E Tenebris Lux Dormiens

Check out Shakespeare In Bits: Hamlet iPad Edition

2012-01-30T12:20:00.001-08:00

Shakespeare In Bits: Hamlet iPad Edition

Check out this application on the App Store:

Shakespeare In Bits: Hamlet iPad Edition

Mindconnex Learning Ltd.

Category: Education

Updated: Jan 24, 2012

iTunes for Mac and Windows

Please note that you have not been added to any email lists.
Copyright © 2012 Apple Inc. All rights reserved

Sent from my iPad

So shall I

2012-01-16T22:46:00.001-08:00

So shall I
Pay for liberty
Without the fee
Of me?

The sound of the ether
The punitive release
That happened to be stayed

2012-01-14T22:40:00.000-08:00

Liberals and libertarians are unhappy with the bailouts but for different reasons. Liberals think that the government should have given the money instead to the homeowners on whom predatory lending took place, and if that couldn't happen, the alternative would be to step in and force the banks to take a loss by writing down the loan. This would have made the mortgage worth the same as what its collapsed price would be and would have set the stage for perhaps another speculation bubble, as unavoidable as dust. The banks, as a result, could have either collapsed, but it would have been fit for the government to nationalize them as needed, the way it did with auto industry.

Libertarians, however, think the banks should all have collapsed, because banks would then not be able to foreclose any house since they wouldn't exist anymore. At least, that's how I understand it.

Short-term profits, innovate or die, free market, they are all idiotic systems based on consumerism. The things that Apple are doing, like offering a recycling program, doing audit to ensure that workers have sanitary condition, eliminated toxic metals, are all things that it didn't have to do, and they are also things that don't benefit Apple's bottom line. Is there anything in the free market that suggest engaging in activities beneficial to society would make them more profitable? I say no because the free market doesn't care. It is an abstract, ideal system that has nothing to do with largely irrational people who buy Coke rather than Pepsi, and drink 64 oz of sugar water instead of plain water.

Purple Communications

2012-01-13T06:46:00.001-08:00

Purple Communications seems like it should be a good company, but it has been difficult to contact anyone about its other services, like the IP-Relay and ClearCaptions. They don't have a Contact Form, and where an email is available, I don't get a reply. Looking at Hamilton CapTel, I was surprised to get a response within a day.

I wonder if the reason Purple had been having problems is still the fine from the FCC for fraud.

Parasites

2012-01-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

Felis Catus

2011-12-29T23:28:00.000-08:00

It looks like Perl enjoys looking outside the window in my room. She spent all day napping and now is watching outside. When I was in my room with the light on, which caused a reflection in the window making it hard for her to see outside, I feel like she sometimes look at me, or dashes between the room and out, as if to signal me that she wanted me to have my light off so that she can look outside.

I closed the curtain, and turned off the light and left her alone in the dark.

Mum was asking where Perl was. I told her in my room. She went there and back and told me that she didn’t find her.

I went to the room to look for her, and found her hiding behind the curtain. She was looking outside as usual, as if in deep contemplation.

She just pooped a half hour ago, and oddly, she didn't try to cover it up. It turned out there was another spot of urine on one side. I wonder if our cat is really that finicky, or it will turn out that the litter box is too small or something.

Tasks and Taxes

2011-12-18T22:27:00.001-08:00

They are words I keep making with my tongues. The way the back of my throat hits to make the k sound is somehow unsatisfying.

Inflation

2011-12-14T21:38:00.001-08:00

It is amazing how things have changed. Just 20 years ago, we could see a ballet in Oakland for just $15. A nutcracker would have a price of $30. Now, I am not even sure we can have that expectation. Not only would we not want to go to Oakland to see a ballet, but we also would have to pay $400 to get a good seat.

Reboot

2011-12-12T13:31:00.000-08:00

Well, let's reboot this blog. I haven't posted much because I haven't felt like I had something worth saying, but you know what, bloviating has the same root word as blogging. So, I shall bloguiate.

I have tried other blogging platforms, Posterous, WordPress, Tumblr, etc. Yet the only one I still feel comfortable with is Blogger.com. Even with the changes that Google made, it feels easy, intuitive, and I don't need to get annoyed. I don't feel, like with Tumblr, that I need to make my contents special or photography-related. I don't feel, like with Posterous, that I need to have friends and families to post to. I don't feel, like with WordPress, that I have to remember to press "Enter" one time to get a new paragraph or that I have to deal with various buttons either confusing me or giving me choices that leave me paralyzed.

With WordPress, I get a button like Save as Draft that is more prominent than Publish, making me feel like I should somehow censor myself. In contrast, Blogger puts Publish in orange, and the rest in tasteful background gray.

I did, however, feel that Blogger was for a time getting complicated in trying to copy other platforms, offering features like labels and tagging (what's an obvious way to tell the difference?). I know the difference between labels, tags, categories, and folders, but I don't want to deal with them when I'm writing. I may geek out, but when I'm writing, I prefer not to be fiddling with the styles, organizations, and classifications.

Like I pointed out before on Abraham Williams' Google+, Google should be the Netflix of text. It should figure out how to parse the contents and offer suggested categories. I believe it already does so with the Internet, so why can't it do so with people posting on Google+ as well? Like Netflix's 5-star rating system, Google can use each individual's +1 to filter out what people aren't interested in.

Naturally, there is worry about privacy, but I think it could be implemented like advertising in emails.

Mamihlapinatapai

2011-10-30T11:56:00.001-07:00

Unsure of - But the soft Blue - Belied by the look of you

Sounds like an enjoyable night I'll miss out on

2011-09-24T20:04:00.001-07:00

http://www.exploratorium.edu/afterdark/

super in Ruby

2011-09-03T23:02:00.001-07:00

<code>

class Person

def initialize(name)

@name = name

end

def name

return @name

end

class Doctor < Person

def name

“Dr. “ + super

end

</code>

That, in short, is how super works.

super

2011-09-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

class Person
	def initialize(name)
		@name = name
	end

	def name
		return @name
	end
end

class Doctor < Person
	def name
		“Dr. “ + super
	end
end

That, in short, is how super works.

Student debt

2011-08-19T15:11:00.001-07:00

Kenyon has erected a $70 million sports palace featuring a 20-lane olympic pool. Stanford's professors now get paid sabbaticals every fourth year, handing them $115,000 for not teaching. Vanderbilt pays its president $2.4 million.

http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/the-debt-crisis-at-american-colleges/243777/

Fitting in

2011-08-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

From Ars Technica:

Fitting in to a group without helping the group: We've all met the sorts of people who adjust their behavior to fit in better with a group. And now a study has come along that confirms our worst suspicions about them: they don't actually care about the wellbeing of the group they're trying to fit in to. Some researchers from the University of East Anglia set up a public goods game, where participants could contribute some resources so that the entire group would benefit. Those that valued being accepted by the group the most were less likely to share resources for said group's benefit. The highest contributions came from those who had the lowest interest in being socially desirable, but only under specific circumstances: the experimenter had to praise their previous contributions to get them to cough up more.

Interesting. I don't think it's related to introversion. It seems that people who are less interested in fitting in would be willing to contribute more if they were praised compared to people who aren't that interested in the well-being of the group in the first place.

2011-08-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

What happened to Obama's Passion?
It is a continuation of your narrative that Congress is too beholden to Wall Street, because even though Americans strongly believe in certain things, like requiring the wealthy to give to charity and not receive it, Wall Street is too intent on preserving the status quo that keeps them very, very rich.

Congress is deadlocked, and even if Obama had tried to fight, he would still have to fight against a distinctly recalcitrant House Republicans and doubting liberals that have been corrupted by Reagan's words.

