The sick man of American politics
I'm not entirely convinced that the Democratic party will exist, at least not in the form that we know it, 20 years from now.
People always talk about how American politics are inherently two-party, and I certainly can't argue with the historical record there, but it's also true that those two parties have not been constant over the years. Admittedly, the Dems and Reps have been with us since the end of the Civil War, but even then, they've shifted to occupy different positions on the political spectrum than they did in 1865. Thus, I don't think it's crazy to suggest that another such change would be possible.
Why do I have this opinion? Simple. The Republican Party has essentially dominated political discourse for the past 34 years or so. It's seemed like, as long as I can remember, the Democrats have been fighting a rear-guard action to try to hold back the tide of Republican policy, rather than being able to discuss the issues on their side of the table. Even in the brief interlude in 1992-94 when the Democrats were able to talk about things like national health care and gays in the military, they accomplished depressingly little, being torn apart by their own fractiousness. And those issues are no longer part of the national discourse: health care is a taboo subject these days, and "don't ask, don't tell" is firmly entrenched in policy. I certainly don't see this changing any time soon, except for that rear-guard action becoming more and more ineffectual as the money and media, the ultimate determiners of the victor, continue to tilt to the right. And I haven't even begun to discuss the deleterious effects of the Greens on the party.
Sometimes it seems like the party is only still alive because, like the Ottoman Empire (did you catch the reference at the top?), there's nothing immediately available to replace it. Ralph Nader's dreams aside, there's no way the Greens will ever be a viable party at the national level. Look, the very name of the party is immediately going to alienate the half of the electorate who thinks environmental issues should be subordinate to other concerns, and that's hardly a great foundation to build a national party on. The Green party certainly will continue to show strength in isolated pockets, but that strength is deceptive, since there are still great swaths of the country where the Greens know that there's no point in bothering to run. Barring an unprecedented sea change in American politics, it'll never happen.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the politics of the first half of the 20th century to discuss whether a role reversal between the parties can occur again. (If only I could get Mark Staloff to read this...) My intuitive answer is to say no, but then again, I'll bet if you traveled back to 1876 and asked a random political observer if he expected that the parties would end up like they are now, he'd probably think you were crazy. Again, I can't see it happening without a major external trigger; though I have no particular desire to live through a Great Depression of my own, I don't think it's completely implausible, either.
As Perot and Ventura have demonstrated, the wellspring of self-identified centrists dissatisfied with both major parties is quite a deep one, so I suppose the most plausible scenario is the appearance of a similar candidate who manages to secure a surprising victory. I don't find the victory part hard to believe at all; after all, Ventura did manage to do it (yeah, yeah, there's a difference between the gubernatorial and presidential level, I know). It's the question of what comes afterwards. To put it delicately, Ventura and Perot are difficult people to build a party around (after all, the efforts to construct a national Reform party have not really gotten all that far); to put it less delicately, they're both pretty much wackos. But of course, you have to be a little bit crazy to try running a third-party campaign in today's climate to begin with, so we have a true Catch-22.
Thus, I find it implausible that a third-party candidate would win and then be able to construct a new party apparatus from the ground up after winning. Nor do I think the grassroots, bottom-up approach is likely to meet with much success either, since I can't see how such a party could ever find the resources to mount a national campaign. But the scenario I can see happening is a third-party candidate (possibly a Democrat who bolted the party after a bitter primary struggle...) gaining a large number of Democratic defections after election and thus inheriting a large chunk of the party already constructed, and building a viable platform from that. And remember, you heard it here first.
(Okay, you probably didn't. But could you claim that you did, anyway? Please?)
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
Sunday, November 17, 2002
Nitpick of the moment
In movies (excepting foreign films, of course), there's always a convention that the characters will speak in English, no matter what language they "actually" speak; it's just implicit that somewhere along the line this has been magically translated into English for our benefit, even though (say) Russian submarine officers obviously would speak to each other in Russian. The one exception to this is, of course, when they want to say something that the hero won't understand, and then they suddenly do speak in Russian, perhaps with subtitles.
Now, Kenneth has bequeathed to me some science fiction anthologies, which I've been sporadically reading. Since they're nominally "best of"-type anthologies, they do somewhat better than Sturgeon's Law, but the quality still has a pretty wide variation.
Wait, I'm getting somewhere with this. So one of the stories makes a big deal about using a base-8 number system, explaining it and all of the associated units in one of the more clunky expositions you'll see. And yet, on the same page as this clunky exposition, the numbers "999" and "ninety" are both used. But in base 8, there is no such number as "9". In fact, I could even argue that there's no such number as "8", either, which (as you might expect) is strewn all over the story. It's like the autotranslator kicks in, but only when the author remembers to stick it in. And because of this carelessness, whenever I see "10", I have to wonder: does he mean 10 base 10, or 10 base 8 (that is, 8)? In fact, you could argue that if it were really in a base-8 system, they would refer to it as base 10, since any numerical system in its own base will be "base 10". (That is, if we had grown up hexadecimal, would base 10 be base 10? No. It'd be base A.)
