Mon - April 9, 2007
Blog Moved
I've moved my blog and all the entries from here
to the top level,
making my entire site a blog. Everything will remain here as long as there's
space for it, but no further updates will appear here.
Posted at 07:42 PM Permalink
Mon - March 19, 2007
Computer Trouble
Last weekend Sarah and I stayed with her parents
in St. Pete because we were planning to attend the Strawberry Festival in Plant
City. But on Saturday morning my computer suddenly crashed and wouldn't
restart. At first it would try to boot, but the screen would flicker and the
batter wouldn't light up. After a while it wouldn't power on at all. So we
took it to the Apple Store in Tampa at International Plaza. We made an
appointment to see a genius that afternoon, so we did some shopping and had
lunch in the mean time, then went back. The genius spent some time trying
everything I already tried at home, so he sent it in for service and said it
would be back in a week.
For the past week I've been using my old laptop (aka Sarah's laptop), possible largely because I keep good backups and I was able to get my data from the beginning of the week.
This weekend we went back to St. Pete to pick up my computer. Saturday morning we went to the Apple Store, and they returned my laptop to me. The sales rep couldn't tell me from the paperwork what the problem was, but they replaced the PC board, battery, and something to do with audio, so I practically have a new computer. So far everything has been working just fine, and now I'm finally able to get back to blogging.
For the past week I've been using my old laptop (aka Sarah's laptop), possible largely because I keep good backups and I was able to get my data from the beginning of the week.
This weekend we went back to St. Pete to pick up my computer. Saturday morning we went to the Apple Store, and they returned my laptop to me. The sales rep couldn't tell me from the paperwork what the problem was, but they replaced the PC board, battery, and something to do with audio, so I practically have a new computer. So far everything has been working just fine, and now I'm finally able to get back to blogging.
Posted at 09:15 PM Permalink
Mon - March 5, 2007
A Calendar with a Location
When scheduling events on my calendar, one thing
I always find tricky is remembering where I physically am at a particular time
of the day. For most people I imagine this isn't a problem: they're at home in
the morning, at work or school during the day, and then at home at night if they
don't have any events. But for several reasons my location varies greatly each
day, and how I schedule events depends largely on where I am throughout the day.
I could schedule events like "@location: school" to help me recall my location,
but this gets messy when there are lots of events. A better solution would be
to allow me to color the background of my calendar. For example, if I will be
at a satellite campus from 1400-1600 on Tuesday, I could program the calendar so
that every Tuesday from 1400 to 1600 the background will appear yellow. When
I'm at work, it might appear green, and when I'm at home, blue. Then at a
glance I could see where I will be when and more easily schedule events without
thinking about what my location will
be.
I use iCal, but I'd probably switch to just about any good calendar with this feature. I don't know of any existing one, so consider this a consumer's cry for a product, free or shareware (if I had the time, I might even try creating it myself as an add-on to an existing calendar program).
I use iCal, but I'd probably switch to just about any good calendar with this feature. I don't know of any existing one, so consider this a consumer's cry for a product, free or shareware (if I had the time, I might even try creating it myself as an add-on to an existing calendar program).
Posted at 06:29 PM Permalink
Thu - February 22, 2007
n-dimensional Political Spectrum
The World's Smallest Political
Quiz and its successors are based on a two-dimensional political
spectrum, where one axes rates economic liberty and the other rates social
liberty. I wonder, though, if this is really enough. As a tool for
categorizing political systems and beliefs, it's very good so far as the effects
of government, but it says nothing about the means. For example, we could have
a very economically and socially restrictive government run by a true popular
democracy, and we could have a very economically and socially free government
run by a dictator. I think it's worthwhile to consider at least a third
dimension of decision liberty, ranging from direct vote to single,
self-appointed dictator.
And if we are willing to consider a third dimension, why not more. It may make the model less useful for online quizzes, but as a tool for categorizing governments it would be very useful. We might also add dimensions related to the legal system, for example. The main challenges will be to political scientists to develop good dimensions and the corresponding ranking on the dimension and to interface designers to find a good way to display such a complex spectrum.
As a first attempt, here are five questions to be answered yes, no, or maybe that are to be scored in the same way as the World's Smallest Political Quiz, where a score of 100 is direct vote, and a score of 0 is self-appointed dictatorship.
And if we are willing to consider a third dimension, why not more. It may make the model less useful for online quizzes, but as a tool for categorizing governments it would be very useful. We might also add dimensions related to the legal system, for example. The main challenges will be to political scientists to develop good dimensions and the corresponding ranking on the dimension and to interface designers to find a good way to display such a complex spectrum.
As a first attempt, here are five questions to be answered yes, no, or maybe that are to be scored in the same way as the World's Smallest Political Quiz, where a score of 100 is direct vote, and a score of 0 is self-appointed dictatorship.
1. People should elect their
government.
2. Convicted felons should be allowed to
vote.
3. No intelligence or education requirements for
participating in government.
4. End indirect voting systems, such as electoral
colleges.
5. No biological or ethnic requirements for for
participating in government.
I'm not satisfied with my list, but it's a start. Hopefully someone with more experience in this area can take this idea and run with it.
I'm not satisfied with my list, but it's a start. Hopefully someone with more experience in this area can take this idea and run with it.
Posted at 06:52 PM Permalink
Mon - February 19, 2007
Karma
A couple weeks ago a fundamentalist Christian
preacher was on campus shouting at passersby, identifying them as whores,
sloths, drunkards, and other types of sinners. One time when I walked by, he
was giving a sermon about good deeds and argued that karma existed. And that
got me thinking, by accident he's right: karma exists, although not exactly as
the corrective force as he
imagines.
