Devil's Staircase in MATLAB

I can't recall how I stumbled over the description of the Devil's Staircase, but it sounded like an interesting programming problem.  Although I recognized the name, math ability has deteriorated to the point that references to Cantor Sets made no sense until I stumbled over pi.math.cornell.edu/~mec/Summer2009/Whieldon/Math_Explorers_Club%3A__Lesson_Links/Entries/2009/7/31_Lesson_3%3A__The_Devils_Staircase_%26_Other_Uncountable_Problems.html
 and the illustration below:

It took an embarrassing long time to get the coding correct.  I was reminded once again of truism I first heard from Roy Mendelson: The first step to solving a problem is the correct statement of the problem.

It took me a while because I was distracted by a seductively sneaky solution to the problem using MATLAB's array math. If the steps below the middle step could be calculated, all the steps after the middle step could be calculated in one swell foop by adding the value of the end point of the middle step to the array of steps between 0 and the lower x-value of the middle step.

It took me a while to find the appropriate quote from Knuth: "The real problem is that programmers have spent far too much time worrying about efficiency in the wrong places and at the wrong times; premature optimization is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." (From Computer Programming as an Art, p. 671, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth)

It was only after I'd solved the problem myself that an online search found a recursive solution (m2matlabdb.ma.tum.de/download.jsp?MC_ID=5&SC_ID=13&MP_ID=104) which provides not only a plot of the staircase, but the Cantor set as well.

(I avoid recursion because 1) I'm not good at it (why not admit it here), 2) recursion generally uses more memory than looping, and, lastly, I suspect that the repetitive function calls is slower.)

From a quick look at the recursive code I like mine even better because the recursive code starts with a conditional check to see how many steps are requested whereas mine will take any step.  (To be frank, however, the recursive code does the mandatory parameter checking.  Mine assumes that the user will not pass an invalid number of steps, e.g., 0 or a negative number, or pass a string or other pathalogical value.)

The recursive code creates the middle step and then if more steps are required generates the left and right side of the Devil's Staircase.  The code involves a lot of multiplication of array values.  My early assembler experience always made me avoid multiplication and array values.  I wish I could blame a cruel instructor for beating into using pointers and addition, but I did it to myself.  As MATLAB doesn't have pointers (yeah, I know, arrays are really pointers) I had to use arrays also.  You can see from the code that calculating a new vector value required two or three multiplications, depending on how you count.  (I'm guessing that the multiplication by 0.5 is accomplished by shifting the bits to the right rather than actually multiplying by 0.5

xr(stufe)=.5*((1-e)*xr(stufe+1)+(1+e)*xl(stufe+1));
yr(stufe)=.5*(yr(stufe+1)+yl(stufe+1));

My MATLAB solution is far from inspired, but much shorter than the recursive method.  The code generates the two member vector (0 and 1) and calls the genXValues function to generate the new values by using every other value in the current vector.  Here's the heart of it:

It' not pretty but it works.

Hey A Custom Error!

Anyone out there get this message on outlook?  I was trying to log in and an unknown error occurred. I'm sure alarm bells must be ringing in Redmond as they scramble to track this down.

Wine & Spirits

Passing a store advertising Wine and Spirits I wondered what wine goes with the ghost of Christmas past?

Would a Merlot go with the specter of a woman spurned by her lover? 

What should be paired with an incubus?

Fintech, Adoption & 23% Interest

Always on the lookout for material for my classes, the headline of Hannah Levitt's article in the Wall Street Journal (July 3, 2018) caught my eye:

Personal Loans Surge to a Record High

The article was about fintech, newer players on the consumer lending scene.  Established entities like Goldman Sachs have entered the market along with startups.  What got me though was the lead:

"Heather Turner and her husband needed a few thousand dollars to jump-start the adoption of a teenager from Ukraine.

"The Turners, of Lewiston, Maine, needed a speedy loan and didn’t want to borrow against their house or car. Heather Turner said LendingClub arranged a 3-year loan for less than $10,000 last October at an interest rate around 23 percent -- similar to that of a credit card. Most notably, the loan is unsecured."

TWENTY-THREE bleeping percent!

A whole load of unanswerable questions popped into my mind, not the least of which was the 23%.  Doesn't that border on usury?  What was the need for speed?  What was the time pressure on adoption?  Was the kid on sale?  If the Ukrainian government was set to impose restrictions that fact wasn't in the article.

I understand the compassionate urge, but going into debt?  I didn't have the nerve to try to contact them to find out why, but then there's the internet and a gofundme page to supply the answers.

So Old News

It takes me a long time to get around to reading stuff, and a little longer to actually doing something.  Here's the latest example: An article in the November 18, 2015 WSJ with the headline "Mallinckrodt: Infant Drug, Gown Up Problem".

(I have a soft spot in my heart for Mallinckrodt because I still have their 60 year old notepads with yellow grid lines.  My dad drew cyclic organic compounds on them andI thought they were cool.  Also, I like pronouncing their name.)

The article concerned the drug Synacthen and Mallinckrodt's decision to raise the price of the drug 2,000%, a move which put it on the same footing as all the other bad boys in Pharma who wanted to show that without competition they could stick it to the patients.  The explanation/excuse was that the drug had been sold at a loss and the new price would insure that the company could continue to produce the drug.

The fact that the drug was approved to treat infantile spasms triggered a dim memory of drugs which were approved for one use, but were used for others.

A web search (just now) found a Washington Post article dated January 18, 2017 "Maker of $34,000-a-vial drug to pay $100 million for allegedly preventing competition".  If the revenues from that drug brought in $1 billion in 2015, a penalty of 10% of gross sales might not be too tough to handle.  The charge was that the drug, H.P. Acthar Gel, which once sold for $40 a vial, was acquired by Questcor Pharmaceuticals in 2001.  Questcor raised the prices and was acquired by Mallinckrodt.  When a rival company, Novartis, planned to market Synacthen, a potential competitor to Acthar, Mallinckrodt bought the rights, thereby eliminating a competitor.

There's nothing as comforting as a story which reinforces my believe in the venality behind much of big business.  And I say this knowing that my own financial security is dependent on companies making money, often by sticking it to those who are powerless to resist..

"If it costs you your peace, it's too expensive."

An email from International Living (internationalliving.com), a newsletter for expats and expat wannabes contained this quote from Bobby Blanchard who seems happily living simply in Puerto Vallarta: "If it costs you your peace, it's too expensive."

Blanchard and his significant other are getting by on $1,000/month.  I don't know what they aren't doing, but it falls in line with a thought which has been rattling around in my mind for a while: what do you really need? 

