Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books

05 October 2002

I just had the most painful experience in my recent memory. I'd been playing basketball with Rob and Sam for about an hour and half (super-low-key; I haven't played basketball at all in more than a year, and I was never very good in the first place), when I jumped for the ball and my elbow came down on Sam's head. At least, I guess that's what happened. What I remember is suddenly being in massive flaming pain. It seems to have been "just" a pinch of the funny bone, but the side of my arm and palm, half my ring finger, and all of my pinky felt like they were being dipped in boiling lava. And I couldn't pull them out. I was laying on the floor of the OMAC, rolling around and gasping for breath. It was awful. It went on for ever, by which I probably mean about three or four minutes; then it subsided into the light pain I usually associate with funnybone problems, at which point I could at least walk around, though I couldn't use the arm still. Almost three hours later, I still feel a slight numbness in my pinky finger, but it seems to be fading.

Sam, apparently, was seeing double for a few minutes, for which I apologised.

"You ever wonder if there's a Japanese version of UPN that plays a lot of really bad Korean shows?" --Aaron McGruder, "The Boondocks"

Posted 3:31 PM [+]

04 October 2002

They seem to be having some grave technical difficulties on the web applications to teach intersessions at IMSA this year. I sent mine in last Friday, when it was due. Then I got a strangely-worded email on Monday that seemed to imply that they had lost all but the first line of each text box, so I sent the app via email (thank goodness I kept a text copy!) to that person. Today I got another email saying that my web app had failed due to technical difficulties (seemingly unaware of the first email), and could I please resubmit. I tried resubmitting by the web, and got all the way through until I hit a Java exception. So I submitted it via email again. What a pain. I hope it all works out.

"You seem to imply that there's a better way. This is me, being all ears." --Michael Kimmitt

Posted 5:37 PM [+]

Seriously, how can you do anything but love a band with lyrics like this?

Have you landed yet and, if so, would you let me know?
I'm tired of looking up into those starry eyes.
Does it rain where you are? Does it snow?
And, if so, remind me not to go there, the weather affects my knee.

Brilliant.

"I expect a good deal of the problem is that you are busy disbelieving a different God than the one I am busy believing in." --Larry Wall

Posted 10:35 AM [+]

Incidentally, that band I was talking about a while back, okgo, I got their CD last week. It's really top notch. Quality music for all purposes, e.g. accompanying a late-night coding binge. They're not going to supplant TMBG as my favourite band---I think---but they have a great blend of good music, good voices, funny and interesting lyrics, and random whimsy. They're definitely at least on my short list of "try to keep track of when they're in town" bands.

"You'll find that most of the feature requests are bogus on some level or other because they tend to suggest bandaid solutions. Nevertheless, I think it's best to treat them all as a "cry for help". With computer languages, about 75% of the bandaids have a bullet hole underneath." --Larry Wall

Posted 7:51 AM [+]

I've been saying for months now that I would be starting to apply for faculty positions this year. For the last few weeks I've been idly bouncing around places like the Chronicle of Higher Education and such to check for job postings, as well as the department web pages of places I'm particularly interested in. Tonight was no different, or at least, not much different, until I noticed something about some of the application deadline dates. Namely, the ones that are in November. The thing I noticed about the dates is that NOVEMBER IS NEXT MONTH. How did that happen? When did they sneak that in there? Aaaaghhh.

No really, I'm fine now. I'm not in a terrible position, really---the main thing I need to is update my CV, write teaching and research statements, and get recommendations. The CV (that's "curriculum vitae", or "curriculum of life", and it's what academics call their résumés) I just did, the statements will be easy, and one month seems like a reasonable amount of lead time on the recommendations. Plus, all the early deadlines are soft, meaning that they will consider apps after that time if they haven't already filled the position. But still, this has been a way-far-off moment for so long now that it's a little scary to suddenly be seriously doing the job search at last. Wow.

