Operation: Help Me With My Thesis - episode 1

Well, here we go. In about nine months, assuming everything goes well, I will be the proud bearer of one Master's Degree in software engineering. And it's time to start thinking about... (cue the sinister music) the Master's Thesis. It's not due until November, but I've seen hollow-eyed fellow students rushing to get it done in their last few months while simultaneously studying for finals and doing class projects. Based on the stress levels I've already experienced, this is not for me, so I need a topic and a start ASAP.

Here's my plan. I really liked my course in data mining, so much that I've been planning for a while to ask Dr. Ghosh to be my adviser. He says he's very busy through the summer, but we can meet in May and get me started. So basically, that's how long I have to really start fleshing out an idea for a project that involves data mining... something.

As I've mentioned before, I'm very interested in the whole Web 2.0 paradigm. People-powered encyclopedias. People-powered politics. People-powered news. People organizing the internet. And oh yeah, blogs. All those blogs.

All those people are generating literally tons of data, which I'm sure needs to be mined in some new way that hasn't been tried before, to figure out some new and surprising bit of internet psychology. I don't know what that is yet. My idea right goes something like this.

Step 1: Web 2.0
Step 2: Data mining
...
Step 4: A completed master's thesis

I think I may be missing a step, so help me out! What could be more fitting than to ask for a people-powered topic? Post a comment, leave a suggestion. If you know people who do work in web 2.0 or mining or are even interested in those topics, please mail them a link to this post. The future of the free world may depend on it!

Well, not really. But I'd sure like to graduate.

What is objective reality?

Over on The Motley Fool atheist board, someone recently posted the question: "Could somebody please explain the term 'objective reality' to me?"

We don't view the world as it really is; we interpret it with our senses and filter it through existing patterns in our brains. For instance, when I think that I see a blue racquetball, I am not really perceiving the ball directly. White light is striking the surface of that ball, all the wavelengths are absorbed except for those that we recognize at the color blue, and then the light bounces back to the surface of our eyes. The cells in our eyes transmit the pattern of photons back to our brain, which then looks at the pattern of light and dark shading, interprets the slightly different information from each eye to estimate distance, and then creates sort of a computer simulated model of a ball. Your brain tells you "That's a blue ball!" and that's what you think you see.

But senses can be fooled or misled, and your brain's program can screw up and misinterpret what it's reading. Then you can get a false impression of what you are seeing in the world.

Furthermore, you interpret a lot of things based on your memories of things that have happened to you in the past. If you see or hear about something that conflicts with the world model that was already in your head, you might reject the new information or file it wrong in your memory, because your brain doesn't like to completely reorganize its existing patterns every time it sees something a bit odd.

So there's a "real world" out there, outside your brain; and then there's the "virtual world" that has been built inside your brain. The real and the virtual world never match up completely, but they can correspond to a greater or lesser degree. When you see a blue ball, you can be pretty confident that there really is a ball and it really has the property of being blue. The color blue is not really a "thing"; it is just a word that we use to label light at a certain wavelength. But there really is light, and it really has different wavelengths, and it really does bounce off of things like balls to show you the color blue.

When we talk about "objective reality", we are talking about the world that's really there, unfiltered, outside your mind. Our beliefs do not change the world, except to the extent that they lead to actions that alter reality. So I can, if I try hard enough, go around all day sincerely believing things like "That blue ball is actually an orange artichoke" or "There's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day" or "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." But if those things are not correct statements about the real world, then no amount of belief will change that.

I'm a cowboy;on a steel horse I ride

Fine. Every other blogger is hyping this stupid test, so why shouldn't I?

Cowboy Lawman

You scored 6 Honor, 7 Justice, 7 Adventure, and 3 Individuality!

You don't just want to explore the open plains, you want to tame it. You're a person with scruples and the steel nerves to back them up. You'd fit well with gunslingers like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. You're a Cowboy Lawman.

Wear your star and sixgun proud, Marshall. You're gonna do just fine!

