Paraphernalia

Written on 4/7/11 but only now being posted.  The original title was misspelled "Paraphenalia".

On the way to my car this evening I spotted a discarded Sprite bottle on the grass. Ever the conscientious recycler, I picked up the bottle and noticed two holes burned into the side and aluminum foil under the cap.

That's odd I thought. And then - oh rats! - drug paraphernalia. How depressing. Maybe it had been tossed over the fence by some kids from town. I hate to think our students have enough free time away from their studies that they can afford (in multiple senses of the word) to get stoned.

A quick search on the web for bongs found directions and pictures - all so much neater and professional looking than the one I picked up.

I envy people who have the time to get stoned. I'd use the time to make a start on all the books I want to read.


Oh, and yes, the bottle and aluminum foil have been recycled.  It was only afterwards that I realized how my civic deed could be misinterpreted as destroying evidence.

Oscar Levant and His Quotes

Bill Scheft's June 5th review of a new Joe DiMaggio biography, “Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil”, in the NY Times Bbook Review quoted Oscar Levant as saying that the slugger's failed marriage to Marilyn Monroe "proved that no man could be a success in two national pastimes."

The quote was new to me.  I thought Levant's most famous quote was either “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin” or, my father's favorite, a quote about Heddy Lamarr, “Everyone knew that under her clothes she was naked.”  (Heddy Lamar, a stunning beautiful actress was infamous for running around au naturel in the 1933 film, Ecstasy.)

I took to the web to see if the quote was listed under Levant's name.   It wasn't.  What I did see once again that sites poach from each other and proofreading, if it exists is poor.  Both ThinkExist.com and BrainyQuote.com were missing the “m” from “my” in the quote, “I have no trouble with y[sic] enemies. But my god damn friends... they are the ones that keep me walking the floors at night.” 


I'm glad I took the time to search, though.  I found a quote which becomes more true as you grow older: “It’s not what your are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.” 

I think my father's fondness for Oscar Levant stemmed from hearing Levant generate his quotes on the fly and the tragedy of his later life.  Depending on the source Levant's stays in mental institutions were the results of dependence on prescription drugs, manic depression as bipolar disorder was known at the time, or a combination of the two.

Antinomian

One of the curses of having an academic bent is the need to know.  It doesn't rise to the level of obsession, but it is pervasive.  If I see a word I don't know, or worse, a word that I looked up previously and whose definition I am now unable to remember, I have to look it up.  

It's clear that I got sidetracked on my way to being an etymologist.  I try to note down where I saw the word and use the word if appropriate.  In this case, however,  I wrote "antinomian" on an envelope and only just got around to looking it up online:

antinomian   [ˌæntɪˈnəʊmɪən]

adj

(Christian Religious Writings / Theology) relating to the doctrine that by faith and the dispensation of grace a Christian is released from the obligation of adhering to any moral law.

I suspect that this applies to those who, secure in their faith, do ill to others with a clear conscience.  Suicide bombers would be the most obvious target, although it might have referred to extremists in the anti-abortion camp.

Dead Grandmothers and Deadlines

In a May 8, 2011 article, "Of Deadlines and Dead Grandmothers", behind the paywall of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas H. Benton the nom de plume of William Pannapacker, an associate professor of English at Hope College, described his experiences with relatives dying before critical academic work was to be done.

When his own grandmother died just before a paper was to be turned in, he spent the night writing the paper and missed the funeral.  At that time it never occurred to him that there was any other choice.  The article was a thoughtful one, with the comments typically informed, containing useful tradecraft, e.g., sending a condolence note or requesting memory cards from the funeral home.

On the more humorous side, there is a classic 1990 essay, "The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall Of American Society", by Mike Adams in The Connecticut Review correlating mortality statistics and exams.  (The link is to a PDF file.)  With appropriate graphs documenting the health hazards to grandmothers of students he reached several difficult to implement suggestions:

• Eliminate exams
• Allow only orphans to enroll at universities.  This of course would lead to a supply and financial problem for younger students,.  For those who delay college attendance out of concern for their grandparents, family responsibilities would be a complicating factor.  (Increasing the number of orphans has certain moral problems.) 
• Have students lie about their enrollment.  Again, another moral problem.

