. Some Democrats whose names are being sealed per Circuit Court order seized a few of the Elven whiskey bottles. Details of what immediately ensued are still sketchy but twelve Democrats are confirmed dead and five elves injured.

An outpour of public fulmination over the incident has forced Republican hands to covertly allow Smokey Bears to reenter the country under a clandestine agreement provisioning some airtime, albeit reduced, to Smokey ads in exchange for curing the deteriorating relationship with the Elven community. A local sheriff whose rise to fame last year was the capture of a picnic-basket thief named Yogi has alerted locals that the Smokey Bears and the Elven communities are engaging in gang warfare and humans should remain calm and stay away when spotting either nearby. Hospitals are reporting an influx of critically wounded elves, possibly indicating that Smokey Bear clans are expediently executing an eradication campaign.

Pundits analyzing the situation paint a bleak picture when asked about the likelihood of achieving social harmony any time soon but agree upon the longer-term benefits of a reduced Elven population. Already, mean young elves are throwing away their bottles of whiskey to hone their skills at bear hunting. This itself will, as pundits point out, ameliorate the spread of ELO. Bears meanwhile are unfazed by the new sober variety of elves and are finding it highly lucrative near the Christmas season to capture elves for resale in the slave trade. China has criticized this new labor force and has opened a complaint with the WTO that Santa's workshop is using slave labor, unfairly competing with their lowly priced merchandise. Santa has defiantly obscured access of investigators working to assess claims of Santa's crimes against elfanity. This matter is still pending in International Criminal Court.

Entaharn

2005-10-31T20:58:00.000-05:00

Sarah seated herself under the shade of a walnut tree, pulling her white frock neatly around her and patting off loose blades of grass trapped in the lacing. Taking a deep breath, she motioned with just her mouth letting no sound out “Mentaharnin…” but before being able to continue a sudden shriek and then joyous laughter from behind broke her concentration.

Someone had just won, or scored many points in a game, Sarah guessed not really thinking. It was true, the other girls her age of Rosemary Manor were playing hopscotch; but the laughter was over Amy Henderson who trying a very challenging sequence had fallen flat on her rear, initially letting out a shriek but then bursting into laughter with the others over her own abysmal performance. None of this concerned Sarah, she always seemed to find the things that brought others great joy to be immensely trite.

The momentary cacophony died down and another round of hopscotch quietly ensued. Sarah focused intently on the sound of the breeze rustling the tree leaves until her mind was completely clear once again.

“Mentaharnin acquinte oransk” she chanted silently, motioning every syllable perfectly just as she had done each week the past three months. Immediately, Sarah felt the familiar, uncomfortable twin piercing at one side of her neck and a withdrawal of warmth. She sat motionless, staring toward the horizon as wispy clouds now stayed their position in the afternoon sky.

“Entaharn, refreshed?” Sarah thought without speech, feeling two incisors slide out her in response. She leaned forward but the air seemed unwilling to move. Defiantly fighting the immobile ether, she struggled forward with increasingly greater effort, and, suddenly, as if a glass door had given way, she hurled forward at frightening speed. The ground and sky spun around her, colors washed from blue to red to green and back to blue, and finally as suddenly as it all began, it stopped. Everything stopped. The sky was reassuringly above her and the ground thankfully beneath her. She noticed herself still seated on grass, but not where she had sat; then, looking forward, she saw nearly fifty meters ahead her own body still under a walnut tree, completely motionless.

“Elegant, always so very elegant.” A boyish, cavalier voice chuckled all around her. “Do you always tumble like that?”

“I’m still practicing,” Sarah retorted a bit embarrassed but returned to a regal tone, “Hurry up and repair that body over there.”

“Ah, yes; fixing your problems.” The same voice was distinctly in front of her but its owner remained unseen. “My, my… an entire centimeter in almost momentary time. I commend your effort, but ripping your flesh seems a rather coarse way to…”

“Just fix it!” Sarah snapped impatiently. An entire centimeter this time, she thought to herself worriedly. Entaharn had explained to her before the dangers of corporeally moving when time slows to a fraction of its original speed. Her whole body could irreparably dissolve under enough acceleration, and with a centimeter of movement this time, it had nearly happened.

Have a Hallowed Eve!

number theory: ah, those funny li'l modulos

2005-10-24T16:14:00.000-04:00

There were only a handful of tricks with numbers that the typical elementary school student would be inculcated with during those years I enjoyed (well, attempted to enjoy) primary education. To cast the bleak bleaker, the divisibility test by 3 is often the only ubiquitously taught trick possessing some semblance of novelty. In case anyone wondered as a kid but failed to discover the reason, modulus arithmetic is the preferred foundation with which one derives efficient divisibility tests. For some reason still unbeknownst to me, I decided to raise this ol' topic and began concocting digit-wise divisibility tests for the primes 7 and 11. I urge readers to please have ready several pitchers of water, since what follows is fairly dry...

When X is a string (of some radix) of numerical value Σ(X[k]*radix^k)_{∀k∈0..X.length-1⊆Z}, then (int)X ≡ 0 mod Y iff: Σ(X[k] * cycle[k])_{∀k∈0..X.length⊆Z} ≡ 0 mod Y, where cycle is the repeating series { radix^k mod Y }.

Let's pick a radix we all know and love, base10:
Let Dn = { 10⁰, 10¹, 10², ... }
Dn mod 3 = { 1, 1, 1, ... } = Cycle (1). Since cycle[k] = 1, we get the age-old mantra "X is divisible by 3 iff the sum of digits is divisible by 3".

But let's look beyond 3,
Dn mod 7 = cycle ( 1, 3, 3*3≡9≡2, 2*3≡6≡-1 ..) = cycle (1, 3, 2, -1, -3, -2)
Dn mod 11 = cycle (1, 10≡-1 ..) = cycle (1,-1)

Interestingly, but with less power than an iff relationship, since lcm(2,6) = 6 and both Dn mod 7 and Dn mod 11 have half-cycles (-1 as an element), then X ≡ 0 mod 77 if X in decimal form can be grouped into 3digit strings, where every other 3digit string is marked red and those in between are marked blue, and the { reds } minus { blues } = Null.

For exampe, let red = { 123, 444, 812, 912, 083, 948, 020, 436 }
Thus, blue = { 123, 444, 812, 912, 083, 948, 020, 436 }
Let shuffle(blue) = { 444, 948, 912, 436, 083, 812, 123, 020 }
Then interlace(red, shuffle(blue)) = 123444 444948 812912 912436 083083 948812 020123 436020. This now yields a base10 string which is divisible by 77 (and obviously also by 2, 5, 7, 11 and all the other factors of their multiple 770): 123444444948812912912436083083948812020123436020

Too big a number to verify with a pocket-calculator? Here's an easy multiple of 77 to generate: 001001 = 1,001. A pocket calculator can verify it is 13*77.

But then, what's the ratio of densities between these simple multiples and the full set of multiples? In the case of 77, cardinality of the full set of multiples for base10 string X is (1/77) * (10^X.length). Cardinality for the parlor-trick partial set is:
Let red_i = ∪(X[6*i+0..6*i+2])
Let blue_i = ∪(X[6*i+3..6*i+5])
Let g = X.length/6
(Π(φ(∃unique j s.t. blue_i = red_j))_{∀i∈0..g-1⊆Z}) * (10^X.length)
= (Π(1 - ((10³-1)/10³)^k)_{∀k∈1..g⊆Z}) * (10^X.length)
= (Π(1 - 0.999^k)_{∀k∈1..g⊆Z}) * (10^X.length)
lim_{X.length→∞}( Π(1 - 0.999^k)_{∀k∈1..g⊆Z} ) ≈ 7.4210E-713
Thus, the ratio of the two is (1/77) : 7.4210E-713 ⇒ 1 : 5.7142E-711. In other words, the parlor trick while being a very good way to generate multiples is a rather improbable way to test for divisibility by 77. The only rigorous divisibility test is the one where iff is ensured instead of the comparatively impotent if.

Manure

2005-10-19T12:40:00.006-04:00

“Hello Prof. Dumbledore,” I began friendlily but was cut off by the steely eyed headmaster obviously refusing to cow before a well-situated and grown up former student of his.

“Snape, yes”

Yes, first name basis will do, I thought grievously. My mind stalled for a moment to recollect his first name. It had been so long since seeing him, since even stepping foot back into Hogwarts. Then I was considered the short, pudgy son of a mediocre family; others knew not of my true legacy or the future legacy I would create. Today I towered in my custom tailored suit and polished leather shoes, and not because I sought to impress; oh, no, seeing in front of me in tawdry attire with a frail figure a man who once caused me anguish was a mere bonus, a treasure of fractional value to why I was here.