For those of us who do not play golf access to a golf course is immaterial.  The though of not being able to play golf would cause others to see their whole life to flash before their eyes.  As I read the messages from International Living I find myself thinking, "Not for me".  Their correspondents enjoy the local shopping (Nfm), the cheap happy hours (Nfm), the inexpensive local wine (Nfm), beer (Nfm), etc.

Sigh.

I'm looking for something, but I haven't seen it described yet.

"Quarts" Countertops Through Angie's List

Sigh.

A recent kitchen remodeling offering from Angie's provided another example of a failing educational system or a desperate need for enhancing grammar/spellchecking software utilities.  High end kitchens may use granite or quartz, but "quarts"?

A perfunctory web search to see if a recent kitchen upgrade trend had escaped my notice produced only links to quartz countertops.  So someone can't spell, or  someone doesn't give a rip, or there is a vast right-wing/left-wing/radical religious/other-to-be-named-later) conspiracy at work.

The reviews may be trustworthy, but the proof-reading is not.

CNN carried a video of Senator John McCain telling the host, Jake Tapper, "Every life has to end one way or another." adding a quote whose author he thought it was a playwright, "I always knew that no one could live forever, but I thought there might be one exception."

Well, what is the Internet for?  It was probably William Saroyan: "Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case."

I wonder if Saroyan's most famous book, "The Human Comedy" is still read in grade schools?  From what I remember many writers felt that Saroyan was unfairly neglected compared to other writers of his era, e.g. Hemingway or Faulkner..

I was reading a a copy of "Hollywood" by Garson Kanin, fished  from one of the piles of books with which my house is decorated when I came across a section about Marshall Nielan in a chapter devoted to "The Great Profile", John Barrymore.

I don't believe I'd ever heard the Nielan's name before, but was intrigued as Kanin described Nielan's Bits of Life as the funniest film he'd ever seen.  So it was quick to IMDB with this depressing result:

Toilets

"So," he said, "How's your day been?"

It's not quite a rhetorical question, but I paused before I answered: "This will give you an idea:  I've been looking at toilets for the last hour and a half."

Backstory: I was preparing a lesson on using dynamic blocks in AutoCAD modeled after an online tutorial which used toilets.  (Dynamic blocks can be thought of as a stack of objects with only the top object being visible.)

The tutorial used several types of toilets which the narrator implied were available, but the installation of AutoCAD I used had one suitable toilet block.  To get more, I downloaded a ZIP file of toilet drawings from Kohler.

To make the lesson easier for the class I looked for toilets with shapes different enough to be easily distinguishable.  This probably will not come as a surprise to anyone who's renovated a bathroom, but aside from color, a lot of toilets look very much alike.  so as I was plowing through hundreds of drawings it struck me that I must be looking at a duplicate.  Sure enough the drawing I just looked like looked like another one I'd seen about a minute before.  I did an A-B comparison to see if there was a difference.  Here's the video:

There's a small difference in the diameter of the bolt holes for the seat.

I imagine that someone needed the larger/smaller bolt holes to accommodate the demands of feng shui.  ("Oh no! It's all wrong!   The smaller holes will ruin everything for the toilets pointing north.)  What may be more depressing is that there must be people whose job depends on not only knowing the difference between models of toilets, but remembering the tagline for each.  Of course there must be toilets which "reflect your good taste", but are there toilets which make a bathroom happier or more inviting?

Barbara Allen/Barbry Ellen/Tecumseh Valley

I was listening to Meg Baird Sing "Barbry Ellen" (about 3½ minutes into the link below) when I was struck by the similarity of her version with Townes Van Zandt's "Tecumseh Valley". Her treatment of "Sweet William on his death bed lay
For love of Barbara Allen.
reminds me of Tecumseh Valley's
"The name she gave was Caroline
Daughter of a miner"
I'll pester one of the music instructors when school is back in session to see if I'm close.

Second Worst Interview on NPR

Michel Martin's interview with former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was the second worst interview I've heard in the 31 years I've been listening to NPR.  (The worst interview was Daniel Zwerdling's interview with Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture.)

Martin should have asked Gonzales how it was that he could recall events now when he couldn't even remember if he was wearing underwear when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee 9 years ago.  At the hearing Gonzales said ""I cannot recall..." or "I don't recall" over 70 times.

Absolutely appalling.

Covert hard Drive Noise

https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03431

The quick an dirty: using malware and no speakers, researchers could force air-gapped computers - computers logically and physically disconnected from the Internet - to generate audio signals at "effective bit rate of 180 bits/minute (10,800 bits/hour) and a distance of up to two meters (six feet)."  The signal could be received by a computer, smartphone, etc.

That's nice, but at 180 bits/minute that works out to ~23 characters a minute, assuming ASCII encoding.  That might work for a password hack which may be all one needs.  

It might be just the push some organization will need to move to SSDs because the hack wprks by generating a specific audio frequencies by controlling the movements of the HDD's actuator arm. Digital Information can be modulated over the acoustic signals.  No actuator arm no signal.

Our security guy replied to my note about DiskFiltration by saying that a lot of this stuff was coming from last week's BlackHat conference. 

We Survive a Swarm of Teenagers or Give Me Girls Every Time

An adjunct instructor was contacted about creating a field trip for a summer camp for disadvantaged middle and high school students.  Before you could say, "Whoa!" I was up to my eyeballs recruiting faculty to participate and then introducing the faculty to the adjunct so they'd read her (the adjunct's email) or put a face to a voice.

My bit of business was a piece of cake: show them how to create a program in Alice to do the following:

.
Not terribly exciting, but it would be the first programming experience for a lot of the kids.  The program could be used to explain how making intelligent decisions concerning logic would enable the same code to work regardless of how the bunny was positioned relative to the chicken.

What could go wrong?  Well for starters, a power outage a few weeks before made about half the PCs unable to login.  The software wasn't working on half the remaining PCs.  And, ever the good sole I had the Computer Center create special single use accounts in the room I was going to use and the computer lab for another presenter.  (The special accounts allowed the students to login, access the web, but not create files on network drives.)

Two former students agreed to demonstrate resonant frequencies.  We were pretty sure that the kids had never heard of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and they'd be impressed to learn that engineers had to design buildings so that the structures didn't shake apart.  One later had her work schedule changed so it was down to one student.

I tried to use a web cam to allow a whole room to see what was happening on a shaker table.  I needed a long video cable, but the cable sent over didn't have the right pinning, but we managed to survive.  I was told the students were impressed that their minders were impressed.

