What happens to all those people who graduate from top notch music schools? I mean, they can't all find the orchestra or theater jobs. I bet lots of them turn into bitter singers and musicians for commercial jingles. They sing the "Eastwood Insurance Song" in a soundbooth and think, "I went to Juilliard for this?" How depressing.

¶ 2 Posted at 10.16 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

In my mind, sometimes, I'm already there. My house sits atop a hill, looking out over the sea. Below, waves lap at the beach. The air is heavy and sticky. As the sun sets, it becomes a giant red ball, bathing everything in a ruddy glow. Some times of the year, the region is beset by torrential downpours that drench everything, and thunder that rolls across the sky.

¶ 14 Posted at 03.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | me )

So, some woman called me this morning. She wasn't looking for me. She was looking for Tony. I suppose checking the number was too much for her to do this early. It wasn't too much to do for her to wake me. Nothing (on the scale of annoyances) angers me more than having my sleep frivolously disturbed. Nothing nothing nothing. Angry angry angry. So when she asked if I was Tony I just said No and hung up. Usually I try to be helpful, asking them who they intended to call, etc. Of course, that's when people just hang up on you. You say, "I'm sorry, but you have the wrong number," and they don't even bother to thank you or apologize to you for the disturbance. They just hang up. Reminds me of the line from Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor that I just read last night. It went something like: "People use telephones because they can't stand to be near each other but can't stand to be alone."

Speaking of Chuck Palahniuk, I had a dream that he was in my apartment telling me that Fight Club (the movie) made $40 million, and had only cost $4 million. I don't know where these numbers come from; I just think it's strange that my dream was so specific. Of course, it was also very specific about the lighting in my living room. It was very accurate; dreams usually are. I was telling him that most people I knew really liked the movie, but there were some who didn't. I think (this was outside the dream) the difference was, people who think there is something significantly wrong with society today liked it. Peoeple who are relatively satisfied with the status quo or can't be bothered to think about it (effectively the same group) didn't like it. What does that say about us? I know what it says. It says we don't care about other people's problems. It says that, as long as things are good for us, we don't want them to change.

Another dream I had, though I think it was tangentially connected to the Palahniuk one, had something to do with me being a substitute justice on the Supreme Court. For some reason a justice (don't remember who; none of them were recognizable in the dream world) had recused himself (from this Gore recount case), I think to go and work on some alien archaeology (his murdered body was found in a storage room for artifacts, like these weird alien skulls). The atmosphere in the Supreme Court was very casual, very collegial. I remember thinking it was going to be weird explaining to everybody how I ended up being a justice at one of the most important cases of the century. Then at some point I was on a spaceship that we were hijacking to take us away from Earth. The impressions of this dream universe were somewhat like that of the Alien movies, but also somewhat like that series by Piers Anthony on Jupiter that I read so long ago. Somehow, though, I was there and also reading about it in a book. It also triggered thoughts about what the ideal size of human space. I was thinking 30 years of travel. Then it would keep humanity separate enough that real changes would develop rather than the mass-media monoculture towards which we are moving slowly. That sort of difficulty in seeing the human universe would (hopefully) bring back a certain sense of mystery that has been lost. We know entirely too much about the world; there isn't much adventure left.

And all of this because some annoying woman called me too early in the morning. Without her, I wouldn't have remembered any of this. So blame her; it's her fault.

¶ 20 Posted at 09.37 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | books )

Have you ever had the problem of being unable to lose context? What I mean is, you get fixed in a way of interpreting things, and then when switching to a different source, you can't snap out of it? It happens to me all the time. I'll read, for example, the Onion (America's Finest News Source). Then I'll go and read something like something serious, but I'm always looking for the joke in all the stories of child torture. Or you'll read some dry piece of scholarship for an hour or two, and then speak in stilted English all day. It's unnerving.

¶ 33 Posted at 10.05 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

I want George W. to be a one-term President. And I want Hilary Clinton to be elected President in 2008. And for no greater reason than the weirdness of it. Consider: the first impeachment in over a century, and only the second ever. Followed by the "election" of the son of a defeated President, who (hopefully) joins his father in the ranks of the one-term Presidents. Then something in 2004, which I haven't figured out yet, followed by the first woman President, the former First Lady. How weird would that be? Exciting times, I think. It would be something for the history books, that's for sure. The ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

¶ 38 Posted at 11.43 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

I have decided that President Clinton should resign on January 19th. That would give Gore a couple days as President, making George W. Bush the 44th, rather than the 43rd, President of the United States. This would accomplish several things. Most importantly, it would just be weird. Secondly, it would piss off Bush. Thirdly, Gore would get to be President, if only for a couple days. I've decided that Gore doesn't have a chance in 2004. I don't expect Clinton will have to do much Presidentially on the last two days of his term.

