I enjoyed this TED talk, Tim Harford: Trial, error and the God complex, because it touches on some subjects I’m really interested in right now, like epistemic arrogance. The ending anecdote stuck out for me because he talked about making good mistakes, mistakes that go in the right direction. This reminded me of antifragility. I’m curious if Harford has read Taleb. In general, I think his ideas about trial and error would benefit from reading Taleb.

So it looks like there will be football this year!

I have no comments on the labor issues other than I had a visceral emotional dislike for the owners. Had nothing to do with facts, though.

Anyway, ESPN is saying that the Ravens will release Derrick Mason. I don’t know if the Niners could get him, but they definitely should. Crabtree and Morgan aren’t good enough. I’d also like to see Plaxico, but that probably isn’t going to happen either.

One last thought: Time to defend my fantasy football crowns!

My work e-mail account recently informed me that I am running out of hard disk space.

Being used to Gmail, this is foreign to me. I just let everything sit in my inbox, and I don’t think I’ll ever have to worry about deleting anything. If it’s important, it gets a star and stays at the top of my inbox. Everything else just fades away. I don’t even bother archiving.

In any case, while waiting for someone to get back to me, I have taken the opportunity clean out my inboxes.

So far, so good…

On the Opera Blog, they have this cool, random thing where you can make an album cover: http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2011/07/19/and-now-for-something-completely-random-your-own-band

You follow these instructions:

1. Use Wikipedia to find something random The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to Random Quotations for a random quote. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and explore the last seven days. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

I made this!

I made a typo; it should be “International Cystinuria Foundation,” but I don’t really want to fix it.

The original quote:

If we have the opportunity to be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love’s reach.

– Margaret Cho, weblog, 03-09-04

Photo credit:
Southwark – Cathedral by Gareth Evans
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaznaz/5942484178/

I think we should test The Oatmeal’s philosophy in class tomorrow. He uses absurdity to make grammar fun. Let’s see if absurd sentences can make grammar less excruciating.

I imagine it will at least make it easier to brainstorm sentences with incorrectly used conjunctions and prepositions.

The Awl has this excellent piece: http://www.theawl.com/2011/07/weekend-at-kermies-the-muppets-strange-life-after-death

One need not be that familiar with the Muppets to appreciate this piece (I’m not, which is why I can say this), only an interest in creativity and loss.

I thought it was a good piece of writing.

I have been farming for stickers on Brawl the past two days. Last Monday during our weekly get-together, we played Brawl for the first time in months. I remembered the only challenges I had yet to unlock: collect 500 trophies, collect all (700) stickers, beat boss battles on very hard, beat boss battles on intense. The last time i finished a challenge, I was still in college.

Then, yesterday, I had a breakthrough. After some SSE and coin launcher, I collected 500 trophies.

I have moved on to sticker farming. I use a sticker factory custom stage. I use Bowser on Special Brawl, with Mega and Fast enabled. Now I only have 21 stickers left.

Maybe I will finish it this time.

I finished Haroun and the Sea of Stories today. Thursday last week, the power went out at work. Now, I wasn’t there, but this still affected me. I was in Berkeley instead of Santa Clara. However, all the servers I wanted to work on were off. So, in my boredom, I plucked Haroun and the Sea of Stories from an ATDP bookshelf and read several chapters. I had never read anything by Rushdie before. I tweeted about how delightful it was, and I was amused that there was a character named Butt. (Later, there are two characters named Butt!)

I found myself wondering what happens next. I knew I wouldn’t have time to finish the book while sitting at the office, so I borrowed the book yesterday… and finished the book today.

Thanks for leaving the book there, Lloyd. It’s a very enchanting tale. I’ll return it on Monday and leave it for anyone else passing through.

Here was a passage I especially liked:

Iff replied that the Plentimaw Fishes were what he called ‘hunger artists’ — ‘Because when they are hungry they swallow stories through every mouth, and in their innards miracles occur; a little bit of one story joins on to an idea from another, and hey presto, when they spew the stories out they are not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nothing, Thieflet; no story comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old — it is the new combinations that make them new. So you see, our artistic Plentimaw Fishes really create new stories in their digestive systems…”

It reminded me of the Everything is a Remix* series by Kirby Ferguson.

