Girl advice

[fwd to blog from another conference]

 

General girl advice to any young males who might be in love: telling her exactly what you're feeling because you can't hold it in any longer is not generally an effective strategy, because (her being a woman and you being a man) what you say is not actually what she will hear. Also, since women are more emotional than men (in general, just like men are taller in general--there are exceptions)--because of that, the best way to communicate may be to her feelings, not her intellect: use very few words indeed. The goal is not for her to KNOW how much you love her so she can make the correct logical inferences from that fact, it's for her to feel how much you love her so she can intuitively make the correct judgments for herself based on that reality. Note also that the goal is not for her to feel how much you need her--that's your problem. "I love you and I want to bring you joy. Interested?" It's an offer, not a plea. If not you are doing it wrong.

 

~Max

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Check your pronunciation

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Announcing/Standard_Pronunciation

 

I think I've been mispronouncing "apartheid", "candidate", "electoral", "foliage", "inclement", "jewelry", "mayonaise", "Visa", "zoology" and "diphthong" for years. I would have been mispronouncing "bruschetta" too except I don't even know what the word means [five seconds later: I do now]. But at least I say "hundred" correctly (and "twenty" also, though it's not on the list).

 

Surprisingly, the way I pronounce "spiel" ("shpeel") is incorrect/nonstandard. The naive way ("speel") is correct. Oh, and "yarmulke" should be pronounced phonetically, after all.

 

-Max

--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Articles of Faith

A friend of mine at work asked me, "What can you tell me about The Articles of Faith? Its history / purpose, etc?"

 

I really like the Articles of Faith, and I think there is logic and a pattern to the statements which not everybody notices. I've mentioned this to several people verbally but never written my observation down, so I think I will quote my response to him here on the blog just to get my thoughts on record, even if I turn out to be wrong. : )

 

The Wikipedia article is pretty decent. Originally written in 1840 or so as part of a response to someone who was writing a book on Illinois history or something and wanted information for include a chapter on Mormons. The fellow didn't end up using the information in his book but it's still a pretty good capsule description of the gospel. I might loosely paraphrase it thusly in my own idiom:

 

"We believe in God the Father, and also that Jesus Christ is his Son, and that the Holy Ghost testifies of both. We believe that sin brings punishment to the sinner, but that through the Atonement of Christ any man may receive forgiveness of sins which are past, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel, which are: faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, and receiving the Holy Ghost. These ordinances must be received from the Lord's authorized servants, called by revelation. The church exists to organize those servants, now as in ancient times, and includes prophets, apostles, pastors, teachers, etc. as set forth by Paul the Apostle in Ephesians 4. We believe in miracles and in the Bible; we also believe in the Book of Mormon, and in everything else which God has revealed or will yet reveal, which is much. We believe in the literal fulfillment of Biblical prophecies regarding Israel and Christ's return. We believe in freedom of religion for ourselves and for those not of our faith, and in obeying the laws of the land. If there is anything which is true and good we also believe in it, no matter where that truth is found."

 

-Max

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

On American Power

Interesting observations on China, worth reading. I wish I knew enough to evaluate how correct his analysis of the response to China is. Be sure to read down to the "Lessons For American Power."

 

Beijing's recent missteps in Asia — moving ahead with reactor sales to troubled Pakistan and crudely threatening Japan over the arrest of a Chinese fishing captain — are swiftly solidifying America's Asian alliances.  The new Japanese government came into office hoping to rebalance Japan's foreign policy and reduce tensions with China.  That dream is now dead.  And China's deepening relationship with Pakistan, intended in part as a counter to America's nuclear opening to India, is driving Asia's other emerging nuclear power closer than ever into the arms of America (and Japan).  South Korea, once drifting peacefully toward China, has moved back towards the United States following China's support for Pyongyang after the sinking of a South Korean naval boat.

In all this there is one clear theme.  America isn't containing China.  China is containing itself.  As China's economy grows and its military develops new capacities, it is looking for ways to turn that potential power into actual power over events.  In the past, China has tried to attract its neighbors into its orbit with sweeteners like trade deals and aid.

But these measures apparently strike a new generation of Chinese policy makers as unsatisfactory.  China is too great a power to play nice, they think.  So they assert their territorial claims more and more boldly, and blow up disputes with Japan out of all proportion.

Lessons for American Power

These developments in Asia illustrate an important truth about America's world role: the foundations supporting our power are much stronger than many people here and abroad understand.

We have had a decade of hand-wringing about American power.  First, 9/11 was seen by some as a deadly blow against the citadel of American strength and the collapse of the World Trade Towers was seen as the start of the fall of America's economic and political domination.  Then the unpopularity of the Bush foreign policy was alienating our friends.  In the Arab world in particular, we were so hated that not even friendly governments could continue to work with us. Then we had lost the war in Iraq, and leading foreign policy analysts and politicians (most of whom had endorsed the war at the beginning) called for ignominious retreat as the best and indeed the only possible strategy.  After that came the stock market crash and the financial meltdowns of 2008, and the "Anglo-Saxon" model of cutthroat capitalism was said to have decisively failed.  After that came the rise of China, the hot new superpower in the east that owned our debt and therefore owned us — and that was going to sweep all Asia into a new economic and political bloc that would leave us in the cold.

This was and is all a bunch of hooey.  Americans do make mistakes in our foreign policy and these can be costly both for us and for other people, but American power is more durable than it sometimes appear.  American power is not eternal, and the world political order is not unchanging, but strong and deep forces in world affairs have brought the United States to its present position of influence and power; those forces will not disappear overnight.  Rome wasn't burned in a day.

The latest round of events in Asia provides a textbook case of just how strong the foundations on which American power rests in Asia really are.  The more China rises, the more Asian countries rally to the American side. [snip]

The entire article is worth your time. And now I must go back to thinking about fencing and hiking instead of politics.

 

-Max

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

Zombie ants

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/18/zombie-carpenter-ant-fungus
--
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

The Voice of God

Christopher Columbus wrote of his trials on his fourth voyage the following account:

 

Exhausted, I fell asleep, groaning. I heard a very compassionate voice, saying: 'O fool and slow to believe and to serve thy God, the God of all! ... Thou criest for help, doubting. Answer, who has afflicted thee so greatly and so often, God or the world? ... Not one jot of His word fails; all that He promises, He performs with interest; is this the manner of men? I have said that which thy Creator has done for thee and does for all men. Now in part He shows thee the reward for the anguish and danger which thou has endured in the service of others.'

 

I heard all of this as if I were in a trance, but I had no answer to give to words so true, but could only weep for my errors. He, whoever it was, who spoke to me, ended saying, 'Fear not; have trust; all these tribulations are written upon marble and are not without cause.'

