Solutions?

*Sighs* As I'm sure everyone is aware, a horrible tragedy happened today. Roughly 10,000 people died in seven countries as tsunamis swept through Southeast Asia from an extremely large earthquake in the Indian Ocean. The numbers will likely only rise.

Much as this news is horrifying, it is not exactly unique. Nearly every year, there is often some sort of major natural disaster that kills hundreds to thousands indiscriminately.

This is unacceptable.

Therefore, the question remains how to minimize or eliminate damage from natural disasters. I can see several avenues of approach:

The first is avoidance. If we could make sure we worked and lived in places unlikely to suffer killing natural disasters, we could sharply reduce our risk. However, this is not exactly feasible. For one, nearly every section of the world is prone to some sort of natural disaster - for example, even Chicago is at risk for tornados and flooding (not to mention our sitting on a rather major fault line, despite its relative lack of activity). Another problem is that some people simply don't have a choice about where they live - I'd wager that most of the people killed in the tsunamis today lived where they had grown up, had little funds to move, and were possibly even dependent on the coast (eg fishing, shipping).

Okay, so let's hit the next step. If we can't avoid natural disasters, can we prevent them? Heh, not bloody likely. There have been theories about how to, say, "defuse" a hurricane (though the chances one takes in doing so are horribly risky), but we have no *clue* about how to prevent earthquakes and the like (which are probably the deadliest killer, along with volcanoes). Tectonic activity can't be dealt with that easily, though some far-fetched ideas have been proposed.

So, we can't prevent them. Can we predict them? This would give people opportunity to move away from the worst area or damage, get to shelter, etc. Well, this we're getting better at as our understanding of the world improves. But sometimes there still is not enough time to prepare, and though we may save many lives, there will be horrible amounts of damage to property, wildlife, etc.

If we cannot warn people ahead of time, can we make structures and such resistant to natural disasters? This works, to an extent, but extremes will always surprise us. Also, some types of disasters (eg tsunamis) do not seem that easy to protect oneself from. Lastly, poorer countries will not have the funds to support that sort of protection.

Once a natural disaster hits, then, can we implement better search and rescue operations? Hundreds may die simply because they were trapped and waited too long for medical attention. This we *can* improve upon - both in the response of the world to such disasters (faster mobilization of aid, etc.) and the response of individuals and countries to a disaster (reducing panic/chaos, quickly bringing a local, then regional response to help sort things out, adequately training rescuers, etc.).

*sighs* Unfortunately, this seems too little to do anything. Do any of my readers have ideas for other directions to take? I'd welcome any suggestions.

Horribly inefficient infrastructure repair

The joke goes like this: There are two seasons in Chicago. Winter, and Construction.

Ha ha. I'm such a wit.

There might be something to it, though, that applies not only to Chicago but to a wide variety of civic improvement projects around the world. My current pet peeve is at a street corner near my apartment in Evanston. For the last four years, this intersection has undergone massive construction efforts every single summer. The intersection is opened up, a few huge holes are dug, they futz around inside the hole for a month or two, then close it up again.

Well, that's not so bad, right? The biggest project seems to be a sewer repair, where there is obviously some difficulty in making repairs with high patency. True, that implies bad civil engineering and a certain stupidity in parceling out adequate funds for the project, but that's not unexpected.

What annoys me is rather that not *only* is there a sewer project, but there are also invariably gas, telephone, and electric utility projects at the same intersection, every single year. Big ones. These projects never think to coordinate how things are done... so when the sewer project is done, they fill up the hole, repave the intersection... only to have the intersection torn up again not a week later for a different project.

That level of inefficiency is simply irresponsible and infuriating. Government projects are never cheap, as bureaucracies have no incentive to lower costs. Yet this takes things to a whole new level of stupidity. There's already a friggin hole in the middle of the street! No need to repeat work so many times in the same summer.

I've heard interesting explanations for this phenomenon. A former civil engineer I know from Israel mentioned that many government projects over there are carried out similarly. Unemployment is a big problem there, and the number of skilled engineers/workers/etc. is actually quite high. So the government chooses to be inefficient, acting as sort of a Keynesian investment in the economy and helping employment levels (this doesn't make too much sense if one comes at it from a libertarian perspective, but most governments are not interested in that, so oh well).

Uncharitably, an alternative explanation would be that pork-barrel politics and rampant corruption mean that each project has a different pet contracter that is trying to squeeze out every possible bit of money from the government. *shrugs*

(Parenthetically, I read an interesting related piece about road repair in African countries. The article claimed that UN- or NGO-built roads were intentionally defaced/damaged/not kept up by the populace. The reasoning of the people using the roads was that if the roads fell apart quicker, they could more easily get further foreign aid. And said foreign aid need not go towards building good roads, which they viewed as optional, but to other government interests, whatever they may be. Interesting thought; don't know the validity thereof.)

The utility of games

Just a short thought. There has been a big ruckus in recent years about how American kids are wasting their brains away by playing games - whether they be video games, computer games, or just plain old games (e.g. cards, board games, etc.). Apparently, this is a sign of our approaching doom, or somesuch.

This controversy got me thinking: Why do games exist? Why do we play at all? Well, the obvious evolutionary/biological answer is that "play" is a way to train our youngsters in how to do things necessary for their survival. To evaluate the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the games children currently play, then, we'd need to assess how useful they are for learning useful skills.

I started considering a wide variety of games, and surprisingly found that a good chunk of them actually could be seen as teaching something worthwhile. A few examples:

• High paced video games (any of them, really): These develop dexterity, reaction times, and hand-eye-coordination. Seems pretty stupid, right? Wrong. My sister (a physician) has noticed that younger surgeons are much better at dealing with laproscopic surgery than older ones, as they already have learnt the skill of looking at a screen while your hands control what is occuring on the screen. Plenty of other examples where that came from.
  
• Minesweeper: Develops mousing skills, and extremely precise control over the hands (useful for any number of applications, again).
  
• Card Games (example: Set): Develops pattern recognition skills.
  
• RTS and simulation games: Strategy, long-term planning, resource management, balancing a variety of factors, ranking objectives, etc.

I could go on indefinitely about this, but I won't go into all of the details. Point being, modern games have the same purpose that olders ones had: masking the teaching of useful skills with a fun activity.

No, it wasn't profound. Deal with it.

Yes. I am here.

Okay, I cannot guarantee I'll go back to daily-ish posts, but I'm back. Sorta. Many of my readers know the reason for my absence; I won't go into it here. Suffice it to say, my life fell apart. I'm beginning to put the pieces back together, but that will take time. I'll have a few thoughts a week, I hope.

Thank you for your patience.

I'm not dead...

I've merely been extremely busy. I have about 20 or so post ideas floating around my head, in varying degrees of mind-composing completion. It's just that life is difficult and complicated. Hopefully this week will settle down into a routinue that I can control.

Many thanks to all of my loyal readers for forbearance during this period. Heh. "Loyal readers".

Who comes up with these names, anyways? [warning, not English]

Mivtza Y'mei T'shuvah.

I mean, Chomat Magen at least made some sense, right? This is only roughly corresponding to the right time (coming a few days late, really), and makes absolutely no sense with regards to the actual operation. Odd.

Even odder is that the name's kinda catchy. I like it, despite it not making any sense.

Hopefully it will be successful in its aims; I'm not really interested in seeing toddlers blown apart when playing by their homes, any more.

A job I'd really like

Sometime in the future, I'd like to have a job in the Israeli foreign ministry, taking questions at press conferences. That would be fun.

