Taking Advantage

It seems that the daily traffic to this site has increased tenfold. I figure that before the linkage fades into google obscurity, and traffic winds down, I should really take advantage of this "thousand eyeballs" phenomenon. So, people of the web, here is some stuff that I need help with.

1. Tom Lehrer is my favorite American humorist. And, one of my hobbies is to find out obscure bits of information about him (ok, so I don't lead a very exciting life). Here are a few questions that I have not had much luck with. (This inquiry was presented in an earlier post, in greater detail).

• Many authoritative articles about Mr. Lehrer refer to his "one year spent at Columbia University." I'd like to find out in what capacity that was. Did he teach, study, do research, or just harass the undergrads?
  
• I would also like to find out what Mr. Lehrer's dissertation topic was, at Harvard.
• Finally, if anyone out there belongs to some sort of auto/historical society, and knows of a way to get me a copy of the Dodge Rebellion Theater film (or has seen the film and can tell me about it), that would be completely stupendous.

2. Since I get about 2500 hits per day now, it's become increasingly difficult for me to stalk my regular readers with my crappy free stats service. You know, I had this whole stable routine going, where I would see the same people coming to the site every day - Jeff through Road Runner in NY, check; Jason through yahoo in CA, check; Kevin through Optonline in Princeton, check; Anonymous person through Verizon in Cambridge, check. And so on. Well, I can't do that anymore, since Sitemeter only stores about 100 hits worth of stats for me. So, if anyone can recommend a good service, I would very much appreciate that.

3. For the term project for my 3D Modeling Class, I need to develop a level for Halo, using 3D Studio Max (in the words of an intern - "they are actually going to give you a degree for that!?") and I need some info on the specific restrictions that I should apply to my model. I know that the game is very particular, and I need to comply with certain standards in order for my map to work with the game engine. If anyone has any experience and is willing to offer advice, please get in touch.

That'll be all for tonight. Get to work, now.

Comments on Comments, etc

Frankly, I am shocked by the popularity of yesterday's "kill your TV" post. It's eerie, actually. Of course, whenever I get such an influx of traffic due to some fortuitous linkage, I always scramble to find my copy of Strunk and White, and regret not paying more attention in writing class when the teacher talked about sentence structure and punctuation.

Naturally, I feel the need to explain myself and clarify several points. And it just so happens that I fancy sequential lists, so here we go.

On logistics:

1. I will read all the comments and notes. There are a lot of them, so I'll need some time. I'll try to reply to as many as possible. I very much appreciate the humorous links.

2. The atom feed doesn't seem to be working for several people. I will try to fix that over the weekend.

3. I'm somewhat peeved that the link was submitted by Alla, who only learned about reddit when she saw me browsing it last week. Of course, her karma is now astronomical. Meanwhile, Henry has been peddling my stuff on reddit since day one, without getting any props. I have no idea how to enforce this rule, but I think Henry should have first dibs on all future reddit submissions.

4. I am not looking for a new job, and I'm not interested in relocating. Thanks for the offers. However, if you want to send me money, by all means. Checks, cash, money orders...

5. When formulating your expectations about the frequency and quality of future posts, please keep in mind that this is just a hobby. I say this often.

On content and substance:

1. A friend called me this morning, and half-jokingly said that I "started a small revolution." This is absolutely not the case. If you pay close attention to the comments, a majority of them are in complete agreement with me, and they are all essentially from people who already don't watch TV and are quite happy (smug?) about it. As one person recalled, my favorite quote on this matter is from Tom Lehrer, who said "It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted."

2. And by the way, the next revolution will not start with a few like-minded college graduates in New York City, or in Boston, being in total agreement with one another. It will start in Arkansas or Louisiana, or some utterly wretched place like that.

3. I saw a lot of notes about violence on television. I purposefully omitted any commentary on that topic, because I haven't yet made up my mind. I tend to be very careful when approaching that issue, because the same arguments that are used against violence on television are often applied to video games, and in the latter case, I happen to strongly disagree. This might be worth addressing in a separate post.

4. The bit about losing weight was mostly for rhetorical purposes, to emphasize the point that even such an ostensibly minor change in a routine was enough to create a significant quality of life improvement. (I especially enjoyed one redditter's comment along the lines of "Maybe I should sign up for cable and cancel it, so that I can lose 5 pounds.")

5. Also, a few notes on entertainment. Nowhere do I imply that you should forsake entertainment. I even mention that there are DVDs of shows and movies available at the library, or through Amazon. My main issue with television really has to do with the inevitable inactivity and passivity of the viewer. The nature of the medium forces the viewer to surrender control (you just sit there, we'll tell you what to think), which in turn creates all sorts of negative repercussions.

