I read Chris Moriarty's "Spin State" last month. It's a generic, hard(ish) science fiction book. I found it unremarkable. Don't bother. There are better books out there.

¶ 1197 Posted at 05.19 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

The bizarre thing about the spying on Americans scandal is how seriously people are taking the Bush administrations assertions that they have that power. Most Republicans are basically taking the line, "oh, well, it's basically just a clerical error that it's not in the Constitution." The Democrats and some Republicans, on the other hand, are responding with, "oh no, you've made a slight error in your reasoning." The proper response is to laugh in the face of the hapless Bush minion making the claim, possibly spraying your beverage all over him. These aren't arguments that are on shaky ground; this is nonsense, it's pure fantasy. The Bush administration's ability to read this so-called presidential power in the Constitution makes the "judicial activism" of Earl Warren et al. look like Scalia's textualism 1 . The worst part is the way Congress is (not) reacting, letting themselves be enslaved to cowardice 2 and partisanship to the detriment of us all.

¶ 1198 Posted at 08.40 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I'd like to point you in the direction of TreeHugger's PostHugger feature. Basically, it's a standard post header using anchor tags so that you can keep clicking on the same part of the page without needing to scroll from post to post. It's handy, although probably much more so on a site like TreeHugger that sees numerous posts per day.

¶ 1201 Posted at 02.18 PM ⇒ No Comments ( web )

I've been using Opera as my primary browser at work for a couple of months now. I've really grown to like it. The key features for me are performance, stability, and session persistence. I am a massive, massive abuser of tabs, on the order of dozens open in a single window, with half a dozen windows open at once. The only thing that keeps me from opening more is that even Opera starts to crawl at this level, but it's still better than Firefox. Secondly... Opera has crashed maybe 3 times on me. Firefox would crash on me on average once a day. That was especially annoying because Firefox does not save your tab session. Opera does, which makes it easy to restart the application to flush out memory leaks (which both Opera and Firefox have), and also to restart in the rare case of a crash (would work for system crashes and power problems too, of course). I still haven't gotten completely used to Opera, and some things still annoy me, like how it switches you to the last used tab when closing a tab rather than the adjacent one like Firefox. Opera also doesn't have nearly as many extensions as Firefox either. Even so, I find the benefits greatly outweigh those inconveniences now that Opera is free. Give it a shot. You may like it. Ironically, the performance and stability issues are much less of a concern for me now that I am getting on the del.icio.us and RSS reader bandwagons. Still, better is better, right?

¶ 1202 Posted at 01.12 PM ⇒ No Comments ( software | web )

For the last 6 weeks, I had been battling my through David Gilmour's "Curzon: Imperial Statesman". I've finally finished, and I'm ready to switch to a fluff diet again. George Curzon was the epitome of late Victorian English nobility. He was born to a member of the House of Lords. He believed strongly in the imperial mission of the British Empire. He served for seven years as Viceroy in India. A staunch Conservative, he opposed women's suffrage. He seemed destined to enter the highest ranks of British statesmen as Prime Minister, but due to a temperament that often exasperated his peers, fell just short of his goal. In Winston Churchill's words:

The morning had been golden; the noontide was bronze; and the evening lead. But all were polished till it shone after its fashion.

As a biography, Gilmour's book is a compelling portrait both of the man and his times in the late Victorian British Empire and the first quarter of the 20th century. He covers in great detail Curzon's upbringing and career, the latter being inextricable from his social life. In his early adulthood, Curzon was a prolific traveller throughout an Asia in the grip of European colonization. I found the parts about India especially interesting, although there were times when I was SO VERY ANGRY THESE WORDS FILL ME WITH RAGE due to the inherent injustice of British colonization, though Curzon himself was one of the more benign British rulers, trying to curb the abusive and unfair treatment by British occupiers of native Indians and working to restore historical buildings such as the Taj Mahal. The parts of the book covering British government during and after World War I are also informative, painting a picture of a nation beginning to realize that empire might not be all they had thought.

Where the biography falls down is in how the author constantly praises Curzon's administrative and rhetorical abilities. We get a taste of the latter, and we certainly are well-informed where it comes to the numerous gaffes and mistakes caused by his obvliousness or indifference to his colleagues personal feelings, but the author gives us little raw material to judge for ourselves his strengths as a ruler. This is especially important because Curzon's Viceroyalty ended controversially with him falling on his sword (so to speak) over an apparently minor issue of administrative policy. That particular scandal is covered in great detail, but due to the insufficient of policy details meant we knew his was the right position due to hindsight and the author's insistence, not by having developed any confidence in his abilities ourselves. That is a key omission, as Curzon's career was built on the twin foundations of rhetorical and administrative excellence, which were sufficient to overcome those aspects of his personality which were somewhat less excellent.

Overall, however, Gilmour does an excellent job of depicting an important and misunderstood historical figure, one whose all-too-human failings and poor luck have kept him in relative obscurity, with what little is generally thought of him being either wrong or unfair. If you're a fan of historical biography, this book certainly worth a look. I learned a great deal that I hadn't previously known, presented in clear (though dense) prose. It's motivated me to learn more about this interesting era, in spite of the SO FURIOUS I AM parts about imperial Britain.

¶ 1203 Posted at 05.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I don't do New Year's resolutions. I don't believe in them 1 . Consider that people generally come up with these resolutions well before the New Year, but delay implementing them until that time. Why is that? Surely, if the resolution is a beneficial change in their lives, they would benefit most from implementing it as soon as they decided to do it. Then there's all the baggage that comes with calling it a New Year's resolution. That's just asking to fail, because nobody keeps their resolutions. In those apparent contradictions are the answer. People make New Year's resolutions for things they think they should do but don't actually want to do. Waiting till the New Year delays doing something they don't want and allows them to join a crowd of people all failing at once, reducing their guilt. It's win-win; they get the satisfaction of trying to do something positive without actually having to do it or feel bad about not doing it.