I did my due diligence: checking out PCs in my room and the room used by another presenter and filing more than 2 dozen help desk tickets.  Because it was summer and the usual tech guy was on vacation, the Computer Center was in some turmoil as the Center's least favorite director was canned earlier in the week, I was rescued by some daring-do not described here lest some unnamed forces react badly.  (Murky I know, but, trust me, it's better that way.)

On the day of I got a shock when I found an instructor reading his Wall Street Journal in the room where I expected to make a presentation to about 40 kids 3 times.   It went like this:

"Hey Mike, what are you doing here?"
"What do you mean what am I doing here?  This is where I teach my class."

Uh-oh!  Scheduling conflict.  I don't think it was my doing, but definitely now my problem.  After some consultation, pleading, and abasement.  Mike agreed to hold his class next door and I would be out of his usually scheduled room in time for his students to use the computers.

It was an interesting experience because the kids showed up late because they'd walked over instead of coming over by bus.

The girls were great.  The followed instructions, raised hands when they had questions, and responded to questions.  The guys?  The ability to make the chicken cackle seemed irresistible to many.

It was gratifying.  One young woman wanted to know if she could have me as her teacher if she came to my college.  I should have said, "I'd love to have you."  I'm not used to dealing with kids.  What I said instead was, "If you come here you'd have to register for my course."  Bureaucratic.  I should be ashamed of myself.

On the other hand, a couple, including one of their minders, asked how they could get the software.  I gave all the info to the adjunct who got me into this and let her pass it along.

All students survived.  All equipment remained intact and in place.  From my point of view: Success!

I imagine that it might become a yearly summer event.  If so I'd be boring the students if I reused the same demonstration.  It might be cool though to have students send a signal over the web to activate a a piston to push something over an edge.  Shouldn't that appeal to the nihilism of grade school kids?

Trump and the Jerk Pride Movement

Donald Trump, the gift that keeps on giving.

When David Letterman, the former host of the Late Night Show, heard that Donald Trump decided to enter the presidential race he moaned that he had retired too early.

Trump has truly been an inspiration for pundits to sharpen their wit.

Patricia Nelson Limerick, faculty director and chair of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, co author of "The Frontier in American Culture", called Trump the standard-bearer for the currently booming “Jerk Pride Movement”  (www.denverpost.com/2015/12/18/limerick-jerk-studies-101/).

Her research, dating back many years established that the consensus of people who dealt with the public (waiters, hotel clerks, cab drivers, etc) was that 15% of the public were jerks.

Quoting from the article,

Trump should be understood as the standard-bearer for the currently booming “Jerk Pride Movement,” in which the Fifteen Percent stride vigorously out of the closet and present themselves to the world, shouting out wildly over-generalized, destructive, and polarizing sentiments and then, still shouting, congratulating themselves for their impressive forthrightness.

Because Limerick claims that her “research” showed the percentage of jerks in the population is 15% she was surprised that a cab driver put the number at only 5%.   Five percent,” he repeated. “But they move around a lot.”

Thinking this could be the basis of a serious question in a research methods class (sociology, psychology, marketing, analytics, etc.)  I forwarded the information to several profs in those areas.

Yes, it’s part of a joke, but assuming that the cab driver were correct, that the true number is 5%, what other error other than exceptionally poor math skills, double counting, or really poor sampling technique would explain the discrepancy?

Flotsam from 2014

I discovered some mail and papers from 2014.  There were some medical bills, since paid, some phone numbers without associated names, some jokes which must have come from "Prairie Home Companion" on the back of an old final exam, and notes on the back of a quarterly statement from an annuity.

The annuity:

I remembered calling the annuity to find out what a "non-qualified annuity" was.  The guy I reached seemed delighted to enthusiastically explain everything in great detail.  I knew I had just become just-like-everyone-else because I couldn't follow him.

It is not supposed to be that way.  Maybe I was tired, It means that I should call again and this time record some definitive answers to some simple questions.  If I only knew what those simple questions might be.

The jokes:

"Cross-country skiing is easier in a small country."

"Go for the juggler."  (The punch line for a number of related jokes: "What should you if attacked by a mob of clowns?" and "How do you kill a circus?")

"What is all dressed up and no place to go?"  A Unitarian corpse.

A classic chemistry joke:

"I've lost an electron!"
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."

And this, a joke many women have found funny:

Q: What is the difference between a married man and a dead man?
A: When you're dead you don't wish you were married."

Stumbled Across Two Books About Wine and Drink

Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France (2013) by Kermit Lynch.  I read a bit here and there.  Lynch is a charming writer to whom I'm now grateful for the Billat-Savarin description of the two features which distinguish man from beast: 1) Fear of the future and 2) Desire for fermented liquors 

Notes on a Cellar-Book ((2008) by George Saintsbury and Thomas Pinney  According to the notation, Saintsbury was a gifted and prolific writer.  I stumbled around online and found this quote from his critical introduction to Gibbons: ""There were some things—not many—which he did not and could not know; but almost everything that there was for him to know he knew."  That seems to be the type of praise every critic would want.

I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Resent the Waste of Time

I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens at a local library. It stirred memories:

• A friend and I paid $1 each to see Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. As the movie played we'd whisper to each other: "99¢",  "98¢", until Sean Connery appeared to kick the value from 45¢ to 50¢
• Then there was my father's voice, "Who wrote this crap?"

The film brought to mind that old, snarky comment: "The dialog was so wooden as to constitute a fire hazard."  The dialog would have been right at home on title cards.

The First Order's got technology to destroy multiple planets with a super-duper weapon, but don't have video surveillance of their own installation.  Maybe it's a fixer-up film:  Hollywood makes the film and viewers can amuse themselves patching plot holes.   Sorry guys, I have stuff to do I real life.

The incomprehensible is just perfect

The mud line on the Doonesbury strip quoted James Parker's piece in the November 3rd Book Review section on Donald Trump's opinions (www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/books/review/is-legitimate-satire-necessarily-directed-at-the-powerful.html):

Trump’s opinions — which I don’t believe are ­really opinions at all, but random clots and thrombi of rhetorical ectoplasm gathered from the ether with high-end paranormal pooper-scoopers.

Much like Ball's description of Trump as a gap in the space-time continuum, the statement forms a nice companion or parallel to the phenominon of the Trump campaign.

