yitz is an agnoster

(it's because -1*-1=1)

2008-03-21T19:37:56Z

Apparently, two wrongs do make a right. I hate rap music and French, and yet I can't stop listening to this:

agnoster @ 2008-03-14T16:14:00

2008-03-14T23:19:48Z

Europe, suffering from the crippling effects of universal health care and high, progressive taxes, overtakes the US as world's #1 economy

Also, here's the new $3 bill. Hott!

(Funny story - my raise means I'm earning the same amount in Euros that I was last year this time. Lol, indeed.)

agnoster @ 2008-03-14T11:22:00

2008-03-14T18:24:06Z

Brainless moron botches marriage proposal to materialistic bitch

I don't think anybody should be accusing teh gays of ruining the institution of marriage. Straight people are still waaay ahead.

Math is hard, let's go into journalism!

2008-03-10T20:21:20Z

CNN estimates that Obama leads Clinton by less than 100 delegates, 1,553 to 1,438.

-- CNN (a bit less than halfway down the article)

*facepalm*

EDIT: They fixed it, but not before I grabbed a screenshot Ryo has a point - doesn't journalistic integrity require visible corrections? I want it to be like "track changes" or Wikipedia. Guess I'll just have to start my own news organization... hmm...

When Amy started thinking for herself, we had to nip it in the bud with Obay(tm)

2008-02-20T00:30:30Z

New Year's resolution

2008-02-02T16:40:46Z

I made a New Year's resolution. I mean, not really. I don't make New Year's resolutions, but I did more or less make a decision for this year: I'm leaving the USA.

I'm not certain exactly what I'm doing next. There are lots of tempting possibilities: going back to Berlin, maybe doing a start-up with my friend Julius. Going to Dublin, get in touch with my Irish roots (now that I've done that with my American roots) and work in a strong EU tech sector. Maybe do technical development aid in Morocco, learn some Arabic, do some good.

Right now the most likely is, I think, go back to Berlin and finally get my German citizenship. It's something I've been putting off for a while (since having a US citizenship helps when you want to work here), but gosh, it would be nice to vote in a real parliamentary democracy. And my German has gotten noticeably rusty, which always leaves me shaken - this is the language of my home, and I don't even speak it any more? That's scary.

Why now? Well, in October I'll have lived in SF for three years, after living in Chicago for three. I can tell I'm getting more an more American - when Ron Paul starts to sound like he's making some good points, that's one way to know. It's getting harder and harder to leave. I have fantastic friends I don't want to leave behind, but ultimately, I don't want to settle down in America, so I don't want to get stuck there. Every reason to stay is becoming a reason to leave, now before it's too late.

So I'm starting to think - what's on my checklist? If I have less than a year in America, what should I do? Learn to drive? Road-trip across the country? See the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or something?

EDIT: Everyone seems to agree, road trip. Have to admit, a "Goodbye, America!" road trip around the country, visiting friends, maybe having them tag along for bits, is sounding better and better!

He's so dreamy!

2008-02-01T14:35:11Z

You know, two weeks after Bloody Sunday, when the march finally reached Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the crowd of thousands and said "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." He's right, but you know what? It doesn't bend on its own. It bends because we help it bend that way. Because people like John Lewis and Hosea Williams and Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King and Rosa Parks and thousands of ordinary Americans with extraordinary courage have helped bend it that way. And as their examples call out to us from across the generations, we continue to progress as a people because they inspire us to take our own two hands and bend that arc.

-- US Senate Speech by Barack Obama

Gave some more money to Obama. It's possible that you can, too! And anyway, if you're not voting for Obama, we should talk. Maybe we can learn something from each other!

