Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books

06 September 2002

I called Apple on Tuesday morning to report the dead AC adaptor, and they said they'd overnight me a new one. Wednesday... nothing. Thursday afternoon, I get a call from a secretary that my package has been delivered to the first floor instead of the fourth---to the computer repair center instead of to the CS department. I go downstairs, and the receptionist there apologises to me, saying that it was weird that the name didn't match anything they were expecting, but they opened it before realising that it wasn't for them.

I wonder if it occurred to them that the label saying "4th floor" might have indicated this?

So anyway, I took the (opened) package upstairs. And you know what? It was missing a part, the part that plugs the AC adaptor directly into a socket (as opposed to via a cord). The corded one was in there, so it's usable, but it's missing a part! I went down there today and delicately asked if it "might have fallen out", "accidentally", when they opened my package. They got very defensive and said they had already apologised. Fine fine, but I thought maybe---it's a little piece---it had rolled out when they opened it or something. Without even looking around at all, the two guys there said that this piece doesn't actually come with the charger, it has to be ordered separately from Apple. Which is patently false, as my friend Rob (among others) just got one less than a week ago, and it included the extra piece. Whatever. These are the same people who claimed I'd dropped my computer and Apple wouldn't fix it. Now I'm calling Apple, we'll see what they say.

Anyway, there's a really interesting essay about being Christian and scientific/technological at the same time, by Larry Wall (creator of Perl), on slashdot today---scroll down to answer #7.

"I always got the impression that Jude was, like, a fixer saint. A Winston Wolf type. He makes your very bad problems go away, but you don't call on him if your problems aren't very bad. He accepts payment in the form of little acknowlegements in the classified section of the Chicago Reader." --Casey Westerman

Posted 2:49 PM [+]

05 September 2002

A senate committee has just recommended legalising pot... in Canada. Still, that's huge progress. We'll see how it turns out.

The only class I'm taking---auditing---this semester met yesterday. It was billed as a first-year seminar (which, since I'm only getting my masters in linguistics, I'm only just now taking), and a bonding experience for the grad students, etc, etc. But there were about four or five grad students there and more than twice as many undergrad cog sci and cog neuro concentrators. Apparently it's also the senior seminar for the cognitive and linguistic sciences department. Format is: everyone picks out their favourite paper in the field, and gives a 40 minute presentation thereon. Oh well, it'll be horizon-broadening, or something. At least there's one other linguistics student in there.

In other news... apparently this is old news, but Greece has outlawed electronic games. All kinds. Whether it's in a console, or your cell phone, or your computer, it's illegal. Internet cafés are still legal, but if anyone's caught playing computer games, the café gets shut down. The avowed goal of the thing is to get rid of gambling machines, but lawmakers were well aware of the law's collateral damage. One hopes that it won't hold up, but I suppose you never know.

On organic farms, they till it like it is. --alternativefoodcoop.com

Posted 2:17 PM [+]

03 September 2002

Some thoughts that occurred to me a few nights ago as I was drifting off to sleep...

A few weeks ago, there was a big flap over the proposed TIPS program, which would have citizens volunteer to be government informants, spying on their neighbours and other fellow citizens; the program was compared to the East German Stasi and other unsavoury Cold War bogeymen. "How terrible," said many Americans, "that we would always be worried that the person we were talking to would look for 'suspicious' things to turn us in over!" After all the fuss, George Junior and his minions dropped the project, fortunately.

The funny thing is, with all the outrage we managed to muster over that, we don't even realise that we're already there. The existing program isn't to look for terrorists, though, but drug users. (Right now, the NORML crowd is saying "yeah, duh, where've you been?".) I don't know about the adults that grew up before programs like DARE were in place, but kids today, and adults who grew up with DARE and such things, are trained deep down that they're supposed to turn in anyone---anyone at all---that uses drugs.

Isn't that a little weird?

I'm not a pot user myself, but I have friends who are. For a long time, it was always uncomfortable to be around them while they were smoking up, because I was thinking that if they got caught, I might get in trouble for not reporting them. Every time I think about that, I just get madder. In no other situation, up to and including murder, would I feel like I'd get in trouble for not reporting someone (of course, in the case of murder I would be reporting them, but because I wanted to, not because I'd get in trouble otherwise). But for drugs, hey, they successfully made me feel like I had some legal obligation to turn someone in for breaking the law. Something tells me I'm not the only one who got hoodwinked, and I think most of the others aren't nearly introspective enough to ever figure out what happened there. (Heck, certainly took me long enough.)

I'd do up a Nacirema-style essay on this, but it'd just make me madder.

"Is that arrogant enough for you? I'm trying to get in touch with my inner Texan, so that I can properly tell you off, but I'm afraid I've been in California too long." --Al Petrofsky

Posted 2:54 PM [+]

It installed, it works. Power consumption's lower under 10.2, too---a full charge gets me over three hours at max brightness, and nearly four at low brightness. I've made use of that fact over the weekend, since I can't recharge my battery. :)

I called Apple this morning, and they're overnighting me a new AC adaptor. I'm pleased to get one that works, and I really like the LED ring on the plug that shows the state of the charging, but I'm sad that it won't match my computer anymore. Oh well.

In Civ3-land, I feel like I've learned a lot. I ended the game where I was China, and discovered during the replay that my biggest mistake was not expanding fast enough. Not beating up the Babylonians early was also a problem---I let that drag out much too long. But possibly the biggest problem was one of luck: there were three continents, and the one I was on had four civs, and couldn't reach either of the other two until we had ocean-going vessels; meanwhile India had a whole continent to himself, and Japan had more than half of the remaining one, and they could move between themselves already with just sea-going vessels. I feel I did good, considering. I started a new game, and now I'm Iroquois, which is fun---but get this, I'm sharing a continent with the Babylonians again! Growing much faster this time, though, so I should have a better time of it.

Classes have started, and everyone's bustling about again; Providence has returned to its slightly dreary overcast light drizzle that it maintains for most of the academic year. Ah, I love my ivory tower, and I will be sad to leave it.

"Suckiness has many orders. Lots of people filter on higher-ordered suckiness factors, like how they perceive the tone of your posts, or whether or not you've demonstrated due diligence in researching their areas of expertise. The thinking goes: if these factors flag suckiness, probably first-order suckiness is also indicated." --Thien-Thi Nguyen

Posted 1:02 PM [+]