6. The problem with television news that I allude to is not a new one at all. In fact, it was thoroughly analyzed by Noam Chomsky in "Manufacturing Consent."

7. Television certainly isn't the only way that one can waste time. Some would say that browsing the web, reading blogs, and playing video games, are all equally terrible modes of counter-productivity. And I agree that you all should be saving the whales and freeing Tibet instead of commenting here, but at least those latter distractions require some sort of activity and interaction. TV seems to be so idle and solitary by comparison.

Finally, I admit that it would be absolutely fantastic to live in a world where everyone is attractive, intelligent, funny, and a Mets fan. And I would love to do my part to bring us all closer to that ideal. But, I'm just a grad student with a day job and a long commute. So please cut me some slack.

Why You Too Should Cancel Cable

It all started when I decided to cancel cable.

About a month ago, I got a letter from Cablevision, informing me that my monthly rates were about to increase. At that point, I evaluated the situation, as follows. I watch only about 3 hours of television per week. The rest of the time, it's just on as background noise, while I am doing something on the computer. There are only two shows that I like to tune in to regularly - The Daily Show and The Colbert Report - which adds up to about 20 minutes of actual programming. However, lately, I've just been going to the (seemingly legal) sites that stream the funniest clips from those programs the very next day.

With that in mind, I made the call.

- Hello, this is Frank, how may I help you?
- I would like to cancel cable.
- What do you mean?
- I don't want to pay for cable TV anymore.
- Really? Have you heard of our low introductory offer for premium channels, such as HBO and Cinemax?
- I think, maybe, I am not being very clear.
- Ms. Paley, let me ask you, where do you intend to get television service?
- I don't intend to get television service.
[about 30 seconds of silence]
- Well what about news?
- I like to read the newspaper, and I visit a lot of Internet sites. Also, there's NPR, which I stream to my computer. For free.
- Well what about movies and original programming?!!
- The New York Public Library has a very large assortment of movies on DVD, and Amazon sells collections of entire seasons of pretty much all the shows. You heard of Amazon, haven't you? And the library? Do you know where the library is Frank?
[more silence, and I'm becoming less amused and more annoyed]
- Sports! What about sports!?
- Do you remember when Cablevision had that huge dispute with the Yankees, and I couldn't get the YES network for about a month while they were working out the details of their contract? Well, that's when I started listening to baseball on the radio, and realized that I actually prefer it that way!

This went on for a little while longer. But eventually, he informed me that I would be added to a special "watch list" of people who cancel cable without an explanation. And with that ominous warning, I was allowed to break free.

I was very surprised that this was such a huge ordeal. Who was this guy? Why did he take it so personally? Maybe he recently bought Cablevision stock. But what did my measly 50 dollars a month mean for their bottom line anyway? Plus, I am still shelling out a huge chunk of cash each month for digital phone and Internet service. In the next few weeks I realized why he was so upset. Essentially, I was putting into question the very foundation of our society.

Week 1: I lose 3 pounds. This is unexpected, because I am not dieting, and I am not exercising. I compare the ingredients in the shampoo that I always buy with those in the generic brand, and opt to buy the generic brand. Same deal with other toiletries and groceries. (Do I really need green tea extract in my soap? No, I don’t). Strangely enough, I find myself thinking "why am I buying another black dress, I know I have one just like that at home" at the checkout counter of Club Monaco. Also, I am extremely adamant against seeing the latest Matthew Mcconaughey movie. Total savings at the end of the week add up to about 150 dollars.

Week 2: I lose 2 more pounds. My ICC 3-minute blitz rating goes up by almost 200 points. I read "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" by Edward Tufte, and construct a "data rich" statistical graph to analyze my professional/academic/personal accomplishments and goals. Recalling something that my Professor mentioned in class a month ago, I decide that it might be fun to prove the trinomial revision identity geometrically.

Week 3: I stay up later at night, but I am more alert during the day. I become more disgruntled with current events. I get especially upset when people say stupid things. Particularly, if those people happen to be elected political officials. I realize just how powerful television really is at subjugating the masses. I decide that someone should publish a pamphlet. I call my friend at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA students are the go-to people when you decide to change the world), and he suggests that I blog about it, and poll the public for some links (i.e. supporting evidence in the form of valid research).