Oh, and the actual story benefit of having this wonderful, exciting different number system? Nothing at all, of course. All it is is a chance for the author to show off his knowledge of sixth-grade math, at the expense of making the reader think a little harder to figure out just what the heck is going on. Grumble, grumble.
In movies (excepting foreign films, of course), there's always a convention that the characters will speak in English, no matter what language they "actually" speak; it's just implicit that somewhere along the line this has been magically translated into English for our benefit, even though (say) Russian submarine officers obviously would speak to each other in Russian. The one exception to this is, of course, when they want to say something that the hero won't understand, and then they suddenly do speak in Russian, perhaps with subtitles.
Now, Kenneth has bequeathed to me some science fiction anthologies, which I've been sporadically reading. Since they're nominally "best of"-type anthologies, they do somewhat better than Sturgeon's Law, but the quality still has a pretty wide variation.
Wait, I'm getting somewhere with this. So one of the stories makes a big deal about using a base-8 number system, explaining it and all of the associated units in one of the more clunky expositions you'll see. And yet, on the same page as this clunky exposition, the numbers "999" and "ninety" are both used. But in base 8, there is no such number as "9". In fact, I could even argue that there's no such number as "8", either, which (as you might expect) is strewn all over the story. It's like the autotranslator kicks in, but only when the author remembers to stick it in. And because of this carelessness, whenever I see "10", I have to wonder: does he mean 10 base 10, or 10 base 8 (that is, 8)? In fact, you could argue that if it were really in a base-8 system, they would refer to it as base 10, since any numerical system in its own base will be "base 10". (That is, if we had grown up hexadecimal, would base 10 be base 10? No. It'd be base A.)
Oh, and the actual story benefit of having this wonderful, exciting different number system? Nothing at all, of course. All it is is a chance for the author to show off his knowledge of sixth-grade math, at the expense of making the reader think a little harder to figure out just what the heck is going on. Grumble, grumble.
Pow.
So I watched Punch-Drunk Love today with Juliana. I have to say, it's been a long time since a movie has made me feel so profoundly uncomfortable. It's not that it was bad, at least by objective standards; it just engendered a strong sense of discomfort. Let me try to explain why.
Everyone is screwed up in their own ways, me included; it's part of the human condition, after all. But seeing someone who has serious issues, like Sandler's character does, triggers in me a primordial fear, a worry that I'm really more screwed-up than average and just don't realize it. And, in a sense, it reverses the normal defense mechanism -- instead of me saying "well, it's okay, because everyone is like this to some extent", the movie essentially presents "well, here's a guy who has some of these same traits, and he's obviously not okay".
But, of course, the kicker is that his screwed-up-ness just happens to be exactly the right tool for the job, so to speak. While mine isn't. Or if it is, it's sure not doing a good job revealing that fact.
So I watched Punch-Drunk Love today with Juliana. I have to say, it's been a long time since a movie has made me feel so profoundly uncomfortable. It's not that it was bad, at least by objective standards; it just engendered a strong sense of discomfort. Let me try to explain why.
Everyone is screwed up in their own ways, me included; it's part of the human condition, after all. But seeing someone who has serious issues, like Sandler's character does, triggers in me a primordial fear, a worry that I'm really more screwed-up than average and just don't realize it. And, in a sense, it reverses the normal defense mechanism -- instead of me saying "well, it's okay, because everyone is like this to some extent", the movie essentially presents "well, here's a guy who has some of these same traits, and he's obviously not okay".
But, of course, the kicker is that his screwed-up-ness just happens to be exactly the right tool for the job, so to speak. While mine isn't. Or if it is, it's sure not doing a good job revealing that fact.
Friday, November 15, 2002
Belated catching-up
So I'm finally getting around to reading the backlog in some of my political sources that I've let accumulate for the past couple of weeks. Fortunately, my strategy seems to have completely worked -- the time interval has made it less bad, and absorbing it all in one large dose allows me to just feel disappointed at the beginning and get it over with rather thhan my disappointment just continually increasing over time.
I suspect that this interval of coping will only last until the next ridiculous happening, though, but I'll enjoy it while it is here.
So I'm finally getting around to reading the backlog in some of my political sources that I've let accumulate for the past couple of weeks. Fortunately, my strategy seems to have completely worked -- the time interval has made it less bad, and absorbing it all in one large dose allows me to just feel disappointed at the beginning and get it over with rather thhan my disappointment just continually increasing over time.
I suspect that this interval of coping will only last until the next ridiculous happening, though, but I'll enjoy it while it is here.
Thursday, November 14, 2002
Ow. Ow ow ow.
