Notes from Eugenio and Wang

Quick notes:

Saber parry: from elbow, fairly late, fairly low on blade or guard to prevent whip-around

Saber lunge: rear leg to front arm, diagonal power. DON'T LEAN or twist body--it shortens reach. Don't lead with head--it telegraphs intention and gives you less time to respond w/ bladework. Know my lunge distance--it's further than I think.

Epee: use elevation of bell guard to protect arm while extending. Depends on height of opponent.

Epee: fully extend during hand peck. On second intention remise to body, don't pull hand back, just redirect slightly with fingers.

Lunge: don't overbalance forward. Weight should not be 80% in front of knee, because that makes it too hard to retreat if I missed on lunge.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Adam and Eve

Okay, now. Thoughts on Adam and Eve...

The Lord does call it a "transgression" in Moses 6 when he says "I have forgiven thee thy transgression in the garden of Eden." I'm not really sure what to make of this, whether it implies that there was a better course of action, or what that course was. I'm not really sure whether the transgression was partaking of the fruit, period, or not consulting the Lord before he acted, or what. The only thing I can draw for sure from this is that Adam felt bad about his actions in Eden, and it had weighed on his mind.

The original word "sin" was a fairly neutral word. It comes from archery, and it means "to miss the target." In that sense, perhaps "sin" and "transgression" are similar. However, as we commonly use the word "sin," it means something stronger: uncleanness, that which the Lord cannot look upon with the least degree of allowance. Accidental harm (e.g. dropping a piano on someone's foot) cannot be sin in this sense, although it can certainly be transgression and can merit a contrite apology. Note that all the suffering D&C 19:18-19 could be justly attributed to Adam's transgression[1].

Moses 6:53 is a very puzzling verse to me in many respects, not just for the use of the word "transgression" but because it doesn't seem to be a direct answer to Adam's question--which may mean that Adam was asking a different question than I think he was. Maybe the Lord was addressing Adam's subtext.

I'll give you two additional pieces of data, both relating to the book of Moses.

JST Old Testament 2 (the latest version) at one point had this in verse 23:

Therefore I give unto you a commandment to teach these things freely unto your Children Saying that in as much as they were born into the World by reason of the fall which bringeth death by water & blood & the Spirit which I have made & so became of dust a living soul even so ye must be born again of water & the spirit & cleansed by blood even the blood of mine only begotten into the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven

This was crossed out and rewritten as this:

Therefore, I give unto you a commandment, to teach these things freely unto your children, saying that by reason of transgression cometh the fall, which fall bringeth death. And in as much as they were born into the world by watter, and blood, and the spirit which I have made, and so became of dust a living soul; even so ye must be born again, into the kingdom of heaven, of watter, and of the spirit, and be cleansed by blood, even the blood of mine only begotten

Something in that paragraph was considered important enough to be worth rewriting for more clarity. The biggest differences I see are emphasizing the causal link between transgression and the fall (and thus, indirectly, to death), and that the rebirth is back into the kingdom of heaven.

Item two is from Moses 7:13. At one point it said (note that this is also the version which is in the Pearl of Great Price),

the Lord said unto Enoch, behold, these thy Brethren, they are the workmanship of mine own hands, & I gave unto them their knowledge in the day that I created them & in the Garden of Eden gave I unto man his agency; & unto thy brethren have I said, & also gave commandment, that they should love one another, & that they should Choose me their Father

It was then altered as follows:

the Lord said unto Enoch, behold, these thy Brethren, they are the workmanship of mine own hands, & I gave unto them their knowledge intelligence in the day that I created them & in the Garden of Eden gave I unto man hisad agency; & unto thy brethren have I said, & also gave commandment, that they should love one another, & that they should Choose me their Father serve me their God

To me this emphasizes a couple of interesting things, including the difference between advice and commandment and what it means to "choose" a Father (cf. John 8:44 and Romans 8:17). But the main difference I see is an emphasis on man having intelligence and exercising agency from the very beginning.

None of this adds up to a conclusive answer to your question, but I hope you find it interesting. Further study is merited.