Another passage makes a point about morals that’s very sophisticated for a kid’s story:

As for the Chupwalas, all of whom belonged to the Union of the Zipped Lips, and were the Cultmaster’s most devoted servants — well, Haroun kept being struck by how ordinary they were, and how monotonous was the work they had been given. There were hundreds of them in their Zipped Lips cloaks and hoods, attending to the tanks and cranes on the deck, performing a series of mindless, routine jobs: checking dials, tightening joints, switching the tanks’ stirring mechanisms on and off again, swabbing the decks. It was all as boring as could be; and yet — as Haroun kept having to remind himself — what these scurrying, cloaked, weaselly, scrawny, snivelling clerical types were actually up to was nothing less than the destruction of the Ocean of the Streams of Story itself! ‘How weird,’ Haroun said to Iff, ‘that the worst things of all can look so normal and, well, dull.’

Well, this isn’t exclusively a kid’s story. I think it can be enjoyed by kids and adults alike. However, it is mostly written from the perspective of a child (though the child is not the narrator) and so it is very much written in the style of a children’s story.

I hate Oracle so much.

I’m trying to download ASMLIB packages. So, I go to the documentation for Grid Infrastructure*. At one point, the documentation tells me:

1.3.6.2.2 Download and Install the Oracleasm Package 

After you determine the kernel version for your system, complete the following task:

Open a Web browser using the following URL:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/linux/downloads/index.html

Of course, their fucking link is broken.

P.S. Oracle, here’s the correct link: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/linux/asmlib/index-101839.html

I’ve strayed from thinking about antifragility, and I’m now thinking about the sucker-nonsucker distinction that NN Taleb gives. In that article about antifragility, NN Taleb lists true-false as fragile under epistemology, but sucker-nonsucker is listed as antifragile. I’m not quite sure why sucker-nonsucker is listed that way, but I’ll think about it later. Talking about suckers is something Taleb does in all his books, so I’m at least familiar with the topic. I’d now like to think about how it applies to politics.

Because we’ve been studying Hitchens in class (for style, not content), the word credulous has been on my mind. Credulous seems to be one of Hitchens’s favorite words. Now, it seems to me that I should avoid political affiliation because it makes one more credulous. That is, when one joins a tribe, one is much more likely to believe that tribe’s claims than the other tribe’s claims. Of course, these political tribes push out so much spin that it’s not good to believe either one of them. However, one gobbles their propaganda quite easily when one identifies so closely with them. One becomes less skeptical and more credulous. Credulity isn’t great in and of itself, but it’s especially worse when the people you want to listen to are, for the most part, liars and thieves.

Now that I’ve described something more abstractly, I should try to come up with a more specific example. Let’s use the Republicans since I was semi-recently a sucker for them. They preach a philosophy of less spending. Yet, during Bush’s administration, they engaged in multiple (expensive) wars and nation-building missions, and they passed Medicare Part D. They expanded the welfare state. Even though their actions contradict their so-called principles, people still cling to the belief that this is what the Republicans are for. Of course, the suckers are now latching onto the Republican’s rebranding as the Tea Party. We’re for less spending, and this time we really mean it. Or at least, say many people who voted for all the wars, Medicare Part D, and the bailouts. Sometimes votes accidentally align with so-called principles, but that only happens when they’re trying to obstruct the other party.

I don’t want to argue that both parties are equal, but I do want to point out something from Democratic side. I believed President Obama wouldn’t expand the national security follies of the Bush Administration, but I was wrong. He engaged in a war with Libya and arrogantly believes he doesn’t need Congressional approval. (Really, this should be an impeachable offense to prevent overreach by other presidents.) He’s cracked down on whistleblowers and has essentially provided immunity for the law-breakers who engaged in torture, which is a heinous crime against humanity. Alas, I should know better than to believe in the rhetoric of politicians. Of course, the loyal Democrats delude themselves into thinking that principles really do matter and that the Democrats aren’t in the back pockets of corporate interests. They tell themselves, If only the Republicans weren’t obstructing everything, then Obama could pass all the great things we want. They like to believe that he’s not essentially a neoliberal.