I look forward to the Iowa vote to see how reality as represented by physical votes matches the polls and surveys.  If a sizeable percentage of Republican voters believe that the President is a Muslim and a smaller, but statistically signiicant percentage of adults, still believe that Obama was born in Kenya it is hard to make a reasonable prediction.

I see only two courses of action: relax and laugh or relax and cry.

Flesh-colored gap in the space-time continuum

An item on Doonesbury's Mud Line sent me to the Atlantic website to read Molly Ball's August 13, 2015 article "Donald Trump and the Search for the Republican Soul" (www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/donald-trump-and-the-search-for-the-republican-soul/401192/).  A good article, main memorable by the a great quip,  flesh-colored gap in the space-time continuum."

Credit is hereby given to Ms Ball.

Donald Trump, God's gift to comedians, is a true phenomenon.  (David Letterman lamented having left his late night talk show 2 weeks before the Donald announced his candidacy.)  Rational beings, in my belief, would regard Trump as an exceptionally wealth clown with a surprising limited vocabulary worth of a few chortle-inducing sideshow.

That he isn't, or because he's been the front-runner in the polls for the Republican nomination for President, (polls show have him as the front runner with 32% of likely Republican voters) makes me wonder if all this noise is because no voting has yet taken place.  I look forward to the primaries where levers get pulled.  (Metaphors may be changing.  Voting may be when pen meets paper.)

There was a recent piece on WNYC radio this morning in which a magazine author (didn't get the names and can't find it on their web site) argued that Trump was a failure as a businessman.  The argument was that had Trump put the $40 million he inherited in 1974 into the general stock market (equivalent of an S&P market index fund) he would have more money than he has with all his business dealings.

My simple check is that the author is wrong.  In 1974 the S&P was in the mid 80's to the mid-90's.  The high for this year was 2063.  A hypothetical standard investment would have increased a shade under 24 times.  So $40 million times 24 is $960 million.  Not a trivial sum, but not a billion which now seems to be the benchmark for serious money.

Action and Reaction in the Real World

Physics at the Newtonian level is pretty simple: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  (I imagine a rising chorus of objections from students dealing with Stokes Law, coefficients in the Starling equation, or multi-body interaction problems.  I acknowledge them, but beg their indulgence.)

It is far less simple when dealing with people.

When the Ashley Madison website was hacked (www.ashleymadison.com "The Original Extramarital Affairs Site") the personal information of 37 million users was posted to the Internet. (For the kids out there that's a three and a seven followed by six zeroes.  Other reports put the number at 32 million.  Even for China that's a lot of people.)  Some of the email addresses were from government sites prompting some to fear that the information could be used not just for the usual blackmail and social embarrassment, but to compromise security .

Among the names was Josh Duggar, the oldest child on the cable channel reality television show, "19 Kids and Counting".  The show focused on the Duggar family, devout Christians who don't practice birth control and whose children follow strict courtship rules.  He's had some documented problems in the past with "inappropriate behavior" when he was younger.  In all the hoopla when that was revealed I don't recall discussions of the fact that he apparently confessed to his parents and accepted responsibility.  I always expect evasion and denial before admission, but that didn't seem to be the case.

Although it'll be some time living down his handle, "josh_the_man", but I'm indebted to him for this quote:

"As I am learning the hard way, we have the freedom to choose to our actions, but we do not get to choose our consequences." (http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/20/us/josh-duggar-ashley-madison)

So, speak and die

For years I've been trying to find the quote.  I couldn't remember the speaker's name, only that the translation was powerful.  I found the reference to Tahar Djaout in a review of “The Meursault Investigation” by Kamel Daoud in the June 8, 2015 NY Times:

There are several translations.  In the quote in the review was:

Silence is death And if you say nothing you die, And if you speak you die. So speak and die. 

If you speak, you die. If you do not speak, you die. So, speak and die. ( izquotes.com/author/tahar-djaout)

I remember the quote as If you speak, they will kill you.  If you do not speak, they will kill you. So, speak and die.

To quote from the wikipedia entry for Tahar Djaout:

He was assassinated by the Armed Islamic Group because of his support of secularism and opposition to what he considered fanaticism. He was attacked on May 26, 1993, as he was leaving his home in Bainem, Algeria. He died on June 2, after lying in a coma for a week.

“Le silence, c’est la mort, et toi, si tu te tais, tu meurs. Et si tu parles, tu meurs. Alors dis et meurs.” - (http://www.algerie-focus.com/blog/2015/01/quand-tahar-djaout-symbolise-le-courage-face-aux-terrorisme-aux-yeux-des-journalistes-francais/)

Another Sign of the End Times

Before I realized that they no longer existed, I used to misquote Henry The Sixth, Part 2 Act 4, scene 2, 71–78, "First kill all proofreaders."  When I see things like this on May 27, 2015, I despair.

Most programs have spell checkers.  Is it possible that "familiy" is a term of art in the music/entertainment industry?  No.  I don't think so.

More likely those who write the content are as oblivious as me, ignoring whatever marks indicate a misspelling.  A number of links to the full article have the same error, although the article itself has family spelled correctly.

AppInventor Hands-on Exam

At the end of each semester I give a hands-on exam, which, among other things, allows the students to demonstrate that they can actually write an app using AppInventor.  It is difficult to know if the homework assignments were done by the student or someone else.

In fairness it must be said that a hands-on exam is fairly stressful, but I do provide sample problems for practice.  From half a dozen apps a student has to choose one.  Within minutes I can tell who will do well: their level of anxiety drops.  I can almost hear them think, oh this is like the other one, but with some differences.

I've come to expect that there will be a few students who'll rip through the exam about as fast as I can.  Then there are a whole bunch who struggle a bit, but eventually get it.  And then their are the others who were in class with their eyes open, but apparently didn't get it, didn't come for help, and don't get it, whatever that "it" might be.

Some will rip through the exam about as fast as I can.  There will be a group which struggles and eventually get something close to right.  And then there will be the others who were in class, with their eyes open, and don't seem to have a clue.

The students had to send me their app as an attachment in email.  The timestamps says it all.  Look at the gap after 3:56:

I try to have the students show me their app prior to submitting in case they overlooked a requirement or were on the wrong track.  I've found it useless to have them call me over if they don't understand the problem.  Those who don't understand the problem either don't realize that they're misinterpreting the instructions or they're in the sad contingent who're just waiting for a respectable time to leave.

There was one student, bored while waiting for me to give her app a once over, spent the time enhancing her app.  The requirements for the app she chose only ask that she create an app which would allow the user to choose a club and display the name of the club and the maximum occupancy.  The "listpicker" looked normal.

