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| Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 | | 6:54 pm |
substantially friends only for now
I've noticed that my posts has become primarily friends-only lately. I'm not too picky about adding people I know, so if you want to read, leave a comment and let me know. If you don't have a journal, but know me in person and read this, leave a comment and let me know that.
If you don't know me but want to read this anyway, probably you should get to know me at least slightly via the usual online mechanisms. I don't mind IMs or comments from strangers saying as much.
[future-dated to 2010, at which point my posting habits probably will have shifted again] | | Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 | | 6:00 pm |
talking to robots I've started using YIM, since, well, it's the standard chat program at the world's #2 search engine, where I work. *cough cough*. It turns out that YIM has a Spim problem. I had an "interesting" IM conversation at work today with a YIM robot, and wanted to share it, since it has some interesting implementation techniques. ( talking to robots>
1) Note how each line is prefixed and suffixed with 5 characters of gibberish. I assume this is to defeat anti-spim filters that look for duplicates. They'd be better off trying to limit messages per account, probably. I don't know why they don't. Sybil problems?
2) They use escape sequences for the URLs -- presumably also to evade spim filters.
3) Note how it responds, one-for-one, to input lines with a solicitation. The 1,2,3,4,5 lines were there to demonstrate that, and to measure the robot's response time.
4) They seem to have a couple lines of )On The Bus. Freeway traffic is light today -- perhaps from drivers abiding by the air quality warning and minimizing traffic. hey weren't kidding when they said it was a bad air quality day. It's amazingly hazy here down here in the Valley. The hills to the east, normally gorgeously clear, are badly obscured. A mix of auto smog, plus smoke from the fires. MP piece is ready to go. Made my hotel reservation. Today has been good. Current Music: red elvises: me and my baby | | 4:39 pm |
| | Monday, July 7th, 2008 | | 6:24 pm |
whee Had a fairly awesome weekend. With people and music and fun. Went to see the Red Elvises at Slim's, in the city. I didn't really know the band and Kate didn't think it was my type of music -- but it was. Whee! And work is moving along. We're basically set to go public. So that'll be awesome. I have three TODO items for the next day or two: finish Manhattan Project article. Send in formal letterhead Yahoo! offer letter to the residency folks. Arrange for accommodation in Pittsburgh. None will take really long, but the first is scary, the second requires me to grab a xerox machine somewhere (RAD lab?) and the third is made difficult by timezones. Current Mood:  cheerfulCurrent Music: dylan: what good am I | | Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 | | 8:13 pm |
blegging for books Addendum to last post: I'm looking for good books on "engineering management" or science management. The book I'd love to read would be a collection of well drawn and analyzed case studies of military procurement in various countries. I'd settle for almost anything fun and readable on the topics, though. I want to know what kinds of cultures lead to reliable engineering, and which just dribble away time and money. I don't want a business how-to; I want to read histories, and in particular, the fun readable kind. Current Mood: cheerfulCurrent Music: pandora | | 6:25 pm |
Been reading up on engineering and science management, particularly in the defense context. Lots and lots to chew on. For instance, it's amazingly hard for governments to shut down bad programs. The US government stopped funding psychics in 1995, after a twenty year history. Oops.
Interestingly, the problem isn't "political meddling". It's that in a huge bureaucracy, which the defense establishment is, where large numbers of individuals have budgets that they can gamble with, it's almost certain that someone with a budget wants to roll the dice on a nut in Palo Alto who claims to be able to find nuclear submarines by waving a dowsing rod over a map. Similarly, we spent millions of dollars on a probably-impossible, almost-certainly-pointless Hafnium isomer bomb. Too many people were willing to take longshot bets.
It's a hard problem to avoid -- we want to avoid idiot bets, but no two program managers quite agree on which bets are risky but worth it, and which are stupid. We turned away Enrico Fermi, back in the day, and ever since, we've been suckers for long shot bets on obscure but self-confident physicists.
Aside -- the 880 in east oakland is amazingly bumpy. Any ideas why?