So, perhaps not surprisingly, all of this DDR-playing has caused my calves to ache something fierce, which means that my guilt about always driving to campus is now balanced by the fact that walking would be considerably more unhappy.
I will eventually stop feeling this way, right? Right?
So, perhaps not surprisingly, all of this DDR-playing has caused my calves to ache something fierce, which means that my guilt about always driving to campus is now balanced by the fact that walking would be considerably more unhappy.
I will eventually stop feeling this way, right? Right?
Wednesday, November 13, 2002
Low-level worry of the day
Computerized voting.
One of the things I read regularly (namely, the comp.risks digest) has had quite a bit of coverage about voting machines in the days before and after the election, and it's made me much more aware of the problems that are going on. While I don't quite subscribe to the "voting machines are a plot by to rig elections!" theory of thinking, the truth is that I'm inherently highly suspicious of these systems, especially when they're pathetically lacking any kind of redundancy, as seems to be the case.
It also annoys the heck out of me that the CEOs of these voting-machine companies are going around making statements like, "No one's discovered a problem in our systems," when the reason for that is that it's a felony to look at a voting machine (presumably to ensure that they can't be tampered with, but sadly this is a two-edged sword). Every system has a problem, and I seriously doubt that they've discovered the magical cure.
Computerized voting.
One of the things I read regularly (namely, the comp.risks digest) has had quite a bit of coverage about voting machines in the days before and after the election, and it's made me much more aware of the problems that are going on. While I don't quite subscribe to the "voting machines are a plot by
It also annoys the heck out of me that the CEOs of these voting-machine companies are going around making statements like, "No one's discovered a problem in our systems," when the reason for that is that it's a felony to look at a voting machine (presumably to ensure that they can't be tampered with, but sadly this is a two-edged sword). Every system has a problem, and I seriously doubt that they've discovered the magical cure.
Hmm, do I really need another addiction?
So Mike and I went out and got ourselves a copy of DDR. This promises to occupy a large chunk of my time, although on the bright side at least I can pretend it's for a good cause (namely, getting myself in better shape -- and that even has a kernel of truth to it).
While buying the pads, I was thinking -- I owned one of the old Nintendo PowerPads, and I enjoyed it immensely, but of course there weren't any games available for it. There was World Class Track Meet, which I played quite a bit of, until I became really good at it, but there was nothing else. I think there might have been one dance game, but I don't remember anything about it -- plus, the design of the PowerPad (just 12 buttons in a grid; nothing in the way of directions, really) didn't really lend itself to dancing in the first place. Now, of course, the concept of DDR is quite popular, and the pads are much more plentiful (not to mention cheaper -- the PowerPad was $99, while the pads for DDR were $25 -- though that's not as large as it might seem, since the PowerPad did accomodate two players), so perhaps the technology was just ahead of its time (it's true that the PowerPad wasn't all that great, or perhaps just not all that well-synchronized with the game, since there would be countless times that you would try to jump and your character just wouldn't jump; it really encouraged cheating by using your hands instead of really jumping).
Actually, between the DDR pads and the fact that I've recently noticed a Power Glove-esque item being sold (its original incarnation was absolutely terrible, at least in my experience playing it at my friend's house, but I'll bet the technology has improved), I wonder if there's a revival of old-school Nintendo hardware going on (the robot notwithstanding). Ironically, the light gun, which was by far the most popular of the alternative input devices that Nintendo pioneered (didn't everyone have Duck Hunt, after all?) seems to be the most left behind in this -- I know the Playstation has a light gun, but I don't think I've ever seen a game which uses it, or anyone who owned it. I wonder why?
So Mike and I went out and got ourselves a copy of DDR. This promises to occupy a large chunk of my time, although on the bright side at least I can pretend it's for a good cause (namely, getting myself in better shape -- and that even has a kernel of truth to it).
While buying the pads, I was thinking -- I owned one of the old Nintendo PowerPads, and I enjoyed it immensely, but of course there weren't any games available for it. There was World Class Track Meet, which I played quite a bit of, until I became really good at it, but there was nothing else. I think there might have been one dance game, but I don't remember anything about it -- plus, the design of the PowerPad (just 12 buttons in a grid; nothing in the way of directions, really) didn't really lend itself to dancing in the first place. Now, of course, the concept of DDR is quite popular, and the pads are much more plentiful (not to mention cheaper -- the PowerPad was $99, while the pads for DDR were $25 -- though that's not as large as it might seem, since the PowerPad did accomodate two players), so perhaps the technology was just ahead of its time (it's true that the PowerPad wasn't all that great, or perhaps just not all that well-synchronized with the game, since there would be countless times that you would try to jump and your character just wouldn't jump; it really encouraged cheating by using your hands instead of really jumping).