This test tracked 4 variables. How the score compared to the other people's:

	Higher than 26% on Ninjinuity
	Higher than 83% on Knightlyness
	Higher than 55% on Cowboiosity
	Higher than 11% on Piratical Bent

In Which My Loserdom Is Sadly Exposed

For those of you who knew me in the days when I was "all fired up" about ridiculing/exposing Amway, here's a LONG overdue commentary.

You wouldn't know it to look at my page, but I still get email about Amway several times every week. I gave up updating the mail page around 2000. Although I made some half-hearted attempts to go through and HTML-ize my mail a few times since then, the problem isn't formatting the mails for the web... it's going through every single piece of mail and stripping out the names to protect their identities. After eleven years of seeing these emails, they do start to get repetitive. A bit more than half of them say "Thanks so much for saving me from a mistake!" or "Right on! Amway sucks!" The other half respectfully dissent by letting me know that I'm a pathetic loser and will never amount to anything.

I know that many of these people pour their hearts into the mail they've written to me, but I've read those words a great many times already, and I'm no longer that motivated to read it all twice. Occasionally I'll reply to one when the mood strikes, but rarely. Sorry, emailers. One of these days, I suppose I really should install a guest book or something so they can write their own messages.

Update: Good idea, past self! I took your advice and created a Perils of Amway Guestbook. Knock yourselves out, folks.

But this letter from "Binoy" really takes the cake, and I thought it would be a terrible thing not to share it.

Subject: Hi plz read - Binoy

i can understand ur situation cos i was der but den i decided i woud rather make money than give xcuses for my own shortcommings
Jus bcos u faild dosnt mean everyone fails u idiot

if john cestena recomends dis business den u gotta have sume nuts loose.

i earn a hell lot than i ever cud and so do 17 of my downlines. u should hav seen the poverty that they hav been lifted from.

if u want money get in make some and den talk.
quiters never win dude.
u r jus cryin bcos u wer un successful.
a lot of people are cos u don hav wat it takes to be rich u re jus a sore looser
if it was a bogus den it coudnt hav survived for 47 years.
wud u rather make money or complain.
i can understand ur situation cos i was der but den i decided i woud rather make money than give xcuses for my own shortcommings

Oh, there are sooo many things to enjoy about this letter. I mean, I hate to shoot at fish in a barrel, but this wildly successful businessman does appear to be functionally illiterate. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume from his interesting name that English is not his native language. However, I'm not so sure that is the case because I don't think I've ever seen foreigners make such heavy use of internet slang like "u r." Or say "dude."

Another thing that amuses me about this letter is the reference to John Sestina -- whom Binoy must respect very much to so creatively mangle the spelling of his name. John Sestina was the "big shot" who Amway was waving around as their street cred eleven years ago. Am I to understand that in all that time, they have not found one single new financial guy to endorse them? That's the worst track record I ever heard of. Even the creationists are constantly being joined by new "scientist" voices.

How well known is John Sestina these days? Well, my google search provides these hits on the name:

1. John Sestina's company's web site.
2. An anti-Amway page
3. Another anti-Amway page
4. John Sestina's book on Amazon
5. My anti-Amway page
6. A citysearch page for John Sestina's company
7. A page where you can purchase and download John Sestina's tapes.

That's all there is on page one. Searching Google News today yields one hit that has the word "John" and talks about the sestina form of poetry, whatever that is. No reference to the world famous investment guy. I have nothing against John; I'm sure he's a fine financial advisor and all, but based on my search, I am pretty well convinced that he is known first and foremost as an Amway shill, far beyond being known for anything else. And again... they couldn't find a new spokesman after eleven years???

The last thing I wanted to highlight about this letter was "if it was a bogus den it coudnt hav survived for 47 years." Awww gee, you're right, I can't think of one single other enterprise that promises to deliver great wealth, fails to provide it for any but a very few people, and has lasted for more than a few decades. Nope, not one.

Cargo cult comedy

At last, the long-awaited Daily Show rip-off has arrived on Fox News. Produced by 24 producer Joel Surnow, The 1/2 Hour News Hour runs with the tagline: "Unfair. Unbalanced. Unserious."