“Albus,” I finally remembered his first name as I gazed at the frays of his cuffs, “the ministry and I had a little chat earlier and since I have been elected to head…” but I was interrupted again,

“Bought to head” Albus finished. His boldly begun words waned into a whisper.

Perhaps it was only because of money I am here again; but money reigns supreme and I possessed a terrifying sum to now head the board of trustees for this school. Even Albus through his thick skull can see this, and through all his defiant pretensions, streaks of fear quiver through his voice and actions. Perhaps Albus need not be disposed after all, I mused. Fear for his job is sensible.

“I have heard a lot of discontent,” I continued, ignoring Albus’s throat clearings, “about the direction of the school and I cannot ignore the extent to which the dissatisfactions have grown. I haven’t invested three hundred million in this place to watch it meander its way into an abyss; I…”, noticing Albus’s open mouth my voice raised, body lurched forward and eyes widened to prevent an interruption, “I want to see this school succeed!”

The words were followed by a short silence, letting me lean back before I continued. “And I assume you do as well, so let us work together. I want to keep you around, but you cannot continue being insubordinate.” His eyes looked more resigned now, and, for once, the idiot had nothing to finish my sentences with.

I Service the Machine that Services the Machine

2005-10-17T14:46:00.000-04:00

Every morning before breakfast, a whistle shoots up high above the rooftops of the nearby service station and blows with all the fury it can muster a high-pitched "Wheeet." That’s the sign. That’s the sign that a baby lord machine has been hatched. We the servicemen rush from our homes, leaving our cereal bowls vacated. Forty leaps with all the might our legs can afford and the service station’s door is in sight. A swipe of the badge and a careful walk past the sterile threshold to the station reveals the little lord machine, shining wetly and acquainting itself with servicemachines fondly dabbing warm cloth on its chassis to prevent any buckles during the cooling process. This time of day is always a treat, since it is the only time we servicemen can gaze upon a lord machine. Our task is not to care for it directly, but to ensure all the servicemachines who do care for it are well cared for themselves. All one servicemachine need do is let us see its light lit orange and four of us will come walking hurriedly to it with clean oil, chilled water, and a sizable, freshly charged battery pack. Mere feet away from a lord machine, our pride swells; to attend to the machine directly attending a lord machine is a privilege bestowed upon the few, the lucky.

do not incense the crack-addicted squirrels (source)

2005-10-10T18:10:00.000-04:00

Rare is it when I start rehashing periodicals, but it is imperative I report that English rodents have gone wild. The fuzzy, cuddly bunnies fondly dined upon by bambi-slaughtering, full regalia donning lords with knives and forks carried in proper hands are not the morsels at play here; rather, unlike rodentia-posing leporidae, these are true rodents who have been feasting upon saran-wrapped packets of crack neatly patted down with topsoil in the gardens of dubious white-powder-shrub gardeners. These are critters teeming with more satanically horrifying vices than contained in all the FOX reality shows and almost as much as contained in Jane Fonda's hair – leave a few cubic hectares of eye-burning aerosol. That's right, these are squirrels, now most easily identified by disheveled fur and the harrowing glare of their blood-shot, demented eyes, and the squirrels have taken a liking to stash buried by scuzzy junkies. Through the mighty rodent quest for granulated satisfaction, squirrels are leaving in their wake a dazed lot of heart-palpitating Londoners.

As always, the bushy tailed recidivism began with the bobbies. After a recent rash of anti-drug enforcement, gardens-turned-safehouses began storing "the goods" and in a double whammy counteracted both the sleuths and the residual yet pungent anal odors gifted by intestinal convoys aboard a long British Airways flight from Lithuania. Of course, now look at the mess; the capital of the mightiest of feeble empires is being overrun by panicky and angsty teens suffering withdrawal and feverishly irascible squirrels who some speculate have already formed a powerful crime syndicate and have half of parliament in their pockets.. pouches.. er paws. Obviously also paid off, the nearly vowelless RSPCA has tried to contain rampant fear by insisting the thimble-sized hearts of our fury friends would go supernovae upon receiving any cocaine. Unconvinced and alarmed by the growing British fiasco, French authorities have decided to examine carefully the baroque snuffboxes of their infamous wayside frogs for any traces of the serious stuff concealed within.

neither 42 nor 47 are interesting

2005-09-13T21:52:00.000-04:00

Infected with an unfortunate meme of geekdom, I've grown unnaturally sensitive toward hearing the numbers 42 and 47. These numbers are almost mythical in nature, 42 for possibly being "the answer to the ultimate question", and 47 for supposedly having an anomalously high frequency of use in daily affair. In a bid to cure myself of susceptibility to mind control by those who'd reap the awesome power of these two numbers, and under the premise that few enough netizens are infected with these memes to constitute any significant alteration to these numbers' use — a premise I'm sure we can all agree upon given the growing ubiquity of non-geeks online — I thought I'd query Google, our very own 'Deep Thought', on what it thinks about single and double-digit numbers. Here are the results:

x-axis represents the number queried, y-axis represents matched documents in millions under Google's Sept 13, 2005 corpus

Thankfully, there existed no easily roused DoS-prevention logic and so my perl script was sportingly allowed to run unimpeded.

Observing the data, we see that lower magnitude numbers reign supreme as expected, followed by their products by 10 and to a lesser extent theirs by 5. Our odd decision to make seconds and minutes base-60 probably encouraged the high popularity of 30. Shopkeepers who price everything one or two cents shy of a whole buck are the likely reason for the spikes at 98 and 99. Curse their financial legerdemain! I snuck in 100 despite it being triple-digit to show my solidarity with our love of base-10. If you must know, I originally had 0 as well but it made the scatterplot rather messy with its frequency being between those of 12 and 13. Notably apparent from the chart, there is nothing strikingly special about 42 or 47.

So there you have it, confirmation that the '80s really were boring, and incontrovertible proof that neither 42 nor 47 are in any way more spectacular than other numbers in the hearts and minds of sane, normal people. The atypically higher frequencies of 44 and 64 do on the other hand raise new questions...

After all this faux statistical analysis of 'cult-figures', it is perhaps prudent to reflect on the sagacious words of Homer J. Simpson.

1F09, 1/6/94 Homer the Vigilante
Kent: Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack-beatings are up a shocking 900%?
Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that.

His eminence's eloquent words denouncing statistically based reasoning. Amen, Mr. Simpson, amen.

Attending a Desi Wedding in Cincinnati

2005-09-06T02:26:00.000-04:00

Labor day weekend went by rather well! Whenever any sort of long weekend creeps up, my family begins by expressing a warm, embracing intention to vacation somewhere. This wishful thinking must be quite taxing because my parents seem to move directly onto appeased inaction, bypassing the entire stage where one normally would book a flight and a room. This brilliant tactic of omission allows a vacation "planned" a month in advance to disintegrate into ether, leaving my family panic stricken the week of our supposed excursion and ultimately resigned to satiate our wanderlust another time. Despite this, somehow, maybe when the stars align, we get our act together and manage to go somewhere. This labor day weekend owes itself to one such cosmic arrangement. And, oh, what a weekend it was!

The Groom as White Knight

The Bride and Groom

Weddings are always special occasions, but this desi wedding meant a three-day gala affair with the groom riding on a white stallion! In the picture to the right you can see the groom mounted on the steed. Truth be known, an equestrian trainer pulled it along, and it was for less than an hour, but still... a horse!

Since the groom is Tamilian and the bride is Gujarati, the wedding combined traditional North Indian style with traditional South Indian style. Hey, if it means more variety in sweets for the guests, I say combine away!

Unfortunately, owing to the paucity of Indian weddings I've attended, I'm not exactly sure which all aspects were Southern inspired and which all were Northern inspired. The ancillary use of the horse, by the way, is primarily a North Indian phenomenon, and may even be confined further to Gujarat. I know, I know, I'm a bad coconut with only a vague understanding of these things. I'm trying, right?

The photo to the left shows the general theme and the apparel worn. The guys in red on the rightside are mostly the groom's friends from Chicago. The girls in red saris are sisters of the bride. People are pumping their arms into the air as they dance to Hindi music in a procession behind which faint and gentle clacks of horseshoes emanate.

Arches and candles are among the more artistic items one can capture with a still; yet, some guy has the impeccable timing to get up and ruin my shot. Oh well.

I probably should cast a little of Cincinnati's limelight over on Kentucky since the latter is where most of the events actually took place. Barefaced about being a geography dunce, I never realized Cincinnati practically grows out from Ohio and into Kentucky! Makes me wonder, though, if Mr. Ed from the first photograph was ever in the Kentucky derby.