Our president is too Nixonian because our politics are changing. Just as many conservatives have been so disappointed by Nixon for passing Clean Waters Act and other acts that while liberal, were distinctly disappointing to both liberals and conservatives, were still acts of the Progressive movement. Now, Obama is the other way, acts of the Conservative movement toward cutting government down and down, while yet preserving it in so many ways, disappointing both parties. Just as Nixon was never accepted as a liberal, Obama is not accepted as a conservative. Just as Nixon might be considered a corrupted conservative, Obama is considered a corrupted liberal.

2011-06-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

It is interesting to read the news over Final Cut Pro X. The way so many people have gotten upset at how Apple threw away what was venerable for what a new, improved, and yet incomplete paradigm.

Area 51

2011-06-12T14:01:00.000-07:00

Radio Habana

2011-04-02T23:18:00.001-07:00

Posted via email from Alan's posterous

The Daily: Kinecting the future

2011-02-27T21:55:00.001-08:00

I want to share the web version of an article from The Daily, the tablet-based original news publication. http://bit.ly/f4B9lM

Kinecting the future

Last year, Kinect appeared in the video game landscape as a massive question mark. The Xbox 360…

For the full experience, download The Daily from the App Store.

Sent from my iPad

Posted via email from Alan's posterous

EPA Careers Info

2011-02-18T10:28:00.001-08:00

Strategically, the degrees with the best potential for employment at EPA Region 9 are engineering followed by life sciences, physical sciences, and lastly EPS.

Posted via email from Alan's posterous

Second kangeiko

2011-02-02T21:34:00.001-08:00

I did the kangeiko again last week, going every morning and then on the last Friday I went evening as well. I expected to see the Sensei, but he did not show. I think he was feeling ill or is having trouble with his legs, I do not know. Happily, I received another tenugui, which is the top one. The bottom I got last year.

I still find it humorous that in Chinese, the words mean way of uniting energy, and it implies being able to use, Yoda-like, the Force to cause damage and move things with your mind.
I didn't know what the cloths were called until I looked up Japanese headband, which was called hachimaki. On the wikipedia page, there was a link to tenugui, whose dimension (35 cm by 90 cm) fits the cloths.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenugui
Sent from my iPhone

H.264

2011-01-12T13:35:00.001-08:00

My support for Google Chrome is henceforth withdrawn. I didn't mind the browser's arrogance, but for the team to take h.264 out of the browser smacks of spite.

Posted via email from Alan's posterous

Avoiding reckless acquisition

2010-12-23T20:32:00.001-08:00

"We don’t let it burn a hole in our pocket, we don’t allow it to motivate us to do stupid acquisitions. And so I think that we’d like to continue to keep our powder dry, because we do feel that there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future. That’s the biggest reason."

Sent from my iPhone

The NMA.tv carolers present the 'TSA Christmas Carol'

2010-12-14T12:23:00.000-08:00

Higginson in 1904

2010-12-09T23:17:00.001-08:00

"As the memories of the slave period fade way, the mere fetich [sic] of colorphobia will cease to control our society, and marriage may come to be founded, not on the color of skin, but upon the common courtesies of life, and upon genuine sympathies of heart and mind."

Amazing thinking on miscegenation. And if one substituted appropriate words for homophobia in modern day, it could read as:

"the mere fetish of homophobia will cease to control our society, and marriage may come to be founded, not on the gender of two people, but upon the common courtesies of life, and upon genuine sympathies of heart and mind."

Posted via email from Alan's posterous

2010-12-07T15:01:00.001-08:00

How America will Collapse in 2025

Unpleasant.

Paul Adams' Presentation

2010-12-05T23:34:00.001-08:00

A marvelous insight into the inadequacies of current technology for enhancing real-life social network, and planting the seeds for future developers to resolve them.

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

Camera + iPad

2010-12-03T00:49:00.001-08:00

While in the car driving home, my mind was on some different topics. The drive home took 45 minutes despite it being no more than 20 miles in distance because it was rush hour. I have rarely driven north on 880 from Fremont to San Leandro because I've always disliked how the cars pile into the highway at peak times.

I bought the iPad Camera Connection Kit and was thinking about how it could be worth the price ($29), and I realized that it's worth it because there could be many occasions where we'd want to send a picture to someone and were hampered by the fact that we had to have a laptop with internet connection. And if we wanted the pictures in the iPad, we'd have to plug the iPad to the laptop and upload the pictures. In this case, I would have to endure iTunes. The strange dialectical dance could be eliminated by the synthesis--the kit that allowed direct upload to the iPad. It answered the question with a resounding "Yes!" and not a "Yes, but ..."

I've already used it, and it is already an astounding convenience. The pictures that I've been meaning to upload to the iMac, but were too lazy to do so after returning from the trip, I've already done with ease. And if I bring them with me, I'd be more likely to upload the pictures during the trip rather than after it.

Posted via email from Alan's posterous

North Berkeley BART

2010-12-01T14:17:00.001-08:00

Posted via email from Alan's posterous

Conversations on Chemistry

2010-11-30T12:39:00.001-08:00

This is an excerpt from a book I'm sorta reading now. It was published in 1817, and was a fictional conversation between a teacher and two students, all women, talking about all the new discoveries that had hitherto been made in chemistry. Mrs. B. is explaining the thermometers, and how they differed among different countries.

MRS. B.

The extreme points of the scales are not the same in all thermometers, nor are the degrees always divided in the same manner. In different countries philosophers have chosen to adopt different scales and divisions. The two thermometers most used are those of Fahrenheit, and of Reaumur; the first is generally preferred by the English, the latter by the French.

EMILY.

The variety of scale must be very inconvenient, and I should think liable to occasion confusion, when French and English experiments are compared.

MRS. B.

The inconvenience is but very trifling, because the different gradations of the scales do not affect the principle upon which thermometers are constructed. When we know, for instance, that Fahrenheit's scale is divided into 212 degrees, in which 32° corresponds with the freezing point, and 212° with the point of boiling water: and that Reaumur's is divided only into 80 degrees, in which 0° denotes the freezing point, and 80° that of boiling water, it is easy to compare the two scales together, and reduce the one into the other. But, for greater convenience, thermometers are sometimes constructed with both these scales, one on either side of the tube; so that the correspondence of the different degrees of the two scales is thus instantly seen. Here is one of these scales, (PLATE II. Fig. 1.) by which you can at once perceive that each degree of Reaumur's corresponds to 21⁄4 of Fahrenheit's division. But I believe the French have, of late, given the preference to what they call the centigrade scale, in which the space between the freezing and the boiling point is divided into 100 degrees.

CAROLINE.

That seems to me the most reasonable division, and I cannot guess why the freezing point is called 32°, or what advantage is derived from it.

MRS. B.

There really is no advantage in it; and it originated in a mistaken opinion of the instrument-maker, Fahrenheit, who first constructed these thermometers. He mixed snow and salt together, and produced by that means a degree of cold which he concluded was the greatest possible, and therefore made his scale begin from that point. Between that and boiling water he made 212 degrees, and the freezing point was found to be at 32°.

And so, like the QWERTY keyboard that was a design borne of compromise, the US has lived with the Fahrenheit ever since it was invented. 0 degree Fahrenheit turned out not to be the coldest temperature that could be achieved, the honor of that goes to the Kelvin and it is a temperature that cannot ever be achieved.

Ecto

2010-11-27T00:16:00.000-08:00

I don't like retyping things. I don't like saying things again. Yet, I am contradicting myself because there are many things over which I obsess, repeating them because i like them. But where I have made efforts, such as typing them into a paragraph, and if I lose them, then I feel exasperated. I don't want to type them again.

Is heaven a physician?

2010-10-10T23:45:00.001-07:00

Is Heaven a Physician?
They say that He can heal -
But Medicine Posthumous
Is unavailable -
Is Heaven an Exchequer?
They speak of what we owe -
But that negotiation
I'm not a Party to -

It is interesting. In Dickinson's time, she was subject to all kinds of exhortation to be Greatly Awakened, to be told that God was a perennial telescope watching us all hours of days. And one of her struggles was Calvinism, she was doomed either way by virtue of existing. To have been born with free will for the purpose of being damned.