I conclude that television is an extremely effective and powerful way of controlling, manipulating, and distracting the American people. It works in three very basic and obvious ways:

1. Making you the passive observer of current events.

When you watch television, you become a passive observer of news. When this happens, your cognitive processes slow down, and you absorb information before you have a chance to process it. In this way, television makes your brain a soft and squishy sponge, perfectly willing to internalize all the misinformation that is propagated to further somebody else's agenda. When you become an active seeker of news (as you are when you browse websites, read newspapers, or talk to other people) you are more likely to question and analyze the content before believing that it is true. If your co-worker tells you that the guy in the next cubicle is stashing weapons of mass destruction under his desk, you are likely to ask for proof; but if a TV news anchor tells you something similar, you will probably go on thinking that it is true.

2. Making you a consumerist whore.

Even if you turn your set off during commercials, you are still constantly being bombarded with advertisements on a very subconscious level. You can't buy the things that you need to make your life better, but television is extremely successful at convincing you of the exact opposite. Your husband will not love you more if you cut your hair like Jennifer Anniston, there is no difference between a Hyundai and a Mercedes, and there is nothing in the world that will make you look like an underwear model.

3. Distracting you from the real problems.

Television is able to distract you from the real problems (in your life, in the world) by either presenting you with irrelevant and superficial problems that will divert your focus, or by providing enough instant gratification to make you forget about your drab and wretched life. Someone on television tells you that two guys in San Francisco want to get married, and you are so distracted by this attack on your ideals that you conveniently forget that there is a war, in which many innocent people are dying. Or you spend your evenings watching attractive people doing exciting things, and this escapism prevents you from facing reality and making positive changes in your own life. (By the way, there is nothing wrong with seeking entertainment, but television creates a routine of dependency that inadvertently results in a state of false complacency).

Finally, here are some really stupid things that people tell me when I suggest that they too break free, and cancel their cable TV service.

How will my son ever make it to the major leagues if he can't watch pro ball games on TV?

This is quite asinine. From an entirely statistical point of view, I can say with relative certainty that your son will never make it to the majors. But besides that, Joe Dimaggio never watched baseball on TV. Neither did Sandy Koufax. They went out and PLAYED baseball. If you plop your kids in front of the TV for 3 hours every evening, you might make them overweight and dimwitted like baseball players, but you certainly won't increase their chances of becoming professional athletes. If you really want to give your kids a chance at a career in sports, make sure that physical activity is an integral part of their (and your) daily routine. Take them to a real baseball game instead, at least that way you can all get some fresh air.

I watch CNN. Where will I get my news? How will I know what is going on in the world?

This is probably the stupidest thing that anyone has ever said to me. You will certainly not know what's going on in the world by watching CNN, or any of the other major news channels. Nor will you become more informed about the world and people around you by watching local news. This is supposed to be the information age, so why are so many people still relying on such a primitive source of news? You can probably get more relevant content from reading Talking Points Memo for 5 minutes than you can from watching CNN all day long. And if you wish to stay away from such blatantly partisan sites, you can always turn to the more traditional AP outlets on the web. Even reading CNN.com is better than watching it on television, because it give you a chance to go back and take note when the reported information is stupid or just plain wrong. Television news never gives you enough time to have a “wait a minute there” moment.

What will I talk to my coworkers about the next day? They all gather and chat about American Idol, and I don't want to be a social outcast.

Well, your coworkers are obviously idiots. And, instead of encouraging this sort of behavior, you should make an effort to change the culture. Have confidence in your decision. This is just like high school. When you do something odd, do it with unwavering self-assurance, and everyone else will follow your trend.

My hope is that there will be a massive social and cultural move away from television. The benefits of such a change will be tremendous. We will become smarter, more informed, and less prone to commercial manipulation. We will not stand for lies and misinformation from our government, we will take action and effect change. We will eliminate credit card debt, and pay off our mortgages faster. Our kids will eat more fruit and do better on standardized exams. We will become global participants, and won't need to tell foreigners that we are Canadian when we visit their countries. We will use less oil. We will get to work on time. We will have better relationships with friends and family. We will make better music, write better books, and develop better software. Just for starters. Pardon my naïve optimism, but I really think that remarkable progress can be achieved very quickly, if you too decide to cancel cable.

G, Knuth, P

- You should look it up in the GKP book.
- You mean the Knuth book.
- No, Concrete Mathematics by GKP.
- You mean, Concrete Mathematics by Knuth.
- What about G and P? What are they, chopped liver?
- What do the G and P stand for again?
- I don't remember.

Information Overload

I spent the day in a workshop on 3-D Modeling. I now know how to make a pendentive and a lunette.