Ideology is another source of credulity. Believing in an ideology, like libertarianism, makes people immune to reality. I remember I had a professor who used to remark quite frequently on the usefulness of modus tollens.

When viewed from this lens, politics becomes less about fixing things and more about doing the least amount of damage. Note that least amount of damage is not the same as least amount of work, so I’m not subscribing to a libertarian ideology. Notice that the Framers restricted what government could do. One should ignore any rhetoric from politicians and elect those who will do the least damage. Now, there are issues with picking whom to elect since these people are mostly sociopaths and charlatans. If we want to reform government, then we shouldn’t look for a savior who will fix everything. Instead, we should just try to find someone who isn’t a complete money-grubbing fraud. As a general rule, I think we’d be better off if we elected more ordinary people, as opposed to rich corporatists and career politicians. Avoid the businessmen and politicians because they’re more likely to be greedy and they’re probably better at knowing how to fool you than people who don’t spend all their time practicing that kind of skill.

I should also think about being informed on political matters in terms of the sucker-nonsucker breakdown. I don’t need to follow the horse race or be informed about the latest scandals. I should, however, learn enough that people can’t take me for a sucker.

Let it be known that I beat World of Goo on the iPad. (With Stevie’s help.) I’m still working on OCD.

I will also note that I have beaten Portal 1 & 2. One day, I may look back on these entries. I’ll see this and be like, “Oooohh yeahh! Those games were fun!”

I find NN Taleb’s concept of antifragility fascinating. I’m going to try thinking about it and applying it to different situations. You already caught a glimpse of this when I said googleable knowledge is fragile. Hopefully, I can understand this concept better by writing about it. Perhaps one day I can use it to improve my life or improve a group of lives.

Two of Taleb’s examples were especially helpful in helping me understand this concept. First, he uses an example of a package. If it’s marked fragile, that means it will break if disturbed. A package that’s more robust would be wrapped in bubbles and could handle a sturdy punishment. But an antifragile package would become stronger by this mishandling. Now, it’s hard to imagine this being true for a package. So the imagery of a hydra, in his chart, was especially helpful to me. He contrasts the Sword of Damocles with a pheonix and a hydra. The first can break; it’s fragile. The second can die, but it’s reborn; this means it’s robust. Meanwhile, when you cut the hydra’s head, it grows three more. This means damaging it makes it stronger. Thus, the hydra is better than the pheonix. It’s not just reborn when hurt, staying where it was before the shock. Instead, it becomes more powerful. That’s antifragility.

Let me try to apply this to relationships. A conflict-free relationship is worrisome because relationships benefit from some amount of conflict. In a relationship, conflicts are inevitable. The question, then, is how does the couple handle these conflicts? When there are no conflicts, the relationship may appear stable, but it’s actually fragile. If a conflict comes up, the couple doesn’t know how to handle it, so it can blow up the relationship. Contrariwise, if there are conflicts, the couple practices conflict-resolution. They learn more about each other. When new (and sometimes bigger) conflicts come up, the couple can handle them better. Thus, a good relationship benefits from conflict.* That, I believe, is an example of antifragility.

Addendum: Hm. I think this needs clarification. A weak relationship is fragile. A strong relationship is antifragile. I’m not sure what I’d call robust… a pleasant relationship?

*A lot of conflict may mean the relationship isn’t going to work. This doesn’t disprove my point. Evolution exhibits antifragility, but it can’t handle the sun going red giant and swallowing up the Earth. Plus, I’m still exploring this concept, not proclaiming any gospel. I am still free to examine this angle.

I’m engaging in a little structured procrastination here: Blogging instead of grading. (Blogging is important because I need to write more often.)