The results didn't.  I can honestly say that I enjoyed grading here app and gaving her full credit.

omeone ay to l

Rent in Ecuador's Eden For $600 or Less

I've amused myself looking at overseas retirement offerings.  Retirement means older people and older people mean preoccupations in this approximate order:

1. Cost of living
2. Language and and expat community
3. Availability of health care
4. Transportation (more important as they get older)

Right behind those seems to be life style things: golf, swimming, sailing, potential for extra income

Considering my lack of life style, disinterest in golf, swimming, sailing, talking to people, and going anywhere, my first concern is Internet speed.  (This will probably change as I race toward my dotage.  Of course, if my legs aren't the first thing to go I might never realize that I can't talk to anyone and my health is already in the toilet.)

Just a short while ago, intrigued by International Living's come-on, "Rent in Ecuador's Eden For $600 or Less":

In fact, when the Ecuadorian tourism bureau decided to market the country as "The Land of Eternal Spring," I'm convinced it had Vilcabamba in mind. With temperature highs averaging between 74 F and 79 F and lows never dropping below the mid-50s F, it's tough for me to imagine a more ideal climate.

an online search and several links later my browser got to http://www.vilcabamba-hotel.com.

This caught my eye.

I can see where this would give Jewish retirees pause. Put the 3 words "gas" and "showers" and "Jews" together and all sorts of warning bells go off.   "Gas showers" probably means gas heated showers, but you can see how if might give pause to those of a certain religion.

A click on the VILCANET link produced a blank page for about a minute.  Maybe I hit them just as they were experiencing a DDOS, but Ecuador's Eden will need upgraded communication services before it's worthy of the name.

All Systems Are Normal

I tried to reach an email account at 1and1.com when my browser was redirected to the page you see below:

They had finished some system maintenance and updates were being propagated to the various servers.  It was obvious that not all the servers had gotten updated hence the incorrect message.  My preference would be a John Oliver rant with a happy face with a nail in its eye, which, let's face it, is a more appropriate visual than a white check mark on a green circle.

I've been through this too many times to be more than disgruntled.  I will note, if only to myself, that this is typical of support and help desks.  I seem to stumble over more errors at work than the average bear.  A ticket will be automatically opened when email is sent and closed because research is being done or the problem has been reported to a vendor or supplier, not when the problem is resolved.

The stats look good.  The real question is who, if anyone, is being fooled?

Ted Cruz will run

As they say you can't make this up:

To quote from the story:

While in New Hampshire, Cruz told voters his daughter, Caroline, had given him permission to join the presidential race in the hopes that the family puppy would get to play on the White House lawn instead of near their Houston high-rise condo. 

 "If you win, that means Snowflake will finally get a backyard to pee in," Cruz said his daughter told him. 

Somewhat later:

In a recent Associated Press interview, he said he wants to counter the "caricatures" of the right as "stupid," ''evil" or "crazy."

I always thought Cruz was a very smart guy who realized that he could make a lot of money from conservative people who had money to give.  There was nothing in his own actions to counter the caricature of evil or cynical attributes of the right.

As flag burning was ruled a right under free speech, I guess the argument can be made that his daughter will be asserting her free speech rights on government property.

I can't quite see the bumper sticker, but I wait with breathless anticipation.  For the time being I'll have to be content with: "Ted Cruz, the first person and only Republican presidential candidate is already in last place."

Spocking Fives and Dick Nixon Stamp

Proof that the Canadians have a sense of humor is documented by “Spocking fives” described as "a fine Canadian tradition that involves etching the beloved Vulcan’s profile over Canada’s seventh prime minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the five-dollar banknote." (qz.com/353488/canadians-spock-their-banknotes-to-honor-leonard-nimoy/)

It brought to mind a cherished memory of  the Nixon stamp.   Some would add to the postmark (below left) or one could purchase special envelopes with a place for he Nixon stamp (below right).  Legend has it that sales of the Nixon stamp surged in response to the envelope. 

According to a contemporaneous report in the LA Times (articles.latimes.com/1995-07-09/news/mn-21870_1_nixon-stamp) 10,000 envelopes were sold in a month.

Thom Zajac, publisher of the Santa Cruz Comic News, a cartoon newspaper, was quoted as saying "Buy soon, because according to the post office, you won't have Dick Nixon to lick around anymore."

As of this post, the envelopes are offered on eBay for $2 each.

"The crack of the bat on Vine Street"

I give my Intro Computer Science class an essay assignment on web indexing based on a chapter in the book, 9 Algorithms That Changed the Future (ISBN 978-0-691-15819-8).  One of the questions they have to answer is why indexing is based on words instead of phrases.

There are a number of different explanations.  The one which now stands out for me is that the user may be searching for the wrong phrase.

That's exactly what happened to me.  There was a lovely Randy Newman song on van Dyke Parks debut Song Cycle (1967) album which I thought contained the line, "The crack of the bat on Vine Street".  A web search failed to find the reference in the first 3 pages.

I remembered the lyrics as written in the subject because I distinctly remember the crack of a baseball bat accompanying the word "bat".  When I finally tracked down the song it turns out that I mis-heard the lyric.

You can hear it yourself on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxOVjZW6U-k).  Because songs merge into one another Vine Street itself begins at about 50 seconds into the youtube video with the lyric in question starting about 2:54.

I clipped the segment of the song from youtube.  The "bat" in the lyric that I remembered as "The crack of the bat on Vine Street" was actually "back beat".  The word "beat" was partially obscured by the sound of the crack of the bat sound effect about 18 seconds in on the clip below.

Twilight Zone at the Emergency Room

I dropped a friend at the hospital emergency room yesterday, parked the car off site, and (cue Twilight Zone music) couldn't find her anywhere.  I'll skip the details, but you can imagine them better than I can describe them as I wandered through the emergency room asking if anyone had seen her.  Two checks on the hospital's computer showed no trace, nobody seemed to have seen her, and a call to her cell phone went directly to voice mail.

The rational explanation was that I was a little too fast and probability had its way with me.  My friend had not been entered in the system the first two times I asked and a shuffling of personnel moved everyone who'd seen her (two guards, 2 clerks, and a couple of medical techs) to other areas.

It took about 10 minutes, but the clerk who'd walked my friend from the waiting area said oh, yes, she remembered, and wearing a visitor's badge with the number of the examining roomI located her.

I spent the rest of the evening reading some old trade rags and the current Law Technology News (now Legaltech News, LTN) I'd brought along.