The class is taught by a really great instructor, Patrick Slater, who is an architect by profession. The design is done in 3D Studio Max, which I found to be a lot more intuitive than Maya (the software we used in Gateway Lab). The focus so far has been on architecture, and we haven't talked much about virtual worlds (which is what I'm most interested in) but the techniques are all the same. And right now, we are just learning the techniques.

There are only four of us in the class, and we are all on the same level. So, that's great. But this stuff is really hard. I am exhausted. But, I'm coming back for more tomorrow.

Photos

Kevin came up (down? left?) for a visit yesterday, and took the opportunity to snap some very awesome pictures. Go check out his stuff. Send him money. His company just got acquired... err... merged.

The edimame is from Café Swish.

Midterm, Redux

I got my Discrete Math midterm back today, and I'm quite happy to report that I got an A! More importantly, I actually answered every question correctly, and even got some points on the extra credit. I have to say that, because an A in a grad class at Columbia doesn't exactly mean that you learned anything.

I want to note that this is entirely to the credit of the Professor, who is really an excellent teacher. (A word of advice to the young undergrads who are pondering a career in academia - whenever you do well, commend the professor; whenever you do poorly, blame yourself.)

However, this really has nothing to do with my interest in the area, or my background in Engineering, or anything like that. Basically, Professor Pollak could have been teaching a class on spider monkey mating habits, and I would undoubtedly have made an equally concentrated effort to become an expert in the subject. Maybe if I had him for freshman calculus, that class wouldn't be such a vague and unpleasant memory for me.

I think that it boils down to a few basic elements of teaching. He knows how to explain the material really well. That is very important. He is also very patient, and takes as much time as is necessary to explain a particular concept. He is very responsive, and actually reads all the papers very carefully (a somewhat rare phenomenon, frankly). And also, he assigns just the right amount of work to facilitate the highest degree of retention - not too much that everyone stresses out, but just enough to really get the gist of the problem and the method.

So, take his class next semester. Regardless of what he is teaching. I definitely will.

Fun with the log book.

As you may already know, I spend quite a bit of time in the machine room (or the computer center, however you wish to call it). The policy is that whenever you enter the machine room, you have to sign a log book with your name, date, time, and a description of the reason for your visit. At the end of the day, some unfortunate soul has to transcribe all those hand-written entries, and that list gets emailed to everyone in CUIT. I was always under the impression that nobody (besides my friend Sonu) ever reads that list.

So lately, whenever I go to the machine room, I always sign the log book with a slightly odd message, just to see if anyone will notice (and also, just to amuse myself).

At first, I tried leaving complete gibberish mixed with usual IT lingo, like "server blah boody bah bah reboot tape eep op ork ah ah scsi" but eventually that got boring. I also gave it a go with the macabre, like "The server is dead. It slashed its wrists, I mean, network cables, last night. I am here to bury it." But that sort of stuff doesn't come naturally to me (I am a very birds are singing, flowers are blooming sort of girl), and I can't exactly take a lot of time with the log book without arousing some suspicions.

So now I started leaving short little poems. The key is to stay within the length of a typical log book entry, which is about two lines. (If you write a six stanza ballad, obviously somebody will notice). Here are a few examples of my recent entries...

I couldn't find the recovery disk.
Too bad Windows doesn't have fsck.

All the robot drives are down,
That's the reason for my sad frown.

I'm installing some RAM and a new SCSI card,
So now the CPU won't need to work so hard.

Everything is so slow,
due to a buffer overflow.

And so on...

So far, I haven't gotten any "wtf are you smoking" emails from management, so I have to believe that nobody ever reads any of these log entries. I'll give it another few weeks.

A girly moment

Wedges are back in style! This is great news for those of us who spend most of our time on an old college campus where all the walks are paved with cobble stones (the number one enemy of skinny heels). I'm so glad that I didn't throw out all those shoes from 1999.

Some linkage with your morning coffee.

I have about 5 minutes this morning, so I'd like to quickly plug a few sites that I really like.

I found out about The Morningside Post because they (strangely enough) link to me, and I recently noticed some traffic from there. It's an extremely well written blog, by way of SIPA, that features informative and topical commentary on numerous foreign affairs issues. The blog is communally written by several very talented graduate students from SIPA, and occasionally features interesting guest bloggers. While most of the content appears to be in the international category , there is some excellent reporting on local issues, as well as various happenings at SIPA.

Scott Aaronson's blog got mentioned in one of the comments, but I wanted to feature it more prominently here. He is a really excellent writer, and I think that this is one of my favorite math/computer science blogs out there. His writing is funny and intelligent, and I think that you'll have a good time even if you don't care about Turing or hyperfractals.