The problem I find with trying to make my case for Obama is that there are so many reasons for it, so where do I start? Do I talk about how he stands a much better chance of winning the general election than Clinton? Or how he's more likely to get stuff done because he knows how to work together with politicians on both sides of the aisle? What about his staunch opposition to the Iraq War from the beginning? Maybe the symbolism, both to America and the world, of having a black President named Barack Hussein Obama? The way he has inspired a grass-roots movement and given hope to people that our political system isn't broken beyond our ability to repair if we try? His commitment to open and transparent government? The simple fact that his rhetoric is an exhortation to us all to be a part of government that bends the arc back into the right direction? His academic manner of finding the right solution by listening to all sides of an issue, with a compass that is moral but not ideological? How he won't shy away from calling the economic argument against immigration scapegoating, or addressing anti-semitism and homophobia in African-American communities? His ability to unite Democrats, Republicans, and Independents as part of one America?

I think what it comes down to is - yes, there are many reasons to like Barack Obama, and why he would be a fine president - but it's not just about the individual, it's about the movement. Obama knows that it will take more than a change of personnel in the White House to right the wrongs in America. Obama is getting new people involved in droves - new voters, first-time contributors, new political organizers, and this is just the beginning. A democracy cannot function without an engaged populace, and that is, I think, the great hope of the Obama campaign - that we can once again become inspired and involved. It is our responsibility to bend the arc of the moral universe, and yes, we can.

agnoster @ 2008-01-31T18:24:00

2008-01-31T17:26:03Z

Thanks to reddit for reminding me of some of my favorite jokes, including:

At a world brewing convention in the States, the CEOs of various Brewing organizations retired to the bar at the end of each day's conference.
Bruce, CEO of Fosters, shouted to the Barman: "In 'Strylya, we make the best bladdy beer in the world, so pour me a Bladdy Fosters, mate."
Bob, CEO of Budweiser, calls out next: "In the States, we brew the finest beers in the world, and I make the King of them all; gimme a Bud."
Hans steps up next: "In Germany ve invented das beer, verdamt. Give me ein Becks, ya ist Der real King of beers, danke."
Paddy, CEO of Guinness, steps forward "Barman, would ya give me a doyet coke wid ice and lemon. Tanks."
The others stare at him in stunned silence, amazement written all over their faces. Eventually Bruce asks, "Are you not going to have a Guinness, Pat?"
Paddy replies: "Well, if you fookin' pansies aren't drinkin', then neither am I".

Lambda calculus ponderings

2008-01-30T10:55:12Z

Yeah, I've been posting a lot. Don't worry, this probably doesn't interest you - I just wanted to muse out loud.

So, Arc's out. Arc (for those of you keeping score at home) is Paul Graham's "new" Lisp he's been working on for the past 6 years or so. If this is at all the kind of thing that interests you, check it out - if not, you can probably stop reading now, because the rest assumes some (though not much) familiarity with Lisp and the Lambda calculus.

Arc's mostly some nice syntactic sugar and conventions. For instance, you write (fn (x) x) instead of (lambda (x) x) for an anonymous function, which seems small, but when you consider how often you have to write lambda, it adds up. And fn is a much better choice than do (as in Nu - another new language that has Lisp syntax, a Ruby heart, and an Objective-C foundation). I also like the concision of single-value lambda expressions, so that (fn (x) (+ x 1)) can be written as [+ _ 1] (the underscore is the single argument, though support for multiple positional parameters would be nice, as square brackets would simply be anonymous functions of any type. Another somewhat more questionable decision is to use = as the assignment operator, since it breaks Lisp convention pretty badly, though it's much more pleasant to say (= foo (list 1 2 3)) than (setf foo (list 1 2 3)) or (setq foo (list 1 2 3)) - and the way you can use = to set inside other data structures is nice, too. If we have set foo as in the previous example, we can say (= (car foo) 0) and the value of foo becomes (0 2 3). Very nice indeed.

