brainstorms

Thursday August 03, 2006

plimpplamppletteren [last entry]

alas, this is it.

there is so much to say, so many people to thank, and now so little time.

started with dean kemp [thanks dean] and his opcom organization. i was privileged to work with a very sharp bunch of people like marc staveley, george nikodym, gil hauer, richard marejka, chris phillips, brian down, lou ferrante, and later david haynes, frank weil, dan davies brackett, just to name a few.

it was such a pleasure. and such a pain at times.

my good friend david tilbrook has a motto: never let your job get in the way of your work. the work is sun, and it is hard: innovative, smart, effective computing. architecting and engineering things others can only mumble about [like dtrace and zfs]. seeing and making things better. making a difference, not a duplicate.

i hope you do the work.

august dawn -
skipping stones
waiting for sunlight.

musical selection: donald byrd, a new perspective, blue note rvg edition.

[my york u page. i can be reached as o zed swirl silentrunning stop ca. new blog undetermined.]

Wednesday August 02, 2006

rootless

a rootless tree,
yellow leaves scattering
beyond the blue -
cloudless, stainless.

-- sozan-kyonin

[from the penguin book of zen poetry, edited and translated by lucien stryk and takashi ikemoto]

Tuesday August 01, 2006

google map of personal history

a pleasant surprise: google maps now have detailed aerial photographs of istanbul that include a part of my family history. the 11-storey building at the center of this image, named after my grandfather, is the third structure occupying that spot starting with my grandparents' family home. [where there are buildings now, there used to be pine trees, a windmill, and enough green space for sheep to graze in...]

the space of these structures aside, only two things have survived: a grape wine my grandfather had planted now covers a little gazebo [cannot be seen at this angle] next to the parking area at the back. the fig tree he planted in front somehow re-grew after it was chopped down during the last construction.

secondary addiction parts II and III

james downard's thorough dissection [actually more like shredding] of recent antievolutionist blather continues: secondary addiction part II and secondary addiction part III.

fascinating reading.

Wednesday July 26, 2006

poverty of information theory

mark chu-carroll's interesting note on dembski's poverty of information theory.

Wednesday July 19, 2006

a zen koan

the apprentice clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached wen and spake thusly:

master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?

wen considered this for some time and at last said: 'a fish!'

and clodpool went away, satisfied.

[terry pratchett, thief of time]

Monday July 17, 2006

quick notes from a boat

sailing somewhere around south-western turkey, with a 49-foot jenneau sun oddysey. trying to learn the ropes, so to speak...

great appetizer: cucumber + onions + green (hot) peppers + tomatoes + red chili flakes + tomato paste + lots of parsley + olive oil + salt to taste. chop very finely with a chinese cleaver. deploy it on toasted bread. repeat. [courtesy of the staff of dutch ahmet, kumlubuku]

halfway through pratchett's thief of time. just wonderful stuff. i would like to see an undergrad philosophy course based on discworld someday.

summer nightfall -
frog's engine
never catches.

Thursday July 13, 2006

gone sailing, photographing...

away on vacation in some corner of egean and mediterranean... my blog will be less active, except for some notes, quotes, haiku, misc.

ı hear jee5 too complex. phew. i cannot wait to read the report when i get back. [no doubt soon thereafter i will want to switch to a boring scheme wannabe for all my work...]

recently noted quotes

software creation is not only time-consuming, it's also much more difficult than i thought it would be. -- donald knuth [theory and practice, III, selected papers on computer science]

In Mercurial, a branch is a repository. Nothing more or less. A repository is a branch. Repeat the soothing mantra. -- mercurial faq

the brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants. -- daniel gilbert [stumbling on happiness]

the internet, that wonderful tool for bringing us into contact with things that make us wish we could scrub our brains out with dental floss ... -- charlie stross

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Especially if it has a vanilla flavour to it. -- tom keats

What would you think of someone who studied economic entities and their interactions in a modern free market economy and insisted that they were, despite a perfectly reasonable and empirically supported Smithian account of their development, the consequence of some all-powerful, detail-obsessed economic law-giver? -- john allen paulos [the mousetrap]

To put it mildly, the public in an age of born-again Rapture, Intelligent Design, miscellaneous guru worship, and do-it-yourself “spirituality” isn’t exactly hungering for an across-the-board application of rational principles. -- frederic crews [from the introduction to follies of the wise]

Friday July 07, 2006

ev (evolution of biological information)

just came across schneider's papers and the program. this has other interesting bits, such as dissecting dembski's "complex specified information" [apparently, dembski's magnum flatus that is dissected here is now available in paperback form.]

Tuesday July 04, 2006

sixty-seven national academies of science on evolution

interacademy panel's statement on the teaching of evolution

We, the undersigned Academies of Sciences, have learned that in various parts of the world, within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data, and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied, or confused with theories not testable by science. We urge decision makers, teachers, and parents to educate all children about the methods and discoveries of science and to foster an understanding of the science of nature. Knowledge of the natural world in which they live empowers people to meet human needs and protect the planet.