Current Music: dylan: when the deal goes down | | Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 | | 10:29 pm |
drinking with your kids Got stuff done today. Filesystems study session was good. Just hoping there isn't drama at work tomorrow. Social science has confirmed something that smart parents knew: it's better to teach your kids to drink, by drinking moderately and responsibly with them, than to turn them loose or buy them beer. It shocks me that parents would buy the kids liquor and leave them alone with it, though I'm told it's common. In contrast, dad started offering alcohol to Nathaniel and myself when we were in our late teens. And I think neither of us drinks irresponsibly, since our understanding is that drinking means "one or two drinks in a sitting, with other people". Readers: when and how did you start drinking? What involvement did your parents have? Current Mood: cheerfulCurrent Music: G+S: Iolanthe | | Monday, June 16th, 2008 | | 10:31 pm |
I'm giving a talk tomorrow at PARC. To paying customers. (they're buying me lunch!) Slides are set, but I haven't had a chance to practice. I did do a serious outline ahead of time, and stick it in the speaker's notes. Hope that's enough. Current Mood: cheerfulCurrent Music: angel | | Sunday, June 15th, 2008 | | 10:35 pm |
semiliterate reporters From the NY Times:
Nuclear experts said a warhead built from the new design was small enough to fit atop a family of medium-range missiles that derive from North Korea’s Nodong class of missiles. Those missiles include Pakistan’s Ghauri and Iran’s Shahab. All are about four feet wide, and any warhead atop them must, by definition, be smaller.
There's two things wrong here. First, it's not true that a missile's payload must have a lower diameter than the missile in question. Consider the Delta II with payload fairings. Also, even if it were true, it wouldn't be by definition. Nothing in the definition of diameter or missile implies the claim in question. "By definition" simply doesn't mean "necessarily". And now, bed. Have to take the bus to work tomorrow, hence up early. Current Mood:  tiredCurrent Music: the strangelings | | Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 | | 5:50 pm |
stolen from a conversation with Strataluna I'm on the Yahoo! bus heading home. More precisely, I'm on the Yahoo! bus, which is waiting to merge into the carpool lane of the 880N freeway. It's warm and gorgeous and sunny day down here in sili valley. Every so often I do a doubletake when I realize that after spending my youth as a computer geek, I now work in silicon valley. Granted, only for a summer, but still. I sometimes wonder if I should be taking off my shoes, or kissing the ground -- And then I realize that the ground is paved. The median strips on the surface arterials are gren, and many of the office parks have lawns. But otherwise, it feels like the whole damn county is a mix of freeways, six-lane surface arterials, parking lots, and office parks. There's no visible urban centers anywhere near me, and so I have this uncanny feeling of being nowhere in particular. The sheer formlessness of this place is freaky. It's a very alien landscape. And I can't decide if this is one of the most economically productive places on earth in spite of, or because of that. Work goes well. Ruckus-at-Yahoo is probably dead, but I'm going to be building interesting things with Andy, so life still has meaning. Current Mood:  relaxedCurrent Music: decemberists: shiny | | Thursday, June 5th, 2008 | | 5:37 pm |
Blurf. Retreat was intense, as usual, and now I'm kinda zonked. Gonna go into a coma this weekend, I think. Day at Yahoo! was sadly underproductive, though the tired was only a small part. Spent a while fighting with HOD. But things are getting better, and tomorrow, FINALLY, I should be able to test and release my fancypants disk-aware scheduler. Tomorrow I'm driving down with AndyK, so I aim to get a full night's sleep. And in other good news, Randy thinks the RAD lab will cover my SOUPS trip. Yaaaay! Current Mood: tiredCurrent Music: dylan: ain't talkin | | Thursday, May 29th, 2008 | | 5:56 pm |
on the bus *giggle*; I can see the caltrans freeway speed report and I can see out the window. I'm stuck in that red smear in south fremont. :( (Showing that traffic on the 880 northbound isn't really moving.) I'm not sure why it's such a chokepoint; it's possible there's a lane-count reduction, upstream from the junction with Cali-237. Fortunately, the drive actually has fairly nice scenery. There's a nice contrast between the mudflats on the bay, on my left, and the Pacific Coast hills on the right. The bus is high enough that ou get a good view. In other news, work is going okay. You can follow my progress on the Apache JIRA system. This is one of the perks of open-source. Tonight I'm going to have some much-needed liquid refreshment, funded by the CS grad student association, then finish my poster and slides for the retreat. Guh. Current Mood: cheerfulCurrent Music: hail columbia! | | Monday, May 26th, 2008 | | 7:06 pm |
Got some stuff done today. Bah. Don't really want work tomorrow. Enjoyed not being on the frenetic schedule. I understand why people with jobs like weekends so much. (As a student, I do homework on the weekend, but have time to relax during the work week.) This week will also be slightly hectic; lab retreat is Monday, and I have a poster and a presentation to prepare. Timing on Falcon Ridge may be too tight, and transportation too awkward. Thinking of visiting parents in DC instead. However. I finish at Yahoo on Aug 15. I'm thinking road trip starting near DC around the 17th, finishing in the Bay Area around Aug 25. Who's interested? Current Mood:  thoughtfulCurrent Music: judas maccabeus | | 10:46 am |