But the single development I liked most was the following: in Arc, every data structure is an accessor function to an indexed binding. For instance (again using the example foo) (foo 1) would evaluate to 2, because the list foo acts as a function that, given an index, returns that binding - in this case, the list contains 2 at the second position. But going further, we can set on this as well: (= (foo 1) 5) would result in foo being the list (0 5 3). And going further still, this works with hashes - no more (gethash myhash "keyname") - just (myhash "keyname"). If you're used to traditional array[key] notation, this is actually a mapping from M-expressions - fn[arg1, arg2, ...] - to S-expressions - (fn arg1 arg2 ...) - which McCarthy described in his original paper on Lisp. They're isomorphic, and in fact S-expressions contain less characters than M-expressions, but of course if you're used to one the other looks weird for a while (of course, I'm quite sneakily leaving the question of infix operators out).

So, this brings us to my lambda calculus question - how would we define basic operations like cons, car and cdr in order to use something like Church numerals and get this behaviour? Typically, we use the following definitions (using L for the Greek letter lambda):

cons = L h. L t. L f. f h t
T = L a. L b. a
F = L a. L b. b
car = L l. l T
cdr = L l. l F
0 = L f. L x. x
1 = L f. L x. f x
2 = L f. L x. f (f x)
+1 = L n. L f. L x. f (n f x)

However, as you can see the application of these definitions doesn't give us the behaviour that the numbers can be used as indices for a list by applying the list to the number. I'd rather redefine cons et al. than the Church numerals, simply because the Church numerals have a very elegant definition: the Nth Church numeral is a function that takes a function and returns its N-fold composition.

So, any ideas?

GASH wants YOU!

2008-01-30T00:03:01Z

So, the Graduate/Alumni ScavHunt team has a facebook app.

If you're at all interested in joining - even if you're not entirely sure if you can, or if you can't physically come to Chicago - go sign up! People who we can call on do an item or two from afar, or even just help decipher the list, will be a tremendous asset.

Scav Decision

2008-01-28T17:50:17Z

For many reasons - none of which, I must emphasize, is the way the residents of Snell-Hitchcock smell - I have decided to scav with the Grad/Alumni team. Dearly as I will miss my brothers and sisters in arms at Snitchcock, it is time to move on, into the future, which is obviously the Grad/Alumni team.

It's time to break the game theory stalemate. Don't say "I'll do it if my friends do it" - just do it, and then convince your friends to come. Join the Facebook group, message Sam Friedman and let him know you'll be there (and if you want to be an officer).

The clock is ticking, ladies and gentlemen. We have a scant 100 days to mobilize the greatest army Scav has ever known - and I do mean that. The group has 77 members right now, the most experience, the scavviest scavvers. Our goal is not to make an impression, or to beat Pierce, it is simply this: Victory.

Oh, and Rockin' Good Times. Victory and Rockin' Good Times.

Yes, we have logistics to work out. Where will be build shit? Where will we sleep? Are the squirrels going to eat us if we camp out on the quads? These will be dealt with. The order of the day now is to stand up and be counted.

Scav be with you. And to my fellow scavvers from Snitchcock to Max, from FIST to... all those other ones, I must recall the words of Lincoln: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection[, even if we are so going to kick your asses]."

agnoster @ 2008-01-27T17:02:00

2008-01-27T16:10:22Z

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

People say Obama may be an inspiring figure, but that he doesn't have the political savvy to get things done. I disagree, of course - his bipartisan record in the Illinois legislature is, I think, just a preview of what an inspiring, unifying politician can achieve. But perhaps it's also because I come from a family in which words matter. Words have inspired humanity to great achievements and horrible failures, terrible atrocities and acts of courage and kindness alike. Don't tell me words don't matter - and don't tell me we wouldn't be better off with a President who can speak to the people and remind them that they matter, that we can resolve our differences with words, and that we can believe in a better world if we are willing to work for it.

ScavHunt decisions

2008-01-25T01:25:10Z

Okay. So you all know, presumably, that I live and breathe ScavHunt. If you don't, you don't know me.