Frankly, I can’t determine just how popular The Eddie Kranepool Society blog really is. I used to read it religiously (and somewhat subversively) a while ago, when I used to spend my evenings pondering Jason Giambi's OBP, and Soriano's strikeout ratio. Now, I check in about once a week. There is a lot of content (a new post almost every day), and it's one of my favorite Mets blogs out there.

Well, there you go. Hope that's something for everyone.

Crappy week, finally over.

This week did not go well for me. I was mostly swamped with sysadmin issues, and didn't even look at my bug queue until this morning. Of course, it was enormous, and I have a lot of catching up to do. And just to keep things interesting, Cert sent out a new cyber security alert last night.

But that's just usual stuff.

However, this week was especially stressful because it was John's last week as our leader. Since John announced his resignation, we've all entered this weird Johnny Mnemonic brain-dump sort of mode, trying to transition as much as possible before his departure. And, it all kind of culminated today, on John's last day.

I tend to get very sentimental, and I really hate saying goodbye (and I'm glad that I wasn't here for Jason's last day). John has been trying to play that whole "I'm not dying you guys, we will still be in touch" card all week. But, I doubt that it made anyone feel any better. Jeff really bummed me out this morning, when he started going through the Oreilly books, to pick out which ones were John's. So, I jumped at the first opportunity to run over to the machine room... the hum of the servers really has a meditative and calming sort of effect on me.

I'll try not to wax poetic too much, but just want to mention one thing, for the record (after all, that is mostly why I write this blog).

There is no doubt that John is an extremely competent sysadmin, programmer, and manager. All of our work lives will be infinitely more complicated and hectic, now that he is gone. That really goes without saying. But what I respect and admire most about John is that he is a genuinely good person, who always tried to do the right thing.

Good luck. And, we'll try not to blow the place up without you.

Bad trade?

The folks over at the Cub Reporter are getting really nervous about a potential deal with Baltimore, trading Todd Walker for Luis Matos. And frankly, I don't see what could be so bad about this trade (from the Chicago perspective).

Those of you who read the old blog might remember that I was always very impressed with Luis Matos, and really believed that he could be quite good, if he stayed healthy. That was based entirely on statistics, and had nothing at all to do with the fact that he is extremely good looking. Granted, his OBP numbers are a bit on the low end, and by 27, there's little hope that he'll pick up much more plate discipline. Still, you could do much worse in that regard.

I think acquiring a 27-year old, who can play pretty much any OF position with relative ease, is not such a bad deal for Chicago. What am I missing here?

Patch Tuesday Browsing

It's Patch Tuesday, which means that if I don't want my servers to get hax0red, I have to stay up tonight to patch and reboot them. It's just swell how I have to sacrifice the second Tuesday of each month to Microsoft. JLG calls it "the guaranteed employment act," but I call it just inexplicably bad software. And my feelings are especially hostile tonight, since the downtime is scheduled for midnight, and I'm particularly beat after fighting my Veritas battle this morning.

While I wait for the servers to reboot, here is some (useless?) content that I've been browsing to pass the time and curb my frustration:

- Do you remember "all your base are belong to us"? Ah, sweet nostalgia. I am not a big fan of poetry, but this one just gets me every time: "Roses are red, Violets are blue, All my base are belong to you."

- Here is an interesting letter written by Thomas Jefferson on the topic of patents. Some have suggested that this very idea was somewhat echoed in the Chumbawamba song "Pass It Along."

- A very good and thorough article about the education of math majors. It comes by way of UC Berkeley, so you know that it's going to be good. Just read it.

- This has been a top-50 hit on reddit for a while, so I'm sure that most of you have seen it already. For the rest, here is a nice visual representation of how our tax dollars are being spent by the government. It's a bit dated (just a bit, though) but I really like the format and display. I hope that somebody updates it each year, because it's a great depiction of important data.

- Richard Kaye explains how Minesweeper is NP-Complete! And a pretty good "in a nutshell" explanation of the P=NP question, too.

- Chessbase interviews Vladimir Kramnik, who is about to make a huge comeback (I predict). It's somewhat inspiring, even.

- Are you the kind of person who gets excited by index out of bounds exceptions? Someone once told me that the size of the number doesn't matter (it's how you use it, you see). He was wrong, of course. Big numbers are good, and bigger numbers are better. So, go read this article by Scott Aaronson, and learn about the glory of the bigger number. (It also has a nice list of references at the end).