Actually, between the DDR pads and the fact that I've recently noticed a Power Glove-esque item being sold (its original incarnation was absolutely terrible, at least in my experience playing it at my friend's house, but I'll bet the technology has improved), I wonder if there's a revival of old-school Nintendo hardware going on (the robot notwithstanding). Ironically, the light gun, which was by far the most popular of the alternative input devices that Nintendo pioneered (didn't everyone have Duck Hunt, after all?) seems to be the most left behind in this -- I know the Playstation has a light gun, but I don't think I've ever seen a game which uses it, or anyone who owned it. I wonder why?
Always with the excuses
This time I have a good reason for not posting. Yesterday, I accidentally spilled a bit of my favorite beverage, water, into my keyboard. Since it seemed that I had only spilled a bit, I wiped the water I had spilled off the top of the keys, and left. I did not (a) turn the keyboard over to drain or (b) unplug the keyboard. The error of my ways would be revealed when I returned home to see that water was leaking out of the bottom of the keyboard, showing that the amount of water I had spilled was more than I initially surmised. I went back to the drying, but the keyboard still failed to work, and taking a look inside revealed that some of the traces had burned out. So I had to head out today and get myself a new keyboard.
On the bright side, where my old keyboard had "Dell.com" and "Dell Support" buttons, surely two of the most useless buttons ever put on a keyboard by man, this keyboard is almost identical, but has "My Computer" and "Calculator" buttons in their stead, decidedly more useful.
This time I have a good reason for not posting. Yesterday, I accidentally spilled a bit of my favorite beverage, water, into my keyboard. Since it seemed that I had only spilled a bit, I wiped the water I had spilled off the top of the keys, and left. I did not (a) turn the keyboard over to drain or (b) unplug the keyboard. The error of my ways would be revealed when I returned home to see that water was leaking out of the bottom of the keyboard, showing that the amount of water I had spilled was more than I initially surmised. I went back to the drying, but the keyboard still failed to work, and taking a look inside revealed that some of the traces had burned out. So I had to head out today and get myself a new keyboard.
On the bright side, where my old keyboard had "Dell.com" and "Dell Support" buttons, surely two of the most useless buttons ever put on a keyboard by man, this keyboard is almost identical, but has "My Computer" and "Calculator" buttons in their stead, decidedly more useful.
Sunday, November 10, 2002
Today's lesson: abuse of statistics
(1) From a Wired article on European sites outlawing Internet racism sites:
"Many European countries have existing laws outlawing Internet racism, which is generally protected as free speech in the United States. The council cited a report finding that 2,500 out of 4,000 racist sites were created in the United States."
Actually, I'm surprised that the percentage is so low. Consider: 2500 out of 4000 is 62.5%. I'd be surprised if the total fraction of Web sites which originated in the US was significantly less than 62.5%. Of course, I could be wrong -- but the point is that this statistic is completely meaningless without a baseline for the total to compare it to.
(2) Len Pasquarelli claims that the fact that only three teams in the NFL rank in the top ten in offense and defense is evidence that the salary cap creates unbalanced teams. Well, no. Suppose the two are uncorrelated. Well, there are 32 teams in the NFL, so the top 10 represents a fraction (10/32) = 0.31 of the total number of teams. Consequently, if we assume that offense and defensive ranking are uncorrelated, we would expect the number of teams in the top 10 of both to be (32)*(0.31)^2 = 3.13, which is exactly the number that we see! Maybe he's just really worried about that missing 0.13.
I could go on and on, but I have a feeling it's a losing battle.
(1) From a Wired article on European sites outlawing Internet racism sites:
"Many European countries have existing laws outlawing Internet racism, which is generally protected as free speech in the United States. The council cited a report finding that 2,500 out of 4,000 racist sites were created in the United States."
Actually, I'm surprised that the percentage is so low. Consider: 2500 out of 4000 is 62.5%. I'd be surprised if the total fraction of Web sites which originated in the US was significantly less than 62.5%. Of course, I could be wrong -- but the point is that this statistic is completely meaningless without a baseline for the total to compare it to.
(2) Len Pasquarelli claims that the fact that only three teams in the NFL rank in the top ten in offense and defense is evidence that the salary cap creates unbalanced teams. Well, no. Suppose the two are uncorrelated. Well, there are 32 teams in the NFL, so the top 10 represents a fraction (10/32) = 0.31 of the total number of teams. Consequently, if we assume that offense and defensive ranking are uncorrelated, we would expect the number of teams in the top 10 of both to be (32)*(0.31)^2 = 3.13, which is exactly the number that we see! Maybe he's just really worried about that missing 0.13.
I could go on and on, but I have a feeling it's a losing battle.
Saturday, November 09, 2002
Yay, minor celebrity!