Mechanopsychokinesis

2010-09-13T16:21:00.001-07:00

Since this "tractor beam" can only work in an atmosphere, perhaps it would be better applied as a form of mechanopsychokinesis. The telekinetic ability expressed through machine.

To write

2010-06-16T00:27:00.000-07:00

This is the longest weblog I've ever kept, and at times it is awkward, like some roiling juggernaut, and makes me wonder if I shouldn't start fresh. I have my Tumblr and my Posterous, my Twitter and my Facebook, but I would most like to not be so fragmented as now.

I am overwhelmed, and undecided. This weblog started with the intention of story-telling, or a diary, but it has roiled around distinctly because I am uncomfortable expressing my opinions. I am afraid to write.

Boinc on Linux

2010-05-23T08:50:00.001-07:00

Installing BOINC on Linux

Spread Review

2010-04-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

Spread was not the best movie, but it was cute and I gave it an extra star for not having a standard Hollywood happy ending. That is, the boy and girl didn't get together at the end and live happily ever after. While I think Ashton Kutcher isn't a bad actor, he is simply too good-looking for the role, for any role, in which his fortune changes dramatically--this made the second half of the movie less sensical than it would otherwise be, showing him being forced to seduce a less-attractive woman in an effort to get things he wants or needs--like a place to stay, food to eat, etc. There was not a clear argument that he might have simply been so love-struck that he couldn't summon his usual charms.

Along with his main plot that later segued into time spent with a woman who is also turning tricks with wealthy men and in fact was engaged, there is also the subplots of Nikki's best friend and ex-girlfriend that were woefully underdeveloped. If trying to explain everything is a crime, then this movie has done the exact opposite. I am not left like other movies dreaming and wondering what happened to the characters after the movie is over, because it trimmed so much meat with the fat that it leaves us unsatisfied.

Ha-Buah (The Bubble)

2010-03-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

I watched this movie on PS3 streamed over from Netflix, which I can only do because Netflix doesn't provide captioning over streamed video. There is some English spoken, but not much.

It is a story of an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian resident who with each other fall in love at first sight, but are swept away by the caprice of religious wars.

2010-03-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

I purchased Lost to the West a few months ago, but since then I haven't had the opportunity or time to read beyond the first few pages. I will say that I was hesitant at first to buy it hardcover, as hardcover seems better for books that are of great importance, and I'm not sure if this book is of great importance. The premise, though, is already an interesting one--the idea that the Eastern Roman Empire, long forgotten, had been the bulwark of culture protecting the Islamic expansion from the Middle East.

(Disclosure: If you use the link and buy something, I get a kickback. I'm also testing out Amazon Associates feature using Blogger in Draft.)

I want to shout

2010-03-22T00:49:00.001-07:00

I want to scream. I want to leap in jubilation! Health care reform,
the start of it, has passed. In America, people will now be able to
think of health care as guaranteed, rather than only for people with
special conditions, such as being poor enough, old enough, or a veteran.

I'm so glad. This is the change I voted for. This is the change I
supported. Wrung our nerve to the last, but this is the climax. Just
like in 2008, with 6 long months of presidential primary fight,
finally ending! This was a parallel strategy!

Inorganic Chemistry

2010-03-07T01:01:00.000-08:00

I have a book titled “Descriptive Inorganic, Coordination, and Solid-State Chemistry” and I think it is a perfect title for the book. The teacher who taught our class started with Chapter 1 and moved to Chapter 9, and it was probably the best way to start. Chapter 9 is a sort of reintroduction of General Chemistry, dealing with the commonest elements found in nature, Group I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII, from alkali metals to the nobel gases, excluding the transition elements (those that add d or f orbitals).

After reaching the end of the book, for the second quarter, we went to Chapter 2, to discuss what our teacher called “the deep dark forests of the transitions elements.” Unlike the eight groups, in which all the elements can be defined in periodicity--the transitions metals are all different and behave in strange ways. If we were able to name lithium, sodium, and other elements down the group as alkali metal, beryllium, magnesium, and other elements as alkaline earth elements, and boron and carbon groups as unique mainly for the step-wise metal-nonmetal boundary, the pnictogen elements, the chalcogen elements, the halogen elements, and the nobel gases, we cannot easily name the transitions elements as anything other than transitions. We get elements as varied as copper and gold, plutonium and uranium, manganese and molybdenum, and others.

Chapter 9 onwards dealt with inorganic chemistry, even carbon. Chapter 2 to 5 dealt with coordination chemistry, unique because the transitions metals are coordinated by various ligands that can be charged or polar. Solid-state chemistry, which we are getting into, is about how crystals are arranged at microscopic size.

It is all descriptive, and infrequently do we get into the nitty gritty details of calculations or energy or physics. I see why this is a capstone class for general chemistry undergraduate majors, and I wished I had the opportunity to take this class earlier.

Politics in General

2009-12-14T23:56:00.001-08:00

Politics is the art of the possible. Right now, we have a Congress in which all Republicans are opposed to reform. This isn't healthy for democracy, and they must be punished. I hope that the bill passes and Obama is able to pass it into law, however bad it is. But I hope much more than all the Republicans are replaced by new ones that are at least more pliable and more willing to contribute rather than stonewall.

Otherwise, they are just disgusting creatures who besmirch the institutions they are supposed to stand for.

The Politics of Health Care Reform

2009-12-14T23:48:00.000-08:00

It's very hard to think. The liberals are too despondent now to vote for Obama again, but I would not be surprised if Obama picked Hillary to be his VP for the second term--however craven it might be, not many people could resist voting for such a power team. But, Clinton might say no. She will sooner leave a sinking ship than try to hitch her wagon to him. That's what I see.

A filibuster threat is more powerful than the filibuster itself, and that seems wrong to me. Senators should be allowed to filibuster 24 hours a day, as needed, rather than by merely threatening it--since filibustering is an exhausting activity--I guess the senators don't like to do anything exhausting. They would rather be pampered.

The teabaggers aren't very successful in stopping Obama because this plan isn't Obama's plan. Unlike Hillary, when HillaryCare worked against her, this plan is a product of Congressional legislation, plus a heaping dose of lobbyists' subsidies. Therefore, they're using the wrong playbook to oppose this legislation. They cannot hope to repeat the failure of 1993-94 unless they change their tactics.

health insurance threat

2009-10-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

This threatening to raise insurance rates if the health reform legislation passes is simply ridiculous. We should just say, "Damned if we do, and damned if we don't."

For the last 20 years, insurance rates have been rising and have never gone down. They're going to rise if we pass health insurance and they're going to rise anyway if we don't. But legislation is precisely for the purposing of taming the rising costs of care. The health insurance industry knows it is going to lose a lot of money, and that is why it is running a massive scare campaign.

i wish a politician had the balls to say, "You ignorant fool, the government created Medicare in the 1960s during Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. The government did it because the private insurance companies believe that you old people are uninsurable. You're liable to get sick, expensive, and therefore you're going to be kicked off their insurance policies. The government created Medicare to help insure the old. Now, we're debating whether to provide a Medicare-like program for everyone else. You're also wrong about the politicians being insured by private companies. We most assuredly are not, we are insured by the government, and that is why we have been able to live longer than the average American people. So, learn your goddamn facts, you ignorant people."

Great Depression II

2009-10-08T22:07:00.001-07:00

The economic news is so depressing, there's nothing to do except to feel gratitude, that it isn't the worst yet. Millions of jobs lost are so much more in magnitude than the fact that during the Great Depression, 25% of the population were unemployed, because the population at that time was smaller.