Apparently they should have added "Unfunny" as well. The kindest review I've seen so far comes from the Washington Post, which declares:

"In a nutshell: It isn't terrible."

Wow, high praise. Other than that, reaction seems to be universally bad, even from right wing blogs like this one:

"It is SO not funny. And it should have been hysterical. There are so many brilliant, funny conservatives. How did they pick this bunch?"

And this one:

"Finally, while there is work to be done to make the show 'workable', the initial offerings or 'taste tests' have left a very sour taste in my mouth as well I'm sure many others. If I were the head of FOXNews I would strongly consider pulling the show and working out some of the kinks before launching a show that appears to be an amateur offering."

Here's a bit of fun pigpiling from the left side...

Not surprisingly, the second biggest (fake?) laughter of the show came in reaction to the title of a spoof magazine called BO: Barack Obama Magazine. I just snarfed, because B.O. is too funny. Here's a perfect example of how Republicans don't understand satire. If Senator Obama was known to have body odor, then the joke would've been funnier. But to my knowledge, he doesn't. Then again, he is a black and they're usually all stinky and black-smelling, aren't they? Seriously, it's a terrible joke.

So why use it? Because body odor is funny. If you're six or, evidently, a Republican.

Here's a clip for you:

When I first saw this, my immediate thought was "They're doing cargo cult comedy."

A refresher on cargo cults, as told by Wikipedia:

The classic period of cargo cult activity was in the years during and after World War II. The vast amounts of war matériel that were airdropped into these islands during the Pacific campaign against the Empire of Japan necessarily meant drastic changes to the lifestyle of the islanders, many of whom had never seen Westerners or Japanese before. Manufactured clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons and other useful goods arrived in vast quantities to equip soldiers — and also the islanders who were their guides and hosts. With the end of the war the airbases were abandoned, and "cargo" was no longer being dropped.

In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors and airmen use. They carved headphones from wood, and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. The cultists thought that the foreigners had some special connection to their own ancestors, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches.

Like a cargo cult, Fox News is imitating the form that produces results, and they hope that the results will naturally follow. The show LOOKS very much like The Daily Show, the hosts use the same style of wry smarminess that works so well for Jon Stewart, and there is laughter. But there aren't any jokes, just sarcasm.

Why do they keep insulting our troops?

Three times yesterday, I turned on C-SPAN while futzing around in the kitchen. All three times, there was a sanctimonious legislator giving a speech -- once in an interview, twice on the Senate floor. All three had an "R" next to their name, and all three were saying something nearly identical. It went something like this:

"My Democrat [sic] colleagues are destroying troop morale by arguing against this war. The biggest enemy our troops have is not foreign fighters, but lack of resolve at home. Every time we discuss plans to end the war, we are helping the terrorists win."

After pondering this for a while, I have decided that one of two things must be true:

1. They think that our troops are complete cowards. It would seem that the troops can face a hostile foreign populace, car bombs, and IEDs, but they run away screaming when they hear a Democrat say "The president has not handled this war well."
2. They think the troops are not very bright or cannot handle debate. No matter how the war is actually going, the troops should be shielded from any frank discussion of progress, unless the news is good.

The thing is, I don't think any of these speakers has attempted to produce a serious case that the war has not been badly botched, nor an actual plan for winning apart from "We'll throw 15% more troops at the region and then all the problems will miraculously clear up." A few months ago supposedly we'd "never been stay the course". Now apparently we are again.

So they haven't actually done anything to make the war either go better or end; their only tactic is to react in shock, horror, and indignation when somebody says that the war is not going well. They're not concerned about fucking up; but they're deathly afraid of hearing someone say that they fucked up.

And one more thing. What's up with all the comparisons to Vietnam by Republicans? Years ago, anyone who suggested that the war was anything like Vietnam was automatically dubbed as narrow minded and shallow at best, or more usually an anti-American idiot. Today, the Republicans are falling all over themselves to say that Iraq is Vietnam all over again. "Didn't we learn anything from Vietnam?" they ask. But instead of learning the lesson that you should pick your battles intelligently, apparently the "lesson" of Vietnam is that no one should criticize any action taken by a sitting president, ever. Because, you see, the right thing for people to do is smile and go along quietly for a 16 year war, and even if things look bad after all that time, you'd better smile and accept the possibility that it could continue indefinitely. Clearly wars are never lost except by popular opinion. Historians take note.