Acting with a Gracious Aussie, Politics at the Pool Table

2005-08-30T02:02:00.002-04:00

I won! Wait, I won?

It takes quite a lot of skill to throw a game convincingly. The fact I'm still uncertain over whether the game was actually thrown is testament to my opponent's crafty generosity, if he really did let me win. I suspected something was awry when I narrowed his lead over me while he kept encountering a rash of difficulties with getting the 8-ball into any pocket, until that cathartic moment when, after a few of my own fumbling moments with the 8-ball, I won. Wow. At that moment, as strongly as I sensed victory was being handed to me, a feeling of redemption engulfed any other worries or misgivings I had. For an instant, lingering questions on the legitimacy of the victory evaporated, as did the tension of being down 0-4 games, a tension I grew so accustomed to as to fail to recognize how taut and clenched-fisted it had been keeping me. While the tension seemed permanently subsided, those lingering questions were less willing to go, coalescing into an anvil and thudding atop my head with the pestering realization that I need to think of how to respond beyond showcasing motionless stupor and disbelief.

What's the protocol, I wondered; do I sneak in a teaser about how he let me win? Should I thank him for the gracious gesture? Perhaps he would be offended if I garishly threw noise on a donation he so discretely made. Then again, I did still have to struggle - he certainly wouldn't have fiddled with that 8-ball long enough to embarrass himself. In fact, in addition to the onus of winning being on me, I had to endure the added pressure of potentially losing to someone playing on a five shot handicap. Yes.. yes.. the victory was well earned. Besides, I continued to reason, it would be sacrilegious of me to call his act an act when he expended considerable effort to make his loss credible. I decided to accept his donation; I played the intended part and offered a courteous "good game" with an appreciative smile and a nod. I instantly second-guessed myself, wondering if silently accepting someone's largesse would be considered tawdry, but, thankfully, the comforting return of relief from my opponent's starkly more relaxed look allayed any fear of misstep. He bought the act, or so I believe.

Robert Blackwill, Dictionaries, and p[a-z]*pot(ate|ent)

2005-08-09T02:47:00.000-04:00

Despite a gleaming mention in the subject, Robert Blackwill has very little to do with this particular journal entry. In fact, he is merely part of the ambient noise surrounding a slippery word that tantalizingly evaded me. It's quite odd how, when focusing so intently on recollecting one thing, loosely related items emerge into thought and, though unsolicited, they emerge with unbridled clarity and brilliance.

I began explaining to a friend how I hate synonyms and prefer words which carry a larger concept - a purposeful word useful in reducing the amount of time to convey an idea. At that moment, I caught the shadow of a word which would be of prime example; unfortunately, anything more than the shadow eluded me. Lilipote? No, no. What was it? I struggled to think. I knew its definition is the use of a euphemism or understatement for emphasis. I started rattling off to my friend whatever I could think to see if the word would come to me. If two people are berated by an extremely mean officer, one can later use hyperbole to tell the other "that's the worst officer ever in history!" One can also use sarcasm to tell the other "he sure is a nice guy." One can also use a .. er .. lilipote to tell the other "he's not an extremely nice guy." Tragically, I was in the car without internet access. I asked my friend over the phone to google "lilipote" and although I was expecting no results, it was disheartening to be confronted with that reality. It did make for a decent segue into Lilliputs and from there the conversion meandered to other things of interest, such as the movie about a 40yr old male virgin, and away from this mess of grappling with quarter-life senility.

To ensure no one's spirits have risen in thinking this blog will delve into the interesting parts of that conversation, I should make clear that interesting movie-related discussion will never be in any blog I write. Interesting stories can easily be told to people, real-time; it's the uninteresting things which require the occasional straggler who resorts to reading blogs, having tired of hours of solitaire.exe and an additional hour of repeatedly dragging rectangles on her desktop to see icons highlight. Right, now that we've squared that away.. Once I arrived home and the conversation ended, I managed to remember 'litotes' was the word I likely was looking for, and a quick validation on the web vindicated my belated answer. Naturally, just before feeling the burden lifted, I remembered once knowing a word used in a many years old NY Times passage about then ambassador Robert Blackwill being autocratic and sinking his staff into depression by incessantly denigrating them. I knew the word meant something along the lines of being given authority or power by appointment; other than that, I only knew it began with something like "pen" and ended with something like "potate" or "potent" which is sadly insufficient to query a web dictionary, or a printed one for that matter.

Cursed word-based queries, grep would solve this in seconds, I muttered. Wait, yes, grep will solve this in seconds! After some longer than anticipated tar.gz hunting, I seemed to find numerous providers of the 1913 Webster's unabridged English dictionary, which has fortunately been released into public domain. With some tr, sed, and sort -u, I had a nice greppable txt file revealing 'plenipotentiary', carrying as a noun the meaning "a diplomatic agent, such as an ambassador, fully authorized to represent his or her government" and as an adjective "invested with or conferring full powers." Aha, excellent. If only there had been a web service to do this generally! Are you listening, Google? I seriously need a mind-augmenting persistent cache to prevent memory loss. As an aside, as if this whole posting wasn't a giant one, a month and a half ago I managed to utter "Al Grove" in place of "Carl Rove", seamlessly morphing him with a certain former vice president and presidential candidate I'll leave unnamed. Needless to say, that gaffe instantly clinched an unofficial debate victory for my heckling opponent.

Cursory Game Review of "Rome: Total War"

2005-05-31T04:00:00.000-04:00

Developed by The Creative Assembly and published in 2004 by Activision, the latest in the Total War series, Rome: Total War, far exceeds any expectations set by Warcraft in warfare while borrowing from the allure of Civilization (Civ) and Master of Orion (MoO). Like Civ, the macroscopic management of the empire (involving the queuing of building structures, the queuing of training troops, and the movement of troops across the available map) is turn-based; however, the time (number of turns) to produce a building or unit is, like Warcraft and unlike Civ, a fixed number of turns dictated by the item being constructed or trained rather than the manufacturing capabilities of the city. Like MoO, battles are fought optionally as mini-games. Unlike MoO, these mini-games are real-time and follow in the genre of Command and Conquer (C&C) and Warcraft but replace the old C&C and Warcraft era maps with true 3D terrain, camera perspective, and high-resolution military units comprised of twenty to fifty individually animated characters per unit. Also unlike MoO, when declining to manually play a mini-game, the player merely is given (and rightfully so) the statistical end-result instead of peering into the 5-10min long battle animation which would otherwise ensue. In brief, this game borrows heavily from, and exhibits itself as, a medley of classic strategy war games, yet does so as would a good recipe harmoniously blend common palatable flavors while adding a few hitherto uncommon ones.

The storyline while lackluster is implemented in a very novel manner. The ahistorical premise of the game is that the Senatus Populusque Romanus (SPQR) wishes to expand Rome vicariously through three powerful Roman houses, the Julii, Scipii, and Brutii. The player's avatar is the faction leader of one of these three houses - the particular house being chosen when creating a new game. The Senate will give time-bound missions incentivized with modest rewards to help steer the player’s faction. Cities cannot be formed or destroyed as would have been able in Civ; instead, each faction simply advances by conquering existing cities and choosing to either occupy, enslave (dispersing 25% of the population to other cities), or exterminate (lowering the population by 75%). Initially, many of the available cities are rebel-owned. These rebel cities have no allegiance and cannot form diplomatic channels and are thus fodder for adjacent civilizations. The player’s faction is initially allied with the SPQR and the other two Roman factions. The Julii house would typically expand northward and northwestward into Gallic territory. The Brutii house would typically expand southeastward and eastward into Greek and Macedonian territory. The Scipii house would typically expand southward and southwestward into Carthaginian territory. Later in the game, Rome expands into Germanic, Dacian, Seleucid, Thracian, Spanish, Scythian, Egyptian, Briton and other territories. The objective of the game is to own the Senate while possessing 50 provinces. Like Civ, the best way to achieve the objective is to build structures improving the economy, city defenses, and sanitary conditions. Like Warcraft, military units have prerequisite military structures, one upgrade path for various infantry units, another for various cavalry units, another for various missile units, and yet another for various naval units. A blacksmith or armourer in the city is the only exception, helping improve the quality of weapons for all military units.