All of that is a long-winded, roundabout way of saying I have resolved to do a new thing, but this resolution is not of the New Year's kind. The main thing I took away from Paul Graham's latest essay was the idea that one should constantly be producing something. I've spent a lot of time thinking about various ideas, but little time in either following through on them or laying the groundwork for doing so at another time. I find it very easy to let a day go by without having accomplished anything productive (code-wise), and it's similarly easy to let a single wasted day become a wasted week. I won't have that luxury if I'm on my own; days and weeks like that could be fatal to an attempt to go independent. As a result, I've resolved that I must write some useful code every day. Always Be Creating 2 . It could be for my day job. It could be for some noodling around on my own. What doesn't matter so much as long as it happens.

There are several clear advantages to doing this:

1. Self discipline and good work habits.
2. Being a doer, not a dreamer. I've spent a lot of time thinking about things I could do and very little time actually following through.
3. Experience and knowledge beyond what I might get through my job. This is especially important because the languages and technologies that will be most useful for me aren't ones I use at work. For example, if I want to create a client-side application, C# looks to be the best language to use. For building many kinds of web applications, the Java that I know is useful, but I suspect a more dynamic language such as Python will be better suited for the scale of what I'm more likely to attempt.
4. Building a library of useful parts from which I could build other things. When the time comes to go off to try whatever fool idea I seize upon, I cannot allow myself to start from scratch. I need to have all my building blocks and tools ready. Otherwise, I just won't have enough time or energy. 90% of most software projects is plumbing, and most of that is the same with similar projects.

¶ 1205 Posted at 12.27 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | longshot | software )

This weekend, I caught up to the present by finishing "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the sixth book in the series, after zipping through book five, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" the previous week. There's no a whole lot to say about them at this point. They're Harry Potter books. If you've gotten far enough in the series to contemplate reading those, you'll find them satisfying. These books are way easier to get through than historical biographies, I tell you what.

¶ 1206 Posted at 12.28 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

It is dizzying to reflect on the fact that I have only been continuously employed for just over 3 years.

¶ 1207 Posted at 02.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | (un)employment )

Department stores like Foley's or Dillard's can be surprisingly good for some kinds of furniture. We looked there only to do due diligence, but it turns out that what they have often sucks less than at focused furniture stores. Their list prices are no good, but it seems like every other weekend has some kind of sale that can knock the price down by 50%.

¶ 1208 Posted at 01.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( fyi )

Almost nothing 1 freaks me out like the possibility that Uma might be unhappy on the other side of the house without us knowing. I don't think it's ever happened before, but I can't know that. We have a mother-in-law plan. We can't hear what's going on in Uma's room without a baby monitor 2 . Problem: I am a light sleeper. Uma's sleeping noises will wake me up unless the baby monitor volume is exactly right. We have a monitor with a volume dial with no stops. The zone between silence and "I can hear her spleen" is very small. Yes, I bought the absolute cheapest baby monitor. It doesn't matter. Nobody sells baby monitors advertising precise and repeatable volume control. They're all into video and flashing lights.

So, every night I have to guess. I have to distinguish between two shades of white noise to know whether it's just far enough or too far. If I'm lucky, she'll murmur before I fall asleep, so I'll know I can hear her. Often, she doesn't. So I worry. That's not to say that we rush in everytime she peeps. Most of her noises are just sighs or babbles or coos. Even when she yells or cries, she's often still half asleep. Intervening then will wake her fully, which will make her really mad. So we listen and wait. She may fall asleep. Or she may need us. Either way, we have to hear her so we know.

Pediatricians will tell you that there's no permanent harm caused by letting your baby cry. I cannot believe that. Your child will remember you weren't there for her, if not consciously. You will remember you weren't there for her. We engage in many adult behaviors that are completely lost on her. It's not a waste of time. We are training ourselves as parents to make sure we have the right habits for when she does notice. Respect. Politeness. Responsiveness. Otherwise, how will we unlearn the bad habits once it starts to matter? In fact, it will almost certainly start to matter before we realize it matters, at which point we'll have lost something we might not be able to get back.

It is very easy to tune out someone else's anguish once you let yourself believe it's ok. The slope is a slippery one. I don't want to set a foot on it. She's my baby girl. Her distress might not be caused by anything that is real to us, but it is real to her. I need her to have absolute faith that I will be there for her. I need her to believe that more than anything else. Once she stops believing that, it is hard, even impossible, to go back. I can't lose that, even if people say 9 months is too young to know that. The risk is too high. She's my baby girl.

¶ 1209 Posted at 06.16 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

I got a spam with the subject "seagoing wishingbone."

¶ 1210 Posted at 10.18 PM ⇒ No Comments ( funny )

Some web site has a list of the 50 most loathsome people of 2005.

¶ 1211 Posted at 05.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | news | funny )

Author: George R. R. Martin
Title: A Feast for Crows
Hey, look, another fantasy fiction mega-tome! I'm on it. This one's been a long time coming, there having been a five year gap between this, the fourth book in the series, and the book preceding it. So, hey, go read those and come back, right? What to expect from those is about what you'll expect from this one. That is to say, it's uncommonly good epic fantasy, but not for the faint of heart. Most other such books and series have a bit of a Disneyland feel. They're in semi-medieval ages, but they're not very medieval. People die nobly. There are Good People, and there are Bad People. Oh, sure, there are often people who switch sides because the author thinks [s]he is clever, but it's either completely random or telegraphed hundreds of pages in advance 1 . Martin does away with all that. You don't know what he's going to do. It's not because he's flat-out unpredictable, but because his characters are complex and changing in an uncertain world. With Robert Jordan, you know where he's going; you just want to see how he's going to get there. And then he'll annoy the crap out of you getting there. Not so with Martin. I just finished the fourth book in a projected seven book series, and I still don't know what's going to happen. In some ways, that's a bad thing; I almost feel as though the main action hasn't gotten started yet.