Google has updated their look. See this blog post from Gmail on their new preview theme. They’re updating their aesthetic for other parts of Google too. I heard they revamped Google Calendar. The ultimate objective is a more unified user experience for all their products.

I actually like the top bar, an almost black (I think it’s like #2d2d2d) with text links to other parts of Google. It’s convenient and not too obtrusive.

I like the new button-look. It’s a light gradient, but it doesn’t look glossy. When you hover over it, you get a drop-shadow and a darker outline. It’s a cool look that I’m pretty sure will get copied everywhere. I suppose it will usher the end of the glossy buttons era.

It’s interesting seeing red text used to indicate the current page/inbox/etc. I’d always used red for link hover, never for something like that. I usually go for some type of light background for the current page, or maybe a darker link. I suppose we’ll also see this new thing pop up everywhere too.

I’m working at Berkeley now, so I’m not too happy about Google being newly enamored with red. They have red buttons, red active links. I suppose they did a bunch of multivariate tests and discovered that red is the new blue.*

I also never noticed this before, and I’m sure it’s not new with this look, but regular links are blue with no underline. Hovering adds an underline. I kinda like that. I may copy it myself. But I won’t copy the buttons. I do, however, expect to see a lot of this new aesthetic copied in other places on the web. New buttons and a lot more red.

(Note: I’d like to have a longer entry on this accentuated with pictures, but alas, this is all I have time for considering my other time commitments. Better this than nothing.)

*WALL-E!!!!

some proto-thoughts on algorithmic thinking…

Algorithmic thinking is fragile thinking. Let’s say I have a computer issue, like I need to mount a hard drive. Now, I could just google it and find instructions on how to do it. I could copy and paste an example line from a sample fstab file. That’s algorithmic thinking: Google it and follow the instructions.

However, in this example, I don’t know anything about hard drives. I don’t know anything about mounting. I don’t even understand what each option means in the example line.

Sure, it can get me through the day, but it doesn’t mean I understand anything. I don’t have any feel for what’s going on. So, when the algorithm fails, I don’t know how to solve my problem anymore. If the drive doesn’t mount, I don’t know why it didn’t mount. I also don’t know what to do next to solve the problem. Shallow thinking breaks when it deviates from the algorithm.

Some math students are good algorithmic thinkers. They can follow directions really well. However, when the problem changes slightly, they’re dumbfounded. If the word problem is told is a slightly different order with slightly different terminology, they are stuck. They don’t truly understand the topic; they only know how to copy the algorithm.

I could be a master googler. I could know how to access information rather than keeping any of that information in my brain. However, it means that my thinking is not only shallow, but also fragile. Any time I have to deviate from the exact directions, I’m lost.

That’s not to say that this type of thinking is completely useless. One’s knowledge is naturally shallow when one begins to learn a subject. Mastery, though, can’t come from shallow thinking. Instead, one must to expose one’s knowledge to those situations where one can’t follow directions. This conflict forces the mind to learn a subject more deeply. It means the knowledge becomes more robust. The end result in my field, for example, is that I’m able to actually program instead of copy and pasting code. Or I can troubleshoot a computer issue instead of googling and picking random things to try.

For a project at work, I have to make a web portal. Originally, I tried out Joomla, but I didn’t like it at all. It felt clunky to play around with. After seeing ATDP Commons, I realized WordPress was a lot more powerful than I thought, so I switched over to that.

While playing with WordPress, I had to style some images, and being the hacker I am, I edited the style.css to do what I wanted to do. I’m very comfortable with CSS and didn’t think a thing of it. I since discovered that it’s better to create a Child Theme. This way, when the theme is updated, your custom modifications won’t need to be reapplied.

I found this really nice tutorial on Child Themes. I took out my code modification and stuck it in a new style.css for the child theme. Then, I decided I needed a smaller header than the default TwentyTen theme wanted, so I added a filter.

All of this has got me kind of itching to do a WordPress theme for my blog. Then again, I’m also tempted to create my own blogging application. I just want something that’s easy to use.