So, apparently my ants saga reached devnull (no, not /dev/null), allowing to bask in my 15 seconds of micro-fame. I've also gotten a surprising email as a result, most of which takes me to task for unfairly maligning ants. I'd like to say this (and yes, I know they're not reading this, which is why I'm going to actually answer the email):
I do like ants in the abstract. I mean, I find the concept of an ant colony interesting; I've read "Ant Fugue" more than once; I played SimAnt (although I was never all that good at it); in fact, some of my best friends are ants! (Okay, I made up that last part.) I just wish they would stop trying to eat my food! Or, as the ants story illustrates, everything in my house! (Well, actually, despite the hyperbolic title, as far as I can tell, the ants didn't actually eat the hub -- I guess they were just there for the warmth -- but still.)
So, apparently my ants saga reached devnull (no, not /dev/null), allowing to bask in my 15 seconds of micro-fame. I've also gotten a surprising email as a result, most of which takes me to task for unfairly maligning ants. I'd like to say this (and yes, I know they're not reading this, which is why I'm going to actually answer the email):
I do like ants in the abstract. I mean, I find the concept of an ant colony interesting; I've read "Ant Fugue" more than once; I played SimAnt (although I was never all that good at it); in fact, some of my best friends are ants! (Okay, I made up that last part.) I just wish they would stop trying to eat my food! Or, as the ants story illustrates, everything in my house! (Well, actually, despite the hyperbolic title, as far as I can tell, the ants didn't actually eat the hub -- I guess they were just there for the warmth -- but still.)
Friday, November 08, 2002
A link I can't refuse
I might complain about the power being down here due to the rain and winds, but it can't compare to this incident in Wales.
"If anyone's found my tank, please give us a bell."
I might complain about the power being down here due to the rain and winds, but it can't compare to this incident in Wales.
"If anyone's found my tank, please give us a bell."
Ramblings of a powerless man
So the rain, which I whined about earlier, was pretty desultory from when it started yesterday up until I left for office hours at 3ish today ("today" being Thursday, despite what the header might tell you). This kind of rain is arguably my least favorite; it's heavy enough that I can't just ignore it, so I still have to carry around an umbrella, but it doesn't have the nice, cleansing effect that a good, heavy rain will. Consequently, the world looks (and smells!) like it's just come out of a dryer which doesn't work so well. Anyway, sometime between when I left for office hours and when I left campus to swing by home before quizbowl, the rain became a lot less perfunctory and a lot more torrential, to the point where I (or at least my jacket, since I hadn't brought an umbrella) got completely soaked walking from LeConte back to my car on Hearst.
So, when driving back after quizbowl, I went to drop Seth off, and we noticed that the power on his block was out. This wasn't terribly surprising, since it was the first heavy rain of the season, and there were tons of downed branches and such all over the place. I thought to myself, "Well, better him than me," and went on my way. But I soon would be punished for my hubris, since after dropping everyone else off and arriving home, I noticed that the power on *my* block was also out. It was a very narrow blackout, too; it extended no further than a block north, south, and east (though it did go as far as my eye could see to the west). As I got home, they were just setting up flares at the intersection, but I heard the screech of people quickly braking more than once when I was home.
I was eminently miserable on getting home. All of the things I would normally do were impossible, of course, and despite having a flashlight and a couple of candles (the latter courtesy of Mike), I could pretty much only unhappily read. I felt so oppressed by the darkness, and that my weapons were quite inadequate against it. (Yes, that's intended to sound as if it were metaphorical. But it's quite literal in this case.) I had even lighted a candle, but I was still cursing the darkness. In fact, though I had been planning to return to campus anyway, I felt so enervated that I just fell asleep. Upon my waking at 3am, the power was still out. I was more than a little annoyed at PG&E, of course; on the one hand, it was the first heavy rain, so they probably had a lot to deal with, but still, it was frustrating.
Returning to campus, though, cheered me up considerably (if you haven't figured it out yet, that's where I'm writing this from). Unlike inside, where it just felt dark, oppressive, and lifeless, outside the world was in the perfect post-rain state: nice, fresh, and well-lit, and I had it all to myself! I actually really like being out in hours like this, since the world doesn't feel like a scary place at all -- it's just completely quiet. In fact, I enjoyed the environment so much that I found myself strongly wishing that I had walked to campus instead of driving (though I changed my mind about that when it started raining again as I was walking back from my car). I'm almost tempted to try to make this part of my regular schedule, but somehow I doubt that would actually end up being a good idea.
Now, to see if I can drag myself away from this in order to actually get some work done.
(Meta-commentary: I suppose this is the closest thing to the canonical "what happened to me today" blog post I've posted so far, unless you count the ants, which are kind of a special case. I'm not sure whether I'll continue to do this kind of thing or not.)
So the rain, which I whined about earlier, was pretty desultory from when it started yesterday up until I left for office hours at 3ish today ("today" being Thursday, despite what the header might tell you). This kind of rain is arguably my least favorite; it's heavy enough that I can't just ignore it, so I still have to carry around an umbrella, but it doesn't have the nice, cleansing effect that a good, heavy rain will. Consequently, the world looks (and smells!) like it's just come out of a dryer which doesn't work so well. Anyway, sometime between when I left for office hours and when I left campus to swing by home before quizbowl, the rain became a lot less perfunctory and a lot more torrential, to the point where I (or at least my jacket, since I hadn't brought an umbrella) got completely soaked walking from LeConte back to my car on Hearst.