¶ 39 Posted at 10.56 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

It has become apparent to me in the last few years that there is a significant life lesson I never learned. It was never indicated to me that there even was a lesson to learn. I was never taught how to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty. Perhaps it was hinted at as part of other studies, but there was never an explicit focus on questions like "What if you're wrong?" When it comes to teaching "life lessons," we too often assume perfect information. In daily interactions with other people, there is so much ambiguity. So much is unsaid or unclearly said. And yet we generally act based on this superficial knowledge we've gathered; we take people's statements at face value rather than looking beyond them. And even when we make inferences based on them, they are either very tentative and tenuous in our own minds, or have the power of fact, with no middle ground. Furthermore, we are a very trustworthy society. This may sound counter-intuitive at first, but consider the information you gain daily. Newspapers, websites, personal conversations.... How often do you question what you read? Some sources (*cough* Slashdot comments) are usually taken with many grains of salt, but in general, you trust what you hear and see. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but there is a tendency to think that only what is stated explicitly is all that is there. Furthermore, these sources will be wrong from time to time. In statistics, there is the ready acknowledgement that gathered data might not reflect reality. Somehow that lesson hasn't escaped into the real world. There needs to be an structured way of teaching people how to accept and deal with ambiguity.

With apologies to Hiyakawa.

¶ 58 Posted at 04.31 PM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas | deep thoughts )

Virtue is its own reward. That's what they say. I can't say I disagree. It's almost a tautology. If you had some incentive to do the right thing, then you're doing it for the incentive, not for the rightness of it. The problem isn't knowing what the right thing is, as some people have said. Nor is it in actually doing it. Both those things are easy. The hard part is living with the consequences. Whenever you're tempted to do The Wrong Thing, you have a million reasons to yield. But you only have one reason to do The Right Thing, and that is because it is right. And you'll never forget all those reasons you turned your back on. It's easy to do anything. The hard part is living with the consequences.

Hypothetically speaking, of course.

¶ 67 Posted at 01.05 PM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas | deep thoughts )

Can't wait for more Tool.

I've acquired a fascination for events in threes. This isn't one of those "everything happens in three" things. It's just a way of attaching significance. Once is a fluke. Twice is an odd coincidence. Only with three data points does the possibility of a broader trend become credible. Einstein was a genius. He had the requisite three things: his explanation of the photo-electric effect (for which he got the Nobel Prize in 1921, not for his other work), and his theories of special and general relativity. Similarly, Newton had calculus, his theory of gravitation, and his law of motion. You need to make the triple threat before you've cemented your status. You're not a programmer until you've written three programs (at least). And so forth.

¶ 70 Posted at 04.35 PM ⇒ No Comments ( music | deep thoughts )

Former President Bill Clinton. Former. That just sounds weird. He's been an omnipresent figure in my adult life. I barely remember Bush (pére), and Reagan not at all. And on top of having to hear President George W. Bush for the next four years...

¶ 75 Posted at 11.45 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

There's a loss of innocence in every relationship, platonic or otherwise. As you attempt to take the step from casual friend/acquaintances to a closer relationship, there is a certain shedding of barriers. You discover things that had hitherto remained hidden. Sometimes you discover that you should have left the barriers alone. Once you push past the point of no return, however, things can never be the same. Innocence lost cannot be regained.

¶ 76 Posted at 01.01 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Beware the three stages of denial:

1. Not me.
2. Not yet.
3. Not that bad.

Now apply it to the dot-com economy.

¶ 105 Posted at 10.09 AM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | deep thoughts )

The Most Dangerous Game has the potential to be an excellent movie. It seems to have already been a Japanese one. Perhaps John Frankenheimer.

¶ 326 Posted at 01.43 PM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas | deep thoughts | movies )

People can be defined by the two ways they react when you make them think: some will love you, but most will hate you.

¶ 417 Posted at 03.14 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Science doesn't explain; it describes. Creation Scientists have already lost before they even get anywhere because they shouldn't even be using scientific means to talk about religion.

¶ 421 Posted at 11.32 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Perhaps given my current unemployment, Passiveindustry.com would have been more appropriate. Hmmm. That didn't make as much sense as it did when I first thought of it.

¶ 425 Posted at 12.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

I was doing some calculations last night (as was made obvious by the previous post). The sooner you start saving, the better off you are. That is obvious, but I don't think people are aware of the degree to which that makes a difference. Every $10/month you save for 30 years is another $8000 in your retirement fund. And the more principal you start with, the more the interest will help. With a sufficiently large starting fund, all you have to do is leave your money alone for a while (not too long) and then you can live off the interest. For example, if you start with $1 million at 5% above inflation and leave it alone for 5 years (while you, say, work), you will be able to live off it for another 27 years, withdrawing $7,000/month (that is worth more than $7,000/month from a regular job because you don't pay Social Security tax on interest, as far as I know). If you wait 7 years to touch it, then you will be able to live off it for another 35 years. If you wait 10 years to touch it, you will have money for 61 years after retirement. And if you wait just two more years to start tapping your fund, your money will last forever. So this is the plan: get a million dollars. Work for twelve years. Live forever.