Stocks Fall After Japan Lifts Nuclear Crisis Levels

(This was originally written on April 12, 2011.0

Why would stocks fall?  The ever mysterious stock market reacting negatively on good news.  Oh wait! "Lifts" means "raise" not lift as in "removes a restriction.  Things are getting worse.  So bad times ahead for Japan means bad times ahead for all.  Combine this with the entrail reading discussions of P/E (or PE10 for the cognoscenti) and it looks like we're in for a dive. 

Quick!  Stock up on canned goods, bottled water, gun, ammo, and triple tax exempt bonds.

(I wanted to include the line "Dark at the end of the road for Bonnie and Clyde", but then I found that it might be one of those things we all know, but what we remember doesn't match with the facts.  The sentence doesn't exist in "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde".)

BRK-A

(This post was hanging around in drafts for about two months.  In the last trading week the stock has dropped to about $113,000.  See the post script.)

It's not everyday your stock can drop over 900 points before noon. I imagine some deep pockets repeating their mantra: "Warren isn't often wrong", but the recent business of what appears to be David Sokol's insider trading moves on Lubrizol should make the Capitalist's Woodstock, the annual Berkshire Hathaway stock holder's meeting interesting. 
Andrew Sorkin's article in today's NY Times has some questions he's ready to ask when the Oracle from Omaha opens the meeting to shareholder questions.  As an owner of BRK-B I should have a dog in this fight, but I'm content to watch the big boys duke it out.

I feel compelled to say that I got BRK-B before it split 50:1.  Watching the share price bounce around 100 points a day gave me the delusion that I was playing the capitalist game, although it was more likely that the capitalist game was playing me.  BRK-B was well down from it's $4+K price when I snapped it up. And how many shares did I get?  Well not very many, but having shares just to get the shareholder report and badge every year commands a modicum of respect when the topic of finance or investing comes up.  (Of course that modicum quickly disappears when I open my mouth and my ignorance is revealed.)

Years before, when what is now known as BRK-A was selling for ~$10K I considered buying a share with almost all my discretionary funds.  It would have been worth it, but then again, there are so many things I should have done.  (And so many I am grateful that I didn't.  Don't knock inertia.)

PS:  Warren Buffett's public inaction and statements masked the fact that he had turned over relevant information about insider trading to the SEC.  See for example corporate Compliance Insights'Was Warren Buffett’s Public Support of Sokol Appropriate?

Wave of the Future

I was rummaging through some old stuff and came across a post card for "The Wave of the Future" (WoF) poster from High Tech Times.  I got the poster years ago.  It's around somewhere, probably still in the mailing tube. 

The cost then was $25 + $4.50 for shipping and handling.  I was surprised that I was flush enough to put up that much money.  How much more could it cost now?  I figured, what with the web being the web I'd search for High Tech Times or the WoF and pick up another one. 

The first thing I stumbled upon was the Grafikdotcom_blog post "Wave of the Future" by the person who created the graphic.  The post contained the excruciating behind the scenes details of creating the pixelation effect by hand and the never before revealed information that the the Japanese calligraphy in the top left hand corner is the name of the design company: “Grafik”.

Never content to leave well enough alone, I found a post from 2007 "Wave of the Future is now the Past" which discussed Hokusai‘s original, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, as well as the WoF. At that time it seems that the WoF poser was no longer in print.

There was a link to an online poster gallery which advertised it for $99, but they were out of stock. A business opportunity or just tough luck?

I'm going to root around to see if I can find my copy.

How Badly Do You Want An iPad?

The headline says it all: "Boy regrets selling his kidney to buy iPad". To quote ShanghaiDaily.com:

A 17-year-old student in Anhui Province sold one of his kidneys for 20,000 yuan only to buy an iPad 2. Now, with his health getting worse, the boy is feeling regret but it is too late, the Global Times reported today.

If not a hoax, it is more supporting evidence that teenage brains are not fully developed.

The story is much juicier because the hospital where the kidney was removed was not licensed for organ transplants, there was a broker who cannot be found, and "the department that did the surgery had been contracted to a Fujian businessman."  I smell a TV special investigative report and a related CSI story on TV.  Expect this story to also surface with a vengeance when supporters of market forces in medicine point out how much more efficiently business deals with illness.