Why, do you say? Well, there is a certain comedy that is acted out at these press conferences - somewhat similar to those given by Mayor Daley. In general, Israel has surprisingly good spokespeople who have excellent English, good quotes, all the right spin. Unfortunately, the press chooses to quote those individuals who are not nearly as politic. Not very surprising, I suppose.

Anyways, Israeli officials have perfected the art of intentional obfuscation to a science. The roots of this probably go back to Israel's policy of amimut on their nuclear status. Although it is not in fact illegal for Israel to have nuclear weapons, they very intentionally did not ever confirm they possessed nuclear weapons. Questions were deflected with a policy of "strategic ambiguity" with regards to their nuclear status.

This legacy has extended to many other Israeli operations. In particular, today's events in Damascus highlighted this rather amusing situation. For those of you who choose not to read the article (is it reg required? If so, use Bugmenot), a high ranking Hamas leader was killed by a car bomb in Damascus.

Israel's official stance is that they don't know anything about what happened. Then again, Israel has never taken responsibility for assassinations done outside of Israel, though it's fairly well-accepted that Mossad has a fairly impressive track record with tracking down top terrorists on foreign soil and finishing them off - quietly or not, but rarely leaving incriminating evidence. Recent bunglings have somewhat dampened the Mossad's reputation for flawlessness, but they are still a feared and respected intelligence/foreign operations organization.

What this all adds up to is that the world is fairly sure that Israel just finished off another high ranking member of Hamas after some not-so-subtle warnings to Syria. Aside from this being good news for counter-terrorism, it's made Israeli press conferences even more circus-like than normal. Israeli officials can't take credit for the assassination, but they exude this palpable feeling of smug satisfaction.

Someday I want to be able to do that. Sit at a microphone, and tell reporters, "Oh, is he dead? You don't say! Well, we all know he was a terrorist running an organization responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israeli civilians. Can't say I'm too sad. What was that? Did we have anything to do with it?! Preposterous! That's on Syrian soil, isn't it? No, I guess he must have just annoyed the wrong people somewhere else."

Then I'd smile quietly, and take the next question.

Ranty goodness: math in primary and secondary school

Caveat: I am not an educator. Most of what I'm saying is likely horseshit. I acknowledge this; I am merely posting my own, extremely biased opinion. I am merely talking about the US educational system, as I am not sufficiently well acquainted with any other to critique it. (I posted this also, more or less the same, at shadowmarch. Feel free to peruse the discussion there.)

I have a pet peeve about how primary and secondary education is structured for quantitative subjects (roughly, let's call that science and math; in reality, this is not a precise definition). I feel that primary school spends years wasting time with repetitive and useless information. This is justified by the argument that the "kids aren't ready for more advanced stuff yet". This "holding back" of students in their early years has disastrous reprecussions for curricula throughout primary and secondary school, culminating in students who are deficient in extremely important subjects and skills.

In specific, I feel that from grades 3-7, math and science curricula are hideously wasteful. The only things one learns after second grade (that's roughly 7 year olds, for those of you non-Americans) are the basics of fractions and decimals, some unit conversions, and a few random bits of unconnected knowledge (e.g. the very basics of statistics or probability). Only by seventh (or sometimes sixth) grade do schools again start to teach at something approaching a reasonable pace, with "pre-algebra" and algebra. Secondary schools generally teach algebra, Euclidean geometry, "Algebra 2" (which is essentially a made-up subject), trigonometry, "precalculus" (often a catch-all including Algebra 2 and trig), and very occasionally calculus (though this is most often seen as a "high level" class for smart seniors). Oh, you can toss in some linear algebra, matrix theory, etc. if you really want, too.

On the science end of things, students learn not only dumbed-down but incorrect versions of basic geology, biology and physics (chemistry is generally neglected entirely except for some nifty demos). They do not learn any quantitative ways of actually doing science; most science classes have an absurd idea of experimentation and the scientific method. Students are generally taught to memorize "facts" and vocabulary words about science, and to promptly forget them. What's worse is that math is intentionally left out of the curricula because the students simply don't know even the basics of manipulating equations, single-variable functions, or simple one-dimensional curves. Science teaching is handicapped by the lack of adequate math instruction.

This problem is compounded in secondary school. It would make sense for science to be taught from the basics to more complex systems - as such, physics should go first, followed by chemistry and then a life science. In most schools, this order is reversed for a simple reason: the students do not know enough math to do even non-calculus physics in the beginning of secondary school.

This is unacceptable. Science curricula are destroyed because of inadequate mathematics (and in general, quantitative applications) preparation; math curricula themselves waste at least four years in primary school on the grounds that students would not understand more complex ideas.

Obviously, I wouldn't be posting this if I didn't have a solution to propose.

The basics of algebra can be comprehended by a kindergardener. Hell, the basics of a derivative could be understood by a six year old, though not a rigorous application thereof. As such, I feel that grade school math programs should be completely overhauled. After teaching the basics of arithmetic - certainly by the end of third grade (eg, four basic functions, fraction operations, etc. - pretty much everything that sixth graders know nowadays), teachers can start teaching important stuff. Two dimensional plotting is a very simple concept to grasp. Jumping to the concept of "variables" and "functions" is not much harder. Kids don't need to be taught extremely rigorous algebraic applications in third grade - I think that may be beyond some eight year olds. Yet understanding the concept of a function is much easier. Here's a simple "function" game you can play: the kid gives you a "x" or independent value, and you spit them back a "y" value based on a function you came up with in your head (eg, you pick y = 2*x + 1, they give you a 3, you tell them 7). The kid tries to guess the function you've come up with in as few tries as possible. This could be easily integrated into a computer system, to apply to many students at once. The advantage to this sort of game is that you can ratchet up the difficulty as soon as they get the hang of it (also, it's best to let the kid come up with their own function often to keep them thinking of novel ways to combine numbers). You can introduce new types of operations and functions within the context of a very simple "function" game, without ever needing to utter the word "variable" or "equation".

I know this can work - it was tried on me (not by my school, alas), and I've since tried it on other young kids, with remarkable results.

The point being that without needing to teach extremely rigorous mathematical methods, you can already have the kids working out the basics of algebra in third grade. With a modest ratcheting up of difficulty, I can't see why kids shouldn't be learning and completing algebra by the end of fifth grade. With this foundation, science classes could already start introducting basic equations to describe natural phenomena - sure, the problems would likely be of the "plug and chug" variety at the beginning, but it's much better than waiting until 9th grade to do so. Even more importantly, science classes can emphasize real experiments with the focus on data capture and analysis - granted, with simpler words so you don't scare off a bunch of 10 year olds.

During the rest of primary school, students could easily learn Euclidean geometry, trigonometry, conic sections, and most importantly, basic statistics (for use in evaluating the validity of data). This is not an unrealistic dream, but merely one that assumes students can learn abstract subjects if given concrete ways in which to visualize them.

The benefits of this kind of curriculum are not merely limited to science classes. Students who can rigorously examine a proof or abstract concept can apply this skill to analyzing literature (another pet peeve of mine is how little emphasis is given to true analysis in primary and secondary school), in tracing historical origins, or in learning rhythmic patterns in music.

Anyways, this kind of primary school curriculum sets the stage for a very different sort of secondary school. Students will essentially know nearly everything they need to take calculus. I believe that the first two years of high school should be devoted to an in depth study of basic differential and integral calculus - roughly equivalent to two quarters of college calculus, or the AP Calc BC exam today. With a full two years, any understanding gaps from grade school can be carefully identified and dealt with, concrete and careful mathematical reasoning can be instilled into the students, and they can get a good understanding of what a derivative and integral means, exactly (again, I think in 5-8th grades there should be some non-concrete thought experiments about, essentially, derivatives and integrals, yet without the actual math backing it up).