Curiously unlike most other strategy games, family members of the faction's patriarchy are important. All the characters gain virtues and vices over time, form entourages conferring insight, marry and propagate, and eventually die as in real life. Some characters may even be elected into the senate and rise through the various bureaucratic ranks. While moderately complex for a strategy game, much of the complexity is mitigated by being read-only. The only control on the family the player has is in selecting the heir, choosing to betroth a female family member to a requesting suitor, and occasionally choosing to adopt into the family a commander who has shown his mettle in combat. Male family members of age (sixteen or older) appear as a General at the capital, carrying modifiers set by his virtues, vices, and the traits of his retinue. These modifiers can affect anything from the morale of troops at battle to the cost of erecting buildings in the city to the chances of rising in the bureaucracy of the senate to the likelihood of having many children. Like any other unit, a General - and, importantly, his modifiers - can be moved across the map from city to city or battle to battle. Less importantly, in real-time battle mini-games, a General often appears as a cavalry unit of 10-20 horsemen - which can have some minimal, direct use. Gameplay-wise, the 10-20 horsemen simply indicate the General's "health" since each horseman bimodally either survives combat or dies during it.

The quality of the mini-games' graphics is astounding, even when using a slightly older (circa 2002) graphics card requiring one to disable various aesthetic features. Unlike the motion-picture implementation in C&C and Warcraft utilizing a dozen key frames, Rome: Total War uses proper 3D animation, vector-based with perhaps five dozen inflection states involving the categorical concepts of marching, running, fleeing, scrimmaging and, for missle units, firing. The viewing camera is, seemingly, several meters above the ground, angled downward toward the battlefield. The height and downward angle of the camera are automanaged and read-only, but the player may polar rotate and cartesian translate the terrestrial plane. Whenever the axis of height is important (viewing units on a slope or viewing from a slope), the camera's automanager will correct the height and downward angle of the camera to provide suitable sight.

Throughout this review, I have been doing a grave disservice by referring to the real-time battles as mini-games; in actuality, these real-time battles can be the sole focus of the game and the creators cleverly catalogue historical battles for instant play, dismissing the need to ever plod along a tiring and lengthy Civ-style campaign. True to its mission of being realistic while fun to play, battles occur on a giant arena which may take 10min to walk across with infantry. Fortunately, your opponent tends to be positioned a minute away. Woodlands and hills can shift the balance of power in battle, forcing one side to fight an uphill battle or render its siege weapons immobile due to absence of clear terrain. Town Watchers, Hastati, Principes and Triarii are, in ascending order of power, the infantry and heart of Roman might early in the game. The various cavalry and missile-based cavalry units are fast, useful to prey on outlying infantry or to pierce a hole in the opponent's rank. Velites, Archers, and the ancient world's engineering marvels such as ballistas and onagers are strategic units with limited but invaluable uses. There are also special units various civilizations possess. A dearth of elephants available to Rome, and consequent cultural abhorrence of elephants and denigration of the militarization thereof, makes this unit unavailable to a Roman army while available to a Carthaginian one. Similarly, pikeman and other units are for exclusive use by certain civilizations. Once the battle is underway, formations prove vital. Morale and effectiveness of one's units are heavily dependent on orderliness, easily disrupted by beasts such as wardogs and elephants or by swift, indefatigable cavalry. A pivotal unit may quickly flee long before it could ever be vanquished if the men are disheartened by pervading chaos. Most units, unfortunately, are limited to the dull blocks legionnaires classically form; however, cavalry can form rhomboid and wedge formations, cavalry auxilla - missile-equipped cavalry - can also form a Cantabrian circle around their prey, and legionnaires during sieges can form a testudo, the oft-romanticized 'invincible' tortoise formation. Given the richness present elsewhere in the game, the unvariedness of formations is a puzzling oversimplification. Perhaps this streamlining correctly portrays the genuine monotony of roman formations. Thankfully, spectacles such as incendiary pigs – oil drenched, violent pigs unleashed upon an enemy and later ignited by fire-arrows to wreak one-time devastation on the opponent – more than make up for the narrow range of formations.

Graphics: 8 /10 Gameplay: 6½/10 Novelty: 8 /10

Jason and the Argonauts.. and The East Colchis Trading Co.

2005-04-17T23:40:00.000-04:00

Some days back, I was watching one of those shows - the ones aired on History or Discovery or some other -y suffixed channel, the shows which somehow mesmerize me with enough intrigue that I try to extrapolate it onto other things or in some other way imbibe it into my own life’s fabric no matter how useless the content. This particular show was analyzing the story of Jason, the epic Greek hero who, unlike every other epic hero, is endowed with little besides leading the Argonauts, crewmen so renowned the cast of Ocean’s Eleven could have been first-year acting majors. The agenda of the show was to prove that Jason was not a mythical figure but an ambitious businessman, premising on the ancient Greeks’ use of allegories to tell the tale of businesses, trade routes, and mergers with fanciful hyperbole coalescing kingdoms, quests, and marriages into a riveting epic. The throne Jason sought from the cold, calculative Pelias was ownership of a trading company, and the quest for the Golden Fleece symbolized establishing a trade route from Thessaly in gold-scarce Greece to elementally rich Colchis in western Turkey where laborers used fleece to dredge up gold from turbid river water. Even Medea, the sultry sorceress-princess of Colchis stolen away by an alluring Jason to later wed him, is theorized to be a symbol of a business contract between two corporate powers. I'm not sure how to interpret, however, how she in her later years turns out to be a scorned termagant, killing her children and an elderly Jason’s young, lithesome mistress. While I’m sure our contemporary academes are over-crediting the epic writer with symbolism and other nuanced literary complexity, oh, how fun it would be if today’s newscasters delivered corporate news in the greek raconteurs' motif!

philobabble

2005-04-10T03:11:00.000-04:00

In the process of procuring for a friend a 1999 college paper of mine from my class on space-time, I decided to indulge myself in a waft of unintelligible writing from my other papers adjacently kept in six years of abeyance. I find it remarkable how I now find the jargon from philosophy so completely alien when years ago I swam in these terms and wrote about them freely. In my defense, Google presently seems to know of only 222 pages mentioning the Covering Law Model of Explanation and only 557 containing corpuscularity. I, however, have little excuse for forgetting Logical Positivism which appears in 76,900 pages in the Google corpus and even has its own wiki entry. Another esoteric term I almost never use and had nearly forgotten, supervenience has a healthy 30,200 hits with Google. Below is the text from my "Models of Explanation" class paper:

03/04/99 “Models of Explanation”
It could be argued that the most powerful tool we as intelligent beings posses is our capability to reason through logic in order to explain the happenings in our world. Ironically, it then becomes quite a task to explain such a tool since we will have to assume that our ability to deduce and explain is powerful enough to be self-applicable. For now, however, let us assume we can explain explanation. One model that seemingly does exactly that is the Covering Law Model of Explanation. In essence, this model uses a miscellany of reasoning taken from corpuscularity and positivism to disassemble our complex understanding of explanation into a series of simpler causal events that take on a true or false value in existence.

Applying this model, an explanation for why a vending machine gives soda would be broken into several mathematical tokens, each representing an ongoing event that influences the outcome in some way. A very rudimentary view would lead one to conclude that putting in seventy-five cents into the coin slot while the sodas are not empty and the power is on and the mechanical components are working would yield in the machine giving a soda. In any combination of events, a mathematical equation could take all the initial states and calculate a corresponding outcome. This very mathematical approach, however, would only be acceptable to a full-fledged determinist, or would otherwise be limited in its range of application, such as being applicable only to non-living things. Aside to this model of explanation’s dependence on determinism, its dependence on reduction again reduces its audience. Most probably, several other factors affect the mechanical condition of the vending machine and the number of sodas remaining as well as the power being on. Recursively, multiple factors would need to be monitored as potential variables in order to truly reduce any complex object. This infinitely required knowledge is often an argument against any form of corpuscularity.

A usual retort to any theoretical challenges imposed on a theory is providing empirical evidence in support of the theory; and, history comes in favor of the Covering Law Model of Explanation. Most Newtonian physicists and chemists often reduced complex real life occurrences into a simple matrix of variables, yielding a determined answer. Even in “An Explanation of Hunger,” a scientific paper written by Cannon and Washburn, the two authors sought to explain why humans get hungry, and in doing so fervently applied the Covering Law Model of Explanation. A similar endeavor to understanding hunger was conducted by another scientist prior to the attempt by Cannon and Washburn. With knowledge of the previous unsuccessful attempt at showing that hunger causes stomach contractions, Cannon and Washburn sought further meticulous analysis of the issue, with the starting intuition that perhaps stomach contractions cause hunger and not vice-versa.

By monitoring all the known macro-variables, which were referral of pain, chemicals secreted by the stomach, volume of substance in the stomach, and smooth muscle lining, Cannon and Washburn were able to deduce that the contraction of the smooth muscle lining that made up the stomach walls was what produced hunger. The very nature of the experiment focussing on components that could affect hunger shows the experimenters’ usage of reduction. The manner in which they manage to stay non-contradictory is to fix the recursive problem with reduction by having holistic macro-variables and using statistics instead of a deterministic framework. With this logic, whenever a person’s stomach walls contract, there exists a probability that the person will suffer from pangs. However, no attempt is made to recursively explain when these macro-variables will be true or when they will be false. This room for ambiguity serves, in part, to preserve the somewhat implicit nature of randomness of any complex system and the likelihood of supervenience being a more comprehensive model of the hierarchy in complexity than corpuscularity.