One thing that has worried me is how the number of fans doesn’t indicate the worth of a project. If I (not so hypothetically) make a comic that has 750 fans on facebook, how can I know that my comic is any good? I mean, way more people are going to watch The Zookeeper starring Kevin James. Lots of people listen to Rush Limbaugh and read Thomas Friedman even though they can be wrong by a lot of things. So, having fans doesn’t necessarily mean what I’m doing is worth anything.

I’ve recently made a distinction in my head between something being good at something and making something worthwhile. Pundits can be very good at what they do. They’re paid to spout interesting opinions while sounding confident. Maureen Dowd is annoying as hell, but she’s good at writing what she does. The pundit, however, isn’t paid to be right. Being wrong about the future, or the present, doesn’t affect their bottom line or their self-worth.* So, they can be good at being a pundit, but it doesn’t mean that a pundit does any good. Rush Limbaugh is a very good talk radio host. He has millions of listeners because he’s good**, not because he’s wise.

Likewise, it’s not actually that easy to make shitty music or a shitty movie. I have respect for even the shittiest TV show because I worked with my friend to put together an episode of Larry Whitman: Data Entry Maverick. There’s so much that goes into it: editing, music, writing, directing, storytelling, camera work, set-building, props, costumes, acting, and more. The same goes for movies. Even though The Zookeeper will be a giant turd, the acting won’t get in the way of the film, it will successfully tell a very basic hackneyed story (as opposed to failing to have any story at all), and it will probably have funny moments. I’m sure the digital animation of the animals will be decent too. It won’t tell a worthwhile story or be great art, but it will be good at what it wants to accomplish. With music, there may be a shitty repetitive song on the radio, but the sound people who do the editing are the best at what they do. Even though the music is inane, it won’t sound like someone recorded it in their garage. It’s professional.

I guess that means when it comes to art, I shouldn’t have as much anxiety about the number of fans I have. The number of fans can help me tell if I’m good at what I do, which is actually helpful. However, it can’t tell me if what I’m doing is worthwhile. I suppose this is where I end the essay with something cliched like, “This is only something I can decide myself,” but I haven’t said anything to support that conclusion. Instead, I’ll end here, still puzzled about what makes something worth doing.

*There are always exceptions, but sometimes we they must be set aside in order to make a worthwhile point.
**And lucky. We all have our debts towards Fortuna.***
***As an interesting aside, my thoughts about luck inform my proto-thoughts on redistributing wealth. The rich should pay more as a kind of luck tax. Capitalism can create a system where wealth is distributed according to a curve defined by a power law. Similar to how fame begets more fame, riches can beget more riches. The only way to be fair is to tax this.

On November 11, 2011, the date will be 11/11/11. In 2012, we will have 12/12/12. There will be no similar phenomenon in 2013 because the world will end on December 21, 2012.

I need an easy way to share what I post on delicious. I’d like a way to share links on this blog without posting everything in my feed. (I often bookmark a ton of stuff in delicious when I’m researching a particular topic. Not all of these links are useful.) One possibility is to delve into the Delicious API and grab the bookmarks I tag with “myblog.” Then, I’ll format the links (a tags) and the descriptions (p tags). I could then cut and paste this into my blog. Another option is to just look at the source code in delicious, then copy and paste from that. (Just checked it. No good.)

I found some programming exercises: http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?KataCatalogue Here’s a 16-day curriculum: Go through the algorithmic exercises once in order. Write pseudocode and tests for these. Go through the algorithmic exercises a second time, in order, but this time implement the code. I don’t have any experience with TDD, so I need to learn that. A good book on that should be the next programming book I read.

Humans are notoriously good at underestimation. When we think something should only take 5 minutes, it’ll more likely take 30. Not only are we bad at estimating the time, but we make our time estimates based on best-case scenarios. That’s why projects like Boston’s Big Dig end up taking forever and going over budget.

Let’s take an example from my day. I have to install an HBA. I tell myself, “This should only take five minutes. I’ll pop open the server, replace the HBA, and boom I’m done.” Oh how very wrong.

