NPR asked today: what should they wear?
The answer is perfectly obvious - both should derss as G. W. Bush!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Heard on NPR - begathon ad
NPR (WNYC, to be precise) is having the semiannual begathon (theoretically semiannual - in reality they do them 3-4 times a year, plus "sponsorship announcements"). One segment in particular struck me as unusually sinister, even for NPR.
They accept a call from a young girl. The girl says that her parent always have NPR on in the house and in the car (even in bathroom), but they never contribute any money. So the announcer asks the girl to get her Mom on the phone. Flustered and ashamed Mom says that she always wanted to pay but forgot. Ca-ching!
The moral of the story: let your kids listen to NPR, and they will become the model Young Pioneers, perfect Pavlik Morozov.
They accept a call from a young girl. The girl says that her parent always have NPR on in the house and in the car (even in bathroom), but they never contribute any money. So the announcer asks the girl to get her Mom on the phone. Flustered and ashamed Mom says that she always wanted to pay but forgot. Ca-ching!
The moral of the story: let your kids listen to NPR, and they will become the model Young Pioneers, perfect Pavlik Morozov.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Rights and freedoms
This cartoon (via Donald Sensing) is a simple and mostly right. But it's less right for being so simple. The "adults" in both frames are actually correct.
The "old-style conservative" (a tautology, I know) in the top frame is talking about the freedom of doing what you consider right. Things like speaking your mind, associating with the people you consider good, or worshiping the supreme being of your choice, including Nonesuch. Those freedoms can be taken by force, but they are not given by any government. You have them because that's how you think.
The "liberal" in the bottom frame is also right. The government nowadays gives you many rights. The right to pension in the old age, the right not to be hungry and homeless even if you don't work, the right to medical attention whether you can pay the doctor or not. These are the rights that government gives you. They used to be alms, things that religious people had to contribute because their religion said so. Nowadays they are ... still alms, but extracted by IRS. You can have them because other people think you have them. And yes, if you have a scrap of decency, those other people do have a claim on your time and effort.
If conservatives want to have a good discussion, they need to clearly separate the freedoms that the top frame talks about, and the rights (entitlements?) that the bottom frame refers to. Those things are governed by different rules even if we use the same word for them.
The "old-style conservative" (a tautology, I know) in the top frame is talking about the freedom of doing what you consider right. Things like speaking your mind, associating with the people you consider good, or worshiping the supreme being of your choice, including Nonesuch. Those freedoms can be taken by force, but they are not given by any government. You have them because that's how you think.
The "liberal" in the bottom frame is also right. The government nowadays gives you many rights. The right to pension in the old age, the right not to be hungry and homeless even if you don't work, the right to medical attention whether you can pay the doctor or not. These are the rights that government gives you. They used to be alms, things that religious people had to contribute because their religion said so. Nowadays they are ... still alms, but extracted by IRS. You can have them because other people think you have them. And yes, if you have a scrap of decency, those other people do have a claim on your time and effort.
If conservatives want to have a good discussion, they need to clearly separate the freedoms that the top frame talks about, and the rights (entitlements?) that the bottom frame refers to. Those things are governed by different rules even if we use the same word for them.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Spreading the wealth around
Senator Obama is going to go on spreading, until the only place you can see any wealth is on the spreading knife.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Annotated Turing
I've finished "Annotated Turing". It's amazing how one person, in his head, managed to create the entire software industry - with elegant solutions and dirty hacks, bugs and features, hardware solution and programming languages and all the things that had to be reinvented over the next 40 years. And he did it without even trying, as a byproduct of a mathematical proof and philosophical thought.
I can perfectly see how Fortran-Algol-C-C++-Java axis evolved exactly along the lines the Turing predicted. I wish I could get a similar book on Alonzo Church lambda calculus - I suspect that would help me a lot in understanding Lisp. And, to complete the list, I guess Smalltalk would be another by-product of Turing's direction, even though that apple fell far from the tree indeed.