The population of the United States was 123 million, which means that a 25% unemployment rate is equivalent to 30 million people. Now, we have a population of 317 million people, meaning that a 10% unemployment rate is over the total number of people ever unemployed in the Great Depression.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Depression. It may not be called that now, but it will be called that by future historians who must acknowledge the long decline of the American Empire. Even if businesses pick up, we have already so destroyed small businesses it is highly unlikely we will succeed in halving the number of unemployed anytime soon.

Thirty-one million people should be enough to rise up against the bankers and the government, and yet they stay silent because they are sucking off the teats of unemployment benefits. I don't know any other reason, other than the Americans continue to retain their absolute faith that the beloved Constitution will fix everything, that like in the Great Depression before, we will pull through as long as we help each other.

single-application mode

2009-10-07T00:28:00.001-07:00

Single-Application Mode via Daring Fireball

I haven't heard of this feature, but it makes me think that is where the iPhone went, despite everyone not liking it on the Mac OS X. The small screen space of the iPhone almost necessitates the focus of one application at a time, so even if, in the future, the hardware is powerful enough to permit background processes, it will maintain the single-application mode, with the Home button being the Finder that quits each application as you switch.

I did not know what it was called, but now I understand that it is what Apple wants--and it represents one of the differences between Mac and Windows.

For example, suppose I have two Safari windows and a Mail window open, and the first Safari window is on top of the Mail window, which is on top of the second Safari window. I would attempt to minimize the first Safari window to get access to the Mail window, only to be frustrated by the second Safari window popping up.

I found this to be annoying (and I'd say I still find it so, because I prefer to minimize rather than click on the Mail app in the Dock), but at least I understand the purpose. It is part of Apple's obsession with keeping users focused on one application at a time, until the users are explicitly switching to another application. It presents applications as the main focus of attention, with clear delineations from each other. In contrast, Windows presents everything as being subsumed under the single category that is--I suppose--aptly titled "windows." In this case, every application is a mere window, and priority is given by which was last used. So, if you used Outlook, and then click on Firefox, and then minimize it, Outlook as the last used window then becomes the foregrounded application. That in the Mac OS X applications are to be the main focus is a necessity probably born of the conscious UI choice made in the 1980s of putting the menu bar on top rather than in every window.

After all, it would be very odd to see the menu bar changing application identity by virtue of minimization (and it might not even be desirable). In contrast, Microsoft Windows puts the menu bar in every window, so that the application is the focus only in each window. This methodology permits a certain degree of flexibility, but perhaps sacrifices clarity, because non-technical people don't get the sense of what an application is as distinct from what an operating system is. It becomes all "Windows" to them.

Decentralized government

2009-09-16T10:20:00.001-07:00

Teacher certification a painful farce

I can't believe the comment, that there are people idiotic enough to blame the problems of teacher certification on too much government. It is idiotic because it's precisely that we have different competing authorities that make it a farce, such that Pennsylvania has a different requirement from that of Connecticut. This is why some people want the federal government to step in, so that it can standardize requirements, and it can assure that teachers who took their education courses in one state can be assured of a job in another.

This is similar to the medical community, in which California actually requires doctors from out of state or country to go to school and take another exam to get a license to practice in California.

It is not an example of more government as much as the problems of decentralized governments and districts disabling people from moving their certification between schools.

Hot Dogs on a Stick

2009-09-06T13:20:00.000-07:00

I saw someone I knew who went to ASL class with me working at Hot Dogs on a Stick. I didn't talk with her because I felt like I would embarrass her. I grew up in a TV culture where such occupations were portrayed as uncool. It was something like the Wonder Years, the 80s/90s with the drag color like that Nan Golding photo. I suppose the chain's bright yellow color is its brand, it's recognizable, but maybe the fact it reminded me of my childhood is why we live in perpetual forgetfulness. Brand is just too ubiquitous and sometimes stale, and it has little of local flavors to make one proud.

Meanwhile, I had been hankering for a corn dog. Maybe I will go back to buy one.

Testing aStore

2009-08-24T20:33:00.000-07:00

I doubt I will ever earn money because I don't pay enough attention to the care of a store, but it can't hurt to try.

Long Perspective

2009-08-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

Daring Fireball linked to 3 key parts of news you usually don't get.

I can't help but agree. I often feel unsatisfied by the lack of long perspective on the health care reform debate. Every news on Huffington Post, CNN, New York Times, and other news sites and papers are breathless in its coverage of the immediate event, as if recent events could have an unalterably large effect on future directions. The shallow parsing done on the Obama Administration's constant, though alarmingly centrist position on the public option is amplified into a meaningless act of putting words in a person's mouth.

It is important to think in terms of context, to give people ideas of the process of health care, rather than reporting on whatever new events are happening, because people don't have the capacity to process and organize information in a manner that allows them to be enlightened at the end of the day. And in fact, it is too easy for newspapers to print loud headlines than to write a thoughtful piece.

We might regard that as journalism, but it's not really journalism as much as a mindless aggregation of the now. And in the end, it leaves one addicted and perpetually unsatisfied.

2009-08-19T00:13:00.000-07:00

What the doctor brought up about Medicare and Medicaid made me think, "How American," because it is just this sort of half-baked fractional approach that makes it our government so bureaucratic and unaccountable to people in the first place, a large percentage of our money spent on separate administrations of Medicare and Medicaid rather than both of them together, and the public option/co-op will further increase that fractionalization by creating yet another separate agency--all because the elected officials are too timid and too wholly owned by the insurance companies to simply extend Medicare to everyone.

Then, it makes the job of universal coverage even harder, because you have these three or four different agencies that must be merged together. I don't think, however, there will be much "turf wars" the way those testosterone-drenched three-letter agencies we call the FBI, CIA, NSA, and so forth, engage in when Bush attempted to merge them under the distastefully-named Homeland Security.

What it also brought to mind is Andrew Sullivan, the gay conservative, who laid out his own ideas of what is a "conservative" government, and why he thought that extending marriage to gay couples was a conservative approach to gay rights, compared to civil unions, which is a liberal approach. In his mind, the liberal approach is always to create something new to deal with problems, and the problem with civil union, regardless of how much you try to say that it confers every benefit equal to marriage, is that you must maintain a separate set of documentations, a new bureaucratic technicality, for them.

Namely, Sullivan conservatives are concerned primarily with preserving institutions and maintaining social orders, but also that conservative and liberal ideas are dependent on and require each other. He cited Burke: "A state without the means of some change is without the means of its preservation."

What's interesting is also that when countries created civil unions, more straight couples are likely to use civil unions instead of marriage because they might not be ready to commit to marriage and would rather "cohabitate" even if civil union is equally a marriage and doesn't smell as sweet. In effect, civil union became for these straight couples a step between merely living together and getting the benefits of marriage.

I find Sullivan's definition of conservative vs. liberal fascinating, but I recognize his ideas are predominantly of British origin, and America has a different, more ideological, definitions of each, and unfortunately, there is also a large pathogenic strain of libertarianism and anarchy, naivete mingled with a large dash of corruptive and corrosive lust for power.

Census

2009-08-16T01:06:00.001-07:00

I hope Obama does not lose Congress to the Republicans in 2010, because 2010 is the year that a new census of the US population will take place, and gerrymandering will ensue.

If the Democrats lose Congress again in 2010, it may be the fifth lost chance. In 1970, Nixon was in power. In 1980, Reagan won, and the Republicans in power could gerrymander the districts to keep themselves safe. In 1990, Bush was in power, and again the districts were gerrymandered to favor the Republicans even further. In 2000, a second Bush won. And now, it will be the first Democratic president's chance to influence the apportionment of the population since JFK was elected in 1960. At least, I think to the president belongs the power to appoint a counsel that will rejigger the districts. Unfortunately, he was cowed by Republicans' putting fear and terror into the hearts of the racist Nativists.