The actual HBA replacement process:

1) Attempt to log into the server to turn it off. (Let’s not haphazardly press power buttons.)

2) Realize you don’t have the login or password for this server. E-mail requester.

3) Wait 2 and half days for requester to respond to e-mail for “Ultra Extra Super Dee-Duper High Priority” ticket.

4) Go into server and check if anyone is logged in before powering it off. See that 2 people are logged in. E-mail requester to tell them that everyone needs to be logged off before it’s powered off.

5) Squeeze stress ball.

6) Requester e-mails back and informs you that everyone is logged off.

7) Log back into server and finally power it off.

8) Locate server in lab and label cables in the back. (It’s best not to pull out the server before removing the cables. And it’s best to label said cables so you can put them back in the right place. Otherwise, add 20 minutes to this ticket for trying to locate the correct NIC.)

9) Look for masking tape in the drawer where you left it. See that it’s gone. Again.

10) Walk all the way over to the other side of the lab to see if there’s any masking tape on the shelf. There is no masking tape.

11) Wander through all the racks trying to catch a glimpse of just one roll of masking tape. There is no masking tape.

12) Ask someone if they’ve seen any masking tape. They reply, “Oh yeah, I think there was some on the shelf.”

13) Reply, calmly, “No, I already checked there.” Person shrugs.

14) Go to your cubicle and grab some post-its because there isn’t any damn masking tape.

15) Go back to server to start labeling cables. There is a roll of masking tape on top of a server in the next rack.

16) Swear loudly.

17) Label cables.

18) Remove cables from back of server.

19) Walk all the way around the lab to get to the front of the server because the racks are too close together.

20) Pull out server.

21) Remove server cover.

22) Pull out old HBA.

23) Realize you left the new HBA on your desk.

24) Swear loudly.

25) Walk back to desk and grab HBA.

26) Install HBA.

27) Replace server cover.

28) Push server back in until it gets stuck.

29) Swear loudly.

30) Find someone stronger than you to push the server back in and show it who’s the boss*.

31) Replace cables.

32) Remove masking tape from cables and throw masking tape pieces in the trash.

33) Walk all the way around the lab to get to the front of the server because the racks are too close together.

34) Keep walking. You’re almost there.

35) Power server back on.

36) Walk back to desk.

37) Ping server to confirm that it’s on. No connection.

38) Wait 15 minutes because it’s an old server that takes that long to power on.

39) Ping server to confirm that it’s on. It’s on!

40) Update ticket to inform requester that the ticket is complete.

41) Go get a cup of coffee.

42) Return to desk. Find frantic e-mail from requester that HBA isn’t working.

43) Search online for an hour and find out that HBA isn’t compatible with the server.

44) Hit face with palm.

45) Repeat steps 1-41 with new HBA.

* Angela, not Tony.

There are several dry cleaning places within walking distance of my apartment. I don’t know if any of them are good.

My first inclination is to check Yelp for reviews. I suppose in older times, I would’ve chatted with my neighbors and asked them for advice. Did people ever really do that? Have we lost community in place and had to rebuild it on the internet?

It looks like I used Github before when I was going through a Rails tutorial. I subsequently abandoned that tutorial and forgot a lot about Rails because I wasn’t doing anything with it. I have since bought a book on Rails 3 (I believe the tutorial was before this), and worked on a new Rails project.

Today, I put the Rails project on Github. I pieced together stuff from a Rails tutorial and Github to get me going. I didn’t change the gitignore file from default. I also used https so I wouldn’t have to deal with proxy issues.

So, my crappy app is up there. Time to start playing with it some more. Also, it’s time to read that chapter in Pro Git on remote branching.

1) I really loved the comment from this article: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/the-laziest-generations/?src=twr

Am I the only one who thinks it’s ridiculous when people debate what stereotype applies to 46 million people?

2) This chapter from Pro Git on branching has helped me understand this topic better.

I’ve played around with Git before. In fact, I used it when I was writing the code for the Chalkboard Manifesto redesign. Today, I looked through the Pro Git book to expand my knowledge more about Git. The internet is amazing: Free books! Well, I guess the library has that too, but I feel like it’s harder to get new stuff in the library than online.