Anyway, I am on AIM now (for the first time in a while) if anyone wants to chat.

US wins while another country gets totally screwed (baseball, not politics)

American ump, Bob Davidson, almost caused an international incident on Sunday, when he made a blatantly incorrect call during a US-Japan WBC game. The call erased a legitimate run by Japan, and left the game tied. US eventually triumphed with a 4-3 final score.

Japan's manager, the famous Sadaharu Oh, argued the call, and was understandably upset after the game. Lee Jenkins, from the NY Times sports pages, covers the story in much more detail.

I feel like a greater effort should've been made to ensure the impartiality of the umpires. I most certainly don't intend to question anyone's ethics, but seeing how this is an international competition, I think that everyone would feel a lot better if there wasn't such a direct national affiliation between the umps and the teams involved. For example, if one team's manager needs an interpreter to argue with the umpire, maybe that's a sign that something isn't quite fair.

Also, this should be a great boost for those crazy instant-replay advocates.

Happy Purim

Today is the beginning of Purim. For those of you not too familiar with Jewish holidays, let me quickly explain. Most Jewish holidays have pretty much the same theme - they tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat!

And that is precisely what Purim is all about. Really. You can look it up, if you don't believe me.

In that spirit, I would like to offer you my own hamantashen recipe. This is not quite how my grandparents do it, but they won't give me their recipe in any sort of legible format, so this is as close as I could get.

Ingredients:
4 cups of flour
4 large eggs
1 cup of sugar
2 cups of softened butter
1.5 tbsp. Orange juice
1.5 tsp. Vanilla extract
2 tsps. Baking powder
pinch of salt
1 pound of strawberry/raspberry/apricot preserves

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and grease a cookie sheet with a stick of margarine.
2. Place all the ingredients (except for the preserves, obviously) into a mixer, and beat together. If it's too dry, add some more orange juice; if it's too moist, add some more flour.
3. Roll the dough until it is about 1/8-inch thick. Use a round cookie cutter, or appropriately sized glass, to cut out circles, about 3-inches in diameter. (Sorry to be so mathematical about it, you can obviously make necessary adjustments).
4. Place about 1 teaspoon of the fruit preserves in the middle of each circle.
5. Fold the dough over the filling, into a triangle (think one of those musket-man hats).
6. Bake for 20 minutes.

This is an easy one, so let me know if you try it. I might give it a go tonight, in which case, the people at work can comment tomorrow.

I haven't calculated the nutritional content, or anything like that. (You can probably go lighter on the butter, but why would you?) So, much like most of my cooking, this is certainly not recommended for the diet-minded individuals. However, it should be noted that this is a significant improvement over my other favorite Purim dish - kreplach (much emphasis on the 'ch' please) which is basically deep fried, meat-filled dough. Mmm.

Why We Fight

Last night I finally watched an excellent BBC documentary by Eugene Jarecki, called "Why We Fight." It was a very depressing and realistic overview of American's quest for global military supremacy.

The history began with Eisenhower's chilling warning about the "military-industrial complex" (a warning that was obviously ignored). The story briefly took us through Vietnam and 9/11, and concluded with our current devastating predicament. The approach is clever in that it doesn't place blame on any one particular person (a very easy out for many) but really analyzes the individual motivations and historical context in an admirable attempt to answer the complicated question of why we fight.

The documentary was extremely well edited, and while Jarecki's bias was quite obvious, he was able to put on a credible façade of objectivity. I feel that it is important for a film maker to be able to present his message without coming across as a radical partisan. (Michael Moore, for example, is not able to contain his anger and frustration, and that's why he can only preach to the converted. Those who would learn most from his films, never see them).

My lefty pacifist attitudes are well known to most of you, so you'll understand why I was so sad and angry after watching this film. It's important and intelligent, and I highly recommend that you watch it.

SEAS Barbie?

Alexis (of reddit) wrote an amusing post about the evils of Teen Talk Barbie. And Benjamin Zimmer writes a more detailed story about the history of the whole "math is hard, let's go shopping" phrase.

When I was a little girl, my parents didn't think to buy me a Barbie. They were anti-consumerist tree-hugging hippies, who were opposed to our culture's objectification of women. Instead they bought me books, like "Number Analysis" and "Advanced Number Analysis." That is really too bad. If I had Teen Talk Barbie to tell me that "math class is hard" and "let's go shopping," I wouldn't have spent so many years studying Engineering. Maybe, I would've gone to Barnard (oh snap!) and become a ... I don't know, what professions do most attractive women with an across-the-street-from-an-Ivy education hold... a reporter?

