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.)

Cynthia Nixon and Augusten Burroughs

As always, bit behind in my readings. 

The Lifestyle section of the May 26^th contained 2 articles which concerned sexuality. The actress Cynthia Nixon got flack from the homosexual contingent for statements questioning the idea that sexuality was fixed. She can serve as her own posterperson (my own coinage) as someone who went from a long term heterosexual relationship to marriage to a same sex partner. The article contains a quote which with the appropriate word substitutions should be applied to most statements in the blogosphere.

“Different strokes for different folks,” she said. “My view of my sexuality is just my view. It has nothing to do with your view of your sexuality or even my view of your sexuality.”   

 There was an article by Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors) about the loss of the word "boyfriend" now that he married his agent.  He classified the both of them as "bad gays" because they did not  fall into the pattern of tastefully married gays: no tasteful wedding, aspirations for children, or a honeymoon.

His statement

A man who frequently smells like cheeseburgers and makes me laugh hard every day and makes me want to be worthy of being his husband. 

gets at what people find attractive and bonding in each other.

Lena Sjööblom, Miss November 1972

In the process of getting images to demonstrate image sampling techniques I found myself reading, once again, about Lena Sjööblom, the most Mona Lisa of computer imaging.

From: electronicimaging.spiedigitallibrary.org/article.aspx?articleid=1100033
Nonadaptive sampling:	quasirandom	farthest point	importance-driven farthest point
Adaptive sampling:	bandwidth	coverage	importance-driven coverage

The May/June 2001 editions of the IEEE Professional Communications Society Newsletter had a nice write up of the origin of the original and subsequent use (www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/pcs_mirror/may_june01.pdf):

Lena Sjööblom, a Swedish native working as a model in Chicago in 1972, was Playboy’s Miss November that year. She would return to her native country, marry, and raise children before learning that her centerfold picture had become the ultimate laboratory rat. Not only that: Lena became for the engineers something like what Rita Hayworth was for U.S. soldiers in the trenches of World War II.

What I didn't find find was a link to the legal arrangement by which Playboy allowed Lena's copyrighted image to be used by graphics researchers.

The same newsletter issue provided this: You know it’s a “No Frills” airline when:

• They don’t sell tickets, they sell chances.
• All the insurance machines in the terminal are sold out.
• Before the flight, the passengers get together and elect a pilot.
• You cannot board the plane unless you have the exact change.
• Before you take off, the flight attendant tells you to fasten your Velcro.

Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza

"In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could." ~Rudiger Dornbusch, an economist who spent his last 27 years at MIT.

I was led to the quote from a NY Times article about the high cost of living in Brazil, "Prices Fuel Outrage in Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/world/americas/prices-fuel-outrage-in-brazil-home-of-the-30-cheese-pizza.html), then through an English translation of a Braziliam economics blog (The Drunkeynesian: thedrunkeynesian.blogspot.com/)

I imagine that when someone waxes lyrical about Ipanema, its sparkling beaches and heavenly weather, I'll be prompted to add, "And the $30 pizza."  Consumer anger has been fueled by a law requiring retailers to detail on receipts how much tax customers were charged.  The article cites one $92 grocery bill, $25 of which was tax.

Joanie and Johnny Together

I owe a small debt of gratitude to Doonesbury's video of the day.  Today's video linked to Johnny Cash and Joanie Mitchell singing "The Long Black Veil".  Joannie added a high pitched part to the chorus that I don't believe I've heard before.  She does it the first about the 1 minute mark.  Enchanting. 

How Old is Too Old? - When to Refresh Student & Facutly PCs

It does not give one confidence when an educational bulletin doesn't know how to use a spell checker.

I know it happens.  I know that I notice typos more than most, but it is still annoying.

In the past, when I spotted a typo I'd send a message to an editor suggesting that if they put someone's liver on a pike I'd bring the fava beans and a nice chianti.  I used to paraphrase Dick the Butcher in ''Henry VI" (Let's kill all the proofreaders) until I realized that few proofreaders were left.

Typesetting is gone.  A piece is written electronically, sent, and then posted without the mediation of experience.  It impresses me that mistakes, obvious mistakes, mistakes underlined in red get through.  I've seen it myself in my PowerPoint presentations.

I'll be in front of the class when -- Ooop!  I stop the presentation, fix the spelling error, save the file, and continue where I left off.  Sometimes its worse: a real error of fact gets through.  Ooop.  That's wrong.  Very embarrassing.  I take time to tell the class that they should pay attention and try to think about what they're being told because some of what they'll be told may be wrong.  The instructor may misspeak.  In editing, a "not" gets misplaced.

One of my PowerPoint techniques is to duplicate a slide or group of slides and then edit them.  Occasionally stuff gets left lying around: stray text, an extra slide, or the wrong reference in the notes.  I would have thought I'd learn my lesson, but I don't.

(This might be the appropriate point to quote someone to the effect that education is the process by which knowledge is passed from the notebook of the instructor to the notebook of the student without passing through the mind of either.  Unfortunately the provenance is unclear (quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/17/lecture-minds/).  An updated version might say that knowledge flows seamlessly from the publisher's PowerPoint presentation to handouts stuffed into student Trapper™ portfolios.)

Installation Blues

Another instructor lent me a PC, a Dell Optiplex 745 with Vista installed.  Not a problem.  I have a genuine Windows 7 SP 1 DVD to install a newer operating systems.  Rushing right ahead into the update routine, I became reacquainted with the Microsoft installation nonsense.

 I'll let others bash Microsoft.  All I need to say is that when installing Linux, I'm presented with a whole bunch of screens and choices up front.  Once I click the Install button I don't have to do anything other than wait and then install the 300 or so updates required, but it's essentially painless.

Microsoft reboots several times and ask for user input.  The most annoying part of the installation is that the screen will go black.  Because I wasn't playing close attention, I would think that the computer was in the process of rebooting.  It was only when I tapped a key the screen would light up and display a dialog box giving me the choice of continuing or cancelling.  Sigh.

It was more annoying than stressful, but then the installation rejected my product key.   I figured I'd do something to get a Genuine Windows seal of approval or contact the Dream Spark people to get an alternate key later.

The first order of business was to install newer browsers etc.  Oh simple soul.  Internet Explorer gave me a few raspberries in the form of DLL exceptions in DLL's as did MSPaint.  The Dell site displayed updates for the hardware up to Vista.  Sigh.

As I write I've reinstalled Vista and am waiting for the 102 updates to install.  Sigh.

An Interview with Terence Stamp

With the "Unfinished Song" soon to be released, Terence Stamp was interviewed on NPR by Scott Simon.  When asked about his social exploits (Julie Christie, Brigitte Bardot, Jean Shrimpton), Stamp responded, "They were after the pill and before AIDS. You know, a good time to be a young lad."  He was asked what it was like to work with Vanessa Redgrave who'd had her daughter, brother, and sister die within a year's time.  Stamp replied, "I saw a woman who was kind of very familiar with change of cosmic address."

Not a bad turn of phrase.  I wonder if the post office would forward mail?

In a web search for images of Jean Shrimpton I found a Guardian interview with Jean Shrimpton  from April 2011.  An indifferent student, rocked to fame as the first supermodel, a succession of men, eventually one introduced her to culture (museums, art, and literature).  She's been a hotelier since her 30's and, if the interview is to be believed,  doesn't seem to miss being in the public eye.

Looking at her pictures, now some 50 years old, I was struck by how artificial the hair seems now.  Were people aware of that then?

 

(Photo from http://www.fanpix.net/picture-gallery/jean-shrimpton-picture-17322359.htm)