I also read this article on the US Postal Service, The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse (h/t Andrew Sullivan). It details how the US Postal Service is in financial trouble. First class mail — the main source of revenue — is declining, which means the US Postal Service more and more on junk mail to keep it afloat. Even that, though, took a hit during the recession. In addition, the USPS spends a lot on worker benefits, and the government had to inject money to keep the USPS going. The article goes into how the USPS could emulate postal services in foreign countries (who were more successful in adapting to modern times) in order to save itself. However, the article seemed like it relied heavily on the testimony of Phillip Herr to make its points. Not that I want quote-both-sides “balance,” but neither am I going to take this article as gospel.

Kevin Drum, in Mindshare vs. Demographics, links to a Gallup poll that shows people overestimating the percentage of guys in America. He surmises that people are overestimating because gay and lesbian issues are prominent in the news. Even though personal experience doesn’t support that, for example, 20% of people are gay, the amount of news coverage makes them believe it’s more. It’s similar to how people always think crime’s going up because that’s all they see in the news. (Let’s ignore recent news coverage of a drop in crime for now. If you want a better example, let’s compare how threatened people feel about terrorisms and random kidnappings despite the really low chances they’ll be affected by this.)

I don’t know if Kevin Drum is right. I haven’t talked to any of these people. I don’t know any data other than the numbers from a Gallup poll that I never looked at myself. (I’m apt to believe that the real answer is more complicated than Drum’s speculations.)

Still, I brought it up just to show how knowledge doesn’t necessarily come from finding more information or being well-informed. In fact, those who follow the news (especially cable news) closely can have a very distorted view of the world. News stories exploit our cognitive biases toward narration and the shocking.

In a similar vein, Jonah Lehrer also has an interesting story on the wisdom of crowds.₁ When you ask a large group of people (one at a time) to estimate how many marbles are in a jar, the average answer can be very accurate. Apparently, people can cancel out each other’s wacky guesses. Cool. Someone recently performed an experiment where they modified this a bit. Instead of giving them a question and having them answer it individually and isolated, they let people see what the group was thinking. The answers became more inaccurate because of groupthink. The range of answers narrowed as people adjusted their guesses to the crowd. Even worse, the people were more confident in their answers when they saw what the group was thinking.

I find the last part more troubling. That adding more information can make us stupider is a problem enough as it is. That it makes people more confident is even worse. People can read the news, think they’re well-informed, and be more confident in their base of knowledge, but they may be worse off than someone who doesn’t pay attention to the news at all. But at least the person who doesn’t read the news knows that he doesn’t know anything about current events.

₁Just want to make a note that I’m really annoyed that I have to summarize what’s here before commenting on it, but it’s good practice. I don’t want to be too lazy with my writing.

1)

I’m having trouble motivating myself to do anything today. I did one load of laundry and vacuumed half of my apartment. The rest of the time was taken up by Angry Birds. It’s a high-quality game, and I’m considering shelling out for the full application.

The sound effects are hilarious but not annoying, which I find an impressive touch.

2)

I want to write more about technical things because those things take up more of my time. I’ll have to experiment with ways to do it that are less boring than straight forward how-to’s.

I’d really like to find partners/mentors for programming. Self-learning is great, but I do need some type of feedback when I’m learning things.

Lately, I’ve been working on a Ruby on Rails application called RackView. I’m just playing around with a way to replace an increasingly unwieldy Visio diagram of the racks of one of the labs at work. I’d like to share what I’ve done. I can’t do it now because all the code’s on a VM I installed on my work laptop. My work laptop is at… work. I prefer doing rails development on a Linux machine over a Windows machine, which is why it’s on a VM.

3)

I read Game Frame and found it very disappointing. It’s supposed to go through and show how you can apply game mechanics to everyday life. I found it way too breezy to be useful. Anyway, it’s kind of soured me on a genre of books. I picked it up in the science section, but it’s more of a business/self-help book. I guess what attracted me to the book was that I like philosophies that can be put into practice. In general, I find the books I’ve been reading too shallow to be useful. I’m also going to be more careful about avoiding pop psychology books and anything written by a journalist.