1. Albanian Academy of Sciences 2. National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences, Argentina 3. Australian Academy of Science 4. Austrian Academy of Sciences 5. Bangladesh Academy of Sciences 6. The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium 7. Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina 8. Brazilian Academy of Sciences 9. Bulgarian Academy of Sciences 10. RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada 11. Academia Chilena de Ciencias 12. Chinese Academy of Sciences 13. Academia Sinica, China, Taiwan 14. Colombian Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences 15. Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences 16. Cuban Academy of Sciences 17. Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic 18. Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters 19. Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt 20. Acad?mie des Sciences, France 21. Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities 22. The Academy of Athens, Greece 23. Hungarian Academy of Sciences 24. Indian National Science Academy 25. Indonesian Academy of Sciences 26. Academy of Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran 27. Royal Irish Academy 28. Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 29. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Italy 30. Science Council of Japan 31. Kenya National Academy of Sciences 32. National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic 33. Latvian Academy of Sciences 34. Lithuanian Academy of Sciences 35. Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts 36. Academia Mexicana de Ciencias 37. Mongolian Academy of Sciences 38. Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco 39. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences 40. Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand 41. Nigerian Academy of Sciences 42. Pakistan Academy of Sciences 43. Palestine Academy for Science and Technology 44. Academia Nacional de Ciencias del Peru 45. National Academy of Science and Technology, The Philippines 46. Polish Academy of Sciences 47. Acad?mie des Sciences et Techniques du S?n?gal 48. Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts 49. Singapore National Academy of Sciences 50. Slovak Academy of Sciences 51. Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts 52. Academy of Science of South Africa 53. Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain 54. National Academy of Sciences, Sri Lanka 55. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 56. Council of the Swiss Scientific Academies 57. Academy of Sciences, Republic of Tajikistan 58. The Caribbean Academy of Sciences 59. Turkish Academy of Sciences 60. The Uganda National Academy of Sciences 61. The Royal Society, UK 62. US National Academy of Sciences 63. Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences 64. Academia de Ciencias F?sicas, Matem?ticas y Naturales de Venezuela 65. Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences 66. African Academy of Sciences 67. The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) 68. The Executive Board of the International Council for Science (ICSU)

Sunday July 02, 2006

quick notes

signed up with checkout.google.com. i am no pal of paypal.

i recently received a short bit of haiku critique, for some haikus [from a beach far far away] i wrote last year. it said: "it doesnt make you feel relaxed and doesnt contain the imagery it should." perhaps the imagery is weak, but the comment about relaxed part seemed strange. my blog title may have [mistakenly] implied a subtext that simply does not exist.

nutautology: jason rasonhouse's essay dealing with the latest embarrassing bit of illiterate nuttiness: is natural selection a tautology?

Stephen Jay Gould once observed that creationists are “singularly devoid of shame” in their willingness to use any argument, no matter how vacuous or frequently refuted, in making their case against evolution. He might have included right-wing demagogues alongside creationists.

[james downard's detailed dissection part 1.]

shick vs gillette: simply no contest. an eight pack of disposable three-blade shick xtreme3 costs half as much as a four-pack gilette mach3 blades, and each gives twice as many one-week-old beard shaves. i always felt gillette blade costs were ridiculous given their mediocre performance on my beard, but now i know this for sure. [gillette fusion? it is a costly joke.]

Sunday June 25, 2006

canadian diversity study

toronto star saturday edition is dedicated to a groundbreaking study of canadian diversity. this is a welcome dose of reality; there has been some heated "editorial" commentary and tension around this topic as a result of the recent arrests of would-be terrorists.

not to have a mind is being very wasteful

there are certain bombastic, spit-in-your-eye and rip-your-tongue-out kinds of claims that can render some knowledgeable people giggling while others speechless. if this sort of thing happens early and often, the claimant is rightly ignored as a street corner megaphone crank. if it gradually develops in the right atmosphere with large doses of nastiness, fanaticism and wood pulp, the claimant becomes a "best selling author" and a whispered embarrassment to his or her causes:

Liberals’ creation myth is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It’s a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist’s laboratory or the fossil record - and that’s after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn’t still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God.

[related entertaining reading: william dembski, christian theodicy in light of genesis and modern science, version 2.0, may 06]

[charlie stross's note]

Thursday June 22, 2006

r6rs syntax-case macros

scheme continues to improve on the only worthwhile syntax extension mechanism (macros) ever devised for any programming language. the srfi-93 [just issued] is a description of the draft r6rs syntactic abstraction system from the current scheme standardization process.

the hygiene condition:

A binding for an identifier introduced into the output of a transformer call from the expander must capture only references to the identifier introduced into the output of the same transformer call. A reference to an identifier introduced into the output of a transformer refers to the closest enclosing binding for the introduced identifier or, if it appears outside of any enclosing binding for the introduced identifier, the closest enclosing lexical binding where the identifier appears (within a syntax template) inside the transformer body or one of the helpers it calls.