Another good thing about this series compared to some other epics is that Martin is honest. When the story is seen from a character's point of view, you know what's going on. There are none of the irritating hinting at secret plots and actions that the character knows about, but the reader is kept in the dark (and, as I see it, taunted). Martin still has too many characters, but at least he limits the number of PoVs to a more manageable number. I sort of wonder whether Robert Jordan's forking of plot threads, multiplication of characters, and half-assed attempts at intrigue in his last few books are a response to Martin's much defter storytelling. Robert Jordan has some gifts, as I've mentioned before, but Martin is as good in those departments and just plain better as a writer.

This book is a bit of an aberration, as it was originally much longer than its current 784 pages. In order to make it publishable, Martin broke it in half, not by splitting the narrative by time, but by character and plot thread. The next book will cover much of the same time period, but with the missing characters. It's a little bit unsatisfying, but it's better than having an artificial break in the story.

Then there's the medieval part. The world is a brutal place. The medieval era was even more so. Most fantasy fiction is pretty anachronistic 2 about that. Not our guy Martin. It's not graphic, but only because that is unnecessary. To some degree, actually, I think he overdoes it, but then I realize that's my own squeamishness, not any lack of historical 3 accuracy. Still, it's something a prospective reader ought to be warned about.

By this point in the ramble, I hope I've given you some idea as to whether you want to read the book. If not, I'll sum it up: this is for people who like fantasy fiction. It is not for people with sensitive stomachs. It's especially for people who are sick of mediocrity in the genre 4 , who want a more challenging and subtle story that doesn't pander to teenagers.

¶ 1212 Posted at 05.03 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Book: Accelerando
Author: Charles Stross
I enjoyed Charles Stross's last two books, "Singularity Sky" and "Iron Sunrise." They were the right balance of science fiction speculation and story. His latest, "Accelerando," is something less. It charts the path of humanity and a dysfunctional family from the near future, (possibly) through the technological singularity, and beyond. The problem is... well, there are several problems. In spite of being science fiction, "Accelerando" is firmly grounded in the present, the very specific present of the last several years. Writing your science fiction from the cutting edge of science, technology, and society is a sure-fire way to obsolete your story before it hits the bookshelves. Extrapolating from trends born a minute ago makes it impossible to filter out the inevitable noise from a near infinity of dead ends and mistakes as the collective mass of humanity stumbles blindly into the future. References to webloggers and slashdotting may have an immediate appeal and drive sales as members of those communities feel a flush of pride at their inclusion (possibly even praising Stross's daring vision in the process), but all they will do is render the book hopelessly dated in 10 years and incomprehensible in 20.

Stross brings some new ideas, but the story leaves something to be desired. mashups of current trends may be excitingly post-modern, but they are no substitute for actual creativity and a strong narrative. Stross adds incrementally to the growing corpus of concepts in science fiction. To the singularity, post-humanism, cybernetic implants, distributed intelligence, computronium, consciousness uploads, nanotechnology, simulated realities, personality backups, group minds, planetary engineering, whole solar system Matrioshka computers, and numerous other now-standard tropes of modern science fiction, he adds reputation markets, forking and converging consciousness, laws and contracts written in code, and some partially-imagined sketches of exotic economics concepts and the evolution of intelligence. There are a lot of other ideas, too, but many of them are not very good ideas. They're the product of throwing a lot of buzzwords and nascent concepts into a blender, not creativity, vision, and insight.

This is meant as a novel, however, and that's where the ultimate flaws lie. The Cory Doctorow quote on the front cover is especially telling:

Who knew it was possible to cram so many sizzling ideas into this many pages? Stross's brand of gonzo techno-speculation makes hallucinogens obsolete.

Once you clean the vomit from your mouth caused by such over-the-top praise from a personal friend of the author, it's also indicative of what is missing. The ideas are crammed in there. The story isn't important. The characters are only outlines. The main character through the first chunk of the book is the sort of person webloggers and Slashdotters want to be, an imagining of the alpha geek in his prime. He's not so good at relationships, but he has six great ideas before breakfast (an almost exact and cringe-inducing quote from the book), knows a lot about everything, and is wired for sound, sight, network, etc. He's not actually much of a person, though. We don't see much deeper than the surface. Then there's that darn cat, which is the source of some the more annoying parts of the story (including the ones that were left out and should have been kept). It all ends in an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion. There isn't even hope for a sequel because the manner of the ending doesn't leave much room for a graceful continuation into another full-length novel. The end is the end, and it leaves too many loose ends to feel complete. It is full of ideas, but ultimately soulless.

Final verdict: skip it.

Addendum: This book was originally published as a serial in a science fiction magazine, which may explain some of those flaws. Painting characters with a broad brush avoids having to keep track of deep characters for month after month (9 in total). It also will create a bias toward stuffing each part with brief references to novel concepts based on the present, as magazines are more transient. Only pack rats hang on to magazines long after their publication, and few of them go back to reread the published stories (I assume). Stross would have done well to work harder on the transition from magazine to book.

¶ 1214 Posted at 12.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Christopher Hitchens in this editorial about the Muhammed cartoons asked the rhetorical question, "hasn't the word offensive become really offensive lately?" Hitchens moves on, as that is not his subject in that editorial, but I thought it worth dwelling on. Having dwelt, my answer is in the affirmative. Modern use of the word offensive is offensive. It makes sense when applied to physical things designed for attacking. An offensive weapon. The offensive line. It doesn't work so well when applied to other things. Calling a smell offensive implies that there is something about the molecules themselves that is abominable. That's obviously silly. You find the smell unpleasant, but that's just you. Oh, sure, you can say "the smell is offensive to me," but you're still using offensive as a modifier of smell. That you qualify it does not change that your language places the blame for the offense on the smell. The objective statement is that you find the smell unpleasant. Your reaction is your own, and calling the smell offensive is a weasely attempt to promote your subjective opinion to objective fact. You took offense. That you did so unconsciously does not change that.