 

When I read these words I feel emotion not unlike that which Columbus himself describes feeling. And I feel so terribly proud of, and in awe of, Heavenly Father. He is exactly what a Man ought to be. When I grow up I want to be just like Him.

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

Ex-girlfriends

I've always kind of liked the idea of ex-girlfriends. It's a nice simple, uncomplicated, platonic relationship with a lot of warm feelings and none of the headaches or obligations associated with romantic relationships--if anyone asks whether you two are dating you can laugh and say, "Been there, done that," and close the subject. It's too bad that it's not actually possible to have an ex-girlfriend without having a girlfriend first, however instantaneously--a state of affairs which repulses me. (It's a wimpy halfway state which is neither friendship nor courtship but tries to be something in between, and in contemporary practice it's nearly synonomous with physical exploitation. Celestial beings have no use for boyfriends or girlfriends.) Fooey on the English language for that.

 

Someone should get me an ex- for Christmas.

 

-M.

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

About Eggs

Factoids (courtesy of Harold McGee's "On Food And Cooking"):

• Chickens are "indeterminate" egg-layers, which means instead of laying a fixed number of eggs a fixed number of times per year, they keep on laying each day until they accumulate a certain number. If a predator, such as a human, takes one of the eggs before she finishes she will replace it before stopping. If the predator keeps taking the eggs she will never stop.
• An animal's "reproductive effort" is the fraction of her body weight which she deposits daily in her future offspring. A hen's reproductive effort is 100x that of a human.
• An egg weighs 3% of a typical hen's weight, and she may lay an egg almost every day.
• Imagine a human woman having a four-pound baby every day!
• An industrial hen may produce eight times her body weight in eggs over the course of her year-long life.
• A hen expends 25% of her daily calorie budget on egg-making. (Ducks expand half their energy on egg-laying!)
• Hens have only one ovary.
• Hens store sperm inside their oviducts. After the germ cell has accumulated enough yolk from the fats and proteins in a hen's liver, but before the egg white is added or the shell is formed, if the hen has mated recently some of the sperm will fuse with (fertilize) the germ. Either way the egg will still get laid.
• An eggshell has about 10,000 little holes, concentrated at the blunt end, to let air into the egg while the embryo is developing. All these holes put together would be about as wide as the head of a pin (2 mm).
• Inside of an egg yolk you can see a flat little white disc attached to ropy white things that look (sorry!) kind of like boogers. The white disc is the actual germ cell, whether fertilized or unfertilized, i.e. the chicken embryo. The ropy white things are designed to keep the embryo from smashing itself into the walls of the shell.
• Good news! This means that you don't have to be queasy about eating unfertilized chicken embryos, or feel nauseous when you think about the texture of the yolk. That's just a bunch of fats and proteins from the mama chicken's liver. Only the little disc ever had any chance of becoming a chicken, even if it had been fertilized.
• By eating the yolk you are, however, stealing candy from a baby. Unfertilized baby chicken, that is.
• Modern industrial techniques transform feed into eggs with better than 33% efficiency, and feed into chicken meat at better than 50% efficiency. That is, you can produce a pound of eggs from less than three pounds of feed, and a pound of (broiler) chicken from less than two.
• Egg color is totally unrelated to nutritional value or taste and is determined by the protein composition of the cuticle, which it the outermost layer (designed to slow water loss and block the entry of bacteria through the pores, at least initially).
• Rhode Island Reds lay brown eggs.
• Chinese Cochins lay eggs with yellow dots.
• Chilean Araucanas lay blue eggs.
• The cross between a Chilean Araucana and a Rhode Island Red lays green eggs.

-Max

 

--

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

 

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

 

Nuclear weapons, use of

Obama has announced a new nuclear posture for the United States: we will not enage in "first use" of nuclear weapons against any country which is signatory to and in compliance with the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6352YK20100407

My uninformed reaction to the Nuclear Posture Review: Republicans are incorrect. The NPR statement is not important militarily. Responding to a chemical or biological attack with nuclear weapons is not an option we would want to exercise in any case. Suppose Uzbekistan or Nigeria, for some insane reason, hits New York City with a sarin gas attack that kills 4000 civilians. We are fully capable of destroying their whole national infrastructure with conventional military force (Army commitments in Iraq/Afghanistan notwithstanding). Using nuclear weapons would simply be a good way to kill a few million civilians for no good return. Realistically, we don't want to do that. Besides, if you really want those civilians dead, destroying their infrastructure will do it, over time via starvation, without the irrational negative PR associated with nukes.

So, you don't nuke someone who is too insignificant to harm you. The only nations we would ever realistically want to nuke are those who are currently unable to nuke us but are developing the capability to do so--Iran and North Korea, at least in the popular view--and those who cannot be defeated with conventional means. In the first case, Iran and North Korea are in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so the new posture does not apply to them. More importantly, they have been in violation all along and we _still_ didn't nuke them, even under the "warlike" George W. Bush. Most likely we were never even tempted to nuke them. In the second case we're dealing with serious, existential threats. Now, if Russia and China got together with Japan, Canada and Mexico and dropped a few hundred thousand soldiers on our shores by surprise--probably by stuffing them inside of shipping containers--we'd find ourselves outgunned, defeated, and occupied in short order if we stuck to conventional weapons, and it would be very tempting (but risky) to use nukes to salvage the situation. I don't imagine the offical "nuclear defense posture" is going to have much to do with how that scenario plays out. In almost any other scenario I can think of, initiating an exchange of nuclear weapons with Russia is a sure-fire losing game for both sides, again without regard to the "nuclear defense posture."

The one area I can see where this could make us less safe is that, having declared that we will not commit "first use" of nuclear weapons, another country might be tempted to force a military confrontation over something important to them (Taiwan) when the terms are favorable to them, since they know they won't get nuked for winning (although both parties are presumably willing to respond once the other party has already escalated to nukes). Thus, the new doctrine makes Taiwan and Israel less safe, and probably Georgia, and maybe all of Eastern Europe too. It doesn't make the U.S. any less safe unless you believe our interests are intrinsically tied to theirs.

It does make it slightly more hazardous to be a U.S. Navy carrier group in the Indian Ocean, since you can now be wiped out without triggering a nuclear war. That's bad for you, but good for the rest of the gene pool.

I may be wrong about all this, I often am.

-Max

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

How your taxes get spent

Your Money Is Spent On	Your Share	%
National Defense	$4,828.00	20%
Veterans and Foreign Affairs	$1,016.00	4%
Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Related Programs	$3,303.00	14%
Unemployment and Social Services	$1,525.00	6%
Social Security, Medicare, and Other Retirement	$9,655.00	37%
Net Interest on the Debt	$2,287.00	8%
Law Enforcement and General Government	$508.00	2%
Physical, Human, and Community Development	$2,287.00	9%
Total Paid	$25,409.00	100%

When I filed with TaxACT.com they computed a summary for me of where my taxes went. I don't begrudge $5K on national defense, and $500 for law enforcement seems okay to me too. The $12K on Medicaid and Social Security are of more concern to me, and $2K for the national debt is non-trivial too, especially given how low interest rates are right now. It's easy to imagine that ballooning to $5K or more per year once interest rates go back to normal levels.