¶ 437 Posted at 10.19 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

It occurs to me that, if we stripped the current Iraq situation of all the details, it would sound rather disturbing. Consider: A nation claims it is threatened by another nation that has a hostile government and wealth. In order to defend its security, the first is compelled to invade the second, invading with an army of the working class and under-priveleged. Along the way, innocents die, cities are destroyed, and the remnants of a nation are thrust into chaos. The merchant class of the conqueroring nation descends upon the vanquished and sets itself to plundering its riches. That is one of the basic templates of wars of conquest. Rome did it. The British Empire too. Tsarist Russia. The Aztecs. Shouldn't we be beyond this? If you look at the polls, you can see that nobody is buying the Bush story; they know it's about oil and revenge. But if you look at the polls, you can see that it doesn't matter. Somehow the Bush administration has managed to convince the nation that war with Iraq is inevitable and there is nothing they can do about it. I'm amazed and depressed at the same time. An imperial, colonialist America is such an oxymoron but it is happening. In fact, that would be the best possible outcome of a war with Iraq, that we occupy the country for many years and leverage American interest in oil to bring money to the region and build a profitable colony, I mean, a stable ally. Imagine the Marshall Plan, but without moral authority. Think carpet baggers. Or MacArthur in post-WWII Japan. The British East India Company. Bush may be the most autocratic and undemocratic President in recent memory, but that he would be so ready to impose his will on a sovereign nation is further than I thought he would ever go. September 11 was the best thing to ever happen for this administration.*

Not that I buy into the conspiracy theories; I accept that what happened is more or less accurate. But George Bush was floundering in mid-2001; now he has sky-high popular opinion, a Congressional majority built on that, a likely second term, and the fear of the American people letting him walk down a path that was never open before, where he can reward the wealthy, connected patrons who got him where he is, increase the size and power of federal government (ironically), and finish off the job dad left undone.

¶ 477 Posted at 01.47 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

"Reality Television" is a stupid name. It's also inaccurate. It should be called "Amateur Television." I don't mean that in a necessarily pejorative sense, although the quality of most such shows would justify that use. What separates it from normal programming is that it involves people who aren't professional actors, not real vs. fake television; "reality television" is often just as plotted as normal programming, if not in the script, then in the editing room. There is nothing real about reality television, usually not even the participants. "Amateur Television" won't get ratings, though.

¶ 486 Posted at 11.02 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

That we've have solved the whole transportation problem. Today is the first SXSW weekday, and parking in downtown Austin is terrible. One would think we'd have solved the whole "where do I put my car?" problem. Think about urban business and living in any major Western city and a huge consideration in designing a downtown or a new apartment complex or anything else is where to put people's cars. It's wasteful to have 3000 lbs of metal to move around 150 lbs of flesh, or in the US, 5000 lbs of metal to move around 250 lbs of flesh. Here's one solution:

Not that anything like that's going to get anywhere in this country until we fundamentally change the economic incentives (or absence of deterrents) to buying a behemoth vehicle that gets 10 miles per gallon.

Link from mute.

¶ 505 Posted at 12.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | future )

The United States is going to defy the United Nations and attack Iraq for defying the United Nations.

Attacking Iraq to save lives is like saving money by buying things you don't need because they are on sale.

¶ 513 Posted at 12.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | politics )

One of the panels I attended at SXSW was called "Trends in how the Internet Connects People." The panelists were James Hong (Hot or Not), Scott Heiferman (Meetup.com, and Brad Fitzpatrick (Live Journal). There were some interesting things that I may write up later, but the most interesting part was a digression into why Google bought Blogger. Brad claimed that Evan (the main Blogger guy) had said Google didn't really have an agenda, that they bought it just because it was cool. I didn't buy that at all. There was some speculation that access to weblogs would help Google make its search results more useful and timely because the normal web is more static. Informational pages, FAQs, etc. on a given site don't get created on a daily basis (I call this "slow content"). Over the whole WWW, there are many such things created on a given day, but Google doesn't know when to look at them. However, Google knows that webloggers are finding these things on a daily basis and posting about them ("fast content"). Google knows where the weblogs are and it can thus use them to find the newer and updated slow content.

From this I gleaned an insight. People find interesting information in ways that cannot be emulated by crawler programs. There is too much out there on the WWW for even Google to index completely in a short period of time. It might take a month for Google to find out that some Britney Spears biography has been updated. But a weblogger might find that in a day and post about it. Google can then pick up on that and index the bio weeks before it would have otherwise. And if no webloggers link it, it's a good indication that people don't much care about it so Google can wait a few weeks to index it. From that Google can also infer some information on how useful the link is in ways that they cannot currently from slow content.

This is the same genius that Google is built on: rather than attempt to emulate human judgment (as Altavista and others did in the pre-Google days), Google skip the unreliable guesswork entirely and extract the human judgment that has already been expressed in the web by people constructing web pages. Webloggers do exactly that, except much faster than the more traditional, slow web that existed a few years ago. Each weblogger that Google tracks and indexes is in some sense a human equivalent of a Google web crawler, finding interesting information faster and more intuitively than a program ever could. The example at the panel was weblogs about chihuahuas. There's no way that Google would have a web crawler looking for information about chihuahuas. And, it turns out, they don't need one. They have the chihuahua webloggers doing that for them already. All they have to do is visit every now and reap the fruits. If you have a weblog, you have been deputized. You are part of the Google search posse. You work for them now. And this is a good thing.