The same goes for offensive speech, be it spoken, written, or drawn. It doesn't matter even if that speech is intended to cause offense. Your reaction is entirely your own. If a tree insults your mother in a forest, and no one is around, should she be offended? Be as sensitive as you like. Get mad about every little thing that people say that you dislike. Go nuts. But don't call it offensive. You and only you are responsible for your behavior. Calling something offensive just proclaims that you aren't smart enough and self-aware enough to control your own reactions, or that you are attempting to manipulate others by pushing their buttons.

Merriam-Webster's dictionary includes the definition "causing anger or displeasure" for offensive. They are wrong. A bullet may cause death. A spark may cause a fire. Nothing, however, causes anger or displeasure. A bullet and a spark are dumb matter behaving only in accordance with the laws of physics. Nothing in the laws of physics necessitates us getting angry in response to an "offensive" stimulus. We just choose to react that way. That doesn't mean that the stimulus is not bad, just that our reaction is not automatic and inevitable. Note the difference between "X is offensive (to Y)" and "Y is offended by X." The meaning is the same, and yet completely different. People are people, and so you can find someone who will be insulted by just about anything. There are no objective criteria for labelling something as offensive besides that someone somewhere claims to have taken offense. They chose to be offended, even if they are not aware of the choice.

There is a certain type of liberal who uses the word to end any discussion that (s)he finds unpleasant (for any reason, but usually because that person doesn't have a leg to stand on). In a gratifying display of bipartisan cooperation, after their original rejection of political correctness, there are now increasing numbers of conservatives who use the word in the same way (for example, if one criticizes the process that led to the US invasion of Iraq). There should be a Godwin's Law for people who call something offensive. You can label anything as offensive. That in itself is enough to render it useless in any meaningful discussion, as no debate can allow itself to be constrained by the wild emotions of every knee-jerk fanatic out there.

Do you remember when Ari Fleischer said "people should be careful what they say?" There are people who don't much like freedom of speech. However, rather than assault free speech directly, they use insidious means of discouraging speech they dislike. Certain ideas are called unpatriotic. Others are, yes, offensive. Free discussion is something that divides us and aids our enemies. On the surface, avoiding offense seems like a fine thing. Who would go out of his/her way to cause others grief? It is only when something like the Muhammed cartoons happens that we realize that everything offends somebody. It is only when such a thing happens that we realize that words and pictures are just ink on a page. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Labelling an idea offensive is an attempt to take it out of circulation. It is a way to control what people think. And that, is truly offensive.

¶ 1216 Posted at 05.28 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

There are people who believe that there have been alarming increases in the average temperature of the Earth in recent times are due to human action that increases atmospheric greenhouse gases. Then there are people who disagree. A problem in the debate on this issue is that global warming is a complex concept with numerous parts, and you have to believe all those parts in order to accept the whole:

1. The average temperature of the Earth has risen in recent centuries. A reasonable person cannot dispute this. We have records.
2. The rise in the temperature is great enough and rapid enough to be a concern. This is also well-supported. Warmer temperates mean that ice melts and sea levels rise. You don't have to get into more complicated theories such as the global conveyor belt thermohaline circulation to see a danger from increased temperatures. There is some uncertainty as to how much of a temperature rise causes how much melting, though that is lessening as we watch the ice in the Arctic and Antarctic shrink.
3. Human action can cause macroscopic changes in the global climate. I include this because anyone who disagrees with it is a fool. Perhaps you disagree that we are currently causing climate change through excessive greenhouse gas emission, but you cannot think that we would be unable to alter the global climate if we really put our minds to it. Remember nuclear winter? There are over 25,000 nuclear warheads in the world. Then there was the change in temperature patterns after September 11 when no airplanes flew. We can create and drain massive lakes, divert rivers, and destroy mountain ranges. It is obviously within human power to remake the world's climate if we dedicated ourselves to that goal. Obviously, we won't, but it is a small step from there to accepting the idea that we could also do it accidentally.
4. Gases such as carbon dioxide and methane affect the Earth's temperature. No serious scientist disputes the existence of greenhouse effects. Earth isn't the only planet with an atmosphere. Venus has a severe greenhouse effect due to its carbon dioxide atmosphere that makes its surface temperature 900° F, hotter than Mercury. With an atmosphere comparable to Earth's, Venus would also have a similar climate. Mars has a thin atmosphere, so even its 95% carbon dioxide concentration is insufficient to warm the planet.
5. Increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases increases a planet's temperature. This is a logical consequence of the previous point. The temperature increase that results from an increase in greenhouse gases can be precisely determined in laboratory experiments by measuring how much infrared radiation a known quantity of a gas absorbs. Coupled with measurements of atmospheric samples, solar radiation intensity, and the Earth's albedo (reflectivity).
6. The concentration of these gases has increased in the last few centuries. This has been established by samples of the atmosphere from previous eras through sampling ice cores, though these samples do not cover most of the Earth's geologic history.
7. The increase in greenhouse gases is a result of human action. We know how many trees have been cut down. We know how much oil we have extracted and burned. We know the same for coal and natural gas. There are additional sources of carbon dioxide, however, such as volcanic action. We also don't fully understand the global effect of plants and algae that consume atmospheric carbon dioxide. We release methane through wasteage in our consumption of natural gas, as well as landfills, cows (seriously), and other human activities. We have also released large quantities of haloalkanes (e.g., CFCs, also implicated in the ozone hole), but our use is phasing out. Human activity does not significantly increase atmospheric concentrations of nitrous oxide, ozone, and water vapor.

Obviously, I consider the case for global warming to be strong. I also acknowledge there are areas of legitimate contention, but they come down to just two main points: how a given increase in the average temperature affects weather patterns, and how the carbon cycle works. Next time you encounter someone who asserts global warming is a myth, break it down. Find out where the precise disagreement is. Chances are, they don't know the science (even the basic sketch above). If nothing else, you'll find out whether there's any point in discussing it with that person.

¶ 1217 Posted at 12.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

This may sound strange, but I really like the way overcast skies in big cities glow at night.