 

Presumably your taxes are spent in about the same way.

 

-Max

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Cheap Turpentine

I've been reading a lot about discovery and the art of design. Here are two quotes that I particularly like:

 

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea." - Francis Bacon

 

This invites the question, "But isn't that the road to self-delusion?" Not necessarily. You may have reasons to believe there is something there which don't involve having actually seen land. You may have seen seagulls in the distance, or you may have analyzed the ocean currents and things that drift through them, or you may, like Christopher Columbus, have calculated the circumference of the earth relative to Marco Polo's reports on the size of Asia. That's where faith comes from, actually, before it becomes a perfect knowledge: evidence that you comprehend and believe, but imperfectly. You may even have no evidence that you can articulate, but curiosity or a feeling that there must be land out there closeby--this is more like hope than faith, but it still can lead to discoveries. (You just have to be prudent about pursuing such hopes full-time because they don't always pan out.)

 

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. - Pablo Picasso

This doesn't really need comment, does it? Sometimes theory is no substitute for practice, which yields experience and hones intuition. Plus I just think it's a funny quote.

 

-Max

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Sketch-a-Move toy car

This video is discussed by one of my textbooks on design as a great example of how "sketches" of concepts can help you decide what to build, even if you don't have the technology to actually build the thing yet. It's a lot better than investing $100 million in a technology and then finding that it isn't any fun to use.

Plus, wouldn't it be cool if toy cars DID work like this?

http://www.vimeo.com/5125096

-Max

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Temptation tax

Some thoughts from Edge.org on the psychology of temptation. Has implications for anyone trying to build wealth. Even has some implications for getting in shape or improving your education: you need to find a way to avoid frittering away your gains on your own personal "temptation tax." Not only will this help you make progress, but knowing that you will keep your gains improves your motivation to get started saving/exercising/whatever in the first place.

When you're very poor, you have very little income to spend on anything other than food. There's very little spending on temptation goods. At some point you might start to spend more on these temptations. You can start to eat dosas, doughnuts, lots of things that you might not value so much, but they're around you when you have cash and you buy them. And of course because of the regressivity, that flattens out. Once you're over here, you can now spend on things like education, etcetera. So, we've got an S-shaped curve: very low spending on temptation goods at deep poverty, but an increasing amount as income increases and then it flattens out as you get wealthier.

If you have somebody like this, notice that being here is very good. Being [at the top] is very good. But moving from [along the middle of the curve] is ultimately pointless—it looks like your income has doubled, but so much of that extra discretionary income is being spent on wasted things, on things that you don't think are that important. [emphasis added]

The key thing is to find a way not to waste the gain on things you don't care about.

-Max

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Article: Can A Biologist Fix A Radio?

J. & T.,

You might enjoy this short article by a microbiologist on the difficulties involved in making scientific progress in understanding complex phenomena like apoptosis--or a radio. It's quite readable, takes maybe ten minutes to finish.

Can A Biologist Fix A Radio?

[snip] How would we begin? First, we would secure funds to obtain a large supply of identical functioning radios in order to dissect and compare them to the one that is broken. We would eventually find how to open the radios and will find objects of various shape, color, and size (Fig. 2, see color insert). We would describe and classify them into families according to their appearance. We would describe a family of square metal objects, a family of round brightly colored objects with two legs, round-shaped objects with three legs and so on. Because the objects would vary in color, we will investigate whether changing the colors affects the radio's performance. Although changing the colors would have only attenuating effects (the music is still playing but a trained ear of some people can discern some distortion), this approach will produce many publications and result in a lively debate.

A more successful approach will be to remove components one at a time or to use a variation of the method, in which a radio is shot at a close range with metal particles. In the latter case, radios that malfunction (have a "phenotype") are selected to identify the component whose damage causes the phenotype. Although removing some components will have only an attenuating effect, a lucky postdoc will accidentally find a wire whose deficiency will stop the music completely. The jubilant fellow will name the wire Serendipitously Recovered Component (SRC) and then find that SRC is required because it is the only link between a long extendable object and the rest of the radio. The object will be appropriately named the Most Important Component (MIC) of the radio. A series of studies will definitively establish that MIC should be made of metal and the longer the object is the better, which would provide an evolutionary explanation for the finding that the object is extendable. [snip]

-M.

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Theory and practice

Jenny,

You might find this article interesting. It's on commercializing a research tool for static analysis of software, and the surprising differences between academic requirements and commercial requirements. The article took me around a half-hour, and the whole thing was worth reading.

-Max

This is the research context. We now describe the commercial context. Our rough view of the technical challenges of commercialization was that given that the tool would regularly handle "large amounts" of "real" code, we needed only a pretty box; the rest was a business issue. This view was naïve. While we include many examples of unexpected obstacles here, they devolve mainly from consequences of two main dynamics:

First, in the research lab a few people check a few code bases; in reality many check many. The problems that show up when thousands of programmers use a tool to check hundreds (or even thousands) of code bases do not show up when you and your co-authors check only a few. The result of summing many independent random variables? A Gaussian distribution, most of it not on the points you saw and adapted to in the lab. Furthermore, Gaussian distributions have tails. As the number of samples grows, so, too, does the absolute number of points several standard deviations from the mean. The unusual starts to occur with increasing frequency.

For code, these features include problematic idioms, the types of false positives encountered, the distance of a dialect from a language standard, and the way the build works. For developers, variations appear in raw ability, knowledge, the amount they care about bugs, false positives, and the types of both. A given company won't deviate in all these features but, given the number of features to choose from, often includes at least one weird oddity. Weird is not good. Tools want expected. Expected you can tune a tool to handle; surprise interacts badly with tuning assumptions.

Second, in the lab the user's values, knowledge, and incentives are those of the tool builder, since the user and the builder are the same person. Deployment leads to severe fission; users often have little understanding of the tool and little interest in helping develop it (for reasons ranging from simple skepticism to perverse reward incentives) and typically label any error message they find confusing as false. A tool that works well under these constraints looks very different from one tool builders design for themselves.

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

The Parable of Bob and the Bill

[letter excerpts]

Posit: Day-old bread is better than nothing. Posit: Nothing is better than chocolate. Conclusion: Day-old bread is better than chocolate.