Some 45 years ago there would be reports of young men killing themselves after being forced to cut their hair. (It was the season of shaggy mops. Short hair in America meant the military or support for the war in Vietnam.)  So don't file this story under "Those Wacky Chinese Teenagers."

Wall Street Truth Laid Bare

There is a statistic in the May 23rd The Street article "War on Crime Revs Up on Wall Street",  by Peter Morici which in its simplicity points out the macro problem with Wall Street:

"In February 1998, the S&P 500 first closed higher than 1000. Since then, corporate profits are up about 210% percent, but equities have risen less than 35%. Corporate profits rose 6% annually, but investing in stocks paid a disappointing 2.3% a year"

 The article goes on to point out that the best and brightest are devoted to enhancing their own compensation rather than value for investors.  Would one expect more from the people attracted to finance?  This falls under the headline of No News News, but I'd never seen it so baldly stated.

And then there was Jay MacDonald's February 14, 2011 "Punch Line to Foreclosure-Gate" article on Bankrate.com which described Florida Attorney General's office's PowerPoint presentation entitled: "Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases" (PDF).  The presentation was based on the AG's investigation of robosigning in the Sunshine State.

The presentation contains some interesting slides:

• examples of 6 different forged signatures for "Linda Green" (who had at least 14 different job titles), 
• 4 different signatures for Scott Anderson, 
• 3 different signatures each for Tywanna Thomas and Jessica Ohde who are variously identified as "Asst. Vice President" or "Asst. Secretary", 
• one document dated "9/9/9999", 
• several documents where the mortgage was assigned to "Bogus Assignee",
• stamped instead of signed signatures,
• bogus notaries (Notary stamps are good for 4 years, yet the examples showed expiration dates 5 years in the future), and
• excerpts of testimony from two people involved in robosigning.  (They say what we now know:  signatures were forged and nobody read the documents.)

It's worth a read.

Yaron Brook: Fwee Market Capitalism

Today's economic porn (The Daily Ticker with Aaron Task) included an interview Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute  I've found Ayn Rand good for a sad laugh.  Yes, if people were responsible and had the psychological orientation to meet her independent Objectivist model it might be worth supporting.

My personal belief is that, people being people doom Objectivism to the same fate as Communism: dustbin of history, fond illusion of idealistic youth, or something in between.  (Has anyone made an attempt to argue that Going Green may mean recycling/reusing the contents of the "dustbin of history"?)

That said I was very impressed (werry, werry impressed) that someone with a speech impediment could end up being the president of an organization. Yaron Brook's fire of conviction is subverted by taking like a baby.

Good News Means Bad Things

Osama Bin Ladin was killed yesterday. A symbolic victory, a boost to the aura of American prowess - not a single Navy SEAL killed- but given the distributed nature of al Qaeda, his death probably does little to reduce their threat.

As I drove to work  market reporters were reporting the favorable economic responses: the prices for gold and oil were down, but there was, of course, the contrarian warning: the US dollar, seen as the safest investment  will now find less eager buyers if the world is perceived as safer.  (Is it puckish to call the dollar a "gold standard"?)

It struck me as odd now, that I should unconsciously use the word "market" to mean financial doings rather than a green grocer. Perhaps I've unwittingly succumbed to a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Skater Dater, Music, and Lord Buckley

As I browsed around YouTube, I stumbled on a reference to Skaterdater, a short film about skateboarding made in 1965.

I'd thought it was charming when I saw it many years ago.  The two things I remembered about the soundtrack were the surf music and the fact that the film makers didn't need synchronized sound.  There is one point in the film where a funny noise is a lead into the next shot.

I was so taken with the soundtrack, surf music over the rumble of skateboards on asphalt, that I taped it off the theater speakers shortly after I saw it.  (It was a tiny theater and I knew the owners.) 

The link above will take you to the film on Google video so you can see it for yourself.

I checked the music credits: Mike Curb and Nick Venet, names which meant nothing to me until I looked up their bios.