¶ 514 Posted at 12.14 PM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | deep thoughts | sxsw )

Suppose you're in an interactive situation where you want to change someone's mind about something. The obvious tactic would be to open with as strong a case as you can, but I think that's wrong. If you do that, your "opponent" will quickly shut you out and retreat. And you need them to counter in order to win. Winning is defined as changing that person's position to be more like yours; after all, even if you "prove" your point, you've accomplished nothing if your opponent doesn't accept the proof.

What you should do instead is present the same strong argument, but omit a couple supporting points, or fail to address weaknesses in supporting points. Then they'll come out with "Ah, but you see..." Since you were prepared, though, you can respond and refute their counter-argument. If you do it right, you pull out the pillars of your opponent's position. Furthermore, they'll have wasted their energy and thought on attacking easily-defended points, making them less likely to construct more sophisticated attacks that are harder to defend against. If you never give that opening, however, they'll never get engaged and will never risk disproof. You need to convince them that you can be convinced to take their side by having a weakness in your argument. If your argument is too strong, they won't listen because they will perceive you as immovable and won't bother to consider the substance of your argument.

On the other hand, you have to keep from appearing too vulnerable at the beginning. If you look too weak at the beginning, your opponent will be convinced beyond reason that he is right even as it becomes more and more obvious (to others) that he is wrong. So make your argument strong enough to hold up at first glance, but weak enough to look defeatable. Then trap your opponent when he falls for the bait.

¶ 546 Posted at 06.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

I've coined what I call the "30 second rule." If you want people to visit a web site regularly, you have to give them at least 30 seconds. If you provide enough on your site to keep them engaged for that long, they will come again. If they don't stay that long, they won't come back. Obviously that's over-simplifying quite a bit, but I'm going to make a point of providing at least 30 seconds worth of content every few days. Maybe that just reflects my impatience and attention span, but everyone has less of both these days, especially on the web.

¶ 594 Posted at 04.53 PM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | deep thoughts | web )

How come we don't get goose bumps on our faces? Hmmm? Think about it.

¶ 628 Posted at 10.18 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Yesterday I was talking to some LBJ grad students about how much general debate they have with other students. One of them expressed some reluctance to participate because he felt that other students knew more than he did, and so would wait until he knew more. At that point I articulated what I realized has been a hitherto unarticulated philosophy of mine: the best way to learn is to say something stupid and ignorant to someone who is neither. Please attribute any stupid or ignorant comments I make to that :-).

Phew. Frequent updates are tiring. I hope you're happy, J3 and J4.

¶ 633 Posted at 09.30 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

I have a potentially really good essay in me that I can't get out. It's not ready. It's been steeping for about 8 months in various forms; I don't know what it's waiting for. Sure would be neat if I could write.

¶ 634 Posted at 09.00 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | me )

The cliche is that we become set in our ways as we age. I would argue that half of that is simply learning what our ways are. You can't become set in your ways at 18 because very few of us know them. I guess that falls under the rubric of "finding yourself," but I always thought that was a silly phrase.

¶ 641 Posted at 10.15 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | me )

I've had an idea bouncing around my head for a while. People describe how to get to a location in a series of instructions. Or we use a map with an idealized aerial view. Neither, however, really works the way people work. I'm thinking that when I need to give people directions to my house, I will use a series of photographs instead. I will write the standard list of directions, but at each meaningful point, I will provide a photograph of what it looks like. This is what it looks like where you turn left. This is what it looks like when you turn right. Etc. Instead of giving people an abstracted bird's eye view or writing a program for my guests to run, I'll give them something that actually works the way they think.

¶ 717 Posted at 07.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Last week, I had a dream about an alien landing on Earth. It was ominous and menacing. When I woke up, that feeling was still very vivid. As I lay in bed returning to normal, my mind wandered. We know so little about the world that just about anything is conceivable. Not only is it conceivable, but we have no idea how likely any of these things are. Aliens could invade tomorrow. The Earth could be destroyed in a collision with an asteroid. We could start another arms race with catastrophic results. We could destroy the environment. And then there is the coming Singularity. We live in a thin shell of a small planet in a tiny pocket of a mind-bogglingly vast universe with complex and intricate rules we have only begun to understand. Every day, though, we manage to ignore that to worry about retirement, whether Apple will release a G5 laptop next year, whether it's worth fixing that dent in my car, and a countless number of other concerns that all depend on us having a future much the same as the present. I suggest no alternatives; given how little we know we must behave this way, but every now and then I wake up in the middle of the night, stunned by possibility.

¶ 865 Posted at 11.28 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

I have issues with pointless obedience to authority. I'm not the only one who thinks that. Clause 8 of Section 9 of the United States Constitution reads:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Thus, it is with some trepidation that I think about the prospect of being in court. It is customary to refer to a judge as "Your Honor," but I just cannot stomach doing that. Nor can I accept standing to address a judge when he/she does not do the same when addressing me. I will not bend knee or grovel to anyone. It may seem like a small thing, but the idea that a judge could fine or jail me for not addressing them with sufficient reverence is offensively un-American. I can't even feel fully comfortable with "Doctor," especially when he/she refers to me by my first name. Then there are other honorifics, such as for religious leaders, high government officials, foreign dignitaries, and so forth, none of which has a place in a democratic society where all are equal. If George W. Bush calls me "Ketan," I must call him "George." I am not in the military, so he is not my commander-in-chief. I am not a Bush, so he is not an older relative. I am not a child, so he is not "Mr. Bush." I am an American citizen, and no one is my better.