I firmly believe that basic one-variable calculus is not only nice but essential for every person to know. A knowledge of the concepts put forth in calculus (though not necessarily knowing the exact way to take some hideously nasty integral) is invaluable in whatever field one enters. Calculus is a somewhat unique way of seeing how the world works, and I think that method of thinking can only be an asset in the real world. True, one may not have to take derivatives in a job writing newspaper articles, yet a knowledge of related rates, infinite limits, and infinite sums can be useful for conceptualizing... well, anything.

If students learn this in the first two years of secondary school, everyone will have these skills. Furthermore, science classes in secondary school with have a huge boon. Physics can come first (or even in 8th grade), replete with all the algebra and trig you want. Chemistry can be taught with real math (beyond silly dimensional analysis), and biology can actually address some of the more advanced maths involved (eg population growth, enzyme kinetics, etc.), as calculus will already be completed by then. The possibilities are boundless.

The rest of the secondary school mathematics curriculum could be filled with useful courses from which students could choose - multivariable calculus, advanced probability and statistics, number theory, linear algebra, ODEs, yadda yadda yadda. Plenty of useful things to learn there, depending on a student's interest.

The key is getting rid of the chaff in our current quantitative curricula. Once that is done, we can truly move our education ahead by years, and leave every high school graduate well equipped to take on the world (or college).

Feel free to post responses. Enjoy!

A good diet...

I was scanning my school's newspaper today when I ran across an article from the AP that was, surprisingly, personally relevant:

Underweight People Work to Put on Pounds
By ALICIA CHANG
Associated Press Writer

With Americans' obesity driving the focus on weight loss, scant attention is paid to the other side of the scale - underweight people who are trying to put on pounds.

Being underweight is not a common problem in the United States, affecting only about 2 percent of adults, compared to two-thirds who are overweight or obese. But people who are too thin can be vulnerable to disease because they may have weakened immune systems; they are also at higher risk of osteoporosis.

There are varying reasons why a person may be underweight. Some may have fast metabolism and burn calories off quickly. Others may be recovering from an eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia or from the side effects of disease such as cancer or AIDS.

People looking to shrink their waistlines often have a wealth of information to reach their goals from diet books to weight-loss programs to support groups. But for those wanting to fatten up, it is often a lonely struggle.

"We are so preoccupied with the idea that people might gain too much weight that we almost don't want to admit that any weight gain is normal," said Joanne Ikeda, the co-director of the Center for Weight and Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

Erika Wallace, a 27-year-old media transcriber from Atlanta, found this out firsthand. Whenever she confides to her friends about the hardship of gaining a mere pound, they shrug her off, telling her she does not have a "real problem."

Wallace has been naturally thin all her life. At 5-foot-4, she weighs only 100 pounds. That gives her a body-mass index of 17.2. Anything under 18.5 is considered underweight.

Wallace scarfs down three meals a day - grits, eggs and bacon for breakfast, sandwich, chips and fruit for lunch and chicken and vegetables for dinner - and snacks between courses.

"I eat all day when I'm in front of the computer. I'm constantly stuffing my face to gain weight," she said. "You get tired of eating sometimes."

Despite her efforts, Wallace struggles to maintain the extra pounds. She would gain a fleeting three pounds only to revert to her regular weight if she missed a meal. Wallace recently joined an online chat room for underweight people on WebMD, a commercial health Web site, where she posts her food diary and gets feedback from like-minded peers.

"Everyone is so obsessed with trying to lose weight that there really isn't much out there for people trying to gain weight," said Martha McKittrick, a staff dietitian at the New York Presbyterian Hospital and a health expert at WebMD.

While there isn't a one-size-fits-all plan to weight gain, the key is to take in more calories than you burn. Consuming an extra 500 calories a day usually leads to a gain of a pound a week.

People suffering from eating disorders or the side effects of disease must first break through mental and physical barriers before they can start counting pounds. For the naturally underweight looking to beef up, health experts advise eating five or six times a day, spacing the meals throughout the day to avoid feeling stuffed and keeping in mind that not all foods are created equal.

Choose nutrient-rich foods like bread, cereal and pasta and dairy-based products like milk, cheese and yogurt. Snacking on high-calorie avocados, nuts and dried fruits is also a good option. Lay off the sugary soda and junk food, which only add empty calories.

"You still can't eat cookies in front of your television willy-nilly," said Cathy Nonas, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and director of the obesity and diabetes programs at North General Hospital in New York City.

Exercise is important too. Not only does staying active help stimulate appetite, it helps build muscle and avoid flab.

Most of the article is chaff, as usual for health related pieces. But it does bring to light an interesting issue that faces some of us. Just how does one gain weight - particularly of the healthy variety?

I can speak from personal experience in saying that it is not an easy task. For one thing, if one can pretty much eat any food in any amount without directly noticeable deleterious effects, one tends to fall into horrible eating patterns. Too-large meals, unhealthy and unbalanced diets, etc. Furthermore, adding pounds is extremely difficult. Even when one is exercising regularly and eating quite a bit, the calories tend to just... disappear. With a busy schedule, one can easily not eat enough, and actually lose weight.

My own experience is a bit extreme. I'm a bit over 1.85 or 1.86 m (that's around 6'1" for you Americans), and weigh less than 60 kg (~130 lb). One can quite easily count my ribs across a room. Now, to me, my morphology isn't that odd, since I've been like this as long as I could remember (though I am told I was one fat baby), but it tends to startle most other people.

The most concerning part is, of course, my bone mass. No one's bones are supposed to be as small or light as mine are, and though I don't have the enormous risk of osteoporosis that women "enjoy", bone density will certainly be an issue in the future. (For reference, my wrist is thinner than some six year olds'.) Other concerns involve my rather small muscle mass that refuses to increase no matter how much I exercise. To be fair, though, I most explicitly do not lift weights, which would probably bulk me up slightly. I never really have much in the way of strength troubles, but the situation is still somewhat annoying.

There are other complaints about being thin, too. Finding clothing is a bitch, particularly in the pants department. I lose heat extremely rapidly, so end up being cold much of the time. My fast metabolism makes me jumpy and fidgety. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

So how can one gain weight in a healthy manner? A BMI of 17 or so just isn't healthy, but there doesn't seem to be much of a way to change things. Eating like a "grazer" (ie, frequent small meals) simply isn't an option for most people who are on the move or at work all day. One could try taking directions from swimmers (who eat ridiculous amounts of food every day), but the real problem is that my body isn't craving more energy than what I currently supply it with. Sure, I'm hungry more or less all of the time, but I'm not starving.

Any suggestions? I know that most people reading this are likely pissed at me for whining about being underweight (sorta like people complaining about the travails of being devastatingly attractive), but I think I'm justified in saying that this degree of emaciation just can't be healthy. So there. *smiles*

Dishonesty, corruption... or is it?

Earlier today, I was playing a game of Taboo with some family members and a friend. (For those of you unfamiliar with the game, one player attempts to get other players to say a specific word on a card using verbal clues, *without* using any of the other words on the card.) My father picked up a card, said, "This is a trait that no Chicago politician practices." Immediately, without hesitation, I blurted out, "Honesty!" Of course I was correct, to grins around the table.