-Max

[1] Well, okay. Except for the very tiny fraction which would have come from Eve alone, if Adam hadn't partaken as well.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Specification-based testing (FsCheck)

This is how I like to write specification tests. Notice the lack of ceremony.

[<Property(Arbitrary=[| typeof<ArbitraryModifiers> |])>]  
let ``Closed under multiplication`` (y : WholeNumber) (z : WholeNumber) =
          (WholeNumber.get y) * (WholeNumber.get z) >= 0

OUTPUT:

Test.Geometry.Closed under multiplication [FAIL]
Falsifiable, after 3 tests (0 shrinks) (StdGen (603380185,295587877)):
(WholeNumber 13118, WholeNumber 227510903) 

In other words, the system is able to automatically prove that whole numbers (implemented on top of .NET Int32) are not, in fact, closed under multiplication because of integer overflow, since 13118 * 227510903 = -514245166.

Then, I change WholeNumber so that it is built on top of bigint (arbitrary-sized integers as in math, not computer architecture) and alter the test slightly to use 0I (bigint version of zero).

[<Property(Arbitrary=[| typeof<ArbitraryModifiers> |])>]  
let ``Closed under multiplication`` (y : WholeNumber) (z : WholeNumber) =
          (WholeNumber.get y) * (WholeNumber.get z) >= 0I  

OUTPUT:

Tests complete: 1 of 3

Tests complete: 2 of 3

Tests complete: 3 of 3

3 total, 0 failed, 0 skipped, took 1.790 seconds

Voila! My program now matches my spec.

FsCheck + Xunit = WIN

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Fencing notes

Monday 2 July, 2012

Had a lesson today w/ Eugenio. Here's my takeaway:

Drill:

• Beat 4, peck hand while retreating. Extension and retreat should be simultaneous to retain reach -- it should feel almost as if extension is happening first, but then you automatically get carried back as soon as you hit.
• Beat 4, peck hand while retreating, evade parry 4 and peck hand again. Again, coordinate extension and retreat -- make sure there are two retreats, not two and a half or one and a half. Make sure you hit the hand not the body. End w/ hand at ear level (see technique, below).
• Beat 4 while advancing, peck hand.
• Beat 4 while advancing, evade parry, peck hand.
• Beat 4 while advancing, choose tactic (below) based on opponent's response.

Technique:

• For tall opponent, angle bell guard up and in more than usual, not flat and perpendicular to body. Bell guard is protecting hand and forearm from pecks, forcing him to get closer to hit.
• Practice small parry 6, just enough to get tip around the blade. NOT a sweep.
• Exploit beats quickly.
• Practice powerful lunges, take full distance.
• Relaxed left arm, left shoulder back, esp on lunges.
• Ear height extensions, including on riposte.

Tactics:

• Preparation: beat 4 while advancing, peck hand.
• Hit hand? Done. 
• He attacks on my beat? Parry 8 wide, take blade in 8, riposte
• He does nothing? Remise to body.
• He does nothing? Draw my hand back (while not retreating) to invite an extension, then parry 6 and riposte. 
• He retreats? Retreat. I have gained half a meter though -- use this to relieve distance pressure when playing for time (if you're ahead).
• He retreats? Redouble or fleche to body.
• He retreats? Take in 6 and flech to body.
• He ripostes to my hand? Take in 6 while advancing and counterriposte to body.
• While probing an opponent, intersperse w/ different probes or attacks to avoid telegraphing your intention or developing a pattern yourself. 
• OODA comes into play only once probes and second intention are happening. Goal is to make him react without orienting first.
• Meta-tactic: some people scream in victory or have teammates scream in order to distract the ref on tricky calls, like hitting just after you pass the opponent.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

SQL stuff

Work-related:

If you install VisualStudio to a non-standard location (I put it under \usr\bin instead of \ProgramFiles (x86)) SSDT won't work correctly. In particular, using a "System Database" like master to a SQL project will fail with lots of errors, because database objects which exist in master won't be resolved correctly when you try to use them (e.g. sys.views actually lives in master).