Update: no, I am not under indictment, facing prosecution, on trial, or anything like that. I'm just sayin'.

¶ 928 Posted at 10.31 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

One of the things that baffles me about the engagement ring phenomenon is how many women view it. They see it as something their fiancés give them, but the money to pay for it doesn't appear out of nowhere. It comes right out of what will shortly be joint property. In effect, the women are buying the rings themselves. That's certainly how we saw it. Jessica and I thought pretty quickly decided that whatever amount of our money that went into a fancy ring would be much better spent on our house. That's not to say that women shouldn't get engagement rings, but rather that they should recognize that it's not a gift. The only exception is the "kept woman" who gets an allowance from her husband, the bread-winner and head of household as in the traditional, bad old days. The only way it can be a gift is if the marriage is not one of equals, and not just for today, but forever. What woman would want that?

¶ 1095 Posted at 06.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

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 )

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 )

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 )

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 thing we haven't done much as parents is stretch Uma's limits. We've gotten burned too much when we've done it inadvertently that it makes us hesitant to test them. Of course, if we don't test them, they'll hardly grow, which is something we're slowly learning. It's mostly with regards to where she sleeps, where she goes, whether/when we leave her, and other basic logistical concerns. We don't actively avoid as many things as we used to, and we're not shut-ins, but we are still skittish, and we certainly don't seek out potentially challenging situations. That's not fair to her, nor is it really fair to us. A 15-month old is much different from a 5-month old (though we could have been more ambitious then, too). I guess we're falling into the standard parent trap.

¶ 1332 Posted at 08.10 AM ⇒ No Comments ( us | deep thoughts )

I wonder what global travel will be like in a post-oil future. Will gas-guzzling airplanes be replaced by more sedate, fuel-cell powered Zeppelins riding the jet stream to go from New York to London in a day? Maybe inter-continental voyagers will rediscover the romance of ocean liners, this time on nuclear-powered hydrofoils running from Sydney to Tokyo at 150 knots. Or there will be a bullet train from Tokyo to Los Angeles, skipping along the edge of the Pacific up Russia and over the Aleutians and down the West Coast. Or maybe we'll just learn to enjoy staying home, keeping in touch with fancy-schmancy video-conferencing and exploring with virtual reality, gobbling up the gigabytes, gigahertz, and gigawatts.

¶ 1333 Posted at 12.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( oil | travel | deep thoughts )

I think the furor over Mel Gibson's drunken, anti-Semitic tirade brings up a host of interesting questions. How much do the beliefs of musicians, actors, etc. matter when it comes to consuming their product? I have no doubt that some of my favorites believe stupid and/or offensive things. They might not say them publicly, but isn't the problem the belief itself? After all, that's part of why people have jumped all over Gibson. They feel like they have been deceived for years and it took alcohol and an arrest to reveal what he really thought. Where does freedom enter into the equation? It may be reprehensible, but we should be careful not to create an environment hostile to free speech.

Then there's the question of punishment and rehabilitation. Rob Schneider has declared a Gibson boycott, that he would never work with Gibson no matter what 1 . On the one hand, it's understandable that he wouldn't want to associate with someone who believes such things. On the other hand, if most of Hollywood behaved the same way and marginalized him, Gibson would see no point in attempting to change his ways. I don't care about Mel Gibson or about this relatively minor incident that has become national news, but it does provoke some interesting questions.

¶ 1344 Posted at 12.51 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | media )

There was a guy driving like a jerk this morning. I got the sense that maybe, just maybe, there was a legitimate reason for it, but I was still convinced he was just a jerk. That got me thinking... how do you know when someone's legitimately in a major hurry, like with a woman in labor in the back seat, or 2 miles from home at World Cup kickoff time? The only way we civilians have to signal our urgency is by honking horns, flashing lights, and driving aggressively, all things that an aggro psycho does. Then I realized it didn't matter. In neither case do I want to be in the way. I don't care about your reasons, just go past me so I don't die.

¶ 1349 Posted at 11.23 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

I've invested a lot of effort in trying to convince people of one thing or another. I've also spent a lot of time thinking about better ways of doing it. One thing that never occurred to me until reading this interview with Steven Soderbergh is how people actually change their minds. I don't even really know what's been the key factor in changing my own mind. I have theories, but I've never matched them up against reality.

Everybody's changed their mind about something, so you'd think it would be easy. For someone who's spent so much time trying to convince people of various things, that I've never investigated real instances of people changing their minds about something is kind of embarassing. Is it emotional? Logical? Maybe there's a trigger event. I have no idea, and I think I ought to get some idea before trying again.