Mike Curb, was a Republican Lt. Governor of California from 1978-1982 under the Democrat, Jerry Brown (II). He was involved in some political shenanigans: taking advantage of the law that put the Lt. Governor in charge when the governor is out of state, he tried to get several judges appointed while Brown was "out of California airspace." (The appointments were voided on Brown's return.)

Later, he was immensely successful in the musical business. Check out his bio.  I was impressed.  Especially so when he made news by calling on Belmont University to rehire a soccer coach who seems to have lost her position for being a lesbian.   here's a link to the story in on the Nashville Scene web site.

The other, Nick Venet, worked with recording luminaries from jazz, pop, and world music. Just reading the names Chet Baker,Stan Getz, Chico Hamilton ("Drumfusion"), Stan Kenton, Gerry Mulligan, and Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross flooded my mind with treasured memories of afternoons just listening to jazz on turntables. (Where did I get the time? Where has it gone?)

He worked with Lord Buckley the great hip and tragic comedian. You couldn't be hip way back in the 50's and 60's without knowing who he was. The two pieces I treasured were "The Nazz", the story of Jesus, "Scrooge", the retelling of Dicken's "Christmas Carole" in a dark ghetto dialect. You can imagine Lord Buckley as a mix of Redd Foxx and Robin Williams topped with the sound effect from Bill Cosby's early records.

A casual mention of "The Nazz", "the carpenter kiddie", "beat up retarded sparrow", or saying "merry Christmas with you" or "What's the matter with you baby?" brought a knowing smile to the cognoscenti. You were home.

Perhaps his most enduring legacy was this bit of trivia from Wikipedia:

"Venet created the "Produced By" credit on singles and albums and started album liner notes for crediting individual performers, musicians, and engineers of pop and rock records. Venet is primarily known for signing the Beach Boys and producing their early material."

He worked with Ravi Shankar, Nat "King" Cole, and Peggy Lee and Kay Starr.  Just amazing.  Dead at 61 from Burkitt's lymphoma.

Throwbots

How cool would it be to have one of these?

They're throwable robots with cameras from Recon Scout. You heave one of these things in (they'll survive a 30' drop onto concrete) and control it with a joystick. Designed for the military and SWAT teams.  You can get yours for just $6-9K. Ideal for braking up jail fights.

For more information, there are videos on YouTube. (Search for "recon scout throwbot" because "recon scout" is also the name for a knife.) Although intended to reduce exposing soldiers and police to hostile fire, I can fantasize a household loaner business to scour a house on a periodic basis to check under couches for missing retainers, rings, and keys.

Because of it's light weight an officer can hold the throwbot in one hand and still keep a weapon in the other.   Most of us are fortunate not to need to consider features like these when making purchases.  Other design features make sense: the throwbot is turned on by pulling a pin rather than flipping a switch to make it easier to activate with gloves, Hazmat suits, etc. and very difficult for the other guys to inactivate it.  (Of course the expectation is that the other side won't have the appropriate pin or a controller to turn off or jam the device.)

I'll know how common these things become when they appear in CSI reruns.  (They may be a standard feature of cop shows, but I'm at a disadvantage here because I rarely watch TV.)

Brutal Knitting

Next winter may be the time to let your freak flag fly.

Tracy Widdess, the knitter, will accept commissions.  If you want to stand out in a crowd, these knits will guarantee it.

$6,400 Kohler Numi Toilet

I kid you not.

If I ever get a chance to teach an intro Computer Science class, this will certainly be an item they'll have to discuss when asked we discuss what constitutes a computer.  Just look at the controls:
I guess in time it will not seem odd, but a toilet with speakers and audio input? I would have written that the bathroom seems to be the only place you can get away from ..., but now there's advertising in restrooms and we've all overheard cell private conversation in public bathrooms.

I imagine that the person on the other end of the conversation will ask if the other person is in a bathroom. It'll no longer be remarkable when the answer is in the affirmative.

What Do We Stand For?

An article mentioned a firm building their social networking system using Mason software, a name which was unfamiliar to me. A web search led me to George Mason University's web site and what you see below:

It reminded me of a joke from an old Pogo comic strip:  

Q: "What do we stand for?" 

A: "We don't stand for much."