The solution is to put master.dacpac in the place where SSDT expects to find it:

mkdir C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\SQLDB\Extensions\SqlServer\110\SqlSchemas

copy C:\usr\bin\VS2010\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\SQLDB\Extensions\SqlServer\110\SQLSchemas\master.dacpac C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\Extensions\Microsoft\SQLDB\Extensions\SqlServer\110\SqlSchemas

-Max

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Morality

Dear J.,

Philosophy and theology bore me, and so does obsessing about moral imperatives and norms. "Should you tell the truth?" as a normative question is less interesting to me than "What happens if you don't tell the truth?" This isn't to say that I'm not interested in doing the right thing, because I am of course. But I'm not really interested in telling people to do the right thing unless they are already interested and motivated to do so. Neither am I very inclined to worry all that much about whether other people think I'm doing the right thing.

Therefore, this blog post seems spot-on to me. He's responding to a guy (Ostler) who is trying to prove that morality in Mormonism has a strong theoretical foundation, just like religions which believe in creation ex nihilo. The writer observes that the theoretical argument is complicated and uncompelling, and maybe even superfluous.

The gospel ("Mormonism") probably doesn't have a theory of moral obligation, and that's probably why I don't either. The gospel is practical, not abstract and theoretical. I hate philosophy.

Happiness isn't something God, from outside of the situation of love, bestows on those who love; happiness is something internal to love itself. It's, in Ostler's appropriate word, a byproduct of love.

I couldn't agree more about all this. My question, then, is simply: Why not begin and end here? Why bother with Kant? I suspect that Ostler's reason is that byproducts aren't enough to ground moral obligation. How can one claim to have a moral obligation to love if one's simply after love's associated affects? (As a byproduct and not simply a product, it might be said that happiness can't be called love's teleology, and so obligation doesn't return in the form of a consequentialist ethics here.) And I think Ostler would be right to point out this problem, were he—as I suspect he would—to do so. But then my question would become: What's so important about moral obligation? Is it so necessary for Mormonism to have a theory of moral obligation? Why can't we say simply that God reveals to us the happy way to live? Why do we need to say that God reveals to us the happy way to live toward which we have an obligation?

All of this is to ask, in the end, why we can't simply agree with the several individuals Ostler refers to at the beginning of the chapter. Why not just confess that Mormonism can't, given its ontological commitments, produce a satisfactory theory of moral obligation? Why not argue that that incapability is one of Mormonism's strengths? Why not agree with the so-called critics that Mormonism is more like training in the good life than exposition of universal moral obligation?

Thoughts? Reactions/response?

Love,

M.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Science

J,

I wish I really understood the underlying issue here, or had time to think things through. You may want to read the original paper.

http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/01/epidemic-of-false-claims/#more-3437 

Triggered by a comment from Bill regarding the work of  John Ioannidis, I dug through my file of draft posts and found this article by Ioannidis in the Scientific American, about a year ago, entitled An Epidemic of False Claims.  Subtitle: Competition and conflicts of interest distort too many medical findings

Excerpts:

False positives and exaggerated results in peer-reviewed scientific studies have reached epidemic proportions in recent years. The problem is rampant in economics, the social sciences and even the natural sciences, but it is particularly egregious in biomedicine. Many studies that claim some drug or treatment is beneficial have turned out not to be true. Even when effects are genuine, their true magnitude is often smaller than originally claimed.

The problem begins with the public's rising expectations of science. Being human, scientists are tempted to show that they know more than they do. Research is fragmented, competition is fierce and emphasis is often given to single studies instead of the big picture.

Much research is conducted for reasons other than the pursuit of truth. Conflicts of interest abound, and they influence outcomes. Even for academics, success often hinges on publishing positive findings. The oligopoly of high-impact journals also has a distorting effect on funding, academic careers and market shares. Industry tailors research agendas to suit its needs, which also shapes academic priorities, journal revenue and even public funding.

The crisis should not shake confidence in the scientific method.But scientists need to improve the way they do their research and how they disseminate evidence.

-M

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.