In fact, Mischel initially reasoned the holistic alternative that challenges the Covering Law Model of Explanation. The problems with both corpuscularity and determinism are corrected in Mischel’s holistic view whereby complex things are not treated as the sum of their individual components. Although classical Newtonian mechanics interlaces reduction throughout many of its theorems, it should be noted that most of the problems under scrutiny by these theorems were about non-living physical things in ideal conditions where no unknown variable influences the system. Because of the limited scope of simplified Newtonian physics, reduction works. However, for any truly natural event, and especially for any living being, the predictions based upon the micro-components would deviate from the actual results so quickly that no similarity between prediction and actuality would ever be noticed. Indeed, if a group of people were to enter a subway, the driving forces behind why each of them entered may differ vastly from the other. No generalization could ever be achieved unless a law were to be made for every person, essentially creating a rule for every exception.

In an excerpt from “The Origins of Intelligence of Children,” by Jean Piaget, the power that the Covering Law Model of Explanation can give is observed. Although, as stated earlier, reduction has its many problems that holism appears to resolve, science repeatedly maximizes the utilization of reduction for their benefit. Piaget initially tries to observe and record each invariant that could have any significant impact on his subjects, and then he goes about creating a system of simultaneous equations, essentially a matrix of all recorded variables. By seeing the deviance of output from a small initial change in one of the variables, and after several iterations of experimenting, a conclusion can be made about what each variable does with its normal environment. Again, empirically, conclusions appear to assimilate from the environment to predict accurately the actual end-results.

The philosophical issue pertinent now is whether empirical corroboration is enough to offset problems in the fundamental theories. The dichotomy between reliance on empirical proof and logical proof is of concern. A simplified analogy would be to drop a feather and a lead ball and show that objects do not undergo equal and unified acceleration due to gravity. This is utter nonsense, since all the empirical evidence would then corroborate with this invalid hypothesis unless someone were to remove every variable including air friction for a perfect experiment. Therefore, empirical evidence with many distracting outside influences cannot always be reliable, since induction has many of its own theoretical flaws.

In the case of Newtonian physicists and many scientists using reduction in order to simplify and then to conquer problems, the focus of study is always a simple organism, be it biological or inanimate. Firstly, a simple focus of study inherently supposes that the actions performed are deterministic, or pseudo-deterministic. A baby’s natural instinct for milk, as was studied by Piaget, would fall under this category of pseudo-determinism, because, although the baby is a living complex entity, the study is not about the baby. The focus of study, in this case, would be on the code programmed into its body, or natural instinct, which is not subject to free-will. If, however, the Covering Law Model of Explanation were to try to explain why a person decided to enter a subway, large clashes in philosophy would occur, since a free-willist would not accept any theory that assumes humans as deterministic. For studying human actions or any other complex indeterminant system, a holist’s approach, such as that of Mischel’s, would be necessary, where supervenience not corpuscularity would be the underlying axiom.

Another freshman-year paper worth reposting is one titled "Reductionist's Belief in the Observation Basis". I cannot recall another time in the six years following when I have alluded to Hilbert or Gödel. My lack of doing so is perhaps indication that, unless I make a conscientious effort otherwise, my most enlightened years are behind me. In any case, below is the text from that elliptical class paper of mine:

03/17/99 “Reductionist’s Belief in the Observation Basis”
Straining to cope with the sudden burst of information rushing through time, with information pleading to be processed as quickly as the next information can take its place, a newborn has the universe materialize around itself. With no earthly law other than the apriori knowledge of motion, everything else, every nuance of our meticulous training and thinking, the foundation of all modern understanding, is left as an unprecedented event for the distant future. The future of this newly created realm, however, remains an unintelligible concept as elusive to decipher as the creation of the present. The self encompasses everything, and the universe appears as merely an extension of the limbs. Indeed, nothing starts of as apriori knowledge and all accumulated knowledge may only be a gaudy tower of Lego blocks where the corpuscles of reality are deceptive inferences of the sensations.

Logical positivism has a long life, spotted with illness, yet healthy for the most part; its longevity allows it to remain an incessantly recurring philosophical view. However, if the universe is a game as mathematics was thought to be by Hilbert, could there be some savior, an anti-positivist counterpart to Gödel? Perhaps, through this game we play, where we role-play in our most sentient dream, we may discover truths of the underlying reality, assuming there is one. Therefore, with the needed assumptions, truths can be derived merely from observation. Furthermore, although a newborn may appear to learn holistically, as the universe takes on a more rigid and developed form, cognitive thinking sharpens like a lens focussing. This sharpening of cognitive thought from the sensory data can be seen as one’s adopting of reductionism. Although the focussed picture may vary in appearance depending on the defined corpuscle, the re-blurred images will all be identical again. Essentially, from a functionalist’s standpoint, the macroscopic object reconstituted solely from its corpuscles will always be the same regardless of what its corpuscles are. As long as the observation basis continues to be used, there will be inherent truths discovered through reductionism, and these inherent truths, holistic in nature, will correlate in a non-contradictory manner.

This weekend has seen me mired in nostalgia. Yesterday, I wanted to immerse myself in '80s video games, loading the save files from my 386. Alas, it was not to be had. I found my 386 hidden in the study room but could not locate its power cables or monitor.

Revisiting the past has surprisingly been therapeutic for me. When I was a latchkey kid at age twelve, I mucked around with the CMOS configuration and nearly rendered the only few months old 386 inoperable. Fortunately, with some desperate prayers and panicky corrective changes, the machine came back to life before my parents returned home. However, ever since then, I harbored the suspicion that the new settings were making the 386 far slower than it once was. When I was 23, I somehow remembered this episode and decided to put my limited experience with computer hardware to task. The 386 at that time was still plugged in - albeit collecting dust - and awaited being turned on. Interestingly, this 386 demanded more of its user to configure its CMOS than needed to configure a modern CMOS. Aside to the ubiquitous settings regarding whether to shadow video ram, the geometry of the hard disks, and the caching policies, there lay many other settings concerning intricacies on architecture and design requiring an investment in a computer architecture course. I reconfigured the CMOS employing what I knew, and, miraculously, the 386 sped up considerably! The feeling of correcting a ten year wrong is an indescribable coupling of euphoria and serenity.

slacker theory, sedulously researched

2005-04-05T14:31:00.000-04:00

Excerpt from AIM session... er, well, actually, the entire session:

(2005-04-04 20:59:16) you_know_who_you_are: what's that theory that states that it's easier to have everything disorganized than to work to keep it clean

Hmm. Excellent question - except, that message had ended up being routed to my office computer's instant messenger so only this morning did I read it, at which time you were offline, and you are conveniently continuing to remain offline. After having Google scour its corpus for me on a variety of search phrases, all to no avail, I settled on the idea of using Wikipedia. While nothing useful came up on 'disorganization' and its variants, I felt I was gaining traction when I searched for 'slacker'. Indeed, it was close; and, ideally, the content answering your question should have been there. Aha, I thought to myself, here's my chance to help the open-source encyclopedia! Below is my personal - and probably myopic and faulty - answer about how slacker theory partially revolves around the notion that it's easier to have everything disorganized than to work to keep it clean. Criticism welcomed. Dodging the highlighter pens I throw at you in a fit of rage is not.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, slacker entry:

Apart from meaning lazy, slacker may also be used to insinuate habitual procrastination and a disorganized, slovenly lifestyle. Proponents of slacker theory assert that managing to survive by doing things at the last possible moment improves intellect as a compensatory way to cope, fashioning a wily yet lazy person. Similarly, a disorganized lifestyle may be superior to an organized one from the pragmatic perspective that a slacker will adapt to disorderliness by improving skills at memorization and at effortlessly rummaging, whereas actively organizing would require serious effort. Hence, the epithet slacker, while often used in the pejorative, is growingly signifying a complimentary, cerebral quality of an unconventional person. For another example of a bimodally pejorative and affectionate term, see hacker. There is also a slight overlap between slacker culture, stoner culture, and hippie culture insofar as they all are implying a disheveled appearance; however, many slackers are straight-edge, and their relative apathy precludes their involvement in any hippie movement.