So, when driving back after quizbowl, I went to drop Seth off, and we noticed that the power on his block was out. This wasn't terribly surprising, since it was the first heavy rain of the season, and there were tons of downed branches and such all over the place. I thought to myself, "Well, better him than me," and went on my way. But I soon would be punished for my hubris, since after dropping everyone else off and arriving home, I noticed that the power on *my* block was also out. It was a very narrow blackout, too; it extended no further than a block north, south, and east (though it did go as far as my eye could see to the west). As I got home, they were just setting up flares at the intersection, but I heard the screech of people quickly braking more than once when I was home.
I was eminently miserable on getting home. All of the things I would normally do were impossible, of course, and despite having a flashlight and a couple of candles (the latter courtesy of Mike), I could pretty much only unhappily read. I felt so oppressed by the darkness, and that my weapons were quite inadequate against it. (Yes, that's intended to sound as if it were metaphorical. But it's quite literal in this case.) I had even lighted a candle, but I was still cursing the darkness. In fact, though I had been planning to return to campus anyway, I felt so enervated that I just fell asleep. Upon my waking at 3am, the power was still out. I was more than a little annoyed at PG&E, of course; on the one hand, it was the first heavy rain, so they probably had a lot to deal with, but still, it was frustrating.
Returning to campus, though, cheered me up considerably (if you haven't figured it out yet, that's where I'm writing this from). Unlike inside, where it just felt dark, oppressive, and lifeless, outside the world was in the perfect post-rain state: nice, fresh, and well-lit, and I had it all to myself! I actually really like being out in hours like this, since the world doesn't feel like a scary place at all -- it's just completely quiet. In fact, I enjoyed the environment so much that I found myself strongly wishing that I had walked to campus instead of driving (though I changed my mind about that when it started raining again as I was walking back from my car). I'm almost tempted to try to make this part of my regular schedule, but somehow I doubt that would actually end up being a good idea.
Now, to see if I can drag myself away from this in order to actually get some work done.
(Meta-commentary: I suppose this is the closest thing to the canonical "what happened to me today" blog post I've posted so far, unless you count the ants, which are kind of a special case. I'm not sure whether I'll continue to do this kind of thing or not.)
Thursday, November 07, 2002
Thoughts inspired by bowling, II
I'm a better bowler than most of my friends (excepting Kenshin, and I haven't bowled with him a long time). However, it's an open question whether this is because I have some superior degree of intrinsic skill, or whether it's just because I spent every Sunday senior year of high school bowling. While the egotistic part of me would like to believe the former, the truth is that it's probably the latter, because bowling is hardly unique in this respect. There's a very long list of activities in which I've become pretty good simply by doing more of it than your average person, and hence in which I would consider myself better than average. (Bowling is one example; quizbowl is another, and I could make this list much longer if I wanted to bore you further.) However, these activities also share something in common: while I was initially interested in them, and enjoyed them long enough to become pretty good, I never was willing to take the additional steps needed to reach "master" level. (To stick with these two examples, I've never sat down and memorized the things I really would need to memorize in order to become really good at quizbowl, nor have I learned how to properly curve the ball in bowling.) Having fun, and improving naturally, was something I could do easily; but when improvement required explicit work rather than simply more practice, I just wasn't sufficiently interested to put in all this effort for some not-really-tangible result. Consequently, there's a lot of stuff I'm pretty good at, but nothing in which I can say that I'm better than anyone I know.
I'm not yet sure whether the above pattern applies to physics or not.
I'm a better bowler than most of my friends (excepting Kenshin, and I haven't bowled with him a long time). However, it's an open question whether this is because I have some superior degree of intrinsic skill, or whether it's just because I spent every Sunday senior year of high school bowling. While the egotistic part of me would like to believe the former, the truth is that it's probably the latter, because bowling is hardly unique in this respect. There's a very long list of activities in which I've become pretty good simply by doing more of it than your average person, and hence in which I would consider myself better than average. (Bowling is one example; quizbowl is another, and I could make this list much longer if I wanted to bore you further.) However, these activities also share something in common: while I was initially interested in them, and enjoyed them long enough to become pretty good, I never was willing to take the additional steps needed to reach "master" level. (To stick with these two examples, I've never sat down and memorized the things I really would need to memorize in order to become really good at quizbowl, nor have I learned how to properly curve the ball in bowling.) Having fun, and improving naturally, was something I could do easily; but when improvement required explicit work rather than simply more practice, I just wasn't sufficiently interested to put in all this effort for some not-really-tangible result. Consequently, there's a lot of stuff I'm pretty good at, but nothing in which I can say that I'm better than anyone I know.