The best part of the evening was finding a tidbit which reminded me about Matthew Kluger, who, as a lawyer at 3 big name law firms used his computer access to improve his fortunes to the tune of $37M through insider trading (dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/two-charged-in-insider-trading-scheme-tied-to-law-firms/).  In some cases all he needed to do was see the names of the files to be tipped off to potential M&A action.  This little factoid will make its way into future discussions of meta data.

The wait also included listening to a guy who may have been a Vietnam vet yell about being disrespected, spied on, taken advantage of, ignored, abused, and frustrated that nobody wanted to know the truth.  I walked over to take a look.  He appeared to be short guy about 5'6 - 5'7" lying on a gurney with a female attendant keeping his eye on him.  He also seemed to be a subject of fascination to another guy who was handcuffed to a gurney with a few cops standing in close proximity.

I would like to say something snarky, but it doesn't seem appropriate.

Oh, my friend, nothing seemed to be wrong and she checked herself out.  She seems fine today.

I know some abuse the emergency rooms, but I remember an incident from many years ago when I was a grad student.  One of the electronic techs wasn't feeling well one day.  The guy with whom he car pooled suggested that he go to the emergency room, but the tech said no.  The tech's wife found him face down dead when she got home.

Several times since I've said to people, go to the emergency room.  Some people may laugh at you for being alarmed but I will not be one of them.  I took my own advice one snowy day.  After an initial examination for an unusual chest pain I spent several hours in the waiting room.  All I can remember is watching a Matlock rerun until they told me that it appeared to be nothing.

And so, dear diary, that was yesterday's excitement.

Howard

Howard was a student of mine in a college chemistry class. A few years later I met him by chance at supermarket. "Howard," I asked, "have your grown? You seem taller than when you were in my class."

"No," he replied, "I've been this height ever since you knew me." He added, "I think instructors look down on students." It is a pun worth remembering.

It turned out he was in computers. A comparison of our earnings motivated me to look into switching careers. Howard moved on from computers, but that's what I've been doing for about 30 years.

Later, he became my broker. His only problem was that he didn't treat me like my mother. Howard used broker speech whereas my mother would say, "Sell it you damn fool."

It may not seem funny now, but when we couldn't get into a van Gogh exhibit, Howard suggested that we threaten to cut off our ears unless they let us in. We laughed ourselves silly. We laughed even harder as we walked up Fifth Avenue as mothers yanked their children out of the path of the two giddy lunatics.

I miss him.

Farewell Steve Post

Steve Post, a legendary, wry, long-time morning personality on WNYC-FM, died yesterday, Sunday.

A self-described curmudgeon, I found his sour, irreverent comments on the news appealing.  When reading press releases about accidents at the Indian Point nuclear power plant he might conclude "Authorities claim - all together now - no significant release of radiation".

Once, as part of a group invitation to broadcasters, he got to meet with Richard Nixon.  A non-disclosure agreement prevented him from discussing the specifics, but he was able to say, "I've never seen a man more uncomfortable in his own skin."  It was an illuminating description.

His last show, carried this tagline: "The No Show is a showcase for the idiosyncratic views and humor of Steve Post, a world-class curmudgeon whose irreverence and iconoclasm have entertained audiences and appalled radio station managers for four decades.sm have entertained audiences and appalled radio station managers for four decades."

Of course, fund raising could never be the same without his emotional breakdown during on-air fund drives.

He appealed to me in part because he claimed to live a life of not so quiet desperation

Amazon's profits

The headline "Why Amazon is Losing $410 to $810 Million this Quarter" led me to an article in SupplyChain247 with the image shown below.

 It took a third look before I found the line on the baseline to see how trivial Amazon's profits were.  I remembered advice given by Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corporation.  After confessing that he hadn't known what the word entrepreneur meant he said that the people who were willing to finance a young business were old.  They expected the business to showprofits during the time they had left on earth.

Times seem to have changed.  Profitless businesses are given sky-rocketing valuations.  Olsen is long gone now.  DEC was purchased by Hewlett Packard.  He'd probably be as mystified as I am by the money and services available today.

Bookshelf Porn

An article in the April 25, NY Times Magazine, "On Their Death Bed, Physical Books Have Finally Become Sexy" by Mireille Silcoff mentioned the web site bookshelfporn.com. which consists of pictures of books and book shelves.

Links from that site lead to tumblr.com ("I Have Bookworms"), a Zurich hotel's library, and book art.  It isn't clear how to get the books from the top tier from the hotel's library.  (A more fastidious person might wonder about dusting them, but it was an afterthought for me.)

The sight of all the the books makes my heart skip a beat and then there's the twinge of sadness for the knowledge that I'll never be able to read even the good ones.

Most of the images are from book stores and libraries, but there are occasional images from private homes.  The crux of the Times article was that physical books were now perceived as a status symbol to be displayed as backdrops in advertising layouts or demonstrations of culture in shelter magazines.

There's so much to say about the non-reading culture, those who don't want to read.  I think I get an insight when I visit a home where the books devoted to religious piety, promoting "perfect health", or "food porn". I have no interest in reading them.  Is that the non-reader's attitude to all books?

All the world's a stage ...

I stumbled across an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon which seems to have gotten it right: life is obviously unrehearsed and everyone is ad-libbing their lines.  Sometimes, when watching a movie, I'll respond to a character's question by saying that if they read the script they'd know what was happening.

Trailer Park Investment Vehicles

Today, Yahoo Finance's Nicole Goodkind interviewed Anthony Effinger, the author of a forthcoming article, "Double Wide Returns", for Bloomberg Markets.  Describing trailer parks as “a supply and demand curve that’s super attractive to investors”  Effinger pointed out the demand is created by the shrinking middle class: "people with bad credit and criminal histories who are often unable to rent or buy homes."

There are problems of course.  Home meth labs and the occasional visit from a SWAT team can add to the excitement of the investment.

A comment by Mariner calls for a bumper sticker: "Paperless office to cardboard box homes in less than two decades. I am America (and so can you!)"

Stunned Again By Ignorance

In my computer science class I was trying to make an analogy between the way a computer monitor displays color and the famous painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat.

There was something about their response, or more accurately their non-response.  I asked them to raise their hands if they'd seen the picture before.  None had.

It was not just an analogy wasted.  It was a smack in the face making manifest the complaint that art education is suffering.

The painting should be famous.  How had they managed to not see it?

I wrote to a number of friends who were unsympathetic.  One replied that it was something which was going to happen more frequently as I got older.  I understand people not knowing my obscure references, but "La Grande Jatte" is supposed to be famous enough to be the source of inspiration for the musical, Sunday in the Park with George.