"It's like Return of the Jedi, when a whole planet gets blown up and there's like two seconds of silence, but an Ewok gets conked with a rock and the whole theater bawls for ten minutes. Perspective, people. One life cannot be summarily valued higher than another, and this is a case where omission is a great sin." --Eva Schillace

Posted 4:00 AM [+]

01 October 2002

Ok, I'm really really getting sick of web systems that require passwords, but are buggy in the way they handle them. Certain types of punctuation in the password will cause them to fail in various mysterious ways, such as claiming that two identical strings are not identical. The better ones at least recognise that they can't handle punctuation, and state that as their reason for rejecting the password, but it's still annoying. It's mind-boggling how easy this is to fix, and how many websites still haven't fixed it.

Almost as annoying are the sites that have some "clever" rule for what the password has to be: it has to include numbers, or punctuation, or mixed case, or whatever; often accompanied by restrictions, i.e. what it can't include. And they usually don't tell you about this rule until after you've typed in a bad password, certainly they don't tell you the rule when you're trying to, y'know, remember your password. I've got lots of passwords on a lot of different sites, and I can't tell you how annoying it is to try and remember, "Hmm, is this the site that has to have eight characters and at least two digits but no punctuation, or at least seven characters including at least one punctuation mark, or..." It would certainly make it easier to remember which password went with which site if they mentioned that on the login screen. And then I end up getting locked out after trying three of my passwords (which probably weren't even valid passwords for that site). Gaaahhh. Surely I'm not the only person who has this sort of problem? I pretty routinely end up having to click the stupid button that sends me my password by email---gee, that's secure.

"The difficulty of your life inspires me to become a Russian author." --Matt Zanon

Posted 11:34 PM [+]

30 September 2002

So I've been thinking about political systems.

Two years ago, when I was telling everyone why they should vote for Nader, I was saying things like, "vote for the person you think is best", and pooh-poohing all the objections about "spoiler candidates" and such. Meanwhile, my friend Michael Kimmitt was telling people about how they need to resolve differences in the primary, then unify under the selected candidate: more or less specifically affirming the two party system. I didn't really like that solution, because it routinely ends up presenting us with decisions like Bush vs Gore.

Earlier this year, the French had an election for President in which Jacques Chirac (the incumbent president) was front runner, and Lionel Jospin (then the premier) was thought to be in second. As was usual French elections, there were a number of lesser candidates as well---after ballots were counted, the top two candidates would face off in a runoff vote a few weeks later. As it happened, Jospin was narrowly edged out by a far-right candidate (Jean-Marie Le Pen), who then faced Chirac in the runoff, where he was soundly defeated 80-20%.

This pattern of events was unfortunate, because Chirac and Jospin were relatively moderate candidates, and each would have gotten a lot of votes in the runoff from people who had voted for someone else in the initial vote. Le Pen was unlikely to increase his percentage (and didn't); those who would have preferred slightly-left Jospin to slightly-right Chirac almost universally preferred Chirac to extreme-right Le Pen, sealing his victory. "It's too bad," thought I, "that they couldn't send to their runoff vote the most popular leftist candidate vs the most popular rightist candidate." Oh. That'd make the first election a primary....

Well, sort of. But it certainly sent me off into a different way of thinking. What if the elections were really just runoffs between the best two candidates, and primaries were really where the elections happened? (Michael's been saying this for years, but it never quite registered, I guess.) I thought a lot about this.

But it still galls me to think that I should have to vote for (say) the Democrat just because I think he's less bad than the Republican, and he was selected in the primary. At least, not if there are alternatives. So I flipped back to backing Instant Runoff Voting or some other fair voting system; it's the logical extension of a basic runoff vote, which is itself just an approximation at finding the most supported candidate. If IRV had been in place in France, then people could have stated explicitly that they liked best but still preferred Jospin over Chirac; and as the runoff rounds proceeded (instantly, without the need for further voting) it would have (correctly) ended up a contest between Jospin and Chirac, instead of a system accident that wasted peoples time by pitting Chirac against Le Pen.