¶ 1219 Posted at 10.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

This past Friday, Fox showed the last 4 episodes of "Arrested Development." AD was one of the funniest shows on television, packing the jokes in so densely that I'd have to rewind a dozen times per episode. I'm sure that's part of why it failed to pull a large audience; you had to pay attention and learn the characters to fully get it. You couldn't just pick it up partway through an episode and instantly figure it out; it wasn't that kind of generic, lowest common denominator show. There were layers of intricate plotting, callbacks, richly bizarre characters, and just plain stupid humor. I'm sad to see it go, but they went out well. The final episodes pulled together many of the loose ends, piled on the funny, and wrapped it all up with a clever self-referential joke. Everything worked. There's still a glimmer of hope that Showtime will pick it up, though. Regardless, I highly recommend you obtain the show (perhaps on DVD) and watch it for yourself.

¶ 1220 Posted at 11.26 AM ⇒ No Comments ( tv )

It's common knowledge that young people learn foreign languages more easily than older people. A lot of research has focused on the neurological aspects of learning to explain this. I believe there is another part to it. We find learning other languages harder as we age because we know our native language better. When you're 8 years old, you aren't dismayed by your ineptitude as a student of a foreign language because you can barely speak your own. At 28 years, however, things are different. I think I know English very well 1 , and I am acutely aware of that fluency when confronted with my lack of fluency when attempting to speak German, French, or Marathi. The degree of intimidation you feel is directly proportional to the gap between your native fluency and your ability in this alien tongue.

This also helps to explain why immersion is a more effective method of learning; if your choices are the awkwardness of speaking badly or the greater awkwardness of not speaking at all, it's easy to overcome the inhibition to fumble through the foreign language. On the other hand, if your choice is speaking your native language fluently vs. speaking the foreign language awkwardly (i.e., in a non-immersive setting), you're always going to have to force yourself away from the easy path.

I think something like this applies to programming languages as well; I am pretty fluent in C-like languages such as C (duh) and Java, but when I see completely different languages like Haskell or Erlang, I am baffled. The thing to remember is that I'm not actually any worse at those languages. My deep familiarity with languages in my comfort zone creates the appearance of larger gap to the foreign than if I knew nothing of those languages.

¶ 1223 Posted at 11.23 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

A short time ago, I read a weblog post on how to manage independent work on the side. The article isn't so important; what caught my eye was that the author used the phrase "a generous 8 hours of sleep every night." Maybe for him. I need 9. That's just the way it is. It's like brown hair or liking papaya; it's one of those things that just is. It doesn't mean you're any better or worse of a person, yet people (Americans) persist in thinking that they're somehow better off and just plain better for skimping on sleep. College students, tech workers, hospital residents, and just about everyone else is a member of this weird macho cult.

By just about every objective measure, not getting enough sleep impairs your abilities. Your reaction time lengthens. You're moodier. You can't concentrate. You feel worse, physically. You think more slowly. Your short-term memory is diminished. The only thing that being tired helps is creativity, which makes sense because your brain is scrambled. You'll come up with wilder ideas, but you will be worse at developing them.

What do you gain from sacrificing sleep? Did you get to see the luge finals? Get a Tivo. It's cheaper than being tired all the time. Maybe you managed to implement that whole module. Great, now someone is going to have to find all the bugs you put in, and you're going to have to fix them. Or was it just so you could brag about how stupid you were?

I am something of a sleep fanatic. This was true well before we had a baby. When I don't get enough sleep these days (which happens frequently, partly due to the aforementioned baby), I really feel it. I look back on my college years, when I got by on considerably less sleep. I mean, if I tried to sleep that little today, I'd just feel miserable all the time. Then I realize, I was miserable all the time in college.

Conveniently, reddit posted a link to this sleep summary from a sleep researcher at Stanford. If you think you're getting enough sleep, try this. Go into your bedroom and lie down like you're going to take a nap. Turn off the lights, draw the shades, make everything quiet, etc. If you lie there for 20 minutes without falling asleep (and you haven't consumed any coffee, exercised, or done anything else stimulating), you're ok. If you fall asleep, you're not sleeping enough. Lack of sleep hurts. If you think otherwise, you're just fooling yourself.

¶ 1225 Posted at 01.45 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Excerpt:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Dennis "Boog" Highberger, Mayor of the City of Lawrence, Kansas, do hereby proclaim the days of February 4, April 1, March 28, July 15, August 2, August 7, August 16, August 26, September 18, September 22, October 1, October 17, and October 26, 2006 as "INTERNATIONAL DADAISM MONTH."

Linky.

¶ 1226 Posted at 10.20 AM ⇒ No Comments ( weird )

I figure there are two types of people when it comes to sports commentary. Some people listen to it, maybe just because it's there, or because they want to. Others don't listen to it because it is stupid. I take the middle ground: I listen to it precisely because it is stupid. They called the US vs. Sweden curling match "a game of cat and mouse." Figure skater Evan Lysacek learned an "important life lesson" when he bounced back from a poor short program performance. Then there's how they pick exactly one biographical datum about each individual or team and repeat it endlessly, whether it be Jamie Silverstein's overcoming an eating disorder or Tanith Belbin's "ordeal" in becoming an American citizen 1 . It's hilariously stupid.

It's also amusing how many of the commentators have accents. This isn't a knock by any means on the commentators, but rather that it makes obvious how Americans only care about many of these sports once every four years, if that. For sports like curling, biathlon, bobsled, etc., the commentators are often Canadian, English, Scottish, or even fluent non-native speakers. We just don't have the interest to support homegrown American "talent" when they're only needed once every four years. The same thing happens with the World Cup, though 10 years of MLS should change that.

Less fun is how thoroughly white the Winter Olympics are. South Korea, Japan, and China provide a steady shot of color, but that's about it. Part of that is justifiable: there aren't a lot of places (where people actually live) that have real winters, and those are mainly Europe, Russia, and North America. However, there are significant non-white populations in those areas that aren't represented. I ascribe that in part to cultural factors, but also to how expensive these sports can be. Skiing and snowboarding require a substantial capital investment, as well as the lift ticket fees. Ice skating requires expensive lessons. I have no clue how anyone gets started with bobsledding and curling, but I'm sure that's not cheap, either. Those costs will naturally favor white people. I don't know what, if anything, should be done about it, but it sure is a shame.