For every bad thing that happens, on average, there will be a good one to "counteract" it. Imagine a scale measuring events from 0 to 1, where 0 is very bad and 1 is extremely good. Assuming such events follow the normal distribution, we can expect regression towards the mean to "correct" for excessive good and bad. Of course, for small samples, even for several peoples' lives, we may find they suffer from a rare string of bad or good events, but on the whole we should expect to see events near the 0.5 mark. So the ancient belief in karma is really just accidental statistical thinking, with the caveat that karma-belief may increase the probability of belief in the law of small numbers.
For every bad thing that happens, on average, there will be a good one to "counteract" it. Imagine a scale measuring events from 0 to 1, where 0 is very bad and 1 is extremely good. Assuming such events follow the normal distribution, we can expect regression towards the mean to "correct" for excessive good and bad. Of course, for small samples, even for several peoples' lives, we may find they suffer from a rare string of bad or good events, but on the whole we should expect to see events near the 0.5 mark. So the ancient belief in karma is really just accidental statistical thinking, with the caveat that karma-belief may increase the probability of belief in the law of small numbers.
Posted at 06:42 PM Permalink
Fri - February 16, 2007
Institutional Education
The comments from parents and teachers in this
article illustrate perfectly why education fails so many students:
the instructors aren't willing to change their behavior based on science. They
cling to what they are comfortable with, regardless of how it helps the
students, and a lucky few students succeed either because of lucky confluence or
despite the system. And while there are glowing exceptions, my experience with
the education system leads me to believe that most teachers, despite good
intentions, don't even really try to do better for their
students.
(Disclaimer: As an educator, I can't claim to always have the best practices. But the difference is that I'm willing to change based on evidential research, even if I find that I can't practically do so, whereas many instructors aren't willing to.)
(Disclaimer: As an educator, I can't claim to always have the best practices. But the difference is that I'm willing to change based on evidential research, even if I find that I can't practically do so, whereas many instructors aren't willing to.)
Posted at 09:27 AM Permalink
Tue - February 13, 2007
Counterinsurgency
In Knowing
the Enemy, a fascinating article by George Packer that appears in The
New Yorker, we learn, specifically, why America is having trouble in Iraq, what
the problems really are, and how they might be fixed. Informed mainly by David
Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert, Packer explores how fights against
insurgents have been won and what lessons the US needs to learn to succeed in
Iraq and the rest of the Islamic world. It's not a matter of ideology or
military might, but of understanding what people need and why they turn to
insurgence rather than peaceful protest.
The problem is that the US military is tuned to fight other countries, still largely organized to deal with Cold War era battles. If it can change itself to focus on people and help people rather than make them resentful, they may have a chance of succeeding.
For those of you thinking of skipping this article, none of this is your typical positions on the war. There's no debate here about whether starting the war in Iraq was a good idea, but about dealing with the situation that we have and looking for the best solution, because regardless of your opinion on Iraq, extremist Islam is a global threat, and it appears we're going to have a long, slow fight against it, one village, one person at a time.
The problem is that the US military is tuned to fight other countries, still largely organized to deal with Cold War era battles. If it can change itself to focus on people and help people rather than make them resentful, they may have a chance of succeeding.
For those of you thinking of skipping this article, none of this is your typical positions on the war. There's no debate here about whether starting the war in Iraq was a good idea, but about dealing with the situation that we have and looking for the best solution, because regardless of your opinion on Iraq, extremist Islam is a global threat, and it appears we're going to have a long, slow fight against it, one village, one person at a time.
Posted at 04:02 PM Permalink
Thu - February 8, 2007
Resave the Date
Since I last posted, Sarah's and my wedding plans
have changed. We're going to get married in Vegas, and the date is two weeks
earlier on 22 September. I suggested this date when we found out that the
original date, the 6th, wouldn't work due to a conference in Vegas. The 22nd is
just two days before our anniversary, so we'll be getting married just shy of
three years after we started dating. The actual date would have been nice, but
it's a Monday, and we want to do it on a Saturday so people can come if they
want to. And that's fine, because now we get an extra day of
anniversary.
In honor of the date change, I've updated my Save the Date widget for Dashboard. Download and count the excitement build:
Save the Date.wdgt.zip
In honor of the date change, I've updated my Save the Date widget for Dashboard. Download and count the excitement build:
Save the Date.wdgt.zip
Posted at 06:32 PM Permalink
Sat - February 3, 2007
Bookplate
A couple years ago I read "The Art of the
Bookplate" by James P. Keenan and it made me want a bookplate of my own, but I
never got around to it, mostly because my books just lived at home on my
shelves. But starting this semester I have a nice office on campus that I use
so I keep books for classes and research there, thus I wanted to make sure I had
them marked just in case. So I did a little work and created a bookplate of my
own:
Posted at 03:56 PM Permalink
Tue - January 30, 2007
iPhone's Future
Nearly a year ago I
proposed a model for the future of computing. Seeing the iPhone, it
mostly fulfills the first half of the requirements. I doubt that Apple will
carry through with the remainder of my plan, but I wonder if someone else
will.
(More posting again soon; I've just been busy with school, work, and life.)
(More posting again soon; I've just been busy with school, work, and life.)
Posted at 06:33 PM Permalink
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Published On: Apr 09, 2007 07:42 PM
Published On: Apr 09, 2007 07:42 PM