While this may merely be an amusing anecdote about Chicago, my lightning-quick response got me thinking. I know that the generalization was a bit unfair - in fact, I'd just eaten lunch earlier with my state senator, and I trust him implicitly to both tell the truth and act in what he believes are the best interests of his constituents. I'm sure there are plenty of honest policitians in Chicago, but they do manage to hide rather effectively. No, what really started my comtemplation was not that the allegation of dishonesty was wrong, but rather how Chicagoans view this trait in politicians.

Chicago is fairly impressive in its history of corruption, backroom deals, political machinations, lies, payoffs, etc. Whatever vestiges that remain of Machine politics are rooted in Chicago - King Richard Daley the Second rules our city as a monarch, and his reign shows no sign of faltering (he's been mayor for 15 years, and will likely continue to be elected until he dies). The city always votes Democratic, acting as a very powerful counterbalance to more conservative chaps in rural areas downstate (and even in southern Illinois "conservative" does not mean the same thing as "conservative" in, say, Texas). Our City Council is a comedy to watch - more so because the aldermen are so clearly corrupt that they don't even bother hiding it. Our mayor destroyed an airport without as much as a by-your-leave with virtually no political reprecussions.

Yet if you ask an average Chicagoan what they think about the whole bit, they'll shrug, grin, and say, "hey, it's Chicago - we like it this way." What many others would view as a perversion of democracy, a waste of public funds, etc., Chicagoans merely view as the usual state of affairs, and a treasured one to take pride in, at that.

I began to ponder: just why are the citizens of Chicago content with this state of affairs? We see continual corruption, outright lies, hilariously mangled sound bites, and favoritism, yet never feel a need to complain. We're aware and fully cognizant of the state of things, yet simply don't care.

The answer lies in the fact that Chicagoans are similar to much of the Midwest - we are practical people. Less considered with high minded ideals, and more concerned with the mundanities of getting things done. And what's important about Chicago is that we're known as the "City That Works". I didn't notice this until I'd spent some time in other cities and towns, but it is quite true. In Chicago, things get done. We don't always ask how they get done, but they are completed. If a little bit of money or nepotism greased the skids, so be it - the end result is positive.

The way I see it, Chicago politics works like this: Mayor Daley decides he wants something to happen. For example, let's say he decides he wants the city to look greener. So, he lets this be known in a badly articulated press conference, talks to some urban planners and some important aldermen, and then sits back. The City Council passes some ordinances (say, that all new property improvements require a bit of "landscaping" or somesuch added... or that all new lampposts in alleys need to have greenery hanging from them, or whatever). Every new contracter is let known of Daley's new pet project (well, in reality this isn't new, it's been a priority of his for over a decade), and they incorporate more trees/plants/etc. into all of their designs - be they highways, office buildings, or athletic fields. This "essence" of Daley trickles down through the corrupt, back-pathways as people try to gain favor among higher ups (and bribes)...

The system may be corrupt and dishonest as hell, but it works. Roads get repaired, projects get finished, laws get passed, buildings get built... and generally, it makes the lives of Chicagoans even better. We love our city with a passion, and for fairly logical and well-articulated reasons. So what if things are a bit shady in the process? In fact, we revel in our corruption, as it is mostly of the benign or even beneficial variety, helping move things along.

True, some of the insanity about Chicago politics can be detrimental - look at the saga of Block 37 to see a perfect example. But most things seem to work better with our type of corruption, not worse.

More on this later - I'm tired.

*chuckles*

The things one can learn online. I was looking up information for NSF Graduate Fellowships, and ran across a bit of something amusing. According to their website, the NSF sponsors the kid's television program The Magic Schoolbus.

No joke.

I'm not quite sure whether to be amused or sad.

Just *who* are you again?

Every now and then, I get IMed by someone who I don't recognize. As my enterprising reader(s?) may know, this is an unlikely occurrence for me, given my reticence in sharing such contact information. But when this does happen, I actually skim the person's profile to guess who they are before responding. Rarely have I found this method of use. Perhaps because IM profiles are not any longer methods of identifying people, but rather forums on which to post odd things/thoughts/quotes/links/etc. For example, my own profile, currently (names have been changed to protect the innocent):

http://matlabfreak.blogspot.com

23:23:57 Jeff: im not brilliant, im just highly reflective!

"It beats sending dead chickens to Belarus though."

I'm Ender. Or wiggin. Yeah. Also the Rogue Taxidermist. And a Haitian sugar lord.

This girl has some nerve: *grins, hugs*
"20:28:09 Krystal: oh.. my X bosses called today and asked me to work for them just tonight cuz they had leftover dishes
20:28:29 Krystal: i told them to fuck off and shove it up their asses.. when you fire some one they no longer work for you!
20:28:34 me: yay!
20:28:38 me: you tell 'em
20:28:38 Krystal: then i called and told them i was busy and i was sorry"

The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer.
- David Ben-Gurion

"The UN gave us some parts here *points to Tel Aviv*, here *points to sliver of Galilee* and ALL of the beautiful, bright Negev. But when the declaration of independence was signed and the Egyptians were shelling Tel Aviv, they kindly offered us an additional plot under the sea."

(Any unattributed quotes are from forums I frequent - I protect the "innocent" even in my profile, for that.)

So... what does that tell you about me? Nothing. Well, I'm interested in Israel. And Orson Scott Card. But that's about it. I wonder if we'll ever develop *real* profile-like things, or if IM will continue to be essentially a "white-listing" type of communication method. I'd prefer the latter, myself.

All in the name of science

During Labor Day weekend (for those of you non-Americans, that would be the first Monday in September), the building in which I work (and often, it feels like, live) does major maintenance. They shut off all of the ventilation to do arcane things to the massive and convoluted air conditioning/etc. system, deal with major infrastructure issues, etc. On Labor Day itself, they even go further - shut off ventilation lines to all of the various hoods in the building (tissue culture hoods, chemical fume hoods, etc.), and do yearly maintenance.

Unfortunately, many of the researchers in the building either cannot or will not cease their experiments for a complete three days (sadly, the building is rather lively at all times of the day, every day). As such, when I dropped into work today to feed my cells, I noticed that Tech was (a) sweltering hot, and (b) full of sweating scientists and workmen. This normally wouldn't be so bad - OK, so maybe it's 90+ degrees (Farenheit, around 34 or 35 centigrade) inside the building, and humid to boot, but one can still safely carry out research.

Unfortunately, I've been told that a great number of these researchers also come in on Labor Day itself. Now, that just can't be safe - performing experiments while all forms of safety ventilation are shut off (particularly if one is working with radioactive/biohazardous/volative chemical materials). Not only that, but all of the hoods in the building have alarms for when ventilation is low; the researchers must be driven slowly insane by the noise.

There's just no way in hell that this fits government safety regulations. But, I suppose... some rather dubious means are acceptable for advancing science, neh?

Children of Dune

Well. As I mentioned earlier, completing the Dune series gave me an incentive to see the SciFi channel's highly acclaimed Children of Dune miniseries. Last week I rented watched it. (As usual, I will include minor spoilers - read at your own risk.)

Hrm. I am torn about this movie. On the one hand, it was an excellent film that really captured the "feel" of Dune. Many aspects of the world matched my inner imagination exactly, and for that I give them kudos. Furthermore, they did a fairly admirable job of sticking to the general plot outline of Dune: Messiah and Children of Dune. True, they had to edit out large sections for time considerations, but that's understandable; they kept the overall idea intact. One particularly impressive scene was at the end of the Dune: Messiah part, where Chani is giving birth.