Maybe that should be one of my conversation-starting questions when I meet new people 1 . It sure beats "What do you do?" So what have you changed your mind about lately, and how did that happen?

¶ 1362 Posted at 04.31 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

I think a lot of people choose to have kids too late. I know many people who had their first child in their early to mid 30s. That does not seem optimal to me, and not just because Uma was born 4 days before my 27th birthday. Consider how old I will be when Uma is at the normal college graduation age: 49. That's pretty young. Suppose Uma gets married at roughly the standard age. I'll be in my 50s. That's good, too. Think ahead to the far future where prospective grandchildren do the same things, assuming it's at roughly the same ages. I'll be 76 when my first grandchild graduates college, and about 80 at the wedding. If, instead of 27, the first child happened at 32, I'd be 86 and 90 respectively when those things happened, which calls into question whether I'd even be alive. And that's just the first child. Most people wait a couple of years at least between children. Then consider how it can take time to conceive as well as the scarily-high miscarriage rate. To the extent that one can even guess things like that, I have a pretty good chance of being around and being healthy until Uma is well-established on her own 1 .

The other major factor is the age of the mother. Pregnancy and health issues of various sorts are much more frequent once the mother is 35. If you want two kids, you have to have the first one in plenty of time for the second one to be born before Mom is 35. What if you decide you like having two kids so much that you want a third? If you started at 32, you have some tough choices to make. There's also the issue of women who stay home while their kids are young. You can certainly get further along in your career before having kids by delaying, but that means you'll be even older when it comes to returning to the work force, which can be rather intimidating.

I'm not saying that everyone should do this. I'm just suggesting that people who have a choice examine the consequences more closely. People who aren't financially stable ought to wait. So are people who aren't in a very stable relationship 2 . Ditto for people who haven't finished their education. There are any number of really good reasons for delaying, but you should make sure you've thought through the consequences, including the options it forecloses. Having a child is easier at a younger age, and when you have your children has ripple effects through all of your life and all of theirs. Delaying has clear advantages for financial stability and getting out your last ya-yas as a footloose and fancy-free youngster, but it comes at no small cost.

¶ 1380 Posted at 01.48 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Parenting is easy if you don't care when your kid is crying.

¶ 1386 Posted at 08.52 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

It does not appear as though Hallmark sells a "Thank you for taking me to the ER" card. That's an unmet market need right there. They could do a joint venture with MTV's "Jackass" and sell them near college campuses.

¶ 1394 Posted at 12.54 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | deep thoughts )

There are all kinds of schemes for replacing gasoline, from corn-based ethanol to algae producing biodiesel. Me, I'm putting my money on genetic engineering. See, all those other things require some kind of industrial infrastructure. They're all multi-stage processes. You have to harvest the corn and process it, or build your vats, etc. It's all just too much work.

I figure genetic engineering will make it easy. Imagine an acorn. Toss a bunch of them into a field. Come back 5 years later and find a forest. Hook up a network of hoses like tapping a sugar maple and drop the end into a 55-gallon drum. Drip drip drip you get bio-diesel. The trees aren't a product of evolution, so they don't need to waste their time with things like seeds. Nor do they need the diesel for themselves, so we can suck it all out. We can design them to grow like weeds for 5 years, and then stop dead, so the majority of their photosynthetic potential can go into sweet sweet biodiesel. Splice some algae genes and tweak their photosynthesis. To be user friendly, you make them sprout a spout when they're mature, so you don't even need to tap them, just hook up the hose.

This is probably not the most efficient way of producing energy from a chemical perspective. That's not what to optimize for. What you want to minimize is human effort. There's basically no investment of human effort after the acorns are produced. Nor is there any new technology needed to burn biodiesel, unlike ethanol (a little bit) or hydrogen (a lot). It doesn't need fancy batteries, because diesel is sort of a battery anyway. It's carbon neutral and way better environmentally than most of the ways we produce energy today. Just imagine driving up to a tree to fill up when your Hummer is running dry.

Credit where credit's due. This is not an idea original to me; I got it from the gasoline mangroves in the short story Appeals Court by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross.

¶ 1414 Posted at 02.13 PM ⇒ No Comments ( science! | deep thoughts )

There's no money in the "Star Trek" universe. We never learn what they do instead of money, though. They clearly still have scarcity of resources, at minimum time, energy, people, and interest in dull jobs. How do they allocate these limited resources to satisfy their needs? They never tell us, they just say there's no money and leave it at that.

¶ 1415 Posted at 11.47 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | tv )

Research shows that breast-fed children are less likely to be obese when they're older than formula-fed children. I have a hypothesis to explain part of it: there's no gauge on a breast telling you how much is left. When I feed Uma, I get a little goal-oriented. I want her to finish what's on her plate, especially if it's only a little bit. I recognized that as bad, and I'm a lot better now than I was before 1 . Naturally, I assume that everyone has that same instinct. It's easy to tell when a bottle is empty, and I think a lot of people have a reluctance to throw away perfectly good formula 2 . I suggest that doing so teaches babies and toddlers to ignore their bodies' satiety signals, so that they continue eating until they're full. That lack of sensitivity to being full probably sticks around, so they're more likely to overeat when they're older, too. I figure a way to test this would be to compare children whose breast milk is "directly-sourced" to those whose mothers pump and feed them with bottles.