I guess what I'm asking is, why do Republicans hate America so much?

The Machine is Us

I totally dig this video about web 2.0.

People will try anything

I've often said that arguing with fundamentalists is like trying to nail jello to a wall. However, I never expected anyone to actually try doing that.

See Al Run

Run, Al, Run!

On Monday, Al Franken announced that his show's last episode will be February 14. Air America is still rolling under new management, and not expected to go down any time soon despite the recent bankruptcy filing. Thom Hartmann will be filling Al's time slot.

At that point, Franken was still being coy about his intentions, saying: "If I make a decision before the show ends, I'll make sure you, my listeners, are the first to know... after Frannie. And my kids. Okay, my listeners will be the eighth to know."

I expected this day to come, and I wish him great success in his campaign. I am, however, a bit saddened. Franken frequently comments on his show "We have to repeat things sometimes because we know that nobody listens to all three hours." Ironically, I have heard this comment over and over, because I do listen to all three hours via podcast. In fact, I don't believe there have been any episodes since the show's inception that I have not heard at least a part of. It is the only daily show that I make a point of not missing. I also had the pleasure of seeing the show produced live a couple of years ago, with guest Molly Ivins, who sadly just died yesterday.

So long, Al, and give Norm Coleman hell.

The ups and downs of internet notoriety

Recently, a friend and listener to my show wrote a post on her blog that brought her a tremendous amount of unexpected internet fame. Her eleven year old daughter wrote an excellent, thoughtful essay about her teacher who assumed that everyone celebrates Christmas. On The Non-Prophets, Matt Dillahunty thought "Possum Momma"s post with the essay was so good that he should read it on the air.

Once we had read the post, the exposure of this post widened, and one of our listeners happened to be a fundamentalist minister named William, who also lived in Possum Momma's area. I do not know why William listens to our show, as I have heard from very few Christians tuning in regularly.

In any case, several people dived in and started arguing with William, since that's what we like doing. Word spread, and to make a long story short, Possum Momma was linked by a number of popular blogs including Brent Rasmussen and Pharyngula, and now she has hundreds of replies. And from what I hear, she's not really all that excited about it.

Not that I can blame her. William called her a vile, filthy person, which is not that unusual among his ilk. It wasn't only William, however, but many of the other newcomers who are nominally on her side. On many sites, Possum Momma has been all but called a liar by people who believe that no eleven year old can possibly write that well. They accuse her of fabricating the essay. One individual claimed that the daughter was an "a-hole", a pessimist, and a whining complainer. And many more people have showed up simply to argue with each other.

Who needs it? When I got interested in web page creation in 1996, one of the first pages I created was a site that was critical of Amway. I wrote it to chronicle an experience I'd had, and I never expected it to get much attention. Yet when it showed up on search engines I started receiving replies, first in a slow trickle, then in a huge torrent. Some of them, quite frankly, either shocked or depressed me. Apparently since I didn't think that an Amway starter kit was a smart way to spend your money, I was a pathetic loser, a terminal failure, a guy who would never succeed in life and die poor and alone.

That was the first time I noticed a truism about the blossoming internet, namely that every single time you open your mouth and say anything more controversial than "I love to pet puppies," a very large swath of people will despise you and everything you stand for. Wait a minute, scratch that. On second thought, "I love to pet puppies" will probably yield the same result.

Now, some people realize this and decide that the fact that they are being criticized proves that they are right. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes people criticize your opinions because your opinions are, speaking accurately, stupid. But that is not always (or perhaps even usually) the case, and the fact is that you can't use people's anger as a benchmark for how well you're doing. That's why many of us think that things like evidence are important.

The internet has become the world's most powerful tool for channeling a shared emotion at an idea. If a few people are angry with you, then they can all tell all their friends, who will tell all THEIR friends, and so on until you have not one but hundreds of people angry with you. And that sucks. That's the dark side of the internet.