Speaking of bobsledding, I don't think it belongs in the Olympics. I'm sure it requires skill, but that is the skill of piloting. I'm not too keen on the rifle shooting events, either. I figure that any event included in the Olympics should require at least a few of the following 2 :

• Precision
• Strength
• Stamina
• Speed
• Agility
• Elegance/Artistry

Bobsledding requires precision, but none of the others. Shooting requires precision, too, but only archery requires strength. Most importantly, they should be human-powered, which singles out the worse of them, the equestrian events. The Olympics are about celebrating the human body. Horseback riding requires skill, certainly, but it belongs in the Olympics no more than car racing. I assume it's only there as a vestige of the more aristocratic era in which the modern Olympics were born.

In general, I'm also against some of the team-oriented sports. The Olympics should celebrate individual excellence. I distinguish between sports like hockey and the 4x100 relay. Victory in the former relies on the success of the group 3 , whereas in the latter, it is the sum of individual performances. Furthermore, games like soccer have a significant strategic element that muddies the waters. A mediocre team with superior strategy can defeat an excellent team with poor strategy. That is certainly a good thing in many cases, it will diminish the importance of the attributes I list above. The Olympic motto is "Swifter, Higher, Stronger," 4 but nowhere does it say "smarter."

¶ 1228 Posted at 12.31 PM ⇒ No Comments ( sports )

A single company, American Media, owns The National Enquirer, Star, Globe, National Examiner, Sun, and Weekly World News.

¶ 1229 Posted at 12.09 PM ⇒ No Comments ( fyi )

Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas... sigh) is ordering an investigation into Citgo because of its program to provide heating oil for up to 60% off list price for poor and low-income residents of several northern states. This is a unilateral program initiated by Citgo at no cost to anyone except themselves. The problem? Citgo is owned by the government of Venezuela, and thus controlled by our pal Hugo Chavez. The column I refer to above also claims Barton is a friend of the oil industry, but that's more speculative, so I'll shy away from it, mentioning only that it's pretty hard not to be a Texas politician and care about oil, if only for the sake of your constituents (set your benefit of doubt on maximum).

¶ 1231 Posted at 08.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

There are those who believe that we invaded Iraq to secure its oil. These people may be right, but they may be wrong. It doesn't matter, because even if we didn't invade Iraq to secure its oil, we are still there because of oil, no matter whom you believe. Don't believe me? We attacked Iraq in 2003 because (pick any or all):

• We wanted their oil.
• Saddam Hussein was an oppressive, brutal dictator
• They had weapons of mass destruction
• They supported Al-Qaeda
• They were a threat to Saudi Arabia

The first one's easy. Go straight to oil; do not pass GO or collect $200(,000,000,000).

Saddam Hussein was clearly a terrible man. There appears to be a strong correlation between strong economies and free societies. More interestingly, there appears to be a strong correlation between strong economies and a lack of natural resources. Correlation is not causation, but it makes a lot of sense. Natural resources can be easily controlled by a small group of people, and it's wealth that literally comes out of the ground, as opposed to the wealth produced by trade, manufacturing, and services, which is greatest in free societies. Natural resources often support tyrannies. Witness Iran, the Republic of Congo (back when it was Zaire), Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc. Saddam Hussein would have been a despot regardless, but controlling the oil enabled him to strengthen his grip even more.

We know they had weapons of mass destruction at some point. Of course, those programs aren't free. How did Iraq pay for the investment in research and capital? Oil money. Why would they be useful? For attacking or intimidating neighboring countries in advancement of the goals of Arab nationalism and Iraqi expansionism. Oh, and you can take their oil, too.

Then there's Al-Qaeda. We now know that there was no meaningful connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, but Al-Qaeda is still relevant. The roots of that organization are in the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, but Al-Qaeda only formed in the early 1990s due to Osama bin Laden's outrage at infidel troops being stationed in the holy land of Islam. Those infidels? US troops. The holy land? Saudi Arabia (I smell oil...). He was also strongly opposed to the Saudi government itself, which we have helped to keep in power for decades.

US troops remained in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War because Iraq was considered a threat. Why do we care about Saudi Arabia? Because they are the major producer of oil (there's that word again). That's the same reason the Iraqis would consider invading. We attacked Iraq in 1991 because they invaded Kuwait. Why did they invade Kuwait? Because Iraq and Kuwait had a dispute over whether Kuwait was illegally tapping Iraqi oil fields. It was also because Iraq's port facilities had been destroyed in the Iran-Iraq War, not to mention their substantial debts arising from the same war.

The Iran-Iraq War had numerous causes. Mesopotamia has been a mess for basically all of recorded history. However, there were certain more immediate issues. One was Saddam Hussein's desire to fully control the Shatt al-Arab waterway, an important shipping channel for oil exports from both Iraq and Iran (hello, oil). The Iranian Revolution had occurred the previous year, presenting Hussein with an opportunity, as the revolution had alienated the west, as well as inspiring fear that the revolution would spread to the Shi'a majority in Iraq. The United States supported Iraq in the war as part of a strategy to counter-balance the dangerous revolutionaries in Iran, but also sold weapons to Iran as part of the Iran-Contra Affair. These actions certainly prolonged the war. Still, that's all geo-political, right? There's no oil there...

Except there is. The Iranian Revolution was a revolution against the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whose regime was corrupt, autocratic, un-Islamic, and pro-Western. The Shah had been returned to power in 1953 as part of an Anglo-American operation to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh. There were two primary reasons for this: the first was because of Mossadegh's socialist rhetoric and Iran's position on the border of the Soviet Union. The second? The Iranian government nationalized the oil-producing assets of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, due to ongoing disputes over the distribution of royalties (from... oil).