Adhering to the slacker principium, I found it easier to forge the results I was looking for than to invest time into researching the matter. Classical texts' veracity notwithstanding, does anyone genuinely assume a compiler diligently winnows out bullshit from available resources? The average compilation is rife with conjecture, and Wikipedia gallantly distinguishes itself from the average by employing even greater guesswork. We can only hope that assiduous researchers will catch on and surreptitiously learn, like everyone else has, to quote themselves, misquote others, and quote out of context anybody with antithetical views; perhaps, then, we may finally escape the irksome face of truth recurrently coming to contradict us.

Plagiarising from Comedy Central: New Journalism

2005-04-02T18:56:00.000-05:00

In my efforts to depart from the wholly unsavory experience of watching television, I am realizing that the Internet, comparatively, is sort of an intellectual camelot. No, I'm serious; and, yes, I am the same person who has always complained about the deterioration of the web ever since AOL decided to join it, but there is a certain respect fake news possesses when compared with the dichotomously apathetic and sensationalist mainstream media news. Intriguingly, the nearest to a television news program daring enough to earnestly tackle the topic of social security - a system ostensibly dilapidated due to gay married terrorists - is an episode of The Daily Show with guest economist, the sassy Paul Krugman.^[1] Thanks to Comedy Central's magnanimity, the episode is available online with limited commercial distractions for anyone who can right-click and select 'fullscreen'.

The waning of the integrity of news reporting isn't new; in fact, seasoned journalist Tom Fenton lambastes his colleagues on what he describes as a slow deterioration arising from loosening FCC regulations and the ending of the Cold War.^[2] Left with "thin soup," as Fenton describes the shallow informational content, the plethora of news channels are subsisting by repackaging the same one or two newswire feeds and filling empty airtime with opinions. While fake news is also fallible, as the pompously defensive Brian Williams likes to articulate,^[3] its reduced obligation to rehash already well-covered stories lends to being able to skip the cursory coverage and immediately start with deeper analysis, assuming the audience has met the prerequisite by watching 'real' news first.

Another point of interest is that mainstream media news refuses to cover news about mainstream media. Absconding scion Ted Hitler eloquently explains how legitimacy brings access, status, and power, all of which reduce the ability to be as objective as illegitimate news.^[4] Particularly, Hitler mentions atrios.blogspot.com (Eschaton) as among the impudent attack-blogs where facts are gathered and collated without the stolidness of mainstream media. However, Hitler also saliently points out how New Journalism, like its predecessor, will eventually gain access, status, and power, and will hence repeat the same mistakes. Dutifully, I pledge that my blog will never reach an audience greater than my fingers let me count, and will therefore shield itself from journalistic decay, despite its never having covered anything of journalistic importance to begin with. I also pledge to wear pants while I blog, from now on.

2005-04-04 21:18 Update — Just thought it would be amusing to point out that Stephen Colbert of The Daily Show mentioned colbertkilledapanda.com, and surely enough, on Feb 16th, 2005, the domain gets registered. Life imitates art, it seems.

gadzooks! toons, extemporaneous fan mail and all that jazz

2005-03-25T23:05:00.000-05:00

The death anniversary today was most enjoyable. Having reveled since daybreak and continuing to revel now well after nightfall, I've grown giddy without horns emerging from the skull or an appendage sprouting from the tailbone. It never ceases to amaze me the euphoric stupor hours spent watching television can cause. The first round of amusement came from rebroadcast '90s science shows where scientists plead for the credibility of concepts now considered obvious; there is sinister, megalomaniacal humor in watching top-rated physicists reduced to uttering 'multiverse' with great hesitation, akin to watching Dr. Evil finger quote 'laser'. The second round of amusement came from flash toons, which I consider part of television despite not requiring a television set per se, one of which contains Mario and Luigi in coarsely pixilated form reenacting battles with Gumbas and Bowser in a masterfully choreographed spoof.^[1] With a remix of nostalgic nintendo music perfecting the ambiance, even alcohol, were it present, could not add to the ecstasy. Ah, yes; may there be more days reserved for ecclesiastical solidarity. Cake, anyone?^[2]

Credit for today's fruitfulness needs to also go towards my mother, without whose nagging at sun rise to make a deposit at the bank, fetch two packets of screws from Waterworks, and buy a gallon of milk, I would have woken up at dinnertime. Wasn't I supposed to find my own apartment after moving back to Connecticut last June?

Ehem. So, anyways; while other rounds of amusement occurred, such as viewing Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, their details elude me in my state of euphoria. One facet I do recall is my surprising, recent leaning toward things Indian. Below is the email I spontaneously wrote to a professor at Penn State regarding his rather popularly reproduced compilation of evidences^[3] attacking the Aryan Invasion Theory, a theory of India's past initially purported by colonial powers and later glorified by the Third Reich:

Prof. Dinesh Agrawal,

I was surprised and delighted to see your consolidation of evidences many other scholars had espoused piecemeal, none individually denting the scholastic machinery that has made the hypothesis of an Aryan invasion of India a ubiquitous fact.

Although it was a reproduction of your 1995 soc.religion.hindu newsgroup mailing, I just recently read it. Having earlier read of excavations and other findings of significance in chronicling the history of ancient India, I long ago concluded that the position of supporting Aryan invasion of India having had happened was untenable; yet, I have seen and am continuing to see a growing adoption of this occidental view in general American education as India becomes a growing interest to the world. I have reservations and mixed feelings towards the transition, from where India is not taught about at all, to where it is taught under a vintage, hesperian lens.

Even among those I know were educated in India, to whom the weaknesses in AIT have been explained in Indian education, some shrug at their learnings as being nationalistic or unduly saffronized, while others, adamant about their xenogenic Aryan or indigenous Dravidian ethnicity, indulge in cliquish behavior under the faulty premise. Such baneful perceptions are reminders of the era we live in, birthed by lingering effects of colonialism and an attempt at discovering self-identity under globalization in which the West is inarguably the leader.

My questions to you are, what steps are being taken to correct historical inaccuracies; which governing bodies are providing the brief excerpts about India's history, ostensibly factual to the believing reader, that have managed their way into countless textbooks and governmental pamphlets; and why are universities, many of which have 'veritas' somewhere in their motto, dismissing the pursuit of truth on the grounds of lack of interest or by alluding that AIT opposition must be a special-interest group akin to evolution doubters attempting to overturn science with specious zealotry?

After watching insurmountable evidence contrarian to AIT be diligently gathered, verified by peers, and reported on by those in the scientific community devoting serious thought and time to Indian history, I am nonplussed at the general education system's insistence on republishing as the authority on Indian history the resources authored by those having put in the least thought and the least time. Only at the higher echelons of education, where being uncritical is a liability, is AIT successfully challenged. What is your view on this?

Sincerely,
(My Name)

Yes, I rather love emailing strangers my prattle on obscure topics. I was amazed when I received Prof. Dinesh's quick reply, the content of which I won't publish without his consent, partly due to netiquette, and partly because there undoubtedly is some law requiring I obtain consent. In line with my recent attraction to Indianness, I found sepiamutiny.com, an amusing blogpository (my coinage) of a half dozen Indian American bloggers with comedic reflections on life as it relates to Desis.

Oh, to the one person who reads this without my prodding, apologies for not posting a blog for nearly two weeks.

2005-04-06 15:34 Update — Drats, blogpository already coined! Cursed elund steals my coinage by developing a time-machine to travel back to 2003:

elund
12-03-2003, 12:18 PM
Blogging has been going on for decades. I think it's hilarious that once somebody attached a funny sounding name to the activity that it suddenly became popular.

I don't have a blog, but I have nothing against them. Blogs come in different forms. Some are platforms for pundits and industry critics, some are really .plan files, some are online diaries, and some act as news aggregators, regurgitating or deep linking to new things on the web. Most have a little bit of each. Slashdot is sort of a public repository blog when you think of about it. A blogpository, if you will.

Blogging gives you a vehicle for adding freeform site content. If you don't have a blog, everything you add to your site needs a purpose. But if you have a blog, just blather away, opine on the business or other sites, or talk about your day. Don't have any news? Mention somebody else's news. It's easy, quick, up-to-date "content." If you find a way to be interesting, it's a good way to get regular visitors to your site.

On the negative side, making a successful blog requires -- besides interesting things to say -- commitment. With the exception of joke blog sites like Gabriel's dullest blog in the world, it takes daily or at least weekly effort to keep a blog updated. Like many team game development projects, it's easy to lose steam and fall apart. It's hard to garner new blog visitors when they see yours is updated infrequently, no matter how interesting your posts are.