But there are great positives at work as well, and they are the flip side of this anger. The internet is also a powerful tool for channeling good emotions like "support" and "community" and "confidence." On Pharyngula, for example, I see this post by Allison:

PZ, thanks for these links! After my recent outing-of-self, I'm still looking for connections with others of my age and point in life (young adult, with youngish kids) who share my belief in freedom of thought.

Skatje [PZ Myers' daughter] had already been inspirational to me, and now I'm beyong impressed with Possom #1's reasoning skills. Oh, how I wish it hadn't taken me until my mid-20s to start the process of deprogramming from my fundie upbringing!

Similarly, when my father does his high school presentations year after year, he regularly hears from a few kids who say things like "Until you spoke, I had no idea that there were other people in the world who thought like me." The Non-Prophets gets listeners from all over the world, including quite a few who are closeted in Bible Belt areas and do not know any other atheists. As a son of atheists, with a great community of atheists as many of my friends, I've had an easy and mostly persecution-free time with my lifelong atheism. I know that this is atypical, and therefore it is uplifting to hear from these people who are so hungry for a connection, someone to talk to, who won't dismiss them as evil heretics because they don't believe in invisible friends.

Mark Twain supposedly^* once wrote: "A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." Mark Twain would probably have loved the internet. It is, admittedly, the fastest conduit for spreading lies that the world has ever known. However, it is at the same time the fastest conduit for countering those same lies. It completely levels the playing field in such a way that "The News" is no longer defined by what a few large corporations think is worthy of attention, but by what ANYBODY can write, filtered by what people find interesting and worth reading.

It is because of this change that Possum Momma has received her unrequested attention. It is because of sites like Digg and Reddit, whose inhabitants declared "This is a great story that deserves a lot of attention," and the internet made it so.

I know it's uncomfortable, to be shoved in the spotlight this way, but in a way it's a very exciting new world we're dealing with. People are becoming more and more interconnected, ideas are being explored in all kinds of rapid new ways from the free associations that thrive on the web. It's a fun thing to be a part of, and it's something that will shape the future of humanity.

Web 2.0

A funny thing happened to me within the last couple of weeks: I've become a raving disciple of Web 2.0. I'm now totally enamored of social networking information sites. The theory is that whereas the internet has given us the ability to all put up our own personal information sites, web 2.0 sites such as Wikipedia (and, of course, Iron Chariots) have begun generating massive amounts of user generated content to produce and catalog information on a scale never before achieved by human history.

It started when a coworker told me about del.icio.us, which is a site that should completely replace your browser's built-in bookmarking capability. This site allows you mark sites with tags that you can easily retrieve on any browser, from any computer, anywhere in the world. But also, you can easily share groups of bookmarks with friends (for example, here is my fledgling page of atheism links) and browse other people's tags to find other content that you would enjoy.

I'm already a regular participant in some 2.0 activities; obviously I have my own blog, and I've cofounded my own wiki. I also use reader.google.com to aggregate all my favorite blog and news feeds. Within just a few days of getting into del.icio.us, I also became an enthusiastic member of Digg (user-driven news alerts) and Plaxo (online contact manager). If you haven't checked out all these neato sites, then you're not geeky enough yet. :) And if you have, go ahead and ridicule me for being so far behind the curve.

In other news, next semester's classes start in a week. Awful to contemplate, but I'm sure I'll be wasting tons of break time visiting my online bookmarks.

Letters from high school

Every year since my senior year in high school (about 14 years) my father has spent a day with the Humanities classes at Los Alamos High School. During the course of the year they bring in representatives from a variety of religious perspectives -- fundamentalist Christian, orthodox Jew, Unitarian, etc. My dad is their token atheist speaker.

The students are required to send letters to him expressing their thoughts about the talk, and he forwarded these letters to me. They are handwritten, so it would be a lot of work to copy them all, but here are a few choice comments.

"Everything you said made complete sense to me. I really liked how you asked us to challenge you. It seemed like you really wanted to know what we thought. You answered all our questions in depth and really thought about them. Thanks so much for all the information you gave us. It was fascinating!"