It should be something to motivate me to become an activist, but I look at the exams to be graded, lessons to be prepared, and I despair.

A few days later I picked up a pre-publication copy of Intel Trinity, How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company By Michael S. Malone.  There was a description in the first chapter of  a set piece in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California: an older engineer enthusiastically explaining the details of an obsolete piece of hardware to a bored looking younger engineer.  I wondered whether it would be an accurate description of my fate.

I'm not an engineer, but I've been fascinated by old technology.  While the specific technology may be irrelevant to today's economy, the lessons learned in the development, marketing, and life span are important: either for relevance or as a cautionary tale.

Faced with a class of students expecting to create the next great app I mention Ronald Wayne, the almost unknown third founder of Apple who gave up his share to Jobs and Wozniak for a few thousand dollars.  While the other two were just kids, he was a businessman with a wife, kids, and mortgage ("The whole catastrophe" -Zorba the Greek) who'd already suffered one business loss.  While the two Stevers had little to lose he had dependents.

I point out to the students that as great as their ideas may be, getting others to join in may be obstructed by something as simple as the need for someone to feed a family.  You may quote me: "It is easier for a family to starve than an individual."

A Sentimental Education

The NY Times February 9th Book Review contained a section entitled, "A Sentimental Education" which contained reflections of a dozen writers on what books taught them about love.

I was struck by Mary Bly's analysis of "Romeo and Juliet":

As the play opens, Romeo is transfixed by his ability to play with language and desperately looking for an object of devotion. He greets Juliet with the first line of a quatrain — “If I profane with my unworthiest hand” — and the two proceed to build a sonnet together, first alternating stanzas, then lines. As Juliet conforms to Romeo’s rhyme scheme, the subject veers from chaste devotion to passion. They must listen intently in order to construct shared rhymes, and Shakespeare punctuates their final couplet with a kiss.

 I doubt I would ever realize that myself.

The same issue had a review of Edmund White's "Inside a Pearl" in which White described himself as "too abstemious, too French to be a good American writer".  The reviewer notes that the reference is to tobacco and alcohol, not "good  meals or sexual encounters, even after being told that he was H.I.V. positive".

Eating sushi off the body of a model in a bikini is politically incorrect.

Who knew?  Hey, you can't make this stuff up.

I went looking after a Madam & Eve weekend cartoon depicted a selfie of someone holding sushi in chopsticks in his right hand and a picture of a young woman with sushi rolls in the background.  I quick web search turned up an article on the British Telegraph date stamped 6:34PM GMT 31 Jan 2011 (www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8293895/South-Africas-ANC-deplores-sushi-on-models-after-scandal.html):

 

A quote without comment is the best:

A statement on Monday from the African National Congress secretary general Gwede Mantashe is unequivocal: "This act is anti-ANC and antirevolutionary. This act is defamatory, insensitive and undermining of woman's integrity."

The statement has a whiff of Stalinist denunciation of ________________ (fill in the blank).  One ideologue  would denounce another for not recognizing the insidious capitalist, counter-revolutionary evil inherent in, say, flossing.

If nothing else, this can be the a great political trivia question, e.g., in which country has eating sushi been denounced as counter-revolutionary.  (There may be a significant difference between "antirevolutionary" and "counter-revolutionary" but I don't give a rip.)

A time line of the scandal can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-groner/south-africas-sushi-scand_b_816724.html.

Greece: Prison Escapee Vows to Fight Again

They say quote without comment (from the NY Times 01/21/2014):

A leftist Greek guerrilla who walked away from a prison while on furlough this month announced his return to terrorism on Monday. ...Mr. Xiros, 55, was serving multiple life terms at the Korydallos Prison near Athens for a series of attacks carried out by the group, chiefly against Greek, British and American business and political targets over nearly three decades. He has been at large since failing to return from a nine-day furlough that began on Jan. 1. 

-/www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/europe/greece-prison-escapee-vows-to-fight-again.html

Can you imagine someone in an America jail going on a nine-day furlough after being sentenced to multiple life terms?   Oh those wacky Greeks!  What a bunch of kidders.

His online manifesto  (“Once again I have taken the decision to thunder the guerrilla rifle against those who stole our lives and sold our dreams for a profit”) is not likely to encourage the investment that Greece seems to need.  It's OK to ignore me: I'm  not an economist.

Keith Richard's School of Optimism

"I always look at life as a syringe half-full."

Credit should be give to Amy Dickenson on the January 18^th broadast of National Public Radio quiz show “Wait, Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!”.  In checking her names I found a NY Times article about her marriage to a childhood friend which included this:

She kept those thoughts to herself until March, when the couple visited New York. As they walked by the church designed by Mr. Schickel’s great-grandfather, he asked where she saw the relationship going. “She was silent for about a minute — completely silent,” Mr. Schickel said. “Then she said: ‘I’m sorry. I want to get married.’”  

Mr. Schickel needed no apology. He proposed on the spot.

The passage should serve as inspiration for an adult romantic comedy.

You won't need no camel

"You won't need no camel, oh no, when I take you for a ride."  Just loved Maria Muldaur's rendition on youtube:

It's a great song by a woman any guy would be proud to have her call him her man.  Whatever she lacked in purity of voice was more than compensated for with emotion.
I remember her from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band all those years ago and her rendition of I'm a Woman from her LP isn't bad either (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDs-7I3NElE&html5=1).  She had an endearing tick of quickly nodding before each stanza.  You can see it the youtube video Kate and Anna McGarrigle with Maria Muldaur: The Work Song (1984)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGvq2Wl4Zvc)

Perhaps I'm sentimental about a Greenwhich Village kid from the folk era (or as Dave Van Ronk termed it, "The Great Folk Scare").  You can see her describe her accidental career on the LivingLegendsMusic videos (www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-bDEZ4RX38&list=PLsf7UsLoHI7-sGsSq2lTVq78vAVQbeckS)

James Lee Stanley

The other night I chanced across an interview of Peter Tork (of Monkees fame) who mentioned a friend of his, James Lee Stanley, and what Tork considered one of JLS's sense of humor:

Since food has replaced sex in my life I can't even get into my own pants.

In one of JLS's videos (Vicki Abelson's Women Who Write, Big Sur, 8/25/12) as part of giving the audience liberty to do what they wanted with videos of his performance he said:

Should you begin to make serious money selling copies of my shows would you please contact Beechwood Recording Studios in Los Angeles California and tell them how you did it.  Because they don't know.