I'm not yet sure whether the above pattern applies to physics or not.
Thoughts inspired by bowling, I
I tend to not think of myself as a particularly competitive person. (I'm sure there are those out there who would disagree with me, but like I said, this is how I think of myself.) I wasn't really tossed into a competitive environment until high school, and while it was true that Lowell was a very competitive environment, I didn't really feel the need to be competitive myself; I suppose, essentially, I had enough confidence in myself that I didn't worry that one poor performance would destroy my ability to get into a good college, or whatever. I didn't end up at the very top of the class, and I didn't really care; because of the way the system at Lowell worked, you had to take as many honors classes as you possibly could to get a maximal GPA, and so if you took classes which weren't honors, even if you did perfectly in them, you could end up with a lower GPA. Consequently, I took things like band and Latin (the latter being too small to have a separate honors course, so it was all non-honors, except for AP Latin), which prevented me from being at the top, but I cared more about taking classes that I wanted to. And when I got to college and everyone was as intelligent as I was (if not more so), there was much more of an atmosphere of cooperation among equals rather than competitiveness to determine who was the best. It didn't hurt that the classes were sufficiently hard that surviving without cooperation was pretty much impossible, although there was occasionally a competitive element in some of the Core classes. Oh, sure, although we were all equals, I did want, sometimes, to be the primus inter pares, but I couldn't win every time, and so if sometimes I had to go to my friends for help, that worked fine for me.
However, to make up for it, my competitiveness seems to have moved to nonacademic areas. In things like bowling or miniature golf, where I feel that I'm probably better than an average one of my friends, I want to win, though I might not admit it (though, then again, I might). If I put up a good effort and then lose, I'll be less disappointed than if I end up not being competitive at all. When bowling on Monday, I had my usual good games interspersed with bad games, but my bads were definitely on the worse end; I very nearly failed to break 100 for the first time in many years and many games, as after eight frames, I hadn't marked once and had a 68. Fortunately, I picked up spares in both of the last two to just barely squeak over with a 105. Still, though, the bad games were infinitely more frustrating than the good games, since I knew I was capable of playing better but just wasn't able to manage it. Conversely, when playing something where I know I'm very likely to lose (say, Starcraft), I'm not likely to hang around for too long, since I really do want to win, and I know if I can't, it takes a lot of fun out of it. I'm not a bad loser, at least in the usual sense of the word, but I do tend to become impolitely uninterested in situations where I just can't win. Well, as far as faults go, I suppose I could pick worse ones to have.
I tend to not think of myself as a particularly competitive person. (I'm sure there are those out there who would disagree with me, but like I said, this is how I think of myself.) I wasn't really tossed into a competitive environment until high school, and while it was true that Lowell was a very competitive environment, I didn't really feel the need to be competitive myself; I suppose, essentially, I had enough confidence in myself that I didn't worry that one poor performance would destroy my ability to get into a good college, or whatever. I didn't end up at the very top of the class, and I didn't really care; because of the way the system at Lowell worked, you had to take as many honors classes as you possibly could to get a maximal GPA, and so if you took classes which weren't honors, even if you did perfectly in them, you could end up with a lower GPA. Consequently, I took things like band and Latin (the latter being too small to have a separate honors course, so it was all non-honors, except for AP Latin), which prevented me from being at the top, but I cared more about taking classes that I wanted to. And when I got to college and everyone was as intelligent as I was (if not more so), there was much more of an atmosphere of cooperation among equals rather than competitiveness to determine who was the best. It didn't hurt that the classes were sufficiently hard that surviving without cooperation was pretty much impossible, although there was occasionally a competitive element in some of the Core classes. Oh, sure, although we were all equals, I did want, sometimes, to be the primus inter pares, but I couldn't win every time, and so if sometimes I had to go to my friends for help, that worked fine for me.
However, to make up for it, my competitiveness seems to have moved to nonacademic areas. In things like bowling or miniature golf, where I feel that I'm probably better than an average one of my friends, I want to win, though I might not admit it (though, then again, I might). If I put up a good effort and then lose, I'll be less disappointed than if I end up not being competitive at all. When bowling on Monday, I had my usual good games interspersed with bad games, but my bads were definitely on the worse end; I very nearly failed to break 100 for the first time in many years and many games, as after eight frames, I hadn't marked once and had a 68. Fortunately, I picked up spares in both of the last two to just barely squeak over with a 105. Still, though, the bad games were infinitely more frustrating than the good games, since I knew I was capable of playing better but just wasn't able to manage it. Conversely, when playing something where I know I'm very likely to lose (say, Starcraft), I'm not likely to hang around for too long, since I really do want to win, and I know if I can't, it takes a lot of fun out of it. I'm not a bad loser, at least in the usual sense of the word, but I do tend to become impolitely uninterested in situations where I just can't win. Well, as far as faults go, I suppose I could pick worse ones to have.