Now, I have a bit of a tricksy decision: historically, I've scavved ad majorem snitchcocki gloria - for the greater glory of Snitchcock - but some people are putting together a Grad/Alumni team. There are some arguments to be made in favor of both, obviously, but I won't go into my current mode of thinking. The question is - what do *you* think? Any alumni thinking of doing the Grad/Alumni team who might be swayed with a few more compatriots?

agnoster @ 2007-12-29T01:54:00

2007-12-29T01:23:28Z

POP QUIZ
1) What comic do you have the longest or most important relationship with?
2) What webcomic do you miss the most?
3) Which webcomic do you wish you could see more of (i.e. would update more frequently)?
4) What is your latest webcomic discovery?

My answers:

1) Girl Genius, to which I was introduced by the ithych (with this page, I believe) and I've re-read approximately 70 bazillion times. I know I've extolled its virtues many times before, but it bears repeating. Also the only webcomic available in printed form in my apartment. Runners up include Nukees (sensing a Mad Science pattern here?) and QC, but neither of them fill me with the kind of breathless anticipation before an update that GG does - seriously, I'll stay up at night until the update comes. If I had to pick a page to sum it up... it's already been done for me.

2) I miss Men In Hats quite a bit. The website puts it best:

Men in Hats is the gripping story of 6 guys who stand around in the desert... talking... sometimes they have breakfast.
It was eventually determined to be too beautiful for this world and discontinued.

Bitterly clever, it illustrates all the cruelty and heartlessness of the human condition in a way that you can't help but laugh at.

3) Dresden Codak is one of my current favorites - the new storyline is engaging and poignant, in a post-morality purpose kind of way - but it seems to update on a geological time scale. But, philosophy role-playing game!

4) New webcomic (new to me, that is), and the reason I wrote this entry: Templar, Arizona. If you're not familiar with it, read the archives - it'll be one of the stranger and more delicious hours you'll spend. Or, I think it was an hour... but I may have lost track of time. It's culture fiction about a place in an alternate history, delightfully and exuberantly portrayed.

So, what have you got for me? Don't adhere to strictly to the questions. Change 'em if it makes for better answers.

agnoster @ 2007-12-24T17:52:00

2007-12-24T16:56:19Z

I got to Berlin. Mind you, I left a good 40 hours before I got here, but that's a story for another time. The moral is "don't ever fly through Heathrow before Christmas - or under any other circumstances, for that matter."

agnoster @ 2007-11-13T14:46:00

2007-11-13T22:56:37Z

I'm really torn about this. It does, however, call to mind the Lazarus Long quote:

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.

Of course, in this case something might have been done about it, and I do believe medical care should be provided when it is needed. Still... it is a little poetic. I mean, I admire faith as much as... well, okay, probably a little less than the next guy. But people like this give everyone with real faith a bad name, because that's not faith, it's stupidity. God helps those who help themselves. Place your faith in Allah - but tie your camel first. Or, of course, the old joke, which I'll reproduce for shiggles:

A very religious man hears a broadcast on the radio - a huge flood is coming. He says, "well, I've been a devout man all my life, prayed every day, God will save me." The water rises, a neighbor comes by in a row boat and tells him to hop in. "Go on without me, I've been a devout man all my life, prayed every day, God will save me." The boat leaves, the water rises so the man moves onto the roof. A helicopter comes by crying out on the bullhorn for the guy to climb the ladder. "Go on without me, I've been a devout man all my life, prayed every day, God will save me." Helicopter gives up and, needless to say, the guy drowns. He comes face to face with God and says, "Lord, I've been a devout man all my life, prayed every day, why didn't you save me." And God just rolls his eyes and says "I sent you a radio message, a boat, even a freakin' helicopter - what more did you want from me?"

Long story short, I never can feel too bad for anyone who enters themselves for a Darwin award. Maybe... I'm a bad person?

agnoster @ 2007-11-06T23:25:00

2007-11-07T07:26:29Z

Somehow, I don't think I would want my epitaph to read like this. (Yes, technically not an epitaph. You get my meaning, though.)