"It is a common misconception that atheists are immoral people. We are glad that you could show our class that. We liked how you explained that morality can come from human nature not just the supposed word of God."

"Even though I am a Christian, I was glad that you accepted everyone's beliefs and you explained your view on sensitive subjects like abortion and homosexuality. Overall I believe that your presentation, though not as flashy as the others, was the best one our Humanities classes had visit them."

"Our class seemed to greatly enjoy your presentation as many other speakers had Q&A but yours by far had the least empty space."

"Dear Dr. Glasser,
You have changed my life for the best. I will always look at religion and life in different ways."

Stranger Than Fiction (movie, ****)

I think it's time for me to just grit my teeth and declare that I am a Will Ferrell fan. I hated him with a passion when he was a hyper cheerleader on SNL. But I just have to say that everything he's done recently has been getting consistently better and better.

Stranger Than Fiction is very funny. Also extremely different from his last movie, Talladega Nights, which was also very funny. Whereas Ricky Bobby went for broad, obvious, Mel Brooks-style satire, STF is a very witty romantic comedy you just watch with kind of a goofy grin on your face most of the way through.

I love movies and books that screw with the narrative structure. It's one of the main reasons why Memento is among my favorites. I also very much enjoy stories which have characters who become aware of the story they are in. I admit to loving Last Action Hero as a guilty pleasure, and I've re-read The Neverending Story (enormously superior to the movie version) many times.

Most everything in the movie just worked for me. The reactions of all the characters to Will's narrator. The chemistry between Will and Maggie Gyllenhaal. (She is a major hottie, but who the hell knew that Ferrell could play a successful romantic lead?) The cleverly placed computer graphics that highlight the tedium of Will's life. The fake-out scenes that take place in the author's imagination. The fake literary analysis.

I can't remember where, but I recently heard a critic say that comic actors make successful transitions to drama far more often than serious actors make successful transitions to comedy, because doing comedy is harder. I would not call Stranger Than Fiction a drama by any means, but it is a thoughtful comedy different in nature from anything I've seen Ferrell do before, and it bodes well for his future career.

Odd feed behavior

By the way, I noticed that my blog feed was exhibiting odd behavior and showing very old posts as if they were new. The reason for this is because I've been going back and re-editing all of my old posts. Blogger just installed this nifty new feature where each post can be assigned to one or more categories, and if you click a category at the bottom of the post, you can see all posts in that category. So if you want to see everything I've recently blogged about, say, atheism, or grad school, just click the label and it's all neatly sorted. I like it.

Actually, more like a war on Hannukah

We celebrate both Christmas and Hannukah fairly loosely. Ginny laid out both a tree and a menorah, but didn't bother buying candles. On the fourth night (Monday), I decided I ought to go get some. I went to the nearest grocery store, combed the candle aisle thoroughly, but couldn't find any that were clearly labeled for menorahs. Since I'm typically an extremely unobservant Jew, I figured I should call my sister, who is up on these things.

Me: "Hey, do you know where I'd find Hannukah candles?"
Keryn: "Check the kosher market on so-and-so street, that's where I got mine."
Me: "I'm in a grocery store, I figured they'd just have them there. Am I crazy?"
Keryn: "In past years I found them easily. This year I couldn't find any in grocery stores at all."
Me: "Huh. What happened?"
Keryn: "I think it's part of this backlash against the war on Christmas. You know, Wal-Mart greeters are actually being told this year that they HAVE TO say Merry Christmas to people. In previous years there were smaller displays devoted to Hannukah and other holidays. No one says happy holidays now and you can't get Hannukah stuff."

You know, if I didn't know better, I might think that this anti-war-on-Christmas stuff is actually a thinly veiled "fuck you" to the other holidays that millions of people celebrate in this country.

Of course, as PZ Myers says, the best way to conduct the war on Christmas is to celebrate it.

My personal war on Christmas is fought in a way the Bill O'Reillys of the world don't even recognize: I blithely wish people a Merry Christmas without so much as a germ of religious reverence anywhere in my body. I take this holiday and turn it into a purely secular event, with family and friends and food and presents. I celebrate the season without thought of Jesus or any of the other myths so precious to the pious idiots who get upset when a Walmart gives them a cheery "Happy Holidays!".