Blogging can take less blatant forms, too. On my website I have a news box where I can post what's going on at Gearhand Studios. If I wanted to, I could update this every day. I don't, because I'm just pretty sure I couldn't say something interesting and topical every day. At least not in it's current format. It's definitely worth thinking more about.

quotted from indiegamer
google cache also available.

hackneyed and lackluster musings of an interviewer, part II

2005-03-12T16:30:00.001-05:00

In my previous animadversions concerning grades, I complained about how positive correlation between classroom scores and future achievement is waning, and I opined that standardized scores would benefit interviewers and mitigate nonsensical school grading. Only fittingly, the efficacy of contemporary standardized exams needs to be critiqued.

Standardized exams truly and dutifully bear the responsibility to provide a metric on which students can be compared, thereby giving institutions insight on applicants' relative success in the future. In theory, the purpose of any exam is to emulate "the ideal exam", a formally defined concept. In reality, however, avarice adulterates the specification. To understand how existing exams are flawed, let us first understand the ideal.

Mathematically, the ideal exam is represented as an exam E for some success predicate S where, for all pairings (A,B) such that A scores higher on E than does B, then A does better at S than does B. Obviously, when E=S, we have a trivial solution of prediction. The commercial value of E exists only when the results for E can be attained long before the results for S are realized. Such augury comes at the cost of accuracy. An imperfect E can only try to maximize the percentage of its better-worse pairings (A,B) which satisfy the condition that A does better at S than B. When the percentage is over 50%, then we say E positively correlates with S. Since a random set would have 50% of the pairings satisfying the relative-success criteria, E must have a positive correlation significantly above 50% to avoid being dismissed as a joke.

Generally, any university aims to admit students who will excel at the curriculum provided by the university. To aid this endeavor, standardized tests like the SAT try to provide positive correlation with doing well in an undergraduate curriculum. Yet, certain universities, feeling behooved to reanalyze their past students in an attempt to improve the selection process, quantitavely discovered that the SAT correlates more poorly than ACT, AP exams, and other standardized scoring means in predicting undergraduate performance. For quite some time it had been popular for schools to simultaneously accept ACT or SAT, but the growing futility of the SAT goaded the powerful University of California system to almost abandon the SAT altogether.^[1] At the risk of losing the patronage of Berkeley, UCLA, and others in the UC system, and for fear such a UC decision would cascade to Texas and New England, ETS has dangerously pulled a prototype exam away from scrutiny and is today recasting it as the new SAT.

Having taken the SAT II subject tests MathIIC, Writing, and Chemistry, I do feel that ETS is correct in principle to strengthen the SAT with the essay portion of the Writing exam and the slightly more difficult math questions from the MathIIC exam. However, the triviality of each question and the pressures of time make the premise of the SAT as irremediably meaningless as a thousand-question examination of single-digit addition problems. Speed at so automatable a task can hardly correlate with any professional success.^[2] The AP exams - also overseen by ETS - ask fewer, more arduous questions and are akin to undergraduate finals. Why will ETS not follow their own standards for crafting AP exams when they ponder on the SAT standard? Profits, perhaps. Despite ETS being a nonprofit organization, they have US$153mil in their coffers,^[3] mostly from the inexpensive to manufacture SAT exams with comparatively high test-taking fees. Moreover, modeling the SAT after the costlier AP exams would necessitate fees many would consider exorbitant,^[4] and would therefore shoo ETS customers to rival test makers. While the problem can be remedied by pledging to operate on a wafer-thin profit margin, ETS is unlikely to be as charitable as its tax-exempt status stipulates it be. It is a pity such pecuniary aspects plague academia so.

Special Mention: The inspiration for this blog, and most of the facts and figures, come from an NPR article by Bob Schaeffer, SAT: A Cynical Marketing Ploy. In NPR's defense, despite Schaeffer's harrowing tale of the deleterious effects of the SAT, there are numerous NPR stories giddily espousing the exam and its new format.^[5]

Egads! Spurious Dickens, Spackled Cars, and Feckless Me

2005-03-09T15:45:00.000-05:00

I stumbled upon a great stash of opinion articles last night. Thank you Maud Newton for your blog on Giles Coren's groundbreaking revealments about Dickens on timesonline.co.uk, without which I would not have found Chris Ayres' taxonomy of Beverly Hills - which tries to be about overpriced cookies in Los Angeles, a rambling segue into the Michael Jackson trial. To those with illusions of internet efficiency, please be aware that timesonline.co.uk is apparently powered by avian transport, so I would encourage getting some coffee while the poor postal pigeon meanders its way to the nearest telegraph-equipped outpost.

Excepting the opinion articles, yesterday was a rather unholy culmination of the weather's malignancy towards my innocent car and my own saturnine wallowing. Pampered by garages at home and at work, I thought little noticing out my window the pretty early morning downfall of powdery snow. Now I see how vile and stygian that snow really is! My subconscious cleverly had repressed memories of studying in Troy, NY and my daily sufferings there at carving my car out from a block of ice itself buried in a mound of snow. My even now thawing hands cannot believe that the garage's annexation by plumbing widgets menacingly laid there would lead to my driving today in a hovering igloo with circular windows dug out.

Enough about New Englanders' banal plights; what of my saturnine wallowing? I had lost a check, a rather sizable one, equal to a few months worth of salary. Convinced I merely misplaced it, I ransacked the house, studied every pocket in my coat like a tailor, and gave my igloo car so thorough an examination the TSA's rectal search would seem scant. When the realization it may truly be lost dawned, I tried to distract myself with work, food, and online opinion articles, all to no avail. After having slept the troubled night of a fugitive, a denouement of sorts occurred this morning. I mustered the courage to overcome embarrassment, phoning the issuer and requesting my sought-after check be cancelled and a new one be issued. Relaxed at having overcome such trepidation, I noticed a moment after hanging up that beneath a few stacks of office stationary was slid askew an envelope containing, yes, my sought-after check. I redialed and ignominiously cancelled my cancellation. Ugh; I'm a scatterbrained moron.

NPR? I am not addicted to Faberge Eggs!

2005-03-08T02:17:00.000-05:00

Some days I really miss the little things I grew accustomed to when living in California. Today was one such day. After the first month of scanning radio stations in Connecticut, I gave up trying to find NPR. Several months ensued and I found being a menace on the highway with my cell phone was a reasonable alternative to silence. Today, I found NPR on AM 820, faintly suffocated by another station in the morning and rendered unintelligible by two or three other stations in the evening. Only King Tantalus can empathize with the feeling of seeing such delicious fruit so close without ever being able to taste it. Although I wished I had never found AM 820 while I struggled to keep sane under the hisses, crackles, and divergent music phasing in and out, the onset of madness did jolt my memory enough to remember a colleague of mine at Oracle who would listen to NPR through www.npr.org! Duh, why was I unable to realize this months ago?!

Before the wrong ideas circulate based on my incessant pining over NPR, bear in mind that NPR is an FM station with the crispest, clearest reception imaginable across the entire SF Bay Area, and that its local franchise, KQED, broadcasts three to four television stations as well. You can perhaps see how weaning away from something that sacrosanct and integral to everyday life can be traumatizing. I admit NY Times' op-eds by Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd ameliorated the otherwise harsh life without NPR, but the attempts of columnists always lack the vigor and buoyancy of a live debate. Bill Maher's Real-Time on HBO was another saving grace, albeit during half a year and even then only weekly. Notwithstanding the alternatives, I am overjoyed at the new prospect of reacquainting myself with NPR.

P.S. addiction to Faberge Eggs is not a laughing matter; it afflicts many people annually, depleting their monetary capital, devastating their ability to sustain relationships with family and friends, and causing early onset of gingivitis.^[1] To help those whose lives have been thusly distraught, please send donations to my Cayman islands account^[2] and I will see that it reaches those who truly need it.

Beyond the Impropriety of Ward Churchill

2005-03-06T23:48:00.000-05:00

The now infamous Professor Ward Churchill may not have been in his element when he described the slain financiers of the World Trade Center as genocidal middlemen, as Adolf Eichmanns of a freemarkets system of amoral efficiency. Despite Churchill's impropriety and lapses in tact, his arguments appeal to those of us weary of ignorance and complacency in an era of mass-produced sorrow.

Cogs in the wheel, most of us are feckless, mired in mundane livelihoods. Our collective departure from agrarian lifestyle, arguably the greatest monument to civilization, gave rise to a flurry of thinkers and buttressed an era of accomplishments; in spite of this, we are knowingly degenerating to days of hunters and gatherers, days when free time ceases to exist.

Lessons from Churchill teach how ignorance of one's evil deeds does not equate to innocence. Just as the judiciary pities very little the reckless driver who, with no intent to harm, slaughters a man, morality should pity very little those who, without evil intent, do evil. Certainly, the crime without intent is lesser, but the criminal is never innocent. Blissfully ignorant of extraordinary renditions, society abidingly supports the machinery to torture. Innocent? We are not, and we mustn't pretend to be.