4... 3... 2...

2007-10-25T17:57:47Z

We have recursion:

yitzhak@hiawatha::lisp $ ./lisp
> ((label fib (lambda (n) (cond ((eq n 0) 0) ((eq n 1) 1) ('t (+ (fib (- n 1)) (fib (- n 2))))))) 10)
55

(also, integer arithmetic)

agnoster @ 2007-10-25T00:35:00

2007-10-25T07:36:12Z

yitzhak@hiawatha::lisp $ wc *
       8      17      86 Makefile
     154     419    3378 lisp.c
      34      60     552 lisp.h
     102     263    2069 parser.c
      28      49     550 parser.h
     326     808    6635 total

I swear I didn't even try to make it short. It's just... LISP.

I'm going wild with the posts today

2007-10-23T02:27:58Z

You stay classy, Google Trends:

Second strike for machines making funny decisions today.

Question for smart people!

2007-10-22T23:28:20Z

This article claims the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas [...] floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii."

So I went to Google Maps - here's a view that contains Texas and the space between SF and Hawaii. My question is - why can't I see it on the satellite view?

A quick calculation, assuming the data as stated is correct, says we're dealing with 3.5 million tons of plastic refuse spread over an area twice the size of Texas, or approximately 1.3 million km², which means around 2.7 tons per km², or 2.7 g/m². A plastic bag averages a few grams in weight, so let's assume that means about one plastic bag per square meter. It's not very dense, but surely it should look different from satellite than pristine ocean. What am I missing?

EDIT: My friend Peter, who is a pilot and knows all, pointed out very astutely, "they simply took the topographical imagery and colored it blue." So, the better question is - how do you get satellite imagery of that area?

EDIT2: NASA's World Wind doesn't seem to show anything either, despite the fact that I was pretty sure the Blue Marble imagery covered the planet. I guess I was mistaken, since it looks an awful lot like they're using some sort of topo imagery too: see for yourself

EDIT3: Updated URL (by way of Joan)

EDIT4: Video of going out to the garbage patch - they show the water at around 5:20 into the video. It really doesn't look any different than normal water, so I guess that clears that up. *yawn* Call me when it's dense enough to build on, then we'll talk, people.

iTunes Store Censors Take Their Job Seriously

2007-10-22T22:15:24Z

Thank God we have people to protect the children from filthy language!

On the perils of Unix

2007-10-17T17:22:47Z

So in the process of writing an LJ archiver for Felicity, my code at one point executed the line:
mkdir -p "~/Library/Application Support/FelJay/"
However, it didn't interpret "~" as $HOME, but as a literal directory. Later on, I found a directory in the code called, unsurprisingly, "~".

$ rm ~
rm: ~ is a directory
"Oh, of course"
$ rm -rf ~
*chugga chugga*
"OH SHIT"
Ctrl-C Ctrl-C Ctrl-C

Of course, I have no way of knowing what was destroyed. All I know for certain is that my .emacs and .bashrc files are missing. Who knows what future surprises are in store for me!

(For the non-techies: I accidentally told my computer to delete everything in my home directory without asking for confirmation, without listing the files deleted, and without mercy. I stopped it before it got too far, but I have yet to see what all is missing.)

agnoster @ 2007-10-15T16:12:00

2007-10-15T23:12:54Z

Teddy Roosevelt, on hacking:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Okay, maybe he wasn't thinking about coders at the time... but I'm still glad that this is the kind of thing that gets quoted on our internal mailing lists :-)

agnoster @ 2007-10-11T10:43:00

2007-10-11T17:44:23Z

Clara pointed out this article: Ben Stein to battle Darwin in major film

It was funny, but I thought it could be... improved upon: Ben Stein to battle Newton in major film

Edit: created by yours truly using nothing but "wget -r -k -l 1" and emacs's fantactic "M-x replace-string", my favorite result of which was "Oxford gravityist Richard Dawkins".