Yet. There were many niggling little (and a few not-so-little) details that really rubbed me the wrong way. A simple, careful reading and analysis could have dealt with most of the problems. Example: Bene Gesserit Reverend Mothers should have blue eyes, from melange use. Lasguns should have been used significantly less, and shields with blades quite a bit more. The Bene Gesserit should have been implicated quite a bit more in the machinations - I felt their potency and power was marginalized, left in almost as an afterthought. Leto II's transformation should have matched the description in the books. The twins were far older than they should have been, reducing some of the impact of their memories, abilities, and wisdom.

If these were the only problems with the movie, I'd be more than happy. My largest issue, though, is their treatment of Ghanima. In the movie, she's the "weak" twin who mistakenly thinks Leto is dead protecting her, who is merely carried along by events. That is far from the truth. In the books, she and Leto plan everything out beforehand, and while she does place a memory block on herself so she'll believe Leto is dead (never can be too careful around those Bene Gesserit), it's intentional. More importantly, in the books she orchestrates events back at Arrakeen, manipulating all of the forces off each other. She's brilliant, not an impulsive waif. Gah.

Or at least that's how I view it. Nonetheless, I'd highly recommend this movie to anyone who has already read the books. One may not get its full impact if you do not read the books first; but that's true of all movies based on books.

Perhaps I'm just spoiled by the amazing job done for LotR.

This sort of thing makes me furious

Yesterday was a bad day for the world: 12 Nepalese hostages were executed in Iraq, 9 Russians died in a bombing in Moscow, and 16 Israeli civilians were slaughtered in a double suicide-bus bombing in Beer Sheva, the first such attack in 6 months. Today is not better: hundreds of children are being held hostage in a Russian school.

Now, this was enough to completely ruin any vestige of enjoyment I've had out of this week. However, some things go above and beyond. An article in the Jerusalem Post caught my eye, and managed to boil my blood:

Ahmed Kawasmeh, one of the two suicide bombers who carried out Tuesday's attacks in Beersheba, was released recently from a Palestinian Authority prison, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Sources in Hebron said Kawasmeh, 22, was arrested several months ago by the PA security forces in the city on charges of membership in Hamas and planning attacks against Israel.

They said Kawasmeh was held for several weeks before he was released. It's not clear why he was released or if he had been questioned about his plan to carry out a suicide attack.

A PA security source said he was not surprised when he learned that Qawassmeh was one of the suicide bombers. "He was well-known as an enthusiastic member of Hamas and he apparently talked to friends about his desire to kill Jews," he said.

*seethes*

Now, I understand that the PA has been severely curtailed in recent years by Israeli actions. I even will go so far as to say that we cannot currently expect them to identify and arrest every would-be terrorist without a great deal of Israeli help. Yet this goes beyond infuriating - they knew he was a terrorist, they even had arrested him (so clearly they could get ahold of him)... yet they let him go. The Palestinian "justice" system seems to have a built in revolving door.

The Big U

Ever since I read Snow Crash, I've been a big fan of Neal Stephenson. In my completely unbiased and judicious opinion, he has assumed the mantle of King of Cyberpunk, inheriting the title from William Gibson himself.

Stephenson's books are fast, clever, witty, and - most importantly - interesting to a random geeky reader (despite the fact that some of his cyberpunkishness is a bit dated, now). I've quickly devoured The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon. On a whim, though, I decided to pick up a book that seemed, on the surface, to go outside the mold of geeky computerish books and enter a somewhat different realm: The Big U, one of Stephenson's first books.

I loved it.

Before picking this book up, realize that it's an early attempt of his, and the edges are rather rough. With that in mind, though, one can truly enjoy this book. It focuses on American Megaversity, an enormous, blundering, bureaucratic monstrosity that is encased in a single building. Stephenson follows the antics, pitfalls, and travails of university life over the course of a schoolyear, with increasing amounts of hilarity and insanity.

I read the book with increasing degrees of incredulousness... but oddly, the stranger the book got, the more it resembled stories I've heard or experienced about universities. Stephenson neatly lampooned the American university system, exposing its many flaws (well, he also implied many of its good traits, but books full of praise aren't funny, anyways). Furthermore, a book that at start seems unrelated to cyberpunk rather impressively turned into a full-blown geekfest. Trust me, it's worth the wait. *Grins*

I'm recommend this book to anyone who has already read some of Stephenson's later works, so that have something with which to compare it. *thumbs up*

Apologies - or rather, explanations

I have not posted lately as my computer's power supply rather unexpectedly crapped out. This lack of verbosity will be remedied within a few days, once a pressing presentation is completed and delivered. Please drop by for more erudition in the near future.

The fishbowl effect

There is a glassed-in computer room in the building where I work/have classes (the amazingly large and imposing Tech, for those of your familiar with my campus). It fronts on a frequently trafficked corridor, and one can rather easily see everything going on the room. There's a small sticker on the bottom of the window: "Creative Primates: Do Not Feed".

Amusing, eh?

I've gotten to thinking, though, after seeing that room and many other like it. Have you ever noticed that people working in rooms put on display like that tend to have odd work habits? At first, they are very self-conscious, constantly noticing that everyone walking by can see them, and often glances in their direction. But amazingly quickly, they begin to completely ignore the window in question. So much so that they never even glance at it - I'd be willing to be their brains have effectively edited the window out of their consciousness. The window (and outsider's scrutiny) no longer is even acknowledged.

I've seen similar phenomena at a large University of Michigan computer room, a fossil research lab put on display in the Field Museum, and many more locales. The behavior of workers inside is amazingly uniform with respect to their observers.

Psychologists must certainly have a term for it - since I am not one of them, I'll call it the "fishbowl effect".

This observation has caused me some consternation. It is so remarkably easy for us to completely ignore certain stimuli and observations without even realizing what we are doing. Is it possible that all of humanity is currently experiencing a "fishbowl effect"? I don't want to advance alien conspiracy theories (or, for that matter, religion), but this line of thinking led me inevitably to Isaac Asimov's absolutely wonderful short story, "Jokester", and Joe Haldeman's atrocious (yet interesting) "Forever Free". Have you ever thought that we are ignoring obvious realities, like lab mice in a labyrinth?

We can quantify our world amazingly well, and much of our society is based on the assumption that observation is fact. Granted, our interpretations of our observations might be incorrect, but most of us generally accept the input that our senses receive. [Parenthetically, one might argue that some current thinking posits that observation defines reality, but let's stay away from metaphysics, philosophy, and Schrodinger for now, eh?] It seems rather possible - nay, even likely - that we all possess undetected blind spots.

Well, one might argue that if we can't identify these blind spots, why worry about them? I feel that at certain times in humanity's development, certain individuals have managed to see beyond one of those blind spots - figurative or not. Societally accepted ideas, scientific "facts", paradoxes of the world... all have been overturned by visionaries. Visionary is an interesting word - it implies that they see something we do not. Perhaps each time that someone has lifted a corner of the veil (to steal a phrase) from the mystery that is... us, and our relationship with the world around us, these visionaries have really just exercised their minds creatively to see the window that was there all along.

This doesn't really have a point; I'm just thinking. I might revise this as I think some more on it. Comments and thoughts are of course welcomed.

From the mouth of babes...

I actually don't know how that quote ends. Regardless, I heard an astonishing line from a twelve year old today:

"Evil exists to provoke the good in us."

I've always been a bit skeptical about philosophies regarding "balance" and the "necessity" of evil for good to exist. Yet it is certainly true that evil provokes us to combat it, and perhaps even do a bit more besides. The measure of a person is defined by how they react to the worst of the world; it often brings out our best and worst traits.