After a comment about his career being in the witness protection program he offered a line which I'm sure many will be able to use:

If my wife hadn't worn bangs I would have seen the 666 on her forehead.

I'm sure he's a fine song smith, but his song's didn't appeal to me. 

I like his banter though.  In another video he describes being inspired by Carlos Santana, a lid of marijuana, and a medical-pharmacological encyclopedia to write the first genuine Latin Boogie in 2,000 years, most of the words stemming from the Latin and coming from the encyclopedia.

As with his songs, the concept seemed better than the execution.

A Memorable Semester

On the day after Christmas, as I drove up to the Comp Sci building emeritus prof Dr. I  drove over to ask how the semester went.

Although a dozen things contented for comment, I chose the word "memorable".

At the end of Christmas day I was able to congratulate myself for not whining on and on about the semester's frustration.  Not a single word.  There wasn't much opportunity.  Nobody asked, hey how was your semester and I didn't prompt the question by asking, "Doesn't anyone want to hear how my semester went?"

Today I told the prof that only one student in my Computer Architecture recognized the name Linus as belonging to Linus Torvald and not Linus from Charlie Brown.  He shook his head and said, "Yeah, they don't know history."

Linus Torvald	Linus van Pelt

I wondered about it during the semester. Was it important? It is unlikely that their lives would be saved, when challenged in a dark alley to identify the person who originated the Linux operating system, but it might be something which would come up in a technical interview. Being unable to identify the person responsible for one of the seismic shifts in computing would be a serious mark on an applicants escutcheon.

Given the opportunity, the next time I teach the class I will probably have a 50 question trivia quiz worth a total of 5 point toward the final just to expose them to tribal legends of Computer Science. Most people with a computer can identify Steve Jobs, but the geeks should recognize "The Woz".  Those students with dreams of entrepreneurship and dreams of entrancing venture capitalists should certainly know the name, Ronald Wayne.  Anyone involved in computer graphics should recognize the name of Playboy’s Miss November 1972, Lena Sjööblom .

Looking For Book Storage Ideas

Here's what my searches netted.

I'm not particularly enamored of pebble beaches, but this could be my dream vacation site:(http://www.lalibreriaimmaginaria.it/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1112.jpg):

This vista evoked contradictory reactions: attraction to the books and repulsion at the bare space.  The seating might be comfortable, but I'd feel too exposed for comfort. (www.lalibreriaimmaginaria.it/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/335450_10150629348599517_169723374516_11932632_1944801617_o.jpg)

I could imagine sleeping here, although I don't see where I would get my reading light at night. That might be  a light visible on the lower surface of the shelf above the pillows.  It reminds me of the reading lights in airplanes.  My preferences are for a tensor lamp or an old swing arm drafting lamp.  (www.lalibreriaimmaginaria.it/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/335450_10150629348599517_169723374516_11932632_1944801617_o.jpg)

And this floor to ceiling books is the type of interior vista I like, except I'd be concerned about the cost of heating and the wasted space.  On the other hand I'd like to rise to the challenge of filling the space.

I Don't Need Drugs

I was reading the comments to an NPR story, "Comedian Faces His Addictions To Food And Alcohol" about comedian Jamie Kilstein (http://www.npr.org/2013/10/20/236950670/comedian-faces-his-addictions-to-food-and-alcohol) when I came across Jim Fetter's comment about addiction: 

"Well the alcohol I don't understand, because I never could acquire a taste for something that would operate my automobile."

I hadn't thought of it that way.  My usual response to the question as to why I don't drink is one of the following:

1. Drinking is for grown-ups.
2. It all tastes like Nyquil to me.
3. I never acquired a taste for it.
4. I'm too cheap.
5. I make money being the designated driver.

Now I can add that I try not to imbibe anything flammable.

I don't need drugs or alcohol.  My brain is addled enough.  (My neighbor and I have a standing joke.  In response to one of us saying something loopy, the other will pretend to examine the speaker's eyes, shrug and say, "Dunno.  The pupils aren't dilated.)

As an undergraduate I lived with the hippies and associated with the drug users.  I can honestly say that I didn't use drugs but I got to share their paranoia.

Some time in grad school I realized that I'd distanced myself from the scene when it dawned on me that I didn't recognize the names of the drugs being tossed about.  Not only that, I didn't want to know.  A fellow grad student claimed to have stopped smoking pot because he didn't have any free time.  And, if he had the free time, he said, he had other stuff which needed doing anyway.  (Life's a bummer.)

Musing on a Pear

Pears were on sale this week and thus several came to reside in my refrigerator.  I couldn't resist.  This one reminded me of Picasso's Femme or someone I once knew.

I had to laugh: Lemmings with Suicide Vests

I haven't been in a joyful mood lately: Every day I don't teach is spent prepping for class, some labs I'm trying to create along with another prof are taking forever to get done, there are legal matters which are similarly crawling along, and then there is the House of Representatives being held hostage by Tea Party Republicans. (I've taken my position from  On The Media's coverage, especially James Fallows' comments.)

I actually laughed out loud when I heard Rep. Nunes' sound bite (from the Washington Post):

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) had choice words for fellow House Republicans who are willing to see the government shut down over their opposition to Obamacare: "Lemmings with suicide vests," he called them.

Transformation Forever!

I spotted this in CIO magazine:

"You can't operate under a banner of transformation forever.  You've got to declare victory." - Louie Ehrlich CIO of Chevron and president of Chevron Information Technology (http://www.cio.com/article/704095/Chevron_s_CIO_Talks_Transformation_and_Why_IT_Leaders_Should_Smile)

It echoes Louis Armstrong, who when asked where he thought jazz was going, replied, "If I knew, I'd be there already!"

Which leads me to chat on about learning to program computers.  The connection being knowing where you're going.

People new to programming start with simple problems.  While this makes sense from a pedagogical perspective, it also hides the necessity of analysis.  Many beginners with an aptitude for programming "grok" the problem - the solution seems obvious without a need for analysis.  (The Car Talk guys would say that the solution was "not encumbered by the thought process.")

The ability to solve the introductory problems intuitively can lull a beginner (take this as a true confession) into thinking he's a "computer genius", surely an archaic term now.  As problems become progressively harder the need for planning become more obvious as those who charge ahead find that their code requires reworking and more reworking.  (From my casual observation the few female computer programming students I've seen plan more than the male students.  The result is that it will take the female students longer to code the early programs because the guys just whale away at the code until it works.  The problems at the end of a first semester course usually require the type of analysis and planning the female students seem to use from the start.)