Hacker vs. Hacker

There is a fascinating article in Business Week (I stumbled over it on Bloomberg BusinessWeek) about the cyber security firm, HBGary, being hacked by Anonymous, the anarchic cyber-guerrilla organization. The attack came after an official at HBGary boasting to the Financial Times that he would reveal the identities of the Anonymous's leaders in his presentation at the next RSA conference.

Steven Colbert put it this way: Anonymous is a hornet's nest. And [HBGary] said, 'I'm gonna stick my penis in that thing.'"

The real fun began when stolen documents were posted on line. The files revealed proposed campaigns to rival the dirty tricks of the Nixon era: infiltrate Anonymous to expose the leadership and a cyber-campaign of disinformation against WikiLeaks.  The corporate results were predictiable: clients disengaging and others making a point of distancing themselves from HBGary.

An interesting read for sure.

SteamPunk Star Wars & CG Society

TechRepublic had a link to images from CGSociety's Hardcore Modeling Challenge.  The image of Princess Leia seems destined for the men's magazines.

Stumbling around the CG Society web site showed just how stunning computer graphics has become.  The page for the challenge showed  a busty, no nonsense Leia.

I Get a Parking Space at 9:30 AM. How Depressing

A few years ago the faculty/staff parking lot on the west end of campus would be filled by 9:15.  I know.

There's a pattern to college parking.  Student athlete's and coaches park close to the stadium near the edge of campus while commuting students park as close as they can to the south campus academic buildings.  Residential students - lazy residential students - drive from north campus to south campus so they can walk less.  (The total time it takes them to walk to their car, drive about half a mile, and then walk to class is more than the time than it takes to walk to class from their dorm.)

Faculty generally try to park close to their offices, except those who try to park near their last class of the day. There are administrative parking spots which are occasionally occupied by students parking "just for a minute" while they try to dart in to a building to drop off a paper or pick up a form.   It's rumored that the campus police now have web cams watching these spots and get extra points for ticketing students parked in those spots because the fines are higher.

I use to get to the campus between 9:30 and 10 AM (and stayed to 11 PM) so parking close to the buildings where I worked was never an option during regular school days.  I didn't mind.  It was aerobic exercise and, when the weather wasn't inclement, a nice 5 minute walk.

Oh, so why depressing?  The available spaces mean that there are fewer employees as the University makes a concerted effort to cut expenses by cutting budget lines.  I always assume the worst.

Ask not for whom the spot is for.  Pretty soon it might not be me.

Gerund and Oxymoron

In the film History Boys, one of the teenage boys knowingly asks if a certain word was a gerund.  I knew it was a part of speech, but made a note to look it up.  Grammar Bytes provided the answer.  (Grammar Bytes' URL is chompchomp.com and, when I accessed it, displayed the head of a roaring gorilla.

So now, I've set a minor task for myself: to listen for gerunds.  All gerunds end in "ing", so, if I understand what I've read, it's a matter of distinguishing gerunds from present participles in which those same terms act as modifiers instead of nouns.

This reminded me of  a story from a student at Classical High School in Providence, Rhode Island.  He said his English instructor asked his students to cringe each time they heard an oxymoron, e.g., bittersweet.  I decided to verify that I still knew what an oxymoron is.

A quick look in Wikipedia turned up a several oxymorons I hear frequently: "objective opinion", "original copy", and "definite possibility".  It is only having seen it pointed out that it strikes me how we/I accept statements without question.  (I perhaps less than most, but still, I stand guilty as charged.)

"Original copy" seems to be valid, especially now that documents are created on laser printers.  What is the difference between the first copy printed, and the second copy printed?  The original might be bits in memory which was never stored on disk.  Or it could be on disk.  If two copies are printed at the same time, is one the original and the other a copy?

The two which had obvious reference to computer science were "virtual reality" and "constant variable". The first case seems appropriate. In the second, computer scientists have created computer languages to resolve the ambiguity.

A variable name is created to let the computer program store information. In some languages (and in some cases some incarnations of the same language) the language has no way to tell the computer that the data should not be allowed to change, i.e., that the variable is a constant. In other languages it can be explicit, the term constant is part of the declaration or the data type, e.g., a tuple in Pythonare immutable. (I just learned this.)