KublaCon, and 1860 Went down to KublaCon in Burlingame. Some guy was playtesting this card+board game he had put together about the 1860 election The game name is "Divided Republic". It seemed like a lot of fun, and if it ever gets published, I want a copy. Players take turns either campaigning in states, or playing event cards. Events include things like "give a platform speech on Kansas", and "Abolitionist intrigues". It suffered from the common defect of all political games that I've seen: the choices presented to players are fundamentally unpolitical; they're questions of tactic -- "which states do I want to campaign in" --rather than of principle, which is the thing most of us care about in politics. The game struck a chord with me, since I've been rereading Lord Charnwood's biography of Lincoln. It's a really good history. It was written in 1917 by a Brit, and he brings an outsider's detachment, and he go to some pains to explain American politics; valuable, for American readers who may tend to project backwards, anachronistically. Charnwood also wants to explain why and in what way Lincoln was a great man; something most Americans actually don't think about. We remember what he did as president, but not necessarily who he was beforehand. A first thing that Charnwood brings out is that Lincoln was in some ways much less obscure than we remember him as being. He didn't have a national reputation before 1858, but he was a leader first of the Whig, and then of the Republican party of Illinois. He was tipped to be governor of the Oregon Territory in 1848, and then was in serious consideration for vice president in 1856. He was regularly in consideration for House and Senate seats, and regularly ordered his supporters to vote for others, who he believed were more electable. In particular, in 1854, he was for a while the front runner, and threw his support behind Lyman Trumbull for senate in order to head off a Douglas crony. Another point that Charnwood raises is that Lincoln got famous because he was possibly the most articulate, reasonable, and clear-thinking person in the country, on the most important issue of the day. He was not an outstanding orator in the sense that it was understood then or now. His rhetoric, particularly from 1854 to 1860, is almost totally free of ornament. The Cooper Union speech, which launched his presidential campaign, has remarkably little rhetorical ornament. The tone is cool, leavened only very occasionally by humor or a startling phrase. This style is actually characteristic of much of Lincoln's political rhetoric -- have a look at the Lincoln-Douglas debates if you don't believe me. Lincoln seldom speaks in sound bites. The one line from the first Innaugural that anybody remembers, the one about "mystic chords of memory", was added by Seward. He sounds like a lawyer, he doesn't sound like Bob Shrum or Peggy Noonan. He eschews metaphor -- you wouldn't catch him using a phrase like "thousand points of light" or "audacity of hope". Lincoln's rhetorical beauty is that of Euclid -- spare, drawing the eye to the logical argument, not to the decoration. As Charnwood notes, only an uncommonly honest politician can afford to rest his appeal so completely on the underlying logic and facts. Charnwood is also interested in a question that modern historians are perhaps too timid to address: whose fault was the war, and why? He puts the blame on Northern politicians, who had gotten into the habit of assuming that the solution to every crisis was a compromise that fuzzed principles enough to achieve a settlement. Compromise is usually a great political virtue; the problem was that the South became convinced that the North would inevitably give way in a confrontation, and as a result, they worked themselves into increasing fanaticism without ever being checked by serious opposition. What made Lincoln Lincoln was that he was virtually the only person in Northern politics who said not merely "slavery is wrong, but "this is as far as we will go to compromise and no farther" -- there was tremendous pressure, which even people as prominent as Seward wanted to bow to, to make common cause with Douglas and accept popular sovereignty. And Lincoln played a crucial role in blocking this. Current Mood: thoughtfulCurrent Music: pandora | | Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 | | 3:10 pm |
This morning I sent my email to EBMUD and the relevant city of Berkeley departments. Can't find an appropriate UC contact. No response yet. Current Mood:  workingCurrent Music: dylan: If you see her, say hello | | Monday, May 19th, 2008 | | 11:27 pm |
first day at Yahoo Had my first day at Yahoo. Not going to go into details before reading the company blogging policy, but I will say that I'm optimistic. And the shuttle buses are totally sweet. Also, they gave me a jellybean dispenser. If I leave it on my desk, my teeth will rot though. Current Mood:  happyCurrent Music: dion with the wanderers | | Sunday, May 18th, 2008 | | 3:17 pm |
Yahoo paperwork is done, SOUPS paper is essentially finished. (Readers eagerly welcomed!) I have a week on the PL paper, which is 80+% done. And I should xerox my residency stuff today, but that won't take long. I've been brooding for a while about American expectations for higher education. My sense is that they're badly screwed up; I just wish I knew how to fix them. Steve Hanna passed along a pointer to a piece in the Atlantic Monthly about one instructor's experience teaching intro English in a community college. Well worth the read, and I'd love to hear thoughts.