For the Nativists have always been with us, from slaves being 3/5 of a person (not to give the slaves the rights to vote, but to allow slaveowners to have greater influence on the census, to--what else--ensure slavery could continue), to John Adam's signing the Alien and Sedition Act (with a sunset provision ensuring it would end when Adam stepped down), to the Missouri-Kansas Compromise, to the squatters' rights where Southern state residents moved westward to claim more slave states and prevent the northern states from being able to outlaw slavery, to the Southern states being eager to start the Civil War, to John Wilkes Booth assassinating President Lincoln, to creating Jim Crow laws that continued to guarantee that African Americans, while no longer slaves by law, would remain slaves de facto, to laissez-faire capitalism, to opposing desegregation and abortion and fighting violently to that end by creating the Ku Klux Klan, to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr., to speak repeatedly of race war, white supremacy, and making various racist, xenophobic, and homophobic attacks on the different.

They all quieted somewhat when we had a string of Republican presidents who had to promise loyalty to them by the usual wedge issues like prayers in school, government encroachment, attacking secularism, demonizing the Democrats, while not actually doing anything about them. In effect, those right-wingers were what people called their "useful idiots."

American history is a string of backward people always winning.

Inventions

2009-08-10T22:25:00.000-07:00

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/can-do/

Lovely.

Mafia Wars Bank Deposit

2009-08-04T12:17:00.001-07:00

The answer is: You must deposit 1 trillion dollars PLUS the 10% bank fee. That would be $1,111,111,111, but $1.2 trillion dollar should be sufficient.

It's weird because when I was able to deposit $1,000,000 and get "The First is the Hardest" achievement with $900,000. But, for the Personal Bailout achievement, depositing $1,000,000,000 made me lose $100,000,000, and I got no "Personal Bailout" achievement.

That's what I found out from looking online. You should click here to read the forum. They probably changed the rule recently, as I noticed they added the word "After Bank Fee", which I guess is to make the game slightly harder.

I had been searching for it too, whether I must deposit exactly one trillion dollars, or whether anything over a trillion is sufficient.

2009-08-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

FCC is investigating Apple, Google, and AT&T over Google Voice.

What I like about this is how the cogs of a democratic republican system are turning to ensure stability, fair market, and healthy competition. The Bush Administration had been trying to put the brakes on, and was very successful in doing so.

Scheme!

2009-07-29T23:54:00.001-07:00

I had a chance to use Scheme again, and it was great, going back to the old memories. I was at first rusty -- I didn't remember some ways of formulating an expression -- but I quickly got into it, and I would like to use it more.

And every time I add a closing parenthesis after another closing parenthesis, I get a thrill in my bones. The parentheses are weird -- maybe for veteran Schemers and Lispers, they are easily ignored and seen as simply a part of the program; and maybe for them, it is useful as a way to see the block each parenthesis encapsulate, so you can see whether you're missing a closing parenthesis that would confuse the interpreter.

All in all, I love it. I love the functional paradigm -- it seems so logical to me, so mathematical, and so resistant against side effects.

Talking to a Wall of Brick

2009-07-29T14:39:00.000-07:00

One of the comments made a good point, for Apple to take down certain apps because they allegedly duplicate certain features of the iPhone is very much like Microsoft's bundling IE and in turn, preventing, crippling, or disabling Netscape from running on Windows. Microsoft can be seen as anti-competitive. Apple, if it does not allow Mozilla to develop its own engine for the iPhone, may soon be accused likewise. On the other hand, Apple hasn't achieved a monopoly (yet), and so these antagonizing behaviors will pass, however eluctably.

Woe

2009-07-28T22:32:00.000-07:00

The woe of California is a good thing. The governor must keep cutting until people realize precisely what they don't want gone. And it should not matter what people vote for anymore, because even if they oppose the legislature's cuts, these votes must be rendered ineffective and non-binding by Sacramento fiat, because we simply cannot afford them. And we cannot afford them not because we cannot pay for them, but because we do not want to pay the taxes.

Obama

2009-06-30T10:52:00.000-07:00

What I like about Obama is he's certainly no dictator. He's not going to use obscure provision in some laws to overturn Don't Ask Don't Tell or use the Justice Department to refuse to recognize Defense of Marriage Act. Doing those things would have been a dictatorial act, even if the laws permitted it, because they would have been done without the consent of Congress and against the will of the military.

Some people might consider Obama's backtracking on indefinite detention to be an example of a dictatorial power, but we must remember that this was a precedent set not by him, but by George W. Bush. Bush has set up a legal limbo that Obama is struggling to disentangle, and for now, he has not figured out how to disentangle himself from this mess without political risks.

AT&T

2009-06-23T12:57:00.001-07:00

AT&T should have followed Apple's strategy when there was outrage over
having to pay the full price of an iPhone.

When Apple, no more than 2 months after debuting the iPhone in June
2007, suddenly dropped the price by $200, there was a huge outrage
that went on for probably a day or two, then Apple offered a $100
rebate, and the outrage largely muted itself. $100 is not $200, but it
was acceptable.

AT&T should have developed more of a spine and said people would be
required to buy the iPhone at full price. Then, after a day or two of
fury, offered a rebate.

Except, unlike with Apple, there's nothing to buy from AT&T, so AT&T
could have instead simply say that the customers get one free month on
their iPhone bill, or $70 off. Then the anger would be muted.

Instead, all I see is a muddled reaction to the anger.

2009-06-16T11:37:00.001-07:00

Zahra Rahnavard

2009-06-15T23:33:00.000-07:00

I am in solidarity with the Iranian people protesting their rights being taken away, and their bravery against government suppression. Even though to me, Moussavi does not represent a huge change as he is chosen by the same party, the Iranian people are inspiring, and we will see what comes of it in the future. We can only hope for the best, but they must determine their path.

Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum: newyorker.com

2009-06-13T16:06:00.001-07:00

Annals of Medicine: The Cost Conundrum: newyorker.com

Shared via AddThis

2009-05-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Night Fisherman

2009-05-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

If you think the new Star Trek movie was unfaithful to the spirits of Star Trek, you should read Star Trek Reboots, a wonderful counterargument.

2009-05-16T00:34:00.000-07:00

Why do oil companies and car companies help each other? It is like the United States helping Israel. By that analogy, I mean to say that both countries' interests are not mutual. Israel is more interested in expanding its territory, even at the risk of a nuclear attack or increased terrorism. Its Jewish fundamentalists have an ugly influence on its politics. The United States, however, does not want further terrorist attacks, and with the elections of 2006 and 2008, the evangelical movement has declined in its ugly power.

So, the vehicular industry ought to be neutral in the oil debate, and more interested in increasing its fuel efficiency, whereas the oil industry would prefer that more oil be consumed, the more profits it obtains. Yet, they apparently infest and join frequently to lobby Congress. Now, we see the near bankruptcy of a car company, and the dispossession of another to an Italian corporation. Meanwhile, the oil companies continue to amass money, but because they are a private industry, they do not take risks the way a government would, so they do not explore, and instead lobby the federal government for money to search for oil and build pipelines for them.

2009-05-14T12:58:00.001-07:00

What Makes Us Happy?

2009-05-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

Is something wrong with Google's spam filter, or is there a new spammer on the block, even more vicious than the last? I noticed for several months that the spam count was going down, but now it's going back up, fast.

2009-05-05T15:02:00.001-07:00

Watching the Watchman

2009-05-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

I was so Sad and so Afraid
To be laid - bare,
I had a moment - once - delayed -
I did not Care -

...