Like criminal law and its perennial amendments, morality serves a particular purpose and we must accordingly redefine morality to serve more greatly its purpose. While laws govern the tactics of our welfare, our immediate needs for safety, morals govern the strategy of our welfare, our needs to live through the next millennium.

So long as we are content, believing we are journeying on the moral high-ground, our small peon-scaled atrocities can be overlooked, thereby giving free reign for our collective atrocities to engulf any hopes for the long-term viability of our civilization. Therefore, with the strategy of civilization's longevity in mind, it is imperative to redefine morality. Ever-increasing population will only further exacerbate the need to fundamentally feel guilt over our minor infractions. Our only recourse is to guide ourselves to the Gandhian philosophy where we must be the change we wish to see in the world.

Readdressing Churchill, we indeed need to view those complacent in their crimes as guilty, as well as ourselves; even if we are not the hammer to bludgeon the skull of a defenselessly quivering man, we cannot feel innocent filing the paperwork approving the action. To adjudicate our own lives' actions, we must set aside time in our day for consulting a new, contemporary, moral compass. With greater time spent reflecting, we may shed myopia and its cohort ignorance;^[1] hopefully, an expanded awareness and culpability will prescribe the good actions we should take. The alternative is to decay into darkness.

2005-03-08 03:10 Update — U.Colorado struck with curse: NY Times 2005.03.07 (registration required, yada yada).

One can only marvel at how the nation's ill-willed mutterings skipped past teflon Churchill and onto president Elizabeth Hoffman for an unrelated sex and alcohol scandal involving recruitment policies of jocks.

Cheers to Churchill despite his inopportunely having had shedded his reticence. Condolences on being forced to step down, Liz.

hackneyed and lackluster musings of an interviewer

2005-03-04T17:24:00.001-05:00

Bell-curves are not fractals; yet, educators thrust bell-curves on classes consisting purposely of individuals chosen for scholastic achievement! The upper end of the curve is elongated, skewed, and forced into fitting the ideal with the same intelligence of an idiot kid jamming shapes into wrong holes. I would typically pity such a kid, and the plight of his or her parents for ceaselessly having to replace cracked plastic toys. At least the educator has to wait a year before a replacement.

Were the formulated grades not inane enough, they are summed and divided across uneven classes, arising at a meaningless gpa. How embarrassing it is when grade-point darlings fail even the most rudimentary questions! Perhaps these darlings need two separate scores, one encompassing their tactics at ephemeral memorization, another spanning true knowledge.

the menu is, monkey brains

2005-03-02T21:25:00.000-05:00

I'm livid with embarrassment over the state of education in this country. No, John T. Gatto is of no use; that half-bake and his neologisms and coinage deserve their place on the funny-farm. I won't even touch the morose subject of the degeneration of secularism in education. The decline of scholastic achievements among youth is saved for a day when I've a ready box of antacid. Something succinct and more pertinent to imminent catastrophe catches my attention. The utter and replete dilution of any and all schools of thought will definitely percolate up until society stagnates, or worse, implodes.

Pop-culture has always been pervasive, a concept absolutely unsurprising and uneventfully invariable. The notion raising eyebrows is its new floral-colored, pixie-powered permeability of inescapable range. Since the days of hermits, societies have offered great respect and aegis to their brethren at the cusp of hamlets. No longer do engrossing troglodytes receive enthralled visitors' kisses at the feet; it's truly for the better; a single improperly inhaled toe hair can asphyxiate a weary, gasping, traveler. Supplanting the hairy toe man, satchel-wearing academes now reign as the new defense against a rising deluge of groupthink. At least, I thought so.

The next generation of erudite insulation fillers for the cold vacuous halls of academia disappoints. Not yet weaned from sensationalist drivel, these men and women are about as iconoclastic as Janet Jackson with her lesson in anatomy.^[1] Worse, with hyper-specialization only a step away from creating the first human-sized transistor, none of these matriculated lads 'n lassies has any clue on his or her position on anything of significance. "We shouldn't form opinions. It's best to assume all possibilities are valid." - fine; then, at least have the opinion that people shouldn't form opinions. Something worth causing a brouhaha needs to spring from college campuses before the next Galileo not waiting for any church gouges his own eye out for seeing things, thereby scoring a possible interview with E!.

Agreed, there are innumerable subcultures and self-described counterculture groups littered about urban dwellings. Most, however, believe indoctrination is remedied with Ayn Rand peeking out of their backpack, body piercings, and a philosophical outlook about as dangerous as a house pet named Rover. Elsewhere, our neighbors still reeling from "The War of Northern Aggression"^[2] turn gay marriages and stem cell research into contentious topics. Oi vey! When the only opposition comes from the same people who still consider evolution contentious, I have serious reservations. However, I recused myself from the topic of declining secularism. At the moment, my quibbles are with the mass communication infrastructure, partly mechanized, partly electrified, and completely stupefied. The monolithic culture of apathy and acquiescence spreads on the internet like plaque on the teeth of a hershey-bar junkie. While I personally love the idea of cultural diffusion, I abhor homogeneity. The new library of the world has pages and sentences from various books interleaved. Goldie Locks, where’s your glass slipper?

Rarefied by the cruelties of numbers, critical thinkers have always required the pressure and density of a school or university to crystallize.^[3] I don’t see that crystallization happening anymore; they come in a potato, go out serving french fries. In today’s pervasive soup de jour, how will even a professor not smell like an onion? Float! Float my little nematode! Float until you’ve something to latch onto!

priestcraft, a pious ode

2005-03-01T16:25:00.000-05:00

Adult children kneel before you in scores, awaiting you, a master raconteur who serves sweetened thousand year old stories. None resist these delicious tales, salted with reactionary principles, peppered with donation-box chicaneries.

O, your humility knows no bounds; first we are made a plaintive lot, then your philanthropy saves us from our dismay. Your predilection for our salvation keeps us in your edacious embrace, shielded from recreants and their infectiously latitudinarian ways.

You offer such elegant sophistry, simplifying the multifarious thinking one otherwise needs. One hardly could reproduce such a spectacularly specious feat.

O, how greatly you enamor your flock, professing the virtues of moderation on gilded podiums, abstinence under the sanguine light of stained-glass windows, and the teachings of an ascetic in such a meretriciously preternatural an abode.

You have no need for red piping, your white suffices; your machinations are the envy of cabals the world over.

ascent of a sycophant

2005-02-28T15:01:00.000-05:00

Buggy-eyed with a grimace covering half his face, the unskilled sycophant is not beautiful. Contortions and contractions of those facial muscles of his manage ugly smiles in even the most trying of times. Near his master, the sycophant is bowing, radiating a glow of appreciation and humble affection. He is not respected; the intentions of the unskilled sycophant are too thinly veiled.

The skilled sycophant is just as uncouth, but cloaked especially well. He does not bow, he does not flinch, he does not strain his face into a smile. A master fraternizer, he keeps and grows his good graces with those he needs to. Ostentatious and reveling, he carefully accomplishes one or two things. This man is no fool; he sheaths his lies and deceit within genuineness. He will not yell at you, he will not fight you on any single day. Yet, cross him and beware: his unsheathed vitriol will seep like ink and stain black any reputable man within the year.

Brave men turn fools, honest men turn cowards; none challenges the skilled sycophant who now only grows in power. I remain waiting, to see whether it is the fool or the coward I have become. I so loathe the skilled sycophant; he soon may be my master.

the phoenix and chaos stalemate

2005-02-27T22:53:00.003-05:00

Wonderful curtains flow down from mounts above the windows. Baby blue, I think the color is, with some embroidery I haven't looked closely enough in years to see. A nice ornate lamp in a corner lets off a comforting yellow glow. Fresh chequered sheets and a down comforter wrap around me on a large bed. All wonderful, all great, none my doing.

My contributions are seen on the other side of the room, the side with lamps unlit because brown paper bags I have to unpack guard them like Cerberus. Stacks of envelopes spread themselves haphazardly on a polished oak table like a recently felled house of cards. The letter-opener has been misplaced for some time; torn and disfigured envelopes tell their dying tale. Some checks need depositing, some bills need paying, all the letters have dates two weeks old. Soon, soon they will be taken care of.

Here I lie, my presence bringing about chaos to the erstwhile order -- not the chaos so foul that remedies are immediately taken. Here brews a more dangerous chaos, the cunning, sly, mischievous kind naively smiled at for its disorderly cuteness.

Unshaven since friday, disheveled and with only a faint recollection of sunlight, I am indeed the most unfitting object in this entire room. Tomorrow by daybreak my obsolescence ends and I vanish, replaced by a rejuvenated man I pray will right my wrongs. He never does, not thoroughly. Chaos fools him also.