One of the things I try to do on the first night of English 102 is relate the literary techniques we will study to novels that the students have already read. I try to find books familiar to everyone. This has so far proven impossible. My students don’t read much, as a rule, and though I think of them monolithically, they don’t really share a culture. To Kill a Mockingbird? Nope. (And I thought everyone had read that!) Animal Farm? No. If they have read it, they don’t remember it. The Outsiders? The Chocolate War? No and no. Charlotte’s Web? You’d think so, but no. So then I expand the exercise to general works of narrative art, meaning movies, but that doesn’t work much better. Oddly, there are no movies that they all have seen—well, except for one. They’ve all seen The Wizard of Oz. Some have caught it multiple times. So we work with the old warhorse of a quest narrative. The farmhands’ early conversation illustrates foreshadowing. The witch melts at the climax. Theme? Hands fly up. Everybody knows that one—perhaps all too well. Dorothy learns that she can do anything she puts her mind to and that all the tools she needs to succeed are already within her. I skip the denouement: the intellectually ambitious scarecrow proudly mangles the Pythagorean theorem and is awarded a questionable diploma in a dreamland far removed from reality. That’s art holding up a mirror all too closely to our own poignant scholarly endeavors.
| | 1:03 pm |
paperwork Bah. I hadn't realized how much paperwork Yahoo wanted me to do before starting tomorrow. Time to sit down and crank through it... Current Mood: workingCurrent Music: beethoven 3rd symphony | | Friday, May 16th, 2008 | | 6:38 pm |
yahoo problems fixed Got the phone call about an hour ago. Yahoo has cleared me to start on Monday. Current Mood:  relieved | | Monday, May 12th, 2008 | | 12:38 am |
The Independent, the British left-wing broadsheet, has balls. They just ran an amazingly harsh piece on organic food.
The proponents of organic food – particularly celebrities, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, who have jumped on the organic bandwagon – say there is a "cocktail effect" of pesticides. Some point to an "epidemic of cancer". In fact, there is no epidemic of cancer. When age-standardised, cancer rates are falling dramatically and have been doing so for 50 years.
If there is a "cocktail effect" it would first show up in farmers, but they have among the lowest cancer rates of any group. Carcinogenic effects of pesticides could show up as stomach cancer, but stomach cancer rates have fallen faster than any other. Sixty years ago, all Britain's food was organic; we lived only until our early sixties, malnutrition and food poisoning were rife. Now, modern agriculture (including the careful use of well-tested chemicals) makes food cheap and safe and we live into our eighties.
Read the rest, it's well worth it. Unhappily, the U of C has distinctly less spirit to them. I got an email from Chancellor Birgenau, explaining that "For graduate students, at least 45 percent of new fee revenue generated by those students would be earmarked to help offset the impact of higher fees." Students in rich departments don't need finaid, since the department pays. Therefore, they (or rather, their departments) are the ones who'll pay. The way I read this, it's basically Cal saying "we're going to squeeze the departments that have money extra hard to make up for the fact that half of them don't have money." This is probably bad for CS, since it raises our per-student fees to cover the costs of the English department. Current Mood: recumbent |
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arisrabkin's journal