¶ 1429 Posted at 04.57 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Sitcoms are notorious for all having the same basic characters. There's the funny one, the neurotic one, the vain one, the ditzy one, the weird one, etc. I'm starting to think that it's not so much a lack of imagination as it is being true to reality. The key concept here is "adaptive radiation," taken from evolutionary biology. Basically, in adaptive radiation, what happens is that a single species will fracture to fill available ecological niches over time, no matter what the starting point. Darwin's Galapagos finches are the prototypical example.

I've noticed something similar in people. You'd think that the student population of Rice is all nerds. You'd be mostly right, if you were comparing against the general population, and yet Rice had the same groups as any other university or even high school. There were the jocks, the stoners, the goths, the earnest thespians, etc. Even though Rice had higher admissions standards, there were still variations along the axes secondary to selection for entry. These became more pronounced over time once the academic attributes were more normalized. You may have distinguished yourself as the smart guy in high school, but in a place where most everyone was smart, you branched out (possibly by being extra smart).

I figure the same thing happens in social groups. Once you factor out the common ingredient that brought you together, "the other stuff" becomes more significant. Furthermore, there's an inevitable conflict that will usually keep two people from occupying the same niche. The loser either finds a different niche or leaves the group entirely. These roles are not fixed to the person, but rather to the group; a single person could be the funny one in one group and the smart one in a different one. This subtle jockeying tends to shake out similarly across social groups, no matter their nucleus. Thus, you inevitably end up with the funny one, the neurotic one, the vain one, the ditzy one, and the weird one in every group.

¶ 1432 Posted at 12.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( tv | deep thoughts )

Ours is the first generation born after the rise of feminism. We're the first generation of Americans where it's accepted and even expected for women to be as educated as men, and to pursue professional careers of their own. That has two significant effects: one, men value intelligence more than they used to, and two, men and women tend to meet in college or at work a lot more. I'm guessing that means that men and women in couples that form nowadays are much more likely to be intellectual matches than they were 50 years ago. It's well-established that intelligence has a strong hereditary component, so I predict that the intelligence bell curve is going to flatten. There are going to be fewer people around the middle, and more people at the extremes (all else being equal). The smartest will be smarter, and there will be more of them.

¶ 1434 Posted at 08.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

A co-worker and I have been going back and forth about the usefulness of tests to measure a job candidate's potential. He pointed me at a weblog post discussing how knowledge doesn't automatically mean ability, suggesting that the point was that knowledge tests are wrong. I don't quite agree. It's not about whether tests work, but rather whether tests measure the things you care about.

Rarely do tests measure exactly what the job calls for. That's due to a number of factors, among them that the job isn't clearly-defined and subject to change, or that the skills it requires are hard to measure, or that testing is just too much work. As a result, we use proxies, more easily measured attributes that we believe correlate to job ability. Sometimes these correlations are stupid, where someone may be thought of as a bad programmer because he always has to look up the difference between an inner join and an outer join (that's me). Other times they are useful, like determining someone's potential as a running back from their 40-yard sprint times.

It's not that knowledge tests are wrong. Knowledge tests are quite good as tests of knowledge (duh). What's unclear is whether they are good proxies for ability. I think the evidence is clear that they're neither excellent nor awful. It's important to call out this relationship because of how often we use easy proxies as shortcuts for harder or impossible measurements. We assume that someone who writes clearly is intelligent, or that someone who speaks assertively has given the matter much thought or is right, or that someone who is Indian is a software developer.

This proxy problem happens in a lot of different situations. IQ tests certainly measure something that correlates to intelligence, but it's pretty definitely not intelligence itself. Programmer productivity often correlates to lines of code produced or bugs fixed, except when it doesn't 1. We also see it in measurements of school quality 2. Tests are just like statistics: it matters a whole lot how you use them.

¶ 1444 Posted at 11.45 AM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts )

Political correctness is about changing the way people express themselves. In theory, that means that people will think differently. In practice, it accomplishes little.

Consider the evolution of "crippled." People didn't like being called "crippled" because there was negative baggage, so we started using "disabled" instead. Wouldn't you know it, "disabled" started to have negative connotations, so we switched to "handicapped." Surprisingly, that didn't work, so we decided to give "physically challenged" a try. Well, I guess it was too challenging for us, so we moved on to "differently abled." You get the point.

We start using news term to avoid the negative connotations of the old. The problem is that the baggage wasn't attached to the old word, but to the old concept. As long as the concept and its perception remain the same, the baggage will always catch up. There's how fired became laid off became downsized became right-sized might soon become externally redeployed 1.