Once there was a man named Bob who attended a charity auction. The auctioneer explained that this was a pay-as-you-bid auction, like poker: you pay as you bid, and if you lose you don't get your money back. "That's dumb," thought Bob, "but I guess if it's for charity…" Then the auctioneer unveiled the item up for bid—a twenty-dollar bill. Bob, who considered himself a very rational person, looked around the room at the other thirty-odd people and thought, "If I bid and lose, I lose everything. If I win, I get twenty dollars. I have a one in thirty chance of winning twenty dollars, so the bid is worth $(1/30 * 20) = 67 cents to me." He immediately bid a quarter, hoping to make a profit, and put his quarter out in front of him.

Another bidder bid fifty cents, and someone else bid seventy-five cents. "Going once," said the auctioneer. Bob frowned in thought. "Odd. There's only three of us bidding. That raises my expected value to $6.67, so I can afford to bid a dollar rationally." The other bidders, after some hesitation, matched his bid and soon the price was at $5. Bob shook his head, "Let's end this," and bid $6.67. Further bidding would be irrational. Bob would pocket the $20, and they could all go home.

The third bidder immediately bid $10. "Oops," said Bob, now seeing the flaw in his reasoning. "No matter what the odds are, the payoff for winning is $20, not $6.67, so of course other people will bid above $6.67. My profit is the difference between my winning bid and $20, not between my winning bid and $6.67." So he bid $15, hoping for a 33% profit on his investment. Bidder #2 bid $17, and bidder #3 bid $18. Grumbling, Bob bid $19.99. Bidder #3 sat down abruptly. Bidder #2 hesitated again, then bid $21.

Bob couldn't believe it. "Who would bid $21 for a $20 bill?" he said to himself. Then with a sudden sick shock he got it. "No," he said, "bidder #2 already bid $17. If he loses, he lost $17. If he wins at $21, he lost only $1. Clearly it is rational to bid again to reduce his losses." And with the same sick certainty, Bob knew the same logic applied to himself. Bob bid: $25. Response: $28. "Again," thought Bob, "I have the choice between losing everything, only it's $25 instead of $19.99 this time, or paying $4 for a 50% chance at winning the $20. 50% of $20 is $10, and $4 is less than $10 so clearly the only rational action is to invest another $4." Bob bid $29, hopelessly, while the rest of the audience watched in fascination. This could have gone on for quite a long time but Bob's wife hit him with her purse and told him to stop being a nit. Bidder #2 won at $30. The auctioneer thanked them all, gave $20 to bidder #2, and put their combined bids ($18 + $29 + $30 = $77) in the charity cashbox. Everyone applauded and Bob went to lie down.

Last story for today: my dad went to med school in Louisiana when I was one or two years old. Some of my earliest memories are of Louisiana and Tulane University—going for stroller rides with my mom, playing in the pool, etc. I'm not sure but I think I might even remember the flood that buried the streets in over a foot of water. (Then again, I might be getting it mixed up with the floods from my mission, which I definitely remember, including what it did to our basement rooms: it was like an indoor swimming pool, which is bad news for missionaries. Or an indoor baptismal font, which is good news I suppose.) In particular I remember a large room, which must have been at Tulane, and one wall of the room was covered with transparent glass cubes or jars, stacked one on top of the other. In each jar was yellow liquid, and in the liquid floated a dead baby. I remember two babies in particular. One had a big corkscrew of a belly button that seemed several inches long and reminded me of a screw. The other baby had two heads. I thought that was quite interesting. I don't remember if this was before or after I saw the two-headed snake at the Santa Ana zoo, which was interesting because it was alive, but I think the baby was even more interesting because it was human and had arms and legs and stuff, which snakes do not. Anyway, I don't remember feeling scared at all but I wasn't sure why the liquid was yellow and I think I drew the obvious conclusion for a two-year-old at that—especially a two-year-old familiar with swimming pools and babies—and perhaps that did disturb me a little.

--
"When people are married, instead of trying to get rid of each other, reflect that you have made your choice, and strive to honour and keep it." --Brigham Young

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

Rare earth technologies

According to the article, many new technologies are reliant upon rare earth elements, of which China controls 97% of the world's supply. I'm not sure what the implications are.

As Deng Xiao Ping presciently commented, at a time when electric cars and wind power seemed like ecotopian wet dreams: "Arabia has oil, China has rare earth".

-Max

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Science is

Science, in its purest sense, is as much an individual activity as religion. Science means reasoning by means of repeatable, testable hypotheses: science is what you can put in a letter and mail to another scientist and have him verify. Asking a paleontologist if dinosaurs were warm-blooded is not science; studying the papers and the fossils and then forming (and checking) your own opinion is science.

-Max

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

WMDs

I'm not allowed to discuss politics until 2010, but you should read this:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/09/is_climategate_the_new_downing_street_memo_99468.html

I will note parenthetically that I was completedly fooled on Iraq, but had I listened to Greg Cochran's views here (http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail227.html) I would have been a lot closer to correct, which is a large part of the reason I'm skeptical of Iran as a threat and trying to be appropriately skeptical of Afghanistan.

The really great thing about Cochran is he's quantitative, cogent, and fact-based. You can disagree with his priorities but you should always hear out people like this.

-Max

P.S. I didn't see this article at the time, but even though the surge in Iraq worked, should we have done it? Cochran discussed an alternative at the time. http://amconmag.com/article/2007/sep/24/00006/

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Why Object Oriented Languages Need Tail Calls

According to this argument, object oriented languages that don't require tail call optimization from their compiler(s) don't preserve object-oriented abstractions. I'm not 100% sure I buy the argument, since even if you do tail-call optimizations there are ways to implement the example in such a way that it runs out of stack space anyway--but perhaps his argument is that there's no correct way to implement the example (in the OO paradigm) without tail call optimizations. If that's the argument then I need to think about it some more.

-Max

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Public speaking

Tips on public speaking from Scott Berkun, who presented at work here recently:

 

1. Don't be afraid of the crowd. If necessary, arrive early, acclimate to the room, exercise beforehand. Amygdala.

2. Don't make it look like it's your first time ("nervous surgeon syndrome"). Practice slides, pitches, video manipulation, etc., beforehand until it feels good.

3. Keep a rhythm. ("Turtle on crack") Let people know how long each segment is supposed to take, be consistent. Attention span: 5-10 minutes. "I've got six pieces, five minutes each." May also be useful to give people an outline to follow in case they drift off for a minute.

4. Keep an interesting angle on things. Make it interesting to yourself at minimum. Also study the audience, talk to the audience beforehand about past experiences.

5. Avoid obfuscation of rhetoric: watch your tendency to use big, obscure words to win arguments (because people won't ask what things mean in an argument). Be clear, bring people along. Don't use language to defend yourself from questions. Do not be afraid of questions! (Side note, trying to make arguments strong: there's a difference between the point you want to make, and the arguments you use to support the points. Points must be clear, arguments can be clarified reactively.)