The last 3 books I picked up were: a collection of DFW essays, How I Became Stupid, and The Bed of Procrustes. I already finished the last one listed, which is a book of aphorisms by Taleb. He’s got a great aphorism about business writers. I don’t have the book with me, so I can’t share it. Sorry. Haha.

I’m really excited to start reading How I Became Stupid. I originally read this in high school during my existentialism phase, and I really, really liked it. I’ve looked for this several times and couldn’t find it, so I’d concluded that I lost the book. Recently, I saw it at a bookstore in Berkeley, on top a stack of books. I decided it was fate, and I had to buy the book. I was worried that it wouldn’t hold up — The Myth of Sisphysus didn’t feel as brilliant the second time around — but the store clerk ringing me up said it was really good.

I have prided myself on buying interesting books (and I’ve been complimented on this). Many of the last books I’ve picked up have been duds, and I started to doubt my prowess. I think I can change this by leaning more towards literature and discounting recommendations from certain sources.

On ESPN, I saw that Troy Polamalu finally finished his degree. He graduated with a bachelor’s in history.

Really? History? Good luck getting a job with that. What the hell are you supposed to do with a history degree?

I found the following picture on Oracle’s website to be a very insightful window into their working conditions and hierarchy.

Java Developers are at the bottom of the food chain. They have to sit on the floor. I wonder if a pillar is available for everyone, or just the senior Java developers. Even so, I can’t imagine that this is ergonomically sound.

Database Admins are a step up. They at least get a pillow beneath their asses.

System Admins get to work on the limited number of stairs. I imagine that there are twenty other System Admins in a row behind that young man in the picture.

I had no idea that the recession had hit developers so hard.

However, Architects appear to be safe. They are sitting in cushy offices, controlling computers without the use of their hands or arms. They made out like bankers! Er, bandits.

I do hope Oracle can soon afford chairs for their developers.

Today, I revisited what Hitchens wrote on the CIA in 2007:

And now we have further confirmation of the astonishing culture of lawlessness and insubordination that continues to prevail at the highest levels in Langley. At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence. This deserves to be described as what it is: mutiny and treason. Despite a string of exposures going back all the way to the Church Commission, the CIA cannot rid itself of the impression that it has the right to subvert the democratic process both abroad and at home. Its criminality and arrogance could perhaps have been partially excused if it had ever got anything right, but, from predicting the indefinite survival of the Soviet Union to denying that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait, our spymasters have a Clouseau-like record, one that they have earned yet again with their exculpation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was after the grotesque estimate of continued Soviet health and prosperity that the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the CIA should be abolished. It is high time for his proposal to be revived. The system is worse than useless—it’s a positive menace. We need to shut the whole thing down and start again.

They got away with it. Just like Blackwater got away with the massacre of 17 Iraqi civilians on September 16, 2007. What a dark period in American history.

A new president… and these assholes still haven’t been brought to justice.

I read this interview with Lupe Fiasco.

I listened to “All Black Everything” by Lupe Fiasco. I love this song so much.

There’s this option in facebook that allows me to use facebook as The Chalkboard Manifesto rather than Shawn McDonald. I’ve been taking advantage of this to share content with my fans. I’ll often click on the “Share” button on my website to post things on The Chalkboard Manifesto’s wall.

Yesterday, I found out that facebook has introduced some new feature or rather that doesn’t allow me to do this. It kicks me to roadblock.php and tells me “To access this page, you’ll need to switch from using Facebook as your page to using Facebook as yourself.”

Bullshit. I thought you were all about sharing, and now I can’t share content with my fans? What am I supposed to do? Copy the URL into facebook? What is this — the year 2000? Could you make this more difficult? Do you want me to put in the <a> tags too?

I need to send an e-mail to facebook that is decidedly less obnoxious than this blog post.