2009-04-29T00:51:00.001-07:00

I think about Shakespeare, where it was said he turned in his plays with hardly any blot in them. I somehow do not believe that. I think he revised endlessly, and then made a new clean copy to turn in. And that if other playwrights turn in plays with blots in them, they are likely lazy with rewriting and stingy with paper. I do believe in rewriting and revising. Getting to the "white heat" is about refining the ore until it cannot be refined anymore. White heat could also refer to the inspiration that leads you to just write your first draft without self-criticism, but you must still look back, and you must revise. Even Dickinson's prose is refined.

Then again, it may say more about me than about how these writers actually worked. I am not that kind of person to revise what I have written. I usually write, and leave the first draft unchanged. But, maybe the ideal I've made of prior writers is what I'm striving toward, that after I obtain the ores--the important step--I must edit and edit until it shines with the white heat.

Kubrick probably posited this idea too. He might have broken down the screenplays to their essential elements reflecting him, then he filmed many takes, then he edits for years until the movie repudiates the forge.

2009-04-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

To explain, the previous post was not an advertisement. It was trying out the Email feature of the New York Times page, having it sent to post on this blog. But, the New York Times always try to advertise.

2009-04-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

Tamim Ansary's Textbook Publishing Controversy

I remember having to carry heavy textbooks, and it made little sense as teachers don't rely on the entire book. Instead, they picked certain chapters, and it would be nice if we had many publishing houses than oligarchic conglomerates. That way, teachers could use a small textbook or several focusing on exactly what they want to teach--everything could be read piecemeal without me having to lug home the meat as well as the fat.

Even last quarter, I bought a textbook called "Principles of Instrumental Analysis" and we only studied 12 chapters out of 34 in the book. Granted, the quarter system had only 10 weeks, but then the textbook should be personalizable to precisely that 10 weeks and what the subject entails. It may be narrower in scope than what a 16-week semester could cover, but that can get its own personal textbook as well.

The Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications textbook is from McGraw Hill, which makes me think of Texas, like Phil McGraw, a very Texan name. Only a fraction of the book were devoted to teaching the said subject in class. It is its own terrible waste of paper, especially in conjunction with needing to "update" textbooks with a new edition every year.

It is the idea to make a profit by updating a weighty tome with only minute changes and jiggling the end-of-chapter questions in order to prevent the teachers from being able to assign problem numbers based on a canonical set. To me, a large textbook should be fairly stable and because it attempts to be comprehensive, it can only be generic. Then there are small books that can be used instead.

(via PZ Mysers)

backward charges

2009-04-12T21:17:00.001-07:00

I have been trying to understand how Franklin got the charges wrong,
and I have repeatedly told myself to try to understand how if he had
named it the other way, things would have been much easier. I think I
am beginning to understand.

When Benjamin Franklin was studying electricity, he thought that there
was this "electrical fluid" that existed on the surface of an object.
When rubbing glass with silk, the glass acquired a charge that was
opposite of that obtained by rubbing amber with fur. This were easily
observed when putting two silk-rubbed glasses together--they repel
each other. The same effect was seen with fur-rubbed amber. However,
putting amber and glass together resulted in attraction.

Franklin decided arbitrarily that the glass obtained a positive
charge, that is, it was thought to that the silk conferred electrical
fluid onto the glass. And the fur, in contrast, removed the electrical
fluid.

It was a 50/50 chance, and he guessed it wrong.

In reality, silk actually removed the electrical fluid from the glass,
and fur added it onto the amber. The amber should have been the one
receiving the positive charge, for positive would have been like a
positive number, it gained something. The glass then received a
negative charge, it lost something.

Unfortunately, we have been living with Franklin's choice for over 200
years since his discovery, and there is no practical way to change it.
We say a glass has positive charge because electrons have been taken
away from--and not added to--it.

Imagine if we instead live in a world where the convention wasn't
backward. A world of electricity in which electrons move to a negative
charge because negative would mean that it has less electrons.

Imagine if we wrote a sodium ion as having a negative charge, meaning
it lacks one electron that would make it neutral. Imagine if we saw
sulfate ion as SO4 2+, with a positive charge, meaning that it holds
two electrons, it is positive of electrons. And we could be talking
about electropositivity rather than electronegativity when referring
to the tendency of an ion to be electron-greedy. So, looking at a
water molecule, H20, we can say that the oxygen side is more delta-
positive and the hydrogen side is more delta-negative because the
oxygen loves electrons and is taking them away from the hydrogen.

The confusion over reducing a compound meaning to add electrons to it
could have been eliminated, since it is instead negative, and we add
electrons, which are positive. We could have called it incrementation,
not reduction. Redox reaction would have been called something else.
Indox, perhaps.

But alas, that is not the way of this world. And with each passing
day, the scientists are dead-set on this inefficient path and will not
change.

On the other hand, the counterintuitive labeling could be helpful to
programmers who need to understand the concept of abstraction, the
idea that a variable can be separate from its meaning. So for example,
we can say a bobcat is a dog as long as we redefine dog contradict its
current Anglo-Saxon meaning. Naturally, this could be unambiguously
used in the local namespace, but not the global.

2009-04-11T12:24:00.001-07:00

My thoughts on Milk on LiveJournal.

Sun’s VirtualBox

2009-04-08T11:17:00.001-07:00

Maybe Sun needs to start working from a profit motive again, rather than giving stuff away, charge for them and their improvements.

Sent to you by Alan via Google Reader:

Sun’s VirtualBox

via Daring Fireball by John Gruber on 4/8/09

VirtualBox is: "a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)."

I need to use this for a certain project I'm working on. Admittedly, I'm not using it in any "enterprise" sense, whatever that means. I'm just using it as a desktop virtualization system. But from that perspective it strikes me as inferior to VMware Fusion in every way. An inferior product given away for free — is it any wonder that Sun is in trouble?

★

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Paying

2009-03-31T13:13:00.001-07:00

My thoughts are bent on buying something, anything. And I am thinking of either buying something from PacSun or signing up for a domain name on Web.com. Which is a better deal? PacSun is stylish, but it probably isn't my style. I would look out of place wearing it. I am still undecided on web.com. I suppose I want to do this because I would like to get ZoneAlarm Security Suite for free.

2009-03-28T19:10:00.000-07:00

The ocean is rising and will soon destroy island nations and various coastal cities. If you ever like strategy game, it would be ideal and futuristic to write or create scenarios of what could happen. Does the US take in refugees? Do we build levees to preserve the island nations? What would happen if we choose only a few islands to save, and let nature do what she will to the rest? Is the political ramification high or extremely low, especially since those island nations are not rich or measurably productive? They, in being uprooted, could be violent, petty, drug-addicted, or gang-trapped and lost mendicants.

Rather than being denialist, recognize that there is a trend, whatever the cause, and solve it.

checking out an add-on

2009-03-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Image via CrunchBase

When I talk about God, I am not more than defined. Apple is such a great computer company. Microsoft is not. AppleInsider is a popup-filled website. Politics is my drug.

Andrew Sullivan is a blogger, but sometimes I find him corny, maybe because he often puts things on his blog that I would not. Once in a while though, he would post great insights. An example is him looking for a word for hobros, a straight guy who's comfortable with homos. So, I am not sure why he is doing this unserious thing.

The reason I am making this post is to try out Zemanta, an add-on for Firefox, to recommend links I can make whenever I'm writing a post. It's interesting so far.

In the same breath, I am going to Los Angeles tomorrow. What places are interesting, I am not sure. I've already gone to Universal Studio, Disneyland, but now I'm looking for the soul of the city, even if it has no soul, even if it is a soul inhabited by fame-seekers and purveyors of vanity.

abrogate

2009-03-20T00:44:00.001-07:00

"We are a country of law - there are contracts (and) the government cannot just abrogate contracts," Summers said.

Emily Dickinson
Franklin 368

I envy Seas, whereon He rides -
I envy Spokes of Wheels
Of Chariots, that Him convey -
I envy Crooked Hills

That gaze opon His journey -
How easy all can see
What is forbidden utterly
As Heaven - unto me!