So... where does that leave us? We wanted the oil directly. We wanted to secure the alleged weapons of mass destruction that were financed with oil money. We wanted to hit an alleged ally of a terrorist group formed in response to our actions to protect our oil supply. This threat came from a nation whose fortunes were tied to and often driven by oil. Any way you slice it, no matter who you believe on the Iraq War, our involvement is inextricably intertwined with petroleum. It's all in Wikipedia; you can see for yourself. We only care about the area today (besides Israel) because of oil. These are essential facts for people to understand. Our oil addiction kills.

¶ 1233 Posted at 01.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( terrorism | issues | iraq )

I can't believe I forgot a biggie in my explanation of the roots of the Iraq War. We send money to Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries for oil. The Saudi government supports the extremist Wahhabi school of Islam, sponsoring religious schools that spread this brand of militant fundamentalism throughout the Middle East, including in Afghanistan, creating an environment where terrorist organizations flourish. Numerous wealthy individuals in the Middle East also give money to Al Qaeda, with their source of income frequently being oil or oil-related, such as Osama bin Laden's inherited fortune from construction.

¶ 1235 Posted at 01.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( terrorism | issues | iraq )

I was reading up on the upcoming Honda Fit as a possible next car for us. Along the way, I spotted a rumor that Honda would introduce a gasoline-electric hybrid version. I hope that's false, because it's a dumb idea. The regular Fit already gets about 35 mpg on average. Let's say hybridizing the power train pushed it to 45 mpg. For someone who drives 12,000 miles per year, that means a drop of about 75 gallons annually. At current prices, that's less than $200/year in savings for a $3,000 increase in cost. With an investment return of 8%, it would take at least 19 years to make your money back. Hybridizing already-efficient cars doesn't save much money because it doesn't reduce gasoline consumption. What we need is hybrid Suburbans. If you turn 13 mpg into 18 mpg, you save 255 gallons per year, or about $635. That only takes 6 years to pay for itself at the same 8% return on savings. That's pretty good.

gets even better. Consider the wide variation in mileage. I drive our Toyota Corolla to and from work. That's about it. Any weekend trips are in the Accord. My office is about 9 miles each way. That works out to about 3600 miles per year. That's nothing. There are normal people who drive several times that, especially in places like Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Houston, or Atlanta. More importantly, there are some people who drive an order of magnitude more than that. Regional managers. Taxis. Pizza delivery. Any one of those people can easily drive 200 miles per day. At 20 mpg, that's 2000 gallons of gas (assuming 200 work days). At 25 mpg, it's 1600. That's $1000 saved per year. That's 4 years to pay back. p>

gets still better. Those people drive ordinary passenger vehicles. What about the UPS trucks, delivery vans, US mail, and 18-wheelers? Those vehicles rack up the miles. They're also big and heavy, with mileage in the single digits. Assuming a trucker drives 6 hours per day at 60 mph for 40 weeks per year is 72,000 miles per year (very, very conservative). That's about 14,000 gallons of gas (yes, fourteen thousand) Hybridizing a single 18-wheeler to boost its mileage 20% saves about 2300 gallons of gas, or over $5700. Obviously, doing that to a tractor rig would cost more than the $3000 it costs for a passenger car, but at anything under $25,000, it's a no-brainer.

point is, there are vehicles whose performance characteristics and/or usage patterns result in gasoline consumption that dwarfs ordinary passenger vehicle use. Hybridizing those gets way, way more bang for the buck than a hybrid Prius, Civic, or Escape. I'm not saying you personally shouldn't buy a hybrid, just that as a nation, our efforts are best focused on the biggest consumers of gasoline. I'm not aware of any government program that encourages commercial operators to invest in those technologies, though 1 . Maybe Congress overlooked something here. That's the flaw with using tax credits to encourage specific behavior. We don't want people to buy hybrids, we want them to use less gasoline. A gasoline tax will always be superior to targeted incentives because people are creative and diverse. Congress can itemize and encourage everything under the sun that reduces gasoline consumption, but then they have to find out what the possibilities are, whether they're real, who might use them, how effective they are, etc. Or, they could just slap a $1/gallon tax on gasoline and let us deal with it. We'd do a better job.

Speaking of excessively-finely targeted behavior, I'm going to contradict both my above statements and previous ones. I am now against a gasoline tax. Gasoline isn't the commodity we want to minimize. What we want to minimize is oil. We derive a lot of products from oil that aren't gasoline. Fuel oil, fertilizer, and plastics are big ones. It's not good policy to target gasoline specifically. Instead of a $1/gal gasoline tax, then, I suggest instead a $20/barrel tax on oil itself. The United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day, or 7.3 billion barrels per year. That's $146 billion in oil taxes per year, more than enough to cover the ongoing (monetary) costs of our oil war. Of course, the US government wouldn't actually collect that much money because it would destroy demand. Doesn't matter to me because it's a win either way.

¶ 1238 Posted at 12.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

Using the words musing or random or thoughts to describe your weblog is l4m3.

¶ 1240 Posted at 09.41 PM ⇒ No Comments ( web )

If someone challenges a position you hold, and you have to think of a defense, you have already lost. You should already know your defense from when you formed your opinion. If you have to justify your position after you adopt it, you're either parroting someone else's position or just going with your gut, neither of which is an acceptable substitute for actual thought. There are too many people who don't know why they believe what they believe. Too many people don't even realize they ought to have reasons for their beliefs. You are of course free to believe whatever damn fool thing you want to believe, but you and everyone you deal with will be worse off for it. If you think about an issue first, and then decide your position on it, you'll never have to think up a defense for it; you'll just have to remember your reasoning.

Not only do you need to know why, you also need to know why it's better. We usually start and stop either by inheriting the beliefs of those around us or whatever idea jumps into our heads first. What are the odds that those ideas are the ones that lead to the best outcomes? This isn't a question of picking strawberry or vanilla at the ice cream stand. You're choosing your strategies for life. You owe it to yourself and those around you to make a deliberate choice.