Just food for thought. I should have another post later today on an absolutely wonderful Saturday.

Er... say again?

There's a rather odd and confusing ad on the train platform right next to my apartment that has been bugging me for months. It makes very little sense, and I see it every day. At first, I'd assumed it would be replaced within a month or two, but it's been up there since the winter. I think I'm beginning to go insane, slightly.

The ad is for one of the lastest MegaCitiCorpFirstThirdNationalCommercialFederal Banks. It consists of a single phrase: "Have your dollar bills been more places than you?"

I've been trying to puzzle this out. Are they trying to get me to travel more? Perhaps since my dollar bills have been lots of places, I'd like to go there, too. But the sweaty, dark pockets of a bunch of people (or dark cash registers) just don't seem like ideal vacation spots.

Is there something wrong with money that has been through a lot of wallets? It is worth the same as a crisp dollar, right?

Then I got to thinking that they meant it as some sort of sexual innuendo. Y'know, saying someone's "been around" can have certain connotations depending on the context. But I really can't wrap my mind around the concept of promiscuous dollar bills, or why I would care (or wish to emulate them).

I haven't switched banks yet. Perhaps this is just another example of my lack of marketing savvy.

A Song of Ice and Fire

For several years, a number of my friends who are avid fantasy readers have recommended I read George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. It's been touted by many as the best new epic fantasy.

A year or so ago, I was facing a long trip, so I picked up a copy of A Game of Thrones (aGoT) to see whether it was worth reading. I enjoyed it, but never had the incentive or time to pick up the next two books (the series is still ongoing; the fourth book, A Feast of Crows, is not yet finished). This summer, I had some free time, so I reread aGoT, and also grabbed the next two books, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords (if nothing else, GRRM has some eye-catching titles). I just finished aSoS a day ago.

In general, I enjoyed the books, and found them worth my time. GRRM is a natural at character construction, building up fairly well fleshed out individuals that the reader actually cares about. I was sympathetic even to the so-called "evil" characters, a hallmark of well-written characterizations. His overall plot/story is also fairly engaging, and he has so far included some plot twists that I had not anticipated (for me, that's pretty good; I have a bad habit of guessing endings). Furthermore, it seems that he's put a lot of thought into constructing this world, as it is nowhere near as transparent as Eddings or Goodkind, for example. There are interrelations that are hinted at in various places, and when you read something later, you remember, "Oh, yeah, those people don't like these people because of that." The books don't match Jordan in the world richness or complexity, but I suppose that might be asking too much.

I'm certainly looking forward to reading through the end of the series, as soon as the books are published.

That being said, I had a number of beefs with aSoIaF. Most of them could be applied to modern fantasy literature as a whole. Perhaps the biggest complaint of all is GRRM's fairly idealized world. Although it's lovingly constructed, it's horribly cliched. The whole bit with noble houses, knights, kingly lines, and more. I feel sometimes like these epic fantasy authors believe that some fairy-tale version of England during the height of feudalism could endure for millennia in their constructed worlds. Fantasy does not need this nonsense to be fantasy - just look at Tolkein, Hobb, Brust, or Card. But authors tend to fall into the thinking that this type of "just-so" feudal structure is the only way to make a non-technological society, and it simply is not right (particularly as most authors combine this feudal structure with strong nationalism, which doesn't make any sense, at least from a historical viewpoint).

I also feel that GRRM has fallen into the trap that many fantasy authors do - a surfeit of superfluous information. His books are long enough as it is. Every other page, one reads a description (and name!) of various horses, or details on the armor/banners/appearance of various individuals, and many other unnecessary details. Descriptive writing is not inherently flawed, but taken to excess can ruin a good story.

Lastly, I felt at times that GRRM has at times added extra characters and plotlines that are essentially worthless. I've already seen some of them closed off/killed, and I could have enjoyed the books without any diminishment had I missed them. I simply don't need to know exactly what was the fate of a specific lord, or what happened to this or that minor plotline.

Those complaints aside, his books were certainly far better than the majority of fantasy being published today. I'd recommend his books to anyone who's a fantasy fan (those who aren't will likely find the flaws more glaring, if they don't know the competition).

Hehe, quote of the day:

On occasion, slashdot actually makes me smile. In a discussion today about downloading the WinXP SP2 file (some 250 MB) from M$ servers or from a BitTorrent, a certain user claimed that using the Torrent download was taking a load off of Microsoft's servers. In response:

"MS has more bandwidth than jesus."

True, in both literal and figurative manners. I've *never* had a problem with bandwidth in downloading stuff from Microsoft, even though they must have an astonishing daily load.

Though according to some, Jesus seems pretty leet. Maybe he does have more bandwidth.

Why I'm not in marketing

There's this nifty stuff we use to do low-level radioactive decontamination called No-Count. It's a surface decontaminant for first-level cleaning. Comes in a big aerosol can, and sorta comes out in this big white mousse-y like blob that you then wipe down your stuff with.

I was using it to clean up a small spill, then wondered what it really was. Turns out it's just a really good detergent, and the spray can just helps it really get into a surface. The stuff works wonders, cleans up fairly easily, and even smells nice (sorta lemony).

I got to thinking... why don't they market this for household use? I mean, it clearly is really good at cleaning stuff, and I'm willing to bet it'd get rid of lots of stains and such from surfaces. I commented about this to another lab member, and said, "Hey, they could even market it by saying that scientists use it all the time to even clean up radioactive spills! They would sell like hotcakes."

My coworker gently reminded me that only a complete idiot would market a product with the word "radioactive". In my fascination with how good the stuff works, I forgot the people are stupid. Oh, well.

But wouldn't it be cool if one could buy No-Count at non-laboratory prices in your local grocery store? (Said non-lab prices not having the automatic 200% markup that manufacturors add for the simple reason that labs can afford it.)

I would buy it.

Marvels of engineering

During the summer, my apartment building gets festooned with spiderwebs on the outside. Sometimes I think the spiders are kinda stupid - some hardy soul occasionally clears off the spiderwebs, yet the spiders come back time and time again. *shrugs*

Anyways, for the last few days, a spider had had free reign over the top foot or so of the front door. All of the tenants have been either too busy, lazy, or arachnophobic to clear off the web.

What's been fascinating about this, though, is the amazing pattern of the ensuing web. I've observed that it has amazing symmetry, fairly even "web density per unit area", for lack of a better term, etc, etc. That got me thinking about how spiders would make good engineers - they face a fairly complex design problem, making a trap that conserves material yet is strong, is anchored well, and catches adequate numbers of insects.

When I looked closer at the web, I realized that the structures and patterns closely mimicked some structures found in human-engineering buildings. The base of the web formed an arch, and the rest rather remarkably matched some truss designs I've seen.

Upon further thought, I realized that spider web strands could be modelled as fairly perfect rods - next to no strength in torsion or bending, but lots and lots of strength in axial tension or compression, and very little mass of their own to factor into calculations. I'm sure that given a selection of anchor points (say, various locations on a door), a given "free" area where those big pink bags of mostly water (ie, humans) are not likely to break the web, and various other material/density constraints, one could develop a computer program to develop the best spiderweb design.

I wonder, would it closely match a spider's natural tendencies? I suspect it would.

Definition of Chutzpah #5112534

The things I learn from speaking with grandparents.

True Story:

My great uncle received a full tuition scholarship to Northwestern University back in the late 20s/early 30s... the complete $350/year. He took a fairly broad liberal arts curriculum, including some philosophy classes.