6. Slides serve what you are saying. Huge bulleted lists are often an indication that you have not practiced this, and are planning to use slides as notes. (Back to the audience, feel obligated to cover every point on the slides, etc.) Makes too many demands on visual bandwidth (information density--speaker doesn't know what the point is). Goal of a slide should be to support your points. If you need density, write a report, make a web site, whatever--but don't do a presentation. The acceptable level of density depends upon the presentation goal and the audience--if you're presenting code programming tips it may be okay to have more density than if you're giving tips on dating. When in doubt, rip it out.

 

-Max

 

--

If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

Metacognition

I had to dig this up recently:

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Leads To Inflated Self-Assessments

It turns out that the very thing which prevents you from being good at certain intellectual or social tasks also prevents you from recognizing that you're not any good at it. Fairly poignant stuff if you look at it from a certain perspective, since there may be things you think you do well (sense of humor?) which you're worse at than almost anybody without even realizing it. On the other hand, it may also explain why we we're so hard on ourselves on at stuff we're good at.

-Max

--
If you're so evil, eat this kitten!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Two-year-old reciting Gettysburg address

Subject: Two-year-old reciting Gettysburg address

Dr. P_____,

If you have two and a half minutes, you will get a kick out of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvlsco7ux4g&feature=related

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Archaeology

[From Chaos Manor. May be of indirect interest to amateur Book of Mormon archaelogical enthusiasts. -Max]

'A wind arose from the south, strong and deadly, bringing with it vast columns of whirling sand, which entirely covered up the troops and caused them wholly to disappear.'

The supposedly unreliable Herodotus is vindicated yet again:

<http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/
cambyses-army-remains-sahara.html>

-- Roland Dobbins

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Religion from a functional perspective

"Stealth religions": interesting essay on objectivism, atheism, and other non-standard "religions" from a well-defined functional perspective.

http://scienceblogs.com/evolution/2009/10/atheism_as_a_stealth_religion.php

The main purpose of a religion or a stealth religion, however, is not to describe the real world but to motivate a given suite of behaviors. One way to do this is by creating a stylized world without tradeoffs, in which the prescribed behaviors are portrayed as good, good, good for everyone and the prohibited behaviors are portrayed as bad, bad, bad for everyone. Behaviors with mixed effects are absent from the stylized world because they do not clearly tell the believer what to do.

This might be a good working definition for the work of a "false prophet" (see Matthew 24:11).

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Cleanshaven Lincoln: true story

Hey you three,

 

Did you know Lincoln was cleanshaven most of his life? He grew out his beard only in 1860, on the advice of an eleven-year-old girl who said she could get her two brothers to vote for him if he would grow out some "whiskers."

 

 

 

Full story at http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln50.html.

 

-Max

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

High Taxes: a California vs. Texas case study

California ranks 4th in terms of total revenues (including federal subsidies) and Texas ranks 44th. What does California get for all this money? Comparison of public spending in Texas vs. California here:

 

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_california.html

 

-Max

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

 

Sherman

William T. Sherman is a personal hero of mine, a kindred spirit and a modern-day Moroni. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

 

-Max

 

=====================================

 

If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late.

 

All the powers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences.

 

-Letter to Major Sawyer, Jan 31, 1864

 

Hold the fort! I am coming!  

 

-Signal to Gen. Corse, Oct 5 1864

 

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling.

 

-Letter to City Council of Atlanta, Sept 12, 1864

 

Boys, I've been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It's entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here.

 

Suppress it! You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!

 

-Speech to cadets at Michigan Military Academy, 1879

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

 

Conference notes from Sunday

[Priesthood notes not included since I don't have them with me.]

Sunday morning.

Sister Ann M. Dibb: (Collapsed bridge story) Get a grip, hold to the rod.

Elder Nelson: communication w/ heaven, conversion, discernment. Revelation facilitated by proper reverence for Deity. May be incremental, those who heed are given more line upon line.

Pres. Monson: Dr. Jack McConnell's father, every day at dinner, "And what did you do for someone today?" He who loses his life for my sake shall find it. Kindness. Ideal gift, "Find someone who is having a hard time, or is ill, or lonely, and do something for them." Received dozens of cards recording service rendered.

Sunday evening.

Elder Holland. Protection against personal calamity, vs. the mist of darkness. Hold to the rod. Mist of darkness descends on ALL, successful travellers resist all distractions. Divinity of the Book of Mormon. Joseph & Hyrum, Ether 12, "Thou shalt be made strong even unto the sitting down in the place which has been prepared for you in the mansions of my Father." Apostolic witness of the divinity of the book and the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith. Great-grandfather: "No wicked man could write such a book as this, and no good man would write it, unless he were commanded of God to do so." Like Christ himself, it is a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, a barrier in the path of those who wish to disbelieve this work.

Elder Cook. Stewardships, we believe we are our brother's keeper. Story: Jewish visitors to temple square & welfare square. "Obedience to the unenforceable." Faithful stewardship exercises righteous dominion, looks to his own, cares for the poor and needy. Story: clear spring at grandfather's ranch, when not protected eventually became polluted. Was then returned to original purity and beauty. Rationalization: "The ship must sail. You can't explain to the ocean." "What happens in Vegas" vs. "What happens in Severe County, you can share with your friends." Provide family with physical security and spiritual nourishment. From abundance, impart portion unto the poor and needy. Story: as new bishop, "some will respond to every suggestion, even at great sacrifice." (Sarah on top of a ladder, at age 80, cleaning out neighbor's raingutters.) Be prudent, but also diligent.

Elder Brent H. Nielson. To rising generation: go ye therefore, and teach all nations, every young man prepare to serve an honorable mission. Story: Finnland (Vipori/Freiburg, praying to open the Soviet Union for the gospel, fulfilled unknowingly by son 32 years later). Jacob 5, "[labor because] this is the last time that I will prune my vineyard."

Elder [not sure]. Heart transplants, need constant attention lest rejection occur. Tendency of the natural man is to reject the changed heart and allow it to harden. Ammonites, "as many as were converted... never did fall away." How? Zeal towards God and men, perfectly upright and honest, held covenants sacred. Story: purposefully late home to skip church for a nap. Discovered he had become casual about prayers and scriptures because of schedule, heart had begun to change back to stone. Do not risk forfeiting the fruits of the ultimate operation.

Elder Michael T. Ringwood. Story, grandfather Ephraim K. Hanks heard that his brother had gone off with the Mormons, went off to retrieve him, ended up getting baptized. Lamoni's father, soft heart that that was willing to change, willing to give up both sins and kingdom. Self-reflection will times when we found it easier to believe the word of God, perhaps especially childhood. Sometimes we are like Naaman, "some great thing." Easiness and willingness to believe, soft hearts, will come from obedience to simple things.