We need School of Engineering and Applied Science Barbie - "stochastic modeling is hard"..."let's major in communications."

Being polite on the train.

I have always adhered to very old-fashioned convictions when it comes to etiquette. For example, I expect men to hold doors, give up their seat, and carry heavy things for me. I also think that young people should give up their seat to old people. And pregnant women should never have to stand, especially on crowded trains.

Lately, I've been encountering some issues when trying to be polite on the train. Here are a few guidelines that I have formulated from my many years of riding the NYC subway.

When you feel compelled to give your seat to a pregnant woman, be absolutely positive that she is in fact pregnant, and not just wearing a bulky sweater, or returning from a particularly filling lunch. Use your best judgment and all your knowledge of human anatomy (think about proportions). You are bound to make a mistake once in a while. It's ok. Just apologize, and avoid eye contact for the rest of the trip.

It also gets tricky with older men. Once, I tried to give my seat to a man of very advanced age, who turned out to be really offended by the unspoken insinuations of my seemingly kind gesture. He proceeded to inform me that his girlfriend is actually just my age, but he took my seat anyway. It's important to remember that men are quite sure of their virility well into their 90s (and sometimes they are not entirely wrong). When you are thinking of offering your seat to an elderly gentleman, here are some things to look out for - he has his hair in a pony tail; he is wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt of some rock band from the 70s; he is wearing very trendy glasses; he is reading Maxim magazine. These are just a few things, to give you an idea. Even if this person is 98, he is still quite positive that he can score (with you), so it's best not to insult his masculinity by offering him your seat.

Of course this is my perspective, and therefore, this advice is mainly intended for women. Men shouldn't have a difficult time being polite on the train, since they should always be prepared to give up their seat.

Get to know your tech support engineer.

Whenever I have to work with support engineers I usually try to be friendly, and make the best of the situation. It's very stressful when your LTO robot craps out, and the person on the other end of the line, who is supposed to be the subject-matter expert, comes back with "holy shit I've never seen it do THAT before!" Our profession requires a lot of patience. There is a lot of waiting involved. It also requires a sense of perspective (this isn't open heart surgery) and a sense of humor.

Today, I spent about 4 hours on the phone with a Veritas engineer, trying to fix a Netbackup issue. I'm going to document it later, but the nutshell of the problem was that the master server wouldn't recognize the robot after I performed a pretty routine software upgrade. We tried all sorts of fixes, and eventually ended up rolling back the upgrade.

While we were waiting for various installs, uninstalls, and restores, we got to know each other pretty well. He told me all about his first wife, second wife, and current wife. I don't know why, but people seem to enjoy telling me personal details about their lives. We also discussed the Yankees (no love lost), the Marlins (interesting to see what happens), and the Mets (clearly this is going to be the year). I am pretty good at steering most conversations my way, and sometimes I do it inadvertently. So eventually, he ended up telling me that his father had a whole bunch of Tom Lehrer LPs, which are now sitting somewhere in his basement. He has no interest in them whatsoever ("is that supposed to be funny somehow?") and when he goes home tonight, he'll try to find them and send them to me! How cool is that?

Oh, the robot problem seems to have been fixed. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to spend a considerable amount of time in the machine room on Monday, anyway.

(The suggestion of) Spring

Even though I spent most of the day in the basement of Hamilton, and in the basement of the Computer Center (where I still am right now), I still enjoyed the lovely weather. I am not a winter person, so this is really my ideal climate.

I hope that everyone got the chance to take a walk, or lounge outside for a bit.

Blame Canada

One last thing for tonight - Canada kicked our butts at the WBC! How embarrassing. 8-0!

Am I the only one who thinks that if the US gets eliminated in the first round, that will be an incredibly good thing for the sport? On so many levels, too. MLB will start taking international tournaments more seriously and the world will start taking baseball more seriously.

Although, a better question might be - did that comment just land me on the patriot act watch list?

Update: the final score was 8-6. (Thanks for the note, Iain). Still, quite embarrassing.

A short guide to people's character.

Sometimes you will find yourself in a class full of people, merrily tapping away at their laptops, while the professor tries to explain something very profound and useful. At that same juncture, you may begin to wonder about the personalities of your classmates. What kind of people are they? Do they like Thai food? Are they fun at parties?

I want to suggest that you can gather quite a bit about someone's personality by looking at the laptop that they are using.