Of course, it's easier for an atheist Christian than an atheist Jew to appreciate the Christmas traditions in their own right. I'm somewhat lukewarm on the notion, and Keryn doesn't like Christmas at all. She says that the only people who dislike Christmas as much as she does are devout Christians who are mad about the commercialization of "their" holiday. Scrooginess makes strange bedfellows, no?

Worst part of being back in school? The nightmares

For many years after I got my Bachelor's degree from UCSD, I had nightmares about being back in school. But I haven't had them for a while... until this weekend. Now they seem to be back with a vengeance. Oh joy.

So I'm in class taking a final exam. The final exam has a very weird format: there are two questions, and you get ten minutes for each of them. Not twenty minutes for the test, but you actually are given one question, then you turn it in at the ten minute mark, then you are given the other question. Furthermore, the questions themselves are pretty ugly. You have to write code, on your paper, without a computer, and it has to compile and run correctly when the professor types it in later. For you non-coders, I should mention that writing code that runs perfectly with no testing is not a skill many normal people have, even very experienced programmers. It is often largely a matter of luck.

A few minutes into the test, I have written one line, and suddenly I lose a contact lens. I go to the bathroom, and for some reason I cannot get it back in for a long time. When I get back, the test is over.

I plead with the professor: come on! This was beyond my control! I need more time to finish! The professor finally says, "All right, you can have four more minutes to finish both questions."

One minute in, I wake up. I immediately panic: No! I can't leave the classroom! I have to go back to sleep and finish the test! It takes me several more minutes to calm myself down and convince myself that the test was not, in fact, real.

Pre-post-mortem on Fall 2006 semester

I'm sitting in Mobile Computing with one hour to go before my first year of grad school officially ends. I realize I am being unkind to my fellow students by blogging while they give their extremely important presentations that they worked on so hard. Well, sorry students. I want to go home, spend time with my family, watch some movies, and then maybe gird my loins for some early Christmas/Hannukah/Solstice/whatever shopping.

In my humble estimation, my class projects both turned out pretty well. As in Spring, I'll post the term papers on my web site in a few days or so. One of my projects was about writing a distributed program to calculate whether very large numbers are prime. (For more information, the basis of our project is www.seventeenorbust.com) I wrote an entire peer-to-peer application from the ground up in Java, which is a very cool thing to know how to do. My other project was a neat little graphics program -- I often miss writing graphics -- which simulated a network of sensors that can detect when a car drives past it. Since the sensor network is fun to play with, I would like to turn it into a Java applet and post it on my project page, but that will take a little work to convert.

I was quite proud of my 4.0 average through the summer, but I predicted that it wouldn't last and I think I'm ready for my prediction to come true now. I won't be completely shocked if I pull an A in either of these classes, but if I do then it will be by the skin of my teeth. Distributed systems was HARD, and while I studied for the final as much as I could, I know there was one question that I completely botched, and a few others that I struggled with. As for Mobile Computing, about 40% of my grade hangs on my performance in three quizzes. I screwed up the first one badly, did well on the second, and mediocre on the third. So I think my performance there is a bit below average. I'm going to guess that I'm getting both B's, and I'll be happy with it. I've honestly never been a straight A student, and I think I'm just satisfied with the fact that I got in here and am lasting.

Next year will be tougher, because I have to write a Master's Thesis while still taking the same full course load that I did this year. Fortunately, there are two classes which I've deliberately lined up, one per semester, which people tell me are easy.

The last day of class is always excruciating, because I've finished a grueling month of work and I frankly don't care that much about other people's projects. Unfair, maybe, but they probably don't care about mine. Some of them are somewhat interesting as explorations of side topics we covered in class, but the problem is that they're explained by computer science grad students who, as a whole, are not known for their public speaking abilities.