Wednesday, November 06, 2002
The blind watchmaker
I have to admit, there are times when I can see the appeal of creationism. I think this was first in AP Biology, when I was learning about the electron transport chain, and I found myself thinking how neat it was that everything fit together so perfectly, and how likely was it that this could have arisen by random chance, anyway? I could certainly agree that if you gave a random anaerobic bacterium the whole apparatus for the Krebs cycle, it would rapidly rise to dominate over its brethren, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing to suddenly pop out by itself. (Especially since I don't see how any intermediate stages would be particularly useful, and we don't see anything around today with, like, only half of the Krebs cycle. But I'm just wildly speculating here.) Of course, the flip side of this argument is, while the electron transport chain is really neat (well, not that I remember anything about it these days, except "cytochrome C"), it certainly seemed like it was unnecessarily complicated, and that if you were designing cellular respiration from scratch, you could probably make it a much simpler process.
I wonder what creationists have to say about language. In many ways, the same kind of thinking applies: languages are also immensely complicated, to the point where, if you think about it, it seems surprising that they could have evolved just from chance, and a lot of that complexity is completely unnecessary (think about all of the weirdnesses of English, or the 125+ verb forms in Latin). And indeed, those languages which have been explicitly designed (not that I know anything about Esperanto, aside from "-oj") have stated that part of their goal is to eliminate a lot of the unnecessary complexity inherent in any modern language. Of course, we know that languages *did* evolve (not quite in the same sense as standard evolution, since "natural selection" doesn't translate perfectly into the linguistic world), and they did so over a much smaller time frame than the evolution that produced us had. So, looked at from that angle, it suddenly doesn't seem incomprehensible at all that all the complexity inherent in us could have come from chance.
(Hmm, I wonder if there are any creationists who say that God planted the Canterbury Tales to fool us, too?)
I have to admit, there are times when I can see the appeal of creationism. I think this was first in AP Biology, when I was learning about the electron transport chain, and I found myself thinking how neat it was that everything fit together so perfectly, and how likely was it that this could have arisen by random chance, anyway? I could certainly agree that if you gave a random anaerobic bacterium the whole apparatus for the Krebs cycle, it would rapidly rise to dominate over its brethren, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing to suddenly pop out by itself. (Especially since I don't see how any intermediate stages would be particularly useful, and we don't see anything around today with, like, only half of the Krebs cycle. But I'm just wildly speculating here.) Of course, the flip side of this argument is, while the electron transport chain is really neat (well, not that I remember anything about it these days, except "cytochrome C"), it certainly seemed like it was unnecessarily complicated, and that if you were designing cellular respiration from scratch, you could probably make it a much simpler process.
I wonder what creationists have to say about language. In many ways, the same kind of thinking applies: languages are also immensely complicated, to the point where, if you think about it, it seems surprising that they could have evolved just from chance, and a lot of that complexity is completely unnecessary (think about all of the weirdnesses of English, or the 125+ verb forms in Latin). And indeed, those languages which have been explicitly designed (not that I know anything about Esperanto, aside from "-oj") have stated that part of their goal is to eliminate a lot of the unnecessary complexity inherent in any modern language. Of course, we know that languages *did* evolve (not quite in the same sense as standard evolution, since "natural selection" doesn't translate perfectly into the linguistic world), and they did so over a much smaller time frame than the evolution that produced us had. So, looked at from that angle, it suddenly doesn't seem incomprehensible at all that all the complexity inherent in us could have come from chance.
(Hmm, I wonder if there are any creationists who say that God planted the Canterbury Tales to fool us, too?)
So, what, in December, Santa Claus is going to lose?
While I'm not as emotionally attached to the Democratic party as I am to the Giants, especially since the Dems have an even larger share of dislikable characters (is Gray Davis the Shawon Dunston of the party?), there's also the little fact that there's slightly more at stake here, so the net effect of yesterday was about the same as Game 7 -- I checked the early results, and when it became apparent that things looked bad, decided to avoid the subject for the rest of the day, only checking at the end to make sure no miracle had occurred. In my political junkie days, I would have eagerly devoured every article on cnn.com talking about the election, and had the results turned out more palatable, I would probably be doing the same now, but now, blah...I just don't want to think about it.
While I'm not as emotionally attached to the Democratic party as I am to the Giants, especially since the Dems have an even larger share of dislikable characters (is Gray Davis the Shawon Dunston of the party?), there's also the little fact that there's slightly more at stake here, so the net effect of yesterday was about the same as Game 7 -- I checked the early results, and when it became apparent that things looked bad, decided to avoid the subject for the rest of the day, only checking at the end to make sure no miracle had occurred. In my political junkie days, I would have eagerly devoured every article on cnn.com talking about the election, and had the results turned out more palatable, I would probably be doing the same now, but now, blah...I just don't want to think about it.
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