Basically, I break people up into three categories, as follows:

• The people who are using Macs are fun, funny, and creative. They are very artistic, and hate the establishment. They have voted for Ralph Nader, and will gladly do it again. They have given money to PBS or the public library (and have a tote bag to prove it). They like to go to art gallery openings. They really want to make the world a better place. They are fantastic at parties, and during lunch.

• The people who are using IBM Thinkpads are very intelligent and very practical. They care a lot about efficiency, and are very much function over form. They probably hold at least one engineering degree. They are also the people who tend to "accidentally" drop their laptops, a lot. They are the folks who will break the ice at the party with "have you seen the latest post on slashdot?"

• The people who are using Dell/HP laptops are idiots.

I hope that this will be helpful to you, in your daily interactions.

Spring What?

I submitted my Discrete Math midterm today. I have no idea how I did, and I won't find out for another two weeks. There were about 5 pages of very imaginative algebra, culminating in a proof of something or other, but I am not quite sure what. I tried to be very serious, and refrained from annotating it with funny comments and quotes, as in "the idea is the important thing." Now, I have some free time to UML-ify all my java programs. Woo.

Webwork Redux

So, over the last few weeks I've gotten into the habit of trading Mathematica expertise for Webwork screenshots. You'd be surprised by how quickly word travels in these hallow ivy halls.

This has created a somewhat ethical conundrum for me. You see, I am happy to help students do well in classes, but I feel like I am doing more harm than good. I even have a little disclaimer that I recite before we begin: "You have to learn Calculus. Mathematica will help you get the answer, but it won't help you understand the problem. You have to understand how to solve these problems if you want to do well on the exams. You can't use Mathematica on the exams. So ask your teacher for help."

I hope that the fact that their midterms and finals are real, closed-book/closed-laptop exams will be sufficient motivation to really learn the material, and not just cruise through the homework with the help of Mathematica.

Still, I feel rather guilty. And, I'm quite angry that the teaching curriculum empowers this sort of situation.

Montaigne's Essays

Liz came over today. I have strong suspicions that she is the source of my growing popularity with the freshman population, but she denies all such allegations. Anyway, she is reading Montaigne's Essays for Lit Hum. I completely forgot just how awful that book really was. Fortunately, my Lit Hum teacher was kind enough not to dwell on that particular part of the core for too long.

I started browsing through her copy, and I realized that it's essentially just some guy's blog. A really really really bad blog.

For example, there is one section on "smells and odors" where he goes on for about 4 pages, to the effect of "Paris is stinky. So is Venice. I don't like very strong smells. I have a moustache, which traps the stink close to my nose." And so on... and on... and on.

And of course, what blog would be complete without the obligatory self-deprecating yet, at the same time, self-indulgent post praising other bloggers while broadcasting the web's favorite mantra - "this is just my opinion."

I thought it would be interesting to write a Montaigne blog. Every few days, post a couple of pages from the books as an anonymous fictional prick, and just sit back and climb to the upper echelons of the blogosphere's elite. There are certainly enough English majors (and New Yorker subscribers) to make that a very feasible little project.

Problem Sets

This weekend is going to be pretty much entirely devoted to the Discrete Math midterm (with a few breaks to program the Java assignment). So to get into the right mood, I started organizing my notes and homeworks. That's when I noticed that the papers in my bag have reached a critical mass.

So, I digitized my graded discrete math homework. The images for problem sets 1-3 are uploaded to flickr, and are also linked from the school page. If I have some time during the week, I'll scan and post the rest of them.

I can't imagine who could possibly be interested in this (unless you are the sort of person to do handwriting analysis, or try to figure out perverse aspects of my personality from the way I write my 7's) but there you go anyway.

Care to comment?

I've had issues with comments before, because I used to write about extremely partisan topics... like the Middle East, the space program, and Derek Jeter's OBP. That was difficult to manage. But, I don't think that my posts about Tom Lehrer, LTO robots, and my discrete math midterm are so racy as to spawn flame wars. Also, aside from those peaks in traffic that result from occasional linkage on reddit, the readership seems to be comprised mostly of my friends, and various people who I frequently email with.

So, by popular demand (read, Anthony and Jiwan), comments are now on. Anonymous cowards allowed.

Why I am not around

There are several reasons.

Midterms and programming projects. JLG's imminent departure, and the resulting meetings, deadlines, and panic attacks. The alarming number of undergrads who have my phone number and need help with Mathematica. WBC's completely unreasonable schedule. The increasing pressure to "do research." Multiple suggestions that getting to alpha centauri on the monarch level doesn't meet the criteria for scholarly research (even if it did take all night).

And some other (non-blogworthy) stuff too. Things should get better by the end of next week. Bear with me for now.