Elder Joseph W. Sitati. Marvelous work. Last dispensation, keys of revelation, no respecter of persons. Dispensations: Enoch, Noah, Babel, Brother of Jared, Nephites, Abraham, lesser covenant under Moses, the Savior's ministry, mission to the Gentiles, last dispensation. Elder Sitati has lived to see the fulfillment of the prophecy of Xenos, all nations partaking of the gospel. Blessings he has seen at home in Africa--celestial culture is developing in homes. Able to break free from the shackles that restrict the use of agency. Singled out dowry as a specific example of one shackle.

Elder Christofferson. Story, James E. Faust in OCS. Does not battle justify relaxed standards? "In the end I simply said, 'I do not believe there is a double standard of morality.'" "This was one of the critical crossroads of my life." Moral agency must be accompanied by moral discipline, self-discipline based on moral standards. To choose the right when it is right, even when it is hard. Society: because there is no discipline, must be imposed by external control. Once gentlemanly behavior protected women from coarse behavior, now we rely on sexual harrassment laws. Recession, partly because of widespread dishonest and unethical conduct. There can never be enough rules so finely crafted as to anticipate and cover every situation, and even if there were enforcement would be impossibly expensive and burdensome. This approach leads to diminished freedom for everyone. We would not accept the yoke of Christ, so now we must tremble at the yoke of Caesar. Moral discipline. We stand with those who demonstrate virtue in their own lives and inculcate virtue in the rising generation. Teaching children: "'Then they will have gained a strength from what they are, not merely from what they know.'" Intelligent use of agency requires knowledge of the truth, knowledge of things as they really are. Satan does not promote objectivity, but is a vigorous multi- media advocate of sin. Story: candy bar. "My mother's love and discipline put an early and abrupt end to my life of crime." We do not have to yield simply because a temptation surfaces. "'Don't you want to?' The question intrigued me because it was so utterly beside the point. Mere wanting... [missed the rest of the quotation]" We cannot presume that the future will resemble the past--politically, economically, etc.--but moral discipline will be immense help to us, whatever challenges may come.

Pres. Monson. Time of permissiveness, we often find ourselves swimming against the current. Ye cannot cross this great deep, save I prepare you against the waves of the sea... and the floods which shall come. If we heed his words we will survive this time of permissiveness. He is ever mindful of us and will bless us as we do what is right. We are all in this together and every man, woman, and child has a part to play.

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

A privilege that could not be denied her

[Cc'ing Brother L______ in case I have your address wrong]

Sister L______,

Here is the quote I was thinking of. I couldn't find a copy of Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith so I couldn't verify whether it's in that book, but I found it in another source.

"He [Joseph Smith] also said many would awake on the morning of the resurrection sadly disappointed; for they, by transgression, would have neither wives nor children, for they surely would be taken from them and given to those who should prove themselves worthy. Again he said, a woman would have her choice; this was a privilege that could not be denied her." (Lucy Walker Kimball, as quoted in They Knew The Prophet, p. 136.)

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)

RE: Church Question

P.S. If you find all that confusing, let me try again: it is not true that there is only one God. As you originally observed, Jesus and his Father and the Holy Ghost are all Gods, and they are three different people. When Jesus told the Jews he was the Son of God, they accused him of blasphemy, and he said, basically, "In your own scriptures it says you are all gods. How can you say I'm blaspheming then because I say I am the Son of God?"

 

John 10:31-36:

 31 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.

 32 Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?

 33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.

 34 Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

 35 If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;

 36 Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?

 

He's referring back to Psalm 82:6, "I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High." So anyway, the simplest and most basic true answer to your question is, "It is not true that there is only one God. That is an old sectarian notion and is false."

 

-Max

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

To us there is but one God...

[In answer to the question, "I was studding Egyptian Religion, when I got thinking, we are suppose to believe in one God. Yet dont we believe in the father and the son, and dont we believe that they are both gods, so wouldnt that make two gods that we believe in?  Then there is the holy ghost, which doesnt that make three deities?  Then where does the devil play into it all.  We belive he is our brother, he is collecting an army of his own to fight agianst us, is he not a god in his own right? Would he not compare to anciant religions form of the god of the underworld?" I wrote the following]

 

When I read the scriptures, the impression I get is that when it talks about there being "one God," it's as a contrast to the many idolatrous gods of the Egyptians and the Babylonians, etc. They had a god of rain and a good of the river and a god of fertility and a god of the sun and on and on--and none of those gods were real or able to do the slightest thing, they were just blocks of wood or stone. It's offensive to see the children of God worshipping things that aren't even real, instead of a real being who actually has power to help them and advise them. Anyway, that's the feeling I get from e.g. Exodus 3:13-14. Moses asks, when they ask me which God sent me, what shall I tell them? And the Lord basically says, "The real one."

 

So when the Lord says, "There is no God else beside me; a just God and a Savior; there is none beside me" (Isa 45:21), I don't think he is any way intending to exclude his Father from consideration. He's just saying, "None of the gods YOU think are god actually are. Baal is not a God, nor Isis, nor Horus."

 

I suppose from a mythological viewpoint you could view any powerful being with a following as a god, and that would make Satan a god from that perspective. (In fact, Satan is referred to in scripture at least once as the "god of this world," i.e. he whom Babylon worships.) Ultimately, though, he is weak and no more a god than any other thing which has no power in the eternities, and is not a God at all.

 

That's my take on it anyway. What's yours?

 

-Max

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

 

Health care solution

I sent the following note to both my Senators and my Congressman:

 

Subject: You can have my vote if...

 

I'm a conservative-leaning independent, but I think the Democrats could instantly get my support for the public plan (even at a $1 trillion price tag over ten years) on one condition: hospitals must be required to let me pay cash for medical services at the same rate they would charge the public plan. One problem as I understand it with the health care industry is, if you took the same money you want to spend on health insurance and simply self-insured (i.e. invested it in bonds or CDs), when you actually needed health care you'd find that the hospitals charge you more for a given service than they charge health insurance companies, because of economies of scale and business leverage. I see that as a problem because it means you're forced into the insurance industry, you can't buy health care out of pocket, so the health CARE industry automatically inherits all the problems of the health INSURANCE industry. By letting me pay cash at the same rate as at least one insurance company (the public plan), it brings market forces back into play and, assuming that the public plan negotiates rates that are not foolishly high, gives health INSURANCE companies their most important competitor--not the public plan but me as an individual--and I don't have to be afraid if the public plan does happen to put the other health care providers out of business, even if there _were_ "death panels," since I could just buy care myself if the public plan won't provide it. Basically I'm using the government as a proxy to negotiate my rates for me.

 

Anyway, if you enable individuals to compete you'll have my vote even if I end up paying for something I'd rather not (the public plan) to get it. Fixing the structural problems in the system is worth it.

 

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Christopher Columbus and the Book of Mormon

So, you know Columbus is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, right?
 
1 Ne. 13: 12-13
  12 And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.
  13 And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.
 
