Our Thursday entry got mentioned on popular geek site Reddit (thanks, Sean!), resulting in a massvie traffic spike (I expect; I haven't been saving and analyzing traffic logs for a few years now), and comparatively lots of reader comments.

A few selected ones, from the comment box and the Reddit thread:

I wish you all could have been at the code review meeting I was at today. My god. It's almost like it came straight from the meeting...

I carried on scrolling, got to "as nifty as virgins", realised my life is essentially meaningless and closed the tab.

This should be required reading for all programmers.

Story of our lives.

poopoo

Hey I'm not sure your colors are as user friendly as they could be

I just wanted to express my appreciation for your September 2 post - even though it hurt a bit to hear my coworker ask "what's so bad about it?"

omg++

slots = SEVEN made me literally lol

2010-09-02 kicks ass

well hello! Nice blog you've got here

(Other popular responses included several "Hi!" or "Hello" or "Howdy" or "Hey, there!", one "dog", one "daugther" and one "sims" (probably related to sims), and one perhaps rather overly familiar "hi fatso!".)

Condolences and congratulations to the reader who acheived enlightenment on reading "as nifty as virgins"; glad to have been of service.

The user commenting on the imperfect user-friendliness of the color scheme is invited to try out the alternate stylesheets available from the tiny selection box at the bottom of the page, or alternately to harden up.

The Reddit comment thread is pretty interesting reading, as things about software development go. A couple of people there articulated an important principle that I think we forget alot (and that I've been encountering a bit at work, and that partly led to my posting in the first place although not at a consciously spelled out level): it turns out that in many cases it's not actually efficient to design software in such a way that it can easily be made to do lots of things that you don't need it to yet, because most likely you will never need it to do those things. Either you will never need it to do anymore than you do today (if it turns out not to have a future), or you will need it to do some different set of things that you didn't anticipate when you were first writing it.

So you will have either wasted effort writing general code that will never need to generalize, or you will have wasted effort writing general code that is general in the wrong way, and that is probably harder to generalize in the way that you actually turn out to need than it would have been if you hadn't done the original generalization at all.

(The XP meme for this is YAGNI, or You ain't gonna need it.)

Which isn't to say that you should never generalize anything; just that it's far too easy to overestimate the future benefits of generalization when weighing them against the present cost in code complexity and development time.

In email, a reader who I suspect got there from Reddit and then scrolled downward, writes:

i read your post about jehovah's witnesses and virgins.
here's the clearest explanation i've found of what "virgin" actually means
http://mordochai.tripod.com/virgin.html#top
although some claim that virgin means "young girl", they don't understand Hebrew law from 2000 years ago.

I replied that that's fine for talking about the words used to describe Mary, but since Revelation was (probably) written in Greek rather than Hebrew, and it uses the relatively unambiguous "parthenos" for "virgin" (whence the English "parthenogenesis"), and includes also the helpful "not defiled by women" bit, there's not much doubt about the intent.

Unless of course you think it's a metaphor. *8)

And finally, a picture of a kitten!

]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100827.html#20100902

s = 7

"We're allowed to have multi-character variable names now, you know."

slots = 7

"Okayyy... Isn't that 7 sort of hard-coded?"

SEVEN = 7 ... slots = SEVEN

"Very funny."

SLOTS_PER_WIDGET = 7 ... slots = SLOTS_PER_WIDGET

"Getting there."

import widgetConstants ... slots = widgetConstants.SLOTS_PER_WIDGET

"Okay, that's..."

widgetModelFactory = WidgetModelFactory.getInstance() widgetModel = widgetModelFactory.getWidgetModel() slots = widgetModel.getSlotsPerWidget()

"Sure, okay, that's..."

context = Context.getCurrentContext() serviceDirectoryFactory = ServiceDirectoryFactory.getServiceDirectory(context) serviceDirectory = serviceDirectoryFactory.getServiceDirectory(context) serviceDescriptor = ServiceDescriptorFactory.getDescriptor("widgetModelFactory") widgetModelFactoryServiceLocator = serviceDirectory.getServiceLocator(serviceDescriptor,context) widgetModelFactory = (WidgetModelFactory)widgetModelFactoryServiceLocator.findService(context) widgetModel = widgetModelFactory.getWidgetModel(context) slots = widgetModel.getSlotsPerWidget()

"I'm not sure you've really got this whole Object-Oriented thing down quite right..."

slots = thisWidget.getSlotCount()

"Thank you." ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100827.html#20100901 I do so dislike the dentist.

"Is that a little sensitive?"

"Yeah, if you STICK A SHARP METAL THING INTO IT, it is."

"I see. Well, you'll need two onlays, which will cost eight hundred dollars more than whatever your insurance is willing to pay, and you'll have to come back four more times."

"..."

"Teach you to get fresh with me, boy."

That's not exactly how it went, but that's always how I come away feeling...

So these friendly Jehovah's Witnesses were talking to me about Bible stuff the other week, and for some reason that I forget at the moment we read Revelation chapter 14, where it talks about the hundred forty and four thousand, and how "These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins".

And rather casually they said "of course, that's a metaphor" (because in their story various married persons and all are member of that set).

Now, come on.

That's really specific and explicit.

It doesn't