Of course, the existence of IRV wouldn't abolish the existence of the parties, nor should it. Political parties provide a convenient way of grouping like-minded people, and funneling monetary support in some centralised way. And for the determination by the party of which candidate to fund, primaries would continue to make sense. If a candidate is defeated in the primary, he can choose to concede---most would, I think---or go it alone, as an independent. An unfunded independent. This would be difficult, but provides a useful outlet: it's the difference between "I agree with A more than B, but in the end, B's pretty good and I'll vote for him" and "I agree with A, but barely at all with B, and the thought of voting for B is awful".

Until we can get IRV in place, though, I've definitely come around to the idea of primaries being a useful if not very perfect approximation thereof. Now I just have to decide whether I'd rather register as Democrat (so I can vote in the primaries) or as Green (to lend numerary support to their existence: it helps their cause to be able to cite numbers of registered Greens in various jurisdictions). Oh well, I'll think about that before the next elections in two years!

"Well, someone come up with a good word that means "person whose name I can put on the same invitation separated by an "and" if I want both people in a couple to show up at my dinner party" yet doesn't indicate what they do with one another in their spare time so as to earn this distinction, and I'll be happy." --Gel Thelen

Posted 8:37 PM [+]

29 September 2002

Last week, I went to our local Bread and Circus for the first time. That's our local Whole Foods store, i.e. organic, GMO-free, hippie food. Well, that's how I thought of it before, at least.

When I went in, it was more or less to look around---I was thinking it'd be a tiny little store, not really much for me since I don't buy everything organic and I'm not really into the wacky alterna-grains and such. But, I dutifully wandered the aisles to see what was available.

To my considerable surprise, they actually stocked almost everything I would look for in a grocery store. Some things were much more expensive than they would be at the supermarket down the street, but most things were just 10--20% more. I was starting to balk at the expense, when I realised that that was a bit hypocritical of me.

See, I consider myself an environmentalist, but the way I figure things is that rather than forbid or require certain things, we should merely internalise their costs into the economy. If one company's process causes pollution, they should have to pay for cleanup. That will probably mean that non-pollutive processes will end up being cheaper and more common, but if it's still cheaper to pollute and clean it up, well, that's not so bad either. Once all the environmental and social costs of a given mode of production are factored into the market cost of the product, the market will do an excellent job of accounting for people and the environment in picking the most efficient way to do something.

So back to Bread and Circus, and organic (etc) foods and other stuff. They may cost a little bit more, but according to my model, this is what we should be paying anyway. If everyone were using these methods, the costs would probably go down some (especially on things that are whole multiples more expensive in 'organic' than they are in a standard supermarket), but the idea is certainly there.

So I bought a pretty full basket o' stuff. I got organic pasta sauce, organic tortilla chips, organic cereal bars, and recycled-paper paper towels and toilet paper. The towels are at least as good as any other brand I've had, but I'm a little worried about the toilet paper (haven't tried it yet). I mean, if there's one thing I want chemical softeners in... but who knows. While two of the brands looked awfully scratchy, the one I got had quilting in the paper. If they turn out to be bad, I'll not feel bad about throwing them out. On the other hand, at $1.50 for four rolls, they're comparable with standard toilet paper, so if they work I'm happy to stick with them.

Actually, that's pretty much my philosophy on any of these things---as long as they taste/work the same or better, and cost the same, less, or not too much more, why not go for the environmentally friendly variety? Not to mention the novel experience of seeing ingredient lists less than five items long, all of them recognisable. It might even be good for you.

Oh, and one more thing---I just had to try out Dr. Bronner's magic soap. The man was a little crazy, and there is a cryptic diatribe on every paper soap wrapper... pretty cool. And hey, the soap seems to work just fine. A bit on the expensive side, though.

"You can't really get an education if it begins with the premise that there's some book or doctrine that's too dangerous for you." --Janet Cooper-Nelson

Posted 4:15 PM [+]