Okay, so does everyone. Did you also know that Columbus realized he was being inspired? And that he was visited by angels? In order that we may gain greater understanding of 1 Ne. 13:12-13, I quote from the Oct 1992 issue of Ensign:
 
The novelty of Columbus's idea was not that the earth was round—every major geographer and scholar since the ancient Greeks accepted a spherical earth, as did seamen and educated people of the time. Rather, it was that the earth was not as far around as everyone believed. The most respected geographical authority in Columbus's time was Ptolemy, who had calculated the circumference of the earth at 21,840 miles (the modern measurement is 25,902 miles). Columbus preferred the estimates of Arab mathematician al-Farghani, who came up with a measurement of about 20,000 miles.
 
More important for Columbus, however, was the ratio of land to water. Here he made his greatest miscalculations. Marinus of Tyre had suggested that land extended for 225 degrees around the earth, leaving only 135 degrees of water between Portugal and China. But even that was too far for Columbus. Had not Esdras written (in the Apocrypha) that six parts of the globe are habitable land and only one part water? Columbus therefore reduced the width of the ocean by 28 degrees to account for a larger Asia and then another 30 degrees to Japan, because Marco Polo had reported (without seeing it, of course) that the island of Cipango (Japan) lay 1,500 miles off the coast of Cathay (China). Columbus subtracted 9 more degrees when he decided to depart from the Canary Islands.

Thus, he calculated the distance from the Canaries to Japan at about 2,400 miles. He was wrong, of course; the actual airline distance is 10,600 miles. But remarkably, what did lie about 2,400 miles west of the Canaries was an entirely new continent, unknown to anyone in Europe or Asia.
 
...Columbus would not be put off. He continued to promote his project so tenaciously that it gave rise to sundry stories and myths to explain his dogmatic certainty. There are so many flaws in these stories that it is amazing anyone ever believed them, much less modern critical scholars. Yet some people are willing to believe almost anything to explain Columbus's unmovable conviction rather than accept his claim that he was led by God. "I could sense his hand upon me," wrote Columbus, "so that it became clear to me that it was feasible to navigate from here to the Indies, and he gave me the will to do it."
 
...On the third voyage, he was unable to control the open rebellion that had broken out in the new colony he had founded on his second voyage. In October 1500, Columbus was arrested and deported to Spain in chains.

The humiliation was overwhelming. In a letter to a friend, Columbus wrote, "The only thing that sustains me is my hope in him who created everyone; his support has always been near. On one occasion not long ago, when I was deeply distressed, he raised me with his right arm, saying: 'O man of little faith, arise, it is I, do not be afraid.' "

Later, during his fourth voyage, Columbus received another divine assurance during an extremely perilous moment when he was about to abandon all hope. "Exhausted, I fell asleep, groaning," he reported to the sovereigns. "I heard a very compassionate voice, saying: 'O fool and slow to believe and to serve thy God, the God of all! … Thou criest for help, doubting. Answer, who has afflicted thee so greatly and so often, God or the world? … Not one jot of His word fails; all that He promises, He performs with interest; is this the manner of men? I have said that which thy Creator has done for thee and does for all men. Now in part He shows thee the reward for the anguish and danger which thou hast endured in the service of others.' I heard all of this as if I were in a trance, but I had no answer to give to words so true, but could only weep for my errors. He, whoever he was, who spoke to me, ended saying: 'Fear not; have trust; all these tribulations are written upon marble and are not without cause.'" [emphasis added]

 

Columbus was wrong about some of the details of geography, and he didn't fully understand the purpose of his mission--but he knew that God had a work for him to do and he did it.
 
-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Miss Manners (Is Hilarious)

Clever people make me happy. The line in bold reminds me of K.'s sense of humor.

 

-M.

 

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/18/AR2009081803382_2.html  

Dear Miss Manners:

When is it appropriate for men to wear white tuxedos? My family is planning an anniversary gala, and would like to have some of the young men escort guests to their tables.

So far so good, but they want the men to wear white tuxedos because it is August. I told them that since the affair was being held after 5 p.m. and it is being set up as a formal (semi-black tie) event, that white was not right to wear. I also said that the men would look like they were ready to pass out ice cream. Am I wrong?

 
Not about the hope of double scoops of chocolate whirl this will engender, if Miss Manners may judge by her own reaction. That white dinner jackets look silly, she agrees.
 
But they are not incorrect as summer evening clothes, so your objections about the hours and the degree of formality are incorrect. They do qualify as black tie. (Miss Manners has no idea what semi-black tie might be, but it sounds disheveled.)

 

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Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

IQ and financial acumen

Surprise, surprise! IQ is a general cognitive phenomenon, it's not subject matter-specific. It turns out that having a high IQ means you're likely to make better financial choices.
 
See http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q2/mail570.html#IQ which refers to:

People with higher IQs make wiser economic choices, study finds
http://www.physorg.com/print160077614.html 

People with higher measures of cognitive ability are more likely to make good choices in several different types of economic decisions, according to a new study with researchers from the University of Minnesota's Twin Cities and Morris campuses.

The study, set to be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, was conducted with 1,000 trainee truck drivers at Schneider National, Inc., an American motor carrier employing 20,000. The researchers measured the trainees' cognitive skills and asked them to make choices in several economic experiments, and then followed them on the job.

People with better cognitive skills, in particular higher IQ, were more willing to take calculated risks and to save their money and made more consistent choices. They were also more likely to be cooperative in a strategic situation, and exhibited higher "social awareness" in that they more accurately forecasted others' behavior.

The researchers also tracked how trainees persevered on their new job. The company paid for the training of those who stayed a year, but those who left early owed thousands in training costs. The study found that those with the highest level of cognitive ability stayed at twice the rate of those with the lowest.

The finding that individual characteristics that improve economic success--patience, risk taking and effective social behavior--all cluster together and are linked through cognitive skill, which could have implications for policy making and education.

This matches my modest personal experience. Several weeks ago, I spent a few days asking various friends, "If you had a choice between $500 now or a 15% chance of $1,000,000 in six months, which would you pick?" I thought the choice was obvious, but in practice I was shocked at how many people picked the $500. While I can potentially imagine some scenarios in which the certainty of $500 has greater utility (you're living on the edge already and $500 is enough to keep you from losing your house and spiraling down into the disaster of homelessness) I can't possibly imagine that 60% of the people I know are in that situation, which means that most or all of them aren't making good financial decisions. You will never get another chance at an investment with a 60,000% annualized expected-value rate-of-return. All of the financial decisions you will ever make in your life are a worse bet than that. Take the 15%!!! 