I envy Nests of Sparrows -
That dot His distant Eaves;
The wealthy Fly, opon His Pane -
The happy - happy Leaves -

That just abroad His Window
Have Summer's leave to play -
The Ear Rings of Pizarro
Could not obtain for me -

I envy Light - that wakes Him -
And Bells - that boldly ring
To tell Him it is Noon, abroad -
Myself - be Noon to Him -

Yet interdict - my Blossom -
And abrogate - my Bee -
Lest Noon in everlasting night -
Drop Gabriel - and me -

2009-03-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

A brilliant speech.

Included a link to Outside.In, which if you put in an address, will give you coverage of all the things happening nearby.

2009-03-14T23:51:00.000-07:00

It is curious that Apple doesn't add auto-save to iWork.

China

2009-03-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

Interesting. China may now regret keeping its currency low by buying huge amount of US Treasuries. It was not just their interest in keeping the renminbi so low that the US suffered enormous trade deficits with China, but also that this policy helped bankroll Bush's expansion of government spending and borrowing, helping to break the $10 trillion debt ceiling.

Even if China were now to try to sell all its US Treasuries holding, it would hurt them more than it hurts us.

A proposal for amending the California Constitution

2009-02-25T19:04:00.000-08:00

I propose that we amend the Constitution of the state of California to require that any law the voters pass must be voted twice. One of the problems of California's democracy is that it is easy for the voters to pass an initiative or a constitutional amendment, and therefore every term is an exercise in passing endless laws that are not necessarily beneficial long-term.

By requiring that a constitutional amendment or initiative passed by the voters be voted on twice, in successive term, it would allow laws to expire that were passed when people were enraged, but whose passion has cooled after two years. The first vote passing the law would have it take effect immediately, and in that intervening two years, the people will have a chance to decide whether to keep the law or not.

Cardamom

2009-02-22T15:45:00.000-08:00

Enjoying the rain
Fall quickly and never hurt
The air drags it - slow

in writing

2009-02-20T17:27:00.001-08:00

Father:

I am fine. I did not reply because I had very little to say. I believe you are telling me your truth. I was just a little boy when it happened, so all the things I've heard are circumstantial, based on vague and sometimes suppressed memories, stretched over years, and day by day wrought and hewn of emotion. And now, after 20 years, it is a moldy story. I think the court will not care about an old case, or about long-past happenstances and forgotten evidence, but I could be wrong. There have been rare times when people have gone to court for something that happened many decades or centuries ago, and they succeeded. I see the truth you told me that your honor and integrity compel you, you were a victim of a grave injustice, and the time that has so long passed has not yet assuage your pain and anger, and for that you fight for a compensation equal to the emotional anguish and the years lost, but I am saddened to admit it is a fight I have no interest in participating. I am sorry you had to spend four years in prison for what you earnestly know you didn't do wrong. And you are very like a person of great dignity. I am glad there are many people who support you and don't believe you are weak.

I hope you will succeed in making new products that will be popular even though your bookstand is not. If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. I hope to see many different and new things of your gift rather than just the bookstand. If you've only invented the bookstand, then it is only one thing. But what if you've actually invented all the things that are in your head, the ideas you have that you can make into reality? Then you have many things! You are a man of talent, and I hope you are putting it to good use, while you're waiting for someone to buy. Making new and new things will help you improve your skills, help you be more efficient in construction, be less wasteful, and make things that are beautiful. That's why you should keep practicing making new things, and you will improve, and you will get a better sense of engineering and business, and you will be able to design things to do what you want, and people will want to buy them.

I know that you would like my support in the form of money, but I have none to give you. In some ways, it is good to have scarcity, because necessity is the mother of invention, and maybe you will learn to be more creative in managing money, priority, and materials, if you know how to direct that energy to better and more fruitful use.

Good luck,

2009-02-16T01:23:00.000-08:00

Music has been known among hearing people to be an expressive medium. The researchers have experimented with creating A Concert for the Deaf through an Emoti Chair. I would love to try it out, and see how it evokes memory and emotion.

divestiture

2009-02-12T11:33:00.001-08:00

Hampshire College, who was one of the first to divest from South Africa, has taken another first, divesting from Israel. Israel was once a country I supported because of the shock of the Holocaust, but now it has engaged repeatedly in unwarranted mass murders and disproportionate warfare. It is time for Israel to be restrained from its destructive behaviors, both in its disgusting attempt at permanent settlements and its bombing of Lebanon and Palestine.

Phelps

2009-02-05T19:17:00.000-08:00

I, like many others, find this whole hoopla over Phelps' smoking pot to be silly. It is a non-affair. I couldn't care less, and in fact, I would have preferred him to be defiant, to state an opinion against the federal government's waste of money being spent on the drug war. Marijuana, a more harmless drug than cocaine and others, is so easy for the police officers to use as a bludgeon to arrest and strike fear into the hearts of people. He should have said, "I do not believe marijuana should be an illegal drug. The fight against it is like Prohibition against alcohol."

But, he will not sacrifice his career or live in acrimony. Instead, he will be an embarrassment forever. When London Olympics come around, it seems, hosts will mention his drug-taking habits along with his rare accomplishment. And that's a sad thing to me.

2009-02-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

Alien Workshop's "Mind Field" has been a highly anticipated video since Photosynthesis in 2000. However, the skateboarding world is an underground community and is often not seen by people in the mainstream. They are the skaterboys that often wear out the rails and the ceilings of building by grinding on them. They are experts at finding good locations, and are the product of our concrete age, when pavements, curbs and barricades are seen not as obstacles dividing people from people, but as potential and ephemeral art forms of inertia, gravity, and friction.

Some of those boys are hot.

2009-01-31T16:22:00.003-08:00

Writing on Water

2009-01-28T16:23:00.001-08:00

This family murder caught my attention. It is fascinating because I don't know what made this father so possessive as to think their children should not be raised by anyone else. It is an enrapturing primate drama, these ape-men. It also likely of no interest to extraterrestrials if they watched it.

2009-01-20T21:39:00.000-08:00

I didn't think it was a good speech. He may have been under a lot of pressure from all those stately speeches past already given. We were warned it would not be surprising. I thought the speech did not appreciate enough of the Anglo-Saxon words, instead using words like "gross domestic product", which sounds like jargon. I know what it means, but it isn't a phrase that will last for the age. No one will remember it by heart, or say it every day. It helps make him human, I suppose, prone to Senator-speak.

2009-01-10T22:25:00.001-08:00

a poem is a poem from Laurel Petty on Vimeo.

2009-01-07T17:31:00.001-08:00

The Macworld 2009 was okay. I couldn't stay long because I had to meet with Dr. LeDuc and talk to Kathleen. I missed most of the seminars, sadly. I didn't request any interpreter or captioner because I didn't feel like I had this obligation to show up every week. Other grad students don't have to, so I don't need to be so special in my perfect attendance. There is not going to be an award for that.

Regarding Macworld, Apple was willing to release a MacBook Pro with a non-removable battery. That eliminates waste, but I would like to see a rechargeable keyboard or mouse soon. Maybe there is something about a battery that's supposed to last for months without needing to recharge that isn't possible with lithium?

I guess it could be confusing to people who might not understand that a wireless keyboard can use USB to recharge, and doesn't use USB to communicate like a wired keyboard.

A New Year

2009-01-05T10:45:00.001-08:00

It is a new year. This blog shall live and be reborn someday, if it can find its alignment.

I can't wait for the Macworld 2009. It will the be last Macworld with Apple presenting a Keynote. Maybe someday, Apple will stop by when it has something to announce, but I'm betting it's abandoning Macworld because it can't hew to IDG's fixed schedule.