There are a few happy exceptions, and I like to believe that I am one. I try to begin or end on a good joke and scatter in some pop culture references, and I often throw in some wacky things in my slides just to keep people awake. I know they'd rather not be there, but I try to make it as painless as possible. Video game references are often a winner in this crowd.

Oh, while I'm on the subject of slides, let me say a few words about Powerpoint presentations. I'm pretty much a Powerpoint novice, but in the last year I've worked on four presentations and observed way too many presentations by others. Here are my words of wisdom, limited in experience as they are:

1. Please oh please don't include large amounts of text on your slides. I don't want to hear you recite things straight off the slide. The bullet points in your slides need to be short, punchy, and highlight what you are saying, rather than repeat it. See, the thing is, I am not reading your slides. I am glancing at them to see if they say anything I need to know beyond what you are telling me.
   
2. Give me pictures! We're writing computer programs; if you can't show me how your program , I want to see screenshots. Or diagrams. A picture is worth a thousand words, you know, and if I can visualize what you're talking about then I might be more eager to know how you did it.
3. If your slides get your point across enough, you don't have to switch slides every 30 seconds. If your going to be talking about one major theme for three minutes, one slide that captures the central issue and hits the big topics can sit on screen for three minutes. Unless you want to break it up with a picture. Did I mention pictures are good?

Anyway, I have no plans tonight except to go home and relax. I have about six weeks till my next class starts. Yay! Six weeks of NOT thinking "Can't relax... must do homework..." Going to the office is going to be a piece of cake without school hanging over me.

By the way, this last guy who is talking is doing everything right. He has pictures, he's explaining what they're for, he includes minimal terminology on screen to identify the important development issues, and he even made a silly analogy to explain the issue he tackled.

Ten minutes now! Freedoooooooommmmmmm!

I'm a follower

Can't help myself... must resist peer pressure...

Oh, what the heck, I will link this extremely important scientific study. And so will YOU, if you have a blog. It's about testing the speed of memes, and you must participate. For science. And stuff.

Happy HOLIDAYS

Gear up early for this year's War On Christmas™.

Divided we stand?

I posted this over in a comment at The Atheist Experience blog, but I think it bears repeating.

There is an argument I keep hearing from well-meaning Libertarian atheists after the show. The argument goes: This has been a bad administration only because one party is controlling everything. If Democrats were controlling all three branches, they would be just as bad. Divided government is always best, because a government that accomplishes things will always be bad, and the only way we can be successful is to always have gridlock and prevent anyone from doing anything. Frankly, I think that is a vacuous argument with no evidence to back it up.

I don't want a government that is incapable of getting anything done; I want a government that is interested in doing the right things. The horrifically bad response to Hurricane Katrina last year really should highlight exactly what the consequences are of a government that can't get anything done.

Yes, a Republican administration with a Republican-controlled house and Senate has been pretty much an unmitigated disaster. That doesn't in any way support the notion that every party would be an unmitigated disaster; that's a hasty generalization fallacy. The simple fact is, Republicans have a lot of really bad ideas.

Does that mean I think Democrats are perfect? Of course not; there are bad Democrats and there are good Republicans. But if you believe that proves that both sides are equally bad, then you are falling for the same fallacy that many creationists do. You know -- "We collected 500 signatures of scientists who support creationism, so what we have here is a genuine scientific controversy." No we don't. We have a tiny, tiny anomaly among scientists.

The point being, just because there are two sides to an issue doesn't mean that the sides have equal merit and equal credibility. By and large, it isn't Democrats who are in the pockets of the religious right. It isn't Democrats who pushed this stupid, stupid war. The Republican controlled legislative branch hasn't merely been conventionally corrupt, in the ways people say that all politicians are corrupt. By many accounts they have been the most corrupt Congress in history.

I don't mindlessly vote a straight party ticket, IF there are worthy individuals from other parties who are running. However, I do to a very large extent favor Democrats over Libertarians and Libertarians over Republicans. I really don't buy this argument that just because there are two types of candidates available, they should be installed in government in equal amounts. If, for example there are "Christian nation" fundamentalists running, I will vote against them every single time. I do not believe there need to be a certain number of fundamentalists in Congress to keep a check on the non-fundamentalists.