One thing I found troubling is the fact that the proof of impossibility of building the "validating" machine does not refer to any properties of the validating machine itself. Rather, it refers to the inherent impossibility of a machine printing a number that depends on the re-execution of that same machine. A gnawing doubt in my mind keeps wandering: if we use the "validating" machine in a different way, would we get rid of contradiction? I need to re-read that part.
I can perfectly see how Fortran-Algol-C-C++-Java axis evolved exactly along the lines the Turing predicted. I wish I could get a similar book on Alonzo Church lambda calculus - I suspect that would help me a lot in understanding Lisp. And, to complete the list, I guess Smalltalk would be another by-product of Turing's direction, even though that apple fell far from the tree indeed.
One thing I found troubling is the fact that the proof of impossibility of building the "validating" machine does not refer to any properties of the validating machine itself. Rather, it refers to the inherent impossibility of a machine printing a number that depends on the re-execution of that same machine. A gnawing doubt in my mind keeps wandering: if we use the "validating" machine in a different way, would we get rid of contradiction? I need to re-read that part.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Vice-presidential debate
I just can't listen to this. Both candidates are perfectly indistinguishable on the matter of regulations. No matter who wins, our economy will go down the drain.
One of the greatest strengths of America was the fact that Washington was a tiny part of her, not that important. As years flew by, the role of Washington grew, but it was not trying to _be_ the country. Now, seizing the excuse of the crisis they made themselves by creating huge monopolies and then encouraging them to make garbage loans, the govt is trying to _be_ the country, or at least her economy. If we're lucky, they will fail so fast and so hard that we'll be able to get rid of them in 4 years. If we're not lucky, the frogs will be boiled so slowly that by the time we wake up, the govt will be the one with all the money and all the power, just like in the good old Soviet Union.
One of the greatest strengths of America was the fact that Washington was a tiny part of her, not that important. As years flew by, the role of Washington grew, but it was not trying to _be_ the country. Now, seizing the excuse of the crisis they made themselves by creating huge monopolies and then encouraging them to make garbage loans, the govt is trying to _be_ the country, or at least her economy. If we're lucky, they will fail so fast and so hard that we'll be able to get rid of them in 4 years. If we're not lucky, the frogs will be boiled so slowly that by the time we wake up, the govt will be the one with all the money and all the power, just like in the good old Soviet Union.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Adventures in plumbing 2
I've replaced a handheld shower head yesterday. The operation is simplicity itself, no knowledge or tools needed. However, the design of the showerhead itself is an interesting thing to contemplate.
The head is an interesting example of marketing and engineering uniting their forces agains UI designer. It has a number of settings for the way water comes out. The setting are switched by rotating the wheel placed around the entire head.
Now, the two most used settings are "normal" shower and "shut off" (AKA "trickle"). The design should make it very easy to switch between them. But the engineering had an elegant implementation where the "off" and "normal" were at the opposite ends of the rotation. And then marketing made it worse by specifying that the switching wheel must look smooth and polished.
So now I have to rotate the ring more than 180 degrees, going through settings that spew water with considerable forse. And then I have to rotate it all the way back, with soapy hands.
Someone is obviously not eating their own dog food.
The head is an interesting example of marketing and engineering uniting their forces agains UI designer. It has a number of settings for the way water comes out. The setting are switched by rotating the wheel placed around the entire head.
Now, the two most used settings are "normal" shower and "shut off" (AKA "trickle"). The design should make it very easy to switch between them. But the engineering had an elegant implementation where the "off" and "normal" were at the opposite ends of the rotation. And then marketing made it worse by specifying that the switching wheel must look smooth and polished.
So now I have to rotate the ring more than 180 degrees, going through settings that spew water with considerable forse. And then I have to rotate it all the way back, with soapy hands.
Someone is obviously not eating their own dog food.
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