At the final exam of one of these philosophy courses, the professor wrote the essay question on the board: "Why?"

After a few minutes of thinking, my great uncle wrote down his name and two words, handed in the exam, and left. He received an A for the exam and the course.

Yes, you guessed it. His response was "Why not?"

I suppose if a professor has enough insolence to put up such an unanswerable question for a final, my great uncle had some right to throw it back in his face. But that move still took some chutzpah - and guts.

Someday, I want to be like him.

Tip of the Day:

Even though an emulsion of dichloromethane and saline containing radio-labelled DNA may sorta look like salad dressing, do not try to taste it.

The things I learn at work. ;)

I've been a bit busy lately; hence the relative sparseness of my entries. No worries, I've been thinking of a clever entry nearly every day, so I've got a bit of a stockpile. Never fear that I'll stop having odd comments.

Hah! I was right

Referencing my earlier post about the alleged evilness of librarians... Perhaps you should have a peek over here. Oh, it's probably registration-required. Either use bugmenot, or read a short excerpt:

Fugitive seized in '69 shooting

Gripping the right arm that took three bullets 35 years ago, former Chicago police officer Terrence Knox tried to explain his emotions after learning that the man who allegedly shot him had been captured Tuesday night in Toronto.

"I never thought this case would come to closure in my life," Knox, 56, said as he spoke to reporters Wednesday.

The case apparently came to a close about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday when Joseph C. Pannell (the name as published has been corrected in this text), 55, a former Black Panther on the lam since 1974, was arrested as he got into his car near the Toronto Reference Library in downtown Toronto, authorities said.

Pannell, who had been living under the alias Douglas Freeman, had worked as a library research assistant for the last 13 years, said Cpl. Tony Gollob of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

[emphasis added]

See? Proof! Librarians secretly want to shoot all of us. Under that mild-mannered exterior, they secretly have plans to hoard all of the world's books into libraries, then read them all without any interference. Diabolical.

I may just be projecting my own goals in life onto these librarians. Someday, when I'm rich and ruler of the world, I plan on owning a library with too many books for me to possibly read in a lifetime. And I won't let anyone else use it. *rubs hands together evilly* MUAHAHAHA.

Ahem. I mean, I'll help youngsters learn to read, and I'll be a benevolent despot. Right.

Whoa. That was easy.

A week ago, I bought an old copy of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 on a whim. I remember mastering the old C&C games with some fondness, as my introduction to RTS gaming. True, I've since switched my love to Starcraft and Warcraft 3, but I figured I might as well buy it just for the hell of it.

I beat the game yesterday. It took me maybe a total of 12 hours, stretched out over the week. I was astounded how quickly I beat the game. I know, the true utility of these games lies in multiplayer mode, but this seemed pathetic.

After some thought, I realized that it wasn't really that bad of a game - but it merely was predictable. The methods in which the computer foe was set up, the tech trees, the uses of various armor units/infantry, the special weapons... all of them were essentially based on the same prototype that all RTS games have been for years. Sure, the graphics got better, the names got cooler, and the storyline was a slightly less disjointed than the original C&C:RA.

But without any truly original game design, it took little effort to win the game. I've thought back over the various RTS games I've played in recent years, and the only one that truly sticks out in my head as superlative is Warcraft 3. There, they broke some of the mold with a pretty decent emulation of terrain, hero characters, and creeps. The multiplayer action was, of course, unparalleled. Yet even with those improvements, the game played much like all of the others.

I've seen the same trends going on in much of the computer game industry: FPSs are all copies of each other with better graphics and user interfaces, MMORPGs are only original because of the interaction with real people, simulation games all follow the same general formula to win.

Now, I could be wrong. I'm certainly not a huge gamer. Maybe there really is true innovation going on in the game industry, and I'm just not aware of it. Yet all of the evidence I've seen points to a general stagnation. The games are no longer a challenge, as all are based on similar premises; there is no requirement to construct an entirely new strategy/playing method to win.

It seems to me that the computer game market has hit a dead end. Ideas are endlessly recycled, with merely cosmetic changes. It won't be long before people start arguing that there's no point in buying yet another RTS game when you have a perfectly good one already. The improvements in graphics and UI have a point of diminishing returns; beyond that point, there will be no point in buying further games.

(Interestingly, I have seen parallel arguments given for the software industry. If an older version of a product works, why buy a new one? This is probably particularly troubling to companies like M$ who market Office 2003 as somehow "better" than Office XP or 97, when there is truly very little to distinguish them. This gives quite a bit of credence to people who support Open Source software - after an initial burst of work to develop a decent program, upgrades and refinements can be added fairly easily to keep the product up to spec, but people will not need to shell out another $150 for a basic office suite that has only two improvements.)

So where does the game industry go from here? Will they fade into the background of computer use, as more and more people find utility in computers besides entertainment? Will they start to truly innovate, coming up with a variety of interesting and unique games?

Of course, this is probably all a moot point. I'm assuming that people are in general intelligent consumers. In reality, game companies can probably turn out the same shit every year, and people will buy it anyways. *grumbles*

A must-see movie

No, I don't mean Spiderman 2.

Last night, I had the privilege to see one of the five documentaries in the film 'Broken Silence'. It was put together by the Shoah Foundation, interviewing Holocaust survivors in five different countries. I saw one with interviews from Argentinean (and perhaps Chilean?) survivors, speaking of their experiences. The film was exquisitely done, horribly depressing, and very thought-provoking.

One bit I remember: A man was speaking of when he and his family were deported in the liquidation of a ghetto. He said that as they were hustled away, he noticed that their door had been left open. "Who leaves their home with the door open?" he asked. That image has stayed with him until today.

I don't suppose I'm doing a good job of explaining it; suffice it to say, the movie is incredible, and worthwhile seeing no matter how much you know about the Holocaust. There were also some sobering thoughts about some of the Nazi leaders who took refuge in Argentina, and the various nasty things that have occurred there (the Israeli embassy bombing in 1992, the AMIA bombing in 1994, a coup back in the 70s...). Most thought provoking of all was the survivors' feelings that the Holocaust was not a unique event in history, and it can all too easily occur again.

Highly recommended. But be prepared for depression.

They sure are scary

As some of my enterprising readers may know, I have a pathological fear of librarians. What's odd about that is I spend lots of time in libraries to feed my book habit.

I've found that it takes quite a bit of need for me to screw up my courage to timidly ask a librarian for help finding something. It doesn't matter where - my university main library, the engineering library, music library... or various public libraries around the area. I just feel that somehow, they don't want me to waste their time.

I know, I know. Most librarians like challenges, and a good chunk are even eager to help. The librarians that I know personally (I got to know them before I learned of their occupation, and now I can't escape) really don't mind people like me asking the sorts of questions I'm likely to ask ("I've looked for the 1996 copies of Bioelectromagnetics, but you only seem to have from 1997 and on. Where can I find the previous year?"). Perhaps I feel this way because most librarians are somewhat introverted. It makes them hard to read when you ask them a question.

The more likely reason, though, stems from my young childhood. I had a library card as soon as I could write my name legibly, and very frequently came by my neighborhood's local library. I would rummage through the children's section for a while, totter up the desk with a large stack of books, and try to check them out.

There was an evil woman who often ran the check-out, though. I do not use the term lightly; she really was evil. Most of the people at the library were kids, and she seemed personally affronted that we might take some of her books away from the library. So much for encouraging reading. To a five year old, one picks up this mood rather quickly, and become fearful of taking books out.