There are certainly plenty of apparent exceptions. Contrast n-plus-5-letters to black 2. Gay is still a neutral term where faggot is not. I suspect that neither of those is an actual exception. Instead, they both demonstrate how newer terms that are free of baggage can only do so when society at large becomes less bigoted and judgmental. The contrast with fired makes it more clear. Involuntary disemployment is always going to be a negative event because it's real and meaningful. It's good to avoid loaded, bad terms for things like race, gender, sexual orientation, and other things that don't (or shouldn't) affect people's lives in general. Losing a job or a limb isn't one of those things. It's one thing to be respectful of disabilities, it's another thing to try to wish them away. I think the key distinction is whether someone would mind shifting into the other category. I think I might mind being black a bit, but much less than 40 years ago. Ditto for being female or gay. However, I can't imagine ever not minding losing leg. That is always going to be viewed as a big bummer. What's important isn't the futile quest for a positive name for something negative, but treating people with respect. And that's a lot harder than changing the way people talk.

¶ 1450 Posted at 05.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( observations | deep thoughts )

I've been finding it hard to find a clear dividing line between personal freedom and economic freedom. It makes me wonder whether the future perspective will think of state-run companies as being like state-sponsored churches and communism like a theocracy. Or maybe I should just go to bed.

¶ 1463 Posted at 10.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | issues )

Scientists appear to have discovered a protein that can erase memory. They have not indicated they know of any way to control what gets erased, either in kind or quantity. At present, it has only been demonstrated with rats, as there are obviously enormous ethical issues there. However, there are those who have no ethical issues whatsoever.

Assuming a similar effect can be produced in humans, how long is it before a criminal gang 1 uses this to wipe out someone's memory? Maybe someone who is informing for the police? The standard tactic is to kill them, but that is messy, dangerous, illegal, and alerts the police. However, if the informant shows up at a hospital with no memory of who he is...

We don't even have a criminal category this kind of thing fits in; it's certainly an assault, but so much more, and in some ways it's a murder, but the victim is still alive. This is freaky stuff. Even if this particular research path turns out to be a dead end, it seems likely that something like this will someday be discovered/invented.

¶ 1547 Posted at 02.53 PM ⇒ No Comments ( science! | deep thoughts )

I'm not too motivated by money these days. What I hope for from my career 5 or 10 years down the road is more about whether what I'll be doing will be interesting. That wasn't true when I started out. Back then, I cared more about how much money I'd be making later. I certainly like money, of course, but it's not something I look forward to the way I used to. Maybe it's because I make more now. Or maybe it's because I'm starting to get a little jaded. Or maybe, just maybe, it's maturity.

¶ 1581 Posted at 08.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment | deep thoughts | money )

Is it possible for the broader economy to be more stable while individuals are less stable? It seems counter-intuitive, but it makes sense. Lifetime employment is long dead, and it seems like the social contract of the earlier post-WWII era has been sundered forever 1. And yet, the broader economy is more stable than ever, even with the current dislocations. Economic cycles have been dampened, inflation seemingly tamed. Perhaps it is like how the San Andreas Fault creeps along instead of letting the pressure build up, and then violently releasing it in a massive earthquake. The economy creeps along, lubricated and stabilized by the fortunes and failures of millions of individual economies. Perhaps that will keep the mortgage collapse from becoming an economic collapse. I'm no economist.

¶ 1583 Posted at 07.53 AM ⇒ No Comments ( money | deep thoughts | economics )

There's this recent trend in giving women gifts after they give birth. It's enough of a trend to have made the NY Times. I've heard them called "birth gifts" and "push presents" (in the aforementioned article). Regardless of what you call them, they're a terrible idea. I can think of nothing that could possibly measure up to the pain and sacrifice of pregnancy, labor, and raising children. Any trinket or bauble I gave would just cheapen the event. She's not some woman I hired to be a brood mare, she's my wife. That's not to say she deserves no consideration; indeed, such a gift is insufficient consideration. True consideration is not nearly so easy or simple.

The practice also implies something about compensation and equality. The new father gives the gift because the new mother endured far more. Giving such a gift in theory works to return things to equilibrium. That's stupid. A successful partnership isn't about equalizing responsibilities and rewards. "From each according to ability, to each according to need." As a general principle for organizing a society, that fails miserably, but it seems like the only sane system in a marriage. Some abstract notion of equality is irrelevant; you don't keep accounts with family. What matters is whether each member is satisfied with the division of duties and dividends.

Such a gift also suggests a lack of equality. Any gift that I give Jessica comes out of our money, regardless of whose name is on the paycheck. Indeed, it is impossible for me to buy a gift for her 1; rather, we are buying something together for her (though she might not know about it [yet]). Saying it's a gift from me to her implies a distinction between my money and her money, and furthermore that my authority is higher than hers2. It's not the 1950s anymore; that's not how things work.

¶ 1617 Posted at 02.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( deep thoughts | stupid people )

I've been wondering about UT's choice of mascot. Texas culture about boldness. Aggression. I realize the longhorn is significant in Texas history, but why would they name themselves after a prey animal? And not just a prey animal, but a domesticated, ranch-raised one, not even a wild one. It doesn't fit.

¶ 1692 Posted at 04.09 PM ⇒ No Comments ( sports | deep thoughts )

Over time, familiarity and fluency in certain areas has become increasingly essential to functioning in society. There was a time when only a minority needed to be literate or numerate, but today, everyone must be. I am hardly objective on this topic, but I am increasingly convinced that familiari