It has little to do with Steve Jobs' health because Jobs is alive, and the company he runs is moving smoothly, but that can't ever be ruled out. I wonder why Apple is doing this, unless it is intentional--it wants uncertainty. In an era when rumors go out so quickly, and when a site like ThinkSecret (now defunct by agreement) can announce a rumor that is true, taking away the element of surprise--Apple may be using this health issue as a fog to keep the rumormongers jittery.

It's not good for the shareholders, but I suppose Apple only wants the most loyal shareholders that are willing to stick with Apple, not those that are simply speculating and hoping for the stock to go up.

Clinton Drama

2008-12-01T14:10:00.001-08:00

I just saw one aspect of the Clinton drama from Obama officially
nominating Hillary to be Secretary of State: Bill Clinton issued a
statement praising the selection of her. Scarcely before she finished
giving her speech.

Ugh. While I know Bill is her husband and a former president, It
seems unnecessarily attention-grabbing, especially to interrupt her.
It would be best to give out a statement some hours later, but
obviously Bill had been extremely eager to weigh his thoughts and
couldn't wait. I can imagine the press having a headphone in their
ears suddenly hearing what Bill is thinking while listening to
Hillary's speech and furiously including it in the article to be
published.

We shall see.

2008-11-19T01:27:00.000-08:00

What Obama did for Lieberman, allowing him to continue to preside over Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, may well be like what Harry Potter did for Wormtail, saving his political life. Only, Obama does it for a reason, that it will pay off in the long run to keep him from caucusing with the Republicans, Potter in contrast was a reluctant hero. Lieberman's cooperation will be necessary to breaking filibusters and helping Obama govern. Lieberman may be a hateful rat, rightly deserving scorn, but it will be up to the people of Connecticut to vote him out. The Senate itself is but an entity interested in votes and legislation, and now with Obama, it will reduce its psychodrama.

Prop 8

2008-11-08T01:16:00.000-08:00

It's the only time a gay marriage was successfully taken away. Unlike Massachusetts, which is in no danger of rescinding same-sex marriage, and Connecticut, and Vermont which offers full equality in civil union, our rights were taken away. The other states that banned gay marriage never offered it in the first place.

But we can get it back. OUr goal is to focus on convincing more people to repeal this amendment. Let us not be too aggrieved.

Men and Women

2008-10-19T01:14:00.000-07:00

One aspect last night of straight people was the fact that men don't shake hands. The one who pushed me up to dance was Liz's friend. I decided to say goodbye to him. When I did it the first time, he merely nodded. I thought he must not have understood, and so I extended my hand, he merely nodded, raised his eyebrow and walked away. I understood it was somewhat silly, and maybe I should have just offered the fist bump instead.

With girls, however, we shook hands just fine.

I remember while at the dance, there was one average man with a thin woman. There were hugging each other in the dance floor, and he kept squeezing her ass. He squeezed it while they were talking. Then he squeezed it again while yelling in her ears. Then he kept his hand on her butt, and squeezed it again, as tightly as possible. She kept talking to him and being close to him. I'm glad women are sufficiently liberated that they can be manhandled and groped without feeling offended.

Yesterday afternoon, I went to a local library in San Leandro, mainly to try to support a local library rather than the dominion of Borders and Barnes and Noble. I came across an old book from 1984 called "The Redundant Male," written by two men. There were two pages on homosexuality that pretty much cover what you and I realize about the difference between men and women, and particularly if they were allowed to be their pure sexuality, which gays and lesbians generally are. Gay men were found to be promiscuous, a large percentage having hundreds of partners, and a quarter of them having partners numbering in the thousand. In contrast, women are more invested in monogamy.

Moreover, both men and women do in large number affirm the ideal is a monogamous relationship; however, men do not live up to this ideal. The book then went on to surmise that heterosexual men would do the same thing if given the chance. They would enjoy getting four minutes of blow jobs with anonymous women at a restroom stop after getting off work, if women were willing. And women are simply not willing.

The conclusion of the book tried to explain why men were necessary, and it was for protection against diseases because men and women mating help provide enough genetic variability to make T-cells that can fight back. It brought up some animal species that produce offspring parthenogenetically are vulnerable to diseases, because female lizards essentially clone themselves when remixing their genes for producing offspring.

As this book was published in 1984, HIV/AIDS was just getting started. There is also a new/old (?) argument that proposes viruses and bacteria do not actually want to kill off their hosts. If we see all living things as merely carriers for their DNA, and the DNA are selfish genes that want to be reproduced and passed on, then it is not in their best interest to kill off all of the hosts, for unless they are successful in inter-species crossing, they would die as well.

The arms race then, in this sense, exists only because of itself. The female lizards that have reproduced by parthenogenesis have survived so far not because they haven't been targeted by viruses, but because that any member of the species that were targeted would have been dead by now. Viruses and bacteria prefer to behave as parasites, like worms and other bugs, living off the people they infect to pass on to others.

They also result in some people hypothesizing that HIV/AIDS will eventually tame itself to become like the common cold, a seasonal nuisance. Even one scientist's controversial statement was that HIV and AIDS shouldn't be prevented because after he thought after several generations, our body will eventually develop a way to fight off the HIV/AIDS.

I can see the argument, but on the other hand, it is my view HIV became deadly not because it is deadly, but because, in your way of phrasing, "the world is lousy with people." The sex, prostitution, needle-sharing, and other habits had become so prevalent and intermingled that the most successful AIDS virus is the aggressive virus, not one that stays with the host, and so the virus tries to produce as many copies of themselves as possible to make sure that they can get through to the next host, and to make enough variability that at least one virus will produce an antigen that the host will not be able to create an antibody for.

Tuberculosis and the Black Plague and other boil-causing diseases kill quickly, and they depend wholly on having the world be lousy with people. HIV instead kills slowly. In contrast to tuberculosis, a pathogenic bacterium that cannot mutate quickly enough to evade antibiotics, were easily eliminated in first-world countries, HIV as a virus exploits the machinery of the human T-cell to make copies of itself and mutates at such a fast rate, that the human body was never meant to catch up.

I would surmise, with the huge number of deaths in Africa due to HIV, that a chance mutation preventing HIV from infecting the T-cells will arise and be more likely to be propagated. Since the human DNA is over 3 billion base pairs, one mutation that turns off such a vector of infection is extremely unlikely. It was just luck that the sickle cell anemia happened upon the group of people suffering from malaria, allowing them to better survive. Sickle-cell anemia is a tragic disease only when taken out of the context of malarial epidemic. When living in a place afflicted with mosquitoes, sickle-cell anemia is a success story for evolution. If the anemia mutation happened anywhere else, the child probably would have died without a chance to pass it on.

A humorous thing the book talked about was why women have large breasts for their entire life: In other animal species, breasts grow when the females get pregnant, so they can start feeding their young, and reduce when they have weaned the young. Human women, however, start lactating from the moment they hit puberty. The authors offered that the breasts were a way to suggest the buttocks, to compensate walking upright, since that means means men don't see the butt as much, except for dropped soap and other things. I can see that aspect, particularly in the fetish of putting the penis between the breasts much like sexual intercourse from behind rather than missionary position.

The other thing also interestingly discussed was the size of males in human species. It is more common for females to be larger than males. The largest whale that ever existed in the ocean was probably a female. The main reason for males to get larger is competition, when a male might have a harem of females to mate with, and therefore would need to be an alpha male. The authors could correlate the average size of males with the average number of females in a harem, concluding that the average size of men over women mean that men should have between 1 to 2 or 2 to 3 concubines.

What was interesting was they compared culture to biology. In some cultures, men can have more than one wife, but they could be closer to women in size, or vice versa--both of which are contradictory results indicating that this arrangement was made by culture, not by biology, and that it was due to outside influence, such as a dominant culture, that shamed them into choosing a different societal arrangement.

I will consider purchasing that book because it could make a nice addition to my collection. It was around $8 or $9, probably because in 1984, books were cheaper.