Of course, I needed books far too much to stop going to libraries. As my tastes matured, I started going to farther branches where there were more extensive collections; eventually I stopped going to the neighborhood one entirely.

Perhaps that is why I'm afraid of librarians. Or perhaps they really don't like me, and I'm not imagining things. ;)

Art or waste of money? You decide

So... to make a short story long:

This evening, the Yeti and I biked to downtown Chicago along the lakefront. Beautiful sunset, nice trail, exhilarating ride. Yadda yadda yadda. We watched some fireworks at Navy Pier (don't ask me why there were fireworks on a Wednesday night), and went over to the newly minted Millenium Park.

For those of you not from Chicago, this is a large piece of land on Chicago's lakefront, immediately adjacent to downtown (just north of the Art Institute, if you must know). It used to be a railyard, and Mayor Daley decided to turn it into a big park. Very Daley-ish thing to do. It has cost some ridiculous amount of money (to the tune of nearly half a billion smackeroos, IIRC), but a good chunk of the cost has been defrayed by rich people who want to stick their name on stuff.

The park seemed pretty nice, as these things go, until we reached this... thing. As far as I could tell, it looked like two big honking towers made out of glass bricks. Upon a closer inspection, these two towers were lit from inside by various colors. What was really odd, though, was on the two facing sides of the towers, extremely large faces were shown on enormous LED displays (50 X 22 feet... I don't want to know how much that cost). They went through some odd gyrations and then puckered their lips... after which a large spurt of water came out of each face's "mouth". After some more inexplicable facial expressions, the two displays turned off, and water started sheeting down the sides of these towers.

I don't have the slightest idea what they are for.

Surely there is some purpose; even sculptures tend to have a point, right? But this isn't really a sculpture, or much of anything else... it just is. I've since learned that this odd contraption is called Crown Fountain (three guesses to know which family gave money for it), and that it's supposed to be art, and a "bold statement". Or something like that.

So check out the link, and try to enlighten me. What's the bloody point?

I'd wager that in a few years, those video images won't be of odd faces, but with the latest traffic and weather conditions for passing motorists. "O'Hare to the Junction, 35 minutes, congestion on the Eisenhower, accident at Dempster on the outbound Edens..."

Now that would exemplify Chicago.

edit: For those of you who don't have the slightest idea of what that last bit meant, Chicago does not refer to their highways by numbers, but rather by names (colloquial or not). As such, traffic reports may seem to be utter gibberish to someone not well-acquainted with the area. This is a good reference for understanding these terms. To understand what's going on, you normally need to have a good grasp of the entire Chicago highway system, the major exits, and regular travel times. Good luck. *Grins*

Chapterhouse: Dune

In case you were wondering, that last post had absolutely no reason for existing except that I like the word accoutrements. Heh.

And now for my first post not full of trivia and mediocrity:

Yesterday, I finished the last book in Frank Herbert's classic Dune series, Chapterhouse: Dune. For some reason, I'd managed to escape reading these six books for years. I can't imagine why I did that.

These books were exquisitely crafted. Each is written differently, with a unique point - yet all have an overarching feel of, well, "Dune-ness" that leaves you breathless. Should I ever need an example of the word "epic", this will top my list. These books don't astonish the reader with their scale; rather, as one learns more about the universe in which he writes, it dawns on you that he's discussing no less than the evolution of humanity in the vastness of the universe. More importantly, it discusses people attempting to control said evolution.

This is the sort of book that you can read fairly quickly, merely picking up the story line as you go... yet you'll wake up in the middle of the night and ask yourself, "Now what did he mean by that?" I cannot recommend these books highly enough. I can't say I agree with all of Herbert's views on how people and society work. Yet his analysis is superb and intriguing.

What saddens me is that he could only write six books; I feel much of the story is left untold, and there's a rich panolpy of possibilities that I will never see realized. This is hardly enough to get me to read the "new Dune" novels that his son has written in collaboration with Kevin J. Anderson, any more than I'll read the new Foundation Trilogy or the "extra" Oz books. In the words of my hero Tycho Brahe (heh, the one who's still alive, silly, not the astronomer), "They are fucking his corpse."

Ahem. Excuse my French. But it really does feel like these authors would throw a tantrum if they actually saw what people did with their work posthumously. Then again, at least these books are supposed to be based on Herbert's notes, so they aren't complete bullshit. To be fair, my mother has read most of the new Dune novels, and has reported they are "interesting" if not outright "good". Not only does this mean my mother's damn cool for reading Dune books, but I'm willing to trust her reading assessments, within limits.

Much more importantly, completing this series means I must now rent Children of Dune and watch it obsessively. I'm told that the SciFi channel did a good job with them, surprisingly. I also should watch the old Dune movies once more, if only for laughs. *sighs* So many inexplicably good movies that have been based on awesome books, lately... one would think that someone in the movie industry is beggining to figure something out.

Oh, wait. Never mind. Isaac Asimov is turning in his grave. At least some good has come out of the travesty that is that movie. I haven't even seen it yet, and I know I'll want to commit murder by the end.

Well, folks, that's all for now. Ta-ta!

Ick. It's ugly, isn't it?

Yup, I mean my blog. I don't think it's ugly because it's plain - I rather like simple designs. Rather, the damn thing is ugly because I used a minimalist template and have not had a chance to optimize it to me. Unfortunately, my CSS skillz have fallen hopelessly out of date, so change will be slow in coming. Over time, I will also add things like a link sidebar and all the usual accoutrements, but for now I'm sticking to the KISS philosophy. I'll freely accept comments and suggestions for changing the place around as I slowly bring it into order. This is implicit; from now on, I will assume that you are observant enough to notice changes in the design without needing me to point it out.

On the other hand, I am most specifically not going to monitor traffic to this site. Not only do I want to spare myself the embarrassment of a pathetically small readership, I also abhor the whole idea of obsessively checking places like sitemeter to know exactly which IPs have come trawling by. Nonetheless, I would welcome feedback on anything and everything; as such, I strongly encourage you to leave comments, even inane ones. I cannot guarantee a response, but I will read and enjoy them. Furthermore, I refuse to place my contact information on something so public as this site; as such, comments may be your only method to reach me, unless you know ways from elsewhere.

If only to conform...

Yes. I have a blog.

Funny thing is, I don't want a blog, nor do I feel I need one. But for quite some time, I've felt a need for some sort of webspace, to post my various rants, ideas, theories, essays, thought experiments... As I'm not sure that I have the time or dedication for my own site, I'm using this place as a test. Sort of like a bridge-to-transplant like VADs, but a bridge-to-website. Or something like that.

For now, I'll try to bring some thought to you with frequency - if I can manage it, daily. I will try to avoid the more mundane details that often appear in blogs, but no promises. On a slightly less frequent status, I'll be posting lengthier pieces - not works of literature, but interesting nonetheless. A caveat - let the reader beware. I do not try to be offensive, nor do I modify my views to make them more palatable. I have strong opinions on most everything - and while I may be wrong, I do attempt to support them well. Feel free to disagree, even vehemently - you may even complain about it. But if you're offended, it was not intentional, and the only advice I can give you is to stop reading, or ask me for a clarification.

To introduce myself, many of you may know me as wiggin or Ender in my posting persona online. On slashdot, where I post extremely infrequently, I'm known as shunterman. In short, I'm nearing the end of my undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering, specifically tissue engineering and transport processes. I love books, music, etc... pretty much what every young intelligent person loves. I'm sure that you'll learn more about me as time progresses.

For now, I'm signing off. Happy reading!