¶ 1241 Posted at 08.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

The NY Times talks about young people leaving Vermont because it's boring. You know, like me. Leaving, I mean, not boring.

¶ 1242 Posted at 12.42 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | articles )

This dude just blew my mind. I'm impressed (with myself) that I remembered what contrapositive meant.

¶ 1245 Posted at 03.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

One of the stupidest things I have seen on the Internet. In 6 steps, a "proof" of the existence of God and the human, and the impossibility of evolution and artificial intelligence.

¶ 1247 Posted at 03.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

In 1961, the psychologist Stanley Milgram performed a simple experiment. Take an ordinary man (they were all men), and see what happens when he is induced to inflict pain on another. The setup was simple. The subject was told that he was participating in an experiment testing learning methods. He was to be the "teacher," while another man was the "learner." If the learner, believed by the teacher to be a subject but secretly an actor, failed to give the correct answers, the teacher was told to administer an electric shock of increasing severity. The learner would give all the external indications of being in severe pain, to the point of pounding on the window separating him from the teacher. If the teacher hesitated, the person running the experiment would goad him on. Fully two thirds of the teachers proceeded to increase the voltage until the maximum level (supposedly fatal) was reached. Of course, they were the real subjects of the experiment, whose purpose was to test obedience to authority. Besides being a disturbing and valuable bit of insight into human nature, it has a bit more immediate relevance.

I can't help but see parallels between the Milgram experiment and the "cry it out" schools of thought on training babies to sleep. Both require ignoring a person who, by all indications, is in great distress. More than ignoring the distress, you are in fact an active participant in causing that distress because you have the power to relieve it. There is also the element of authority in asserting that you are doing the right thing. In the Milgram experiment, the authority was the psychologist running the experiment. In the world of baby care, it comes in the form of pundits and "experts" such as (but not only) Richard Ferber. I use the word authority intentionally, because the appearance of authority is really all it rests on. Ferber may be a pediatrician, and he is the director of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders, but there have been no scientific studies on the comparative effectiveness of any of the various methods for teaching infants and toddlers to sleep (with the exception of co-sleeping, which isn't quite the same kind of thing). As a result, there is a huge jumble of assumptions, myths, and actually effective techniques that can very difficult to untangle. You end up with lots of people loudly proclaiming the superiority of their chosen path, with little beyond anecdotal evidence to support it. "Cry it out" methods can be very appealing to desperate parents (and you do get desperate) because they remove responsibility and can (partially) eliminate the problem by defining it out of existence. It also appeals to parents of certain philosophies by attempting to avoid pampering and coddling children, as though those concepts make any sense whatsoever with a baby.

I don't say any of this out of sanctimonious judgment (for once), but instead out of guilt. You see, we have taken a small step down the path to the dark side. We have made a conscious effort to be less responsive when Uma is upset at bed time (nap or night). The sleep situation in our house has degraded over the last few months, to the point where we had to expend considerable effort to get her to fall asleep at least twice and sometimes all three times in a day. This involved rocking, patting, and singing until she was calm or asleep, then trying to put her down gently, running out of the room, and hoping. Usually, she woke up as she was getting put down, and it was a roll of the dice as to whether she would accept it or start crying. Getting out of the room quickly helped, as it seemed like seeing us leave caused more unhappiness than us being absent. For a while, I was spending 20 or more minutes on her morning nap and up to an hour at night trying to soothe her to sleep. Sleep times became something that we approached with fear and foreboding, because we knew it would be hard. That was not a situation we wished to see last indefinitely. Certainly, she would sometimes go down without a fuss, but that was a distinct minority of cases. However, on numerous occasions, we haven't been able to respond to Uma's cries as quickly as we wanted. To our surprise, in many of those cases, she quieted down and fell back asleep without intervention.

As a result of our accumulated exhaustion and this faint light of hope, last week we decided to make the conscious choice of holding back. Our rationale is simple. Uma is aware of us and the world around her to a much greater degree than she was a few months ago. She is very good at letting us know when she doesn't want something, be it more peas, a diaper change, or to have her face cleaned. There's a difference between that and the confused, scared desperation that sometimes afflicts her. The former is just complaining, while the latter is real agony. She's also much more clued-in to what's happening around her and can often predict what is going to happen. Sometimes, she starts complaining as soon as she's picked up from play time or finished nursing because she doesn't want to go to bed. Our new choice is to ignore the complaining and respond to the real anguish. We're not exactly happy about this. Most obviously that is because there will always be some crying, but it's also because there's a lot of error in the process. We often think she'll quiet down and then endure awful, painful minutes as she doesn't. Or we'll intervene when we don't need to, which is certainly not painful, but has a wearing effect. We're slowly getting better at distinguishing between the two, but there are still those terrible moments. Ideally, she wouldn't cry at all, but we are far away from that. One thing is for certain, though; we will not let her cry indefinitely. We listen very closely to the quality of her cry. Some cries are clearly fishing to see if she can get Mommy or Daddy back, while others are red alert and get us in there faster than a blink.

I feel like we're doing the right thing for us and for her, but it's very easy to convince yourself of that no matter how bad a thing you are doing. In spite of the problems we've had with her sleeping, I'm also glad we didn't try this before. For this to work in a way we're comfortable with, it's essential that Uma be aware and self-reliant enough that she can quiet down, play for a while, and then fall asleep. It's certainly not something to do with a newborn 1 , who is so bewildered and confused that any disturbance is terrible and frightening. We certainly don't want to teach her that crying gets no response, because sometimes, something truly is wrong. Nor do we want her to believe that we won't respond to her distress; even if she isn't capable of thinking those thoughts today, she will be someday, and sooner than we think. We just want her to learn that sleep isn't as distressing as she thinks. So far, it's been helping. When she's genuinely upset, we fall back on our standard playbook of soothing tactics. We still try to leave with her awake, but sometimes we just have to go in for the long haul. That's fine. We didn't expect that things would be immediately perfect; we just wanted to reduce what had become a fr