And of course there's the whole mystery of credit card debt. Don't get me wrong--I've found some situations where it's useful to have a credit card, and there are even situations where I can see that it would be advantageous to carry a balance for a brief period of time, if an unexpected expense requires liquidating assets and you need more time to avoid taking a loss. Still, I remember the first time I was ever exposed to credit cards. I was somewhere around four or five years old, and I remember being at a store and watching my mom pay for something with a credit card--the clerk had this awkward contraption with carbon paper, and he put the card in there and worked the device (ka-chunka-chunka!) and gave it back to my mother, then did some paperwork for a minute and then we were done--and I was amazed. You can actually buy stuff without money! I also remember my disillusionment when I found out, later that day, that you have to pay the money back. My disgruntled reaction: "Well then what's the point?!"

 

And that's still basically my attitude toward credit card debt today. The crazy thing is that it should be the universal attitude, but somehow it isn't.

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Twin studies

This guy reminds me of Judith Harris. I wonder if it's still true.

 

"In graduate school at UC [the University of California] Berkeley, I was reading a book edited by psychiatrist D. D. Jackson on the etiology of schizophrenia. The first chapter, by a geneticist, was on twin studies. Then Jackson refuted it all with just the kind of [guff] you hear now against twin studies. He said families are the cause of schizophrenia. I remember saying in a graduate seminar, "Most of this stuff [in Jackson's argument] is junk"—I crawled out of the seminar room a bloody pulp. The reaction [from seminar members] was my first absolutely clear-cut demonstration that psychologists believed correlation is causation, ... and many still do."

 

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q3/mail578.html#Twins

 

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Soft-hearted dupes

M.,

 

I spent some time today trying to remember enough names to dig up this info--someone made a disparaging comment about HUAC and McCarthy, but the fact is that the in some cases HUAC was right and the soft-hearted "useful idiots" were wrong, even if they managed to keep the cases controversial. (That is, you don't have to be innocent to convince a lot of people that you're being witchhunted.) The Rosenbergs are a case in point. They were executed for treason fifty years ago. This has been "controversial" for a long time because a lot of people thought they weren't guilty. In 2008, one of their co-conspirators confessed, without regret, that the Rosenbergs and their supporters had lied to everybody all along and that they and he had actually done the things they were accused of (passing secrets to the Soviets), although according to him "spying" isn't the way he likes to think of it.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

 

Anyway, I remember hearing about this at the time, but it took me a while to track it down and so per policy this time I'm notifying you and archiving the info (and Cc'ing the blog).

 

-Max

 

--

Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

 

Spy vs. Spy

Okay, you've got to admit this is pretty interesting.

 

Facts: On July 24, between the islands of Oland and Gotland, the vessel was attacked by a group of 10 to 12 people in black masks. They beat and bound the crew while searching for something on the vessel. According to some sources, the hijackers spent nearly 12 hours on the Arctic Sea before leaving empty-handed... It was allegedly hijacked again on August 3, at which point the hijackers demanded a $1.5 million ransom for the vessel's safe release. The Russian navy embarked on its first major operation since the end of the Cold War, rushing three battleships and one frigate to find the Arctic Sea.

 

Speculation: Given the scale of the potential international brouhaha, a country with a distinct interest in preventing this shipment chose to interdict it in an unofficial manner.

 

-Max

 

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Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

 

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

 

Message in a Bottle

Dear K.,
 
How are you? I mean that sincerely. The fact that my mind is blank ought perhaps to clue me in to the possibility that I ought to write later when I do have something to say, but I can't help wanting to interact with you in some way anyway. For so long you've been my best friend--who knows how long? maybe years, maybe centuries--but there's still so much about you that I only guess at, but wish to know. So, dear friend, how are you?
 
I love the climate and terrain here in Washington. One thing about desk jobs though--it's important for me to interact with the actual physical universe because of all the time I spend living in my head, and it takes a fairly deliberate effort to do so. Pain is a funny thing. Though it isn't pleasant in and of itself, there's something deeply satisfying about having worked hard enough to have sore muscles all over your body.
 
I really like my new apartment, by the way. It's my first time without roommates, and to my surprise I find that rather than being lonely I enjoy controlling the whole space, deciding how most efficiently to use each room, internalizing the details of what I own and precisely where it is, and what is okay to throw away or not buy in the first place. And when I clean something it stays clean--it's very motivating. I think so far at least I have fewer urges to go out and spend money--perhaps that was a coping mechanism for getting away from people (and clutter).
 
I also bought an iPod Nano. It's amazingly small and light. Music makes me happy. I continue to read (both sci-fi/fantasy and nonfiction, variously scientific, psychological, political, or business-oriented). How are your hobbies?
 
It's nice to talk with you. Be well, dear friend.
 
Love,
Maximilian
 
P.S. I now have a multicolored propeller beanie. Watching the red propeller spin in the wind makes me happy.
 
(Hmmm. "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Propeller Beanie." Because seriously, what is more amazing and enviable, a coat or a hat? What do you think?)
 
--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!
 
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Medical malpractice

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/036480.html

In 2003, $11 billion for medical malpractice premiums, out of $215 billion for all liability insurance, or out of $1.5 trillion on health care costs.

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Miscalculations and Interpersonal Relationships

You know, M., if I had known then what I do now, there are several things I probably wouldn't have done. One is this: there were occasions when I knowingly did things that would hurt my relationship with K., because I thought the benefit to her would be greater than the cost. For instance, still forwarding her interesting articles while we weren't on good terms. I thought she would value the information despite the source (incorrect assumption), and that our relationship wasn't important to her so any damage to it would also not be important (also incorrect). Things would have turned out better if I had assumed that we were both important to each other.

That would also have changed the way I addressed problems in our relationship. For instance, when she felt inundated with Max-ness (you know I can be pretty overbearing), she tended to react by being purposefully rude so that I'd back off. Eventually I would notice and stop talking to her, and I'd count that as further evidence that she didn't really care about our relationship. At which point she would now feel comfortable talking to me again, so we'd drift back into being friends. It was a vicious, perplexing cycle. If I had known we cared about each other I would have used my normal tactic of asking, "Hey, what's up with the way you're treating me lately?" and she probably would have told me that I needed to back off. Since I figured I already knew, though, I didn't ask, I just kept assuming that she occasionally found me useful but didn't like me very much as a human being, and that she was sometimes annoyingly rude--and the cycle never got fixed.

There are things I would do differently if I had the chance to do them over again, now that I know more.

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Gulf War I (Recommended)

A summary of the first Gulf War. Very readable, pretty short.
Discusses motivations and larger context.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/2009/Q3/mail583.html#Trainor

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)

Tax revenues

[From http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/slideshow/ALeqM5ibGXhJv-N7Qg6nh-nQpPOgJRTgugD99ROBK80?index=0]



I wonder what caused the big spike in corporate tax revenue during the Bush years.

-Max

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

I love Gmail!

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html

--
Rock Is Dead. Long Live Scissors!

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a
man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and
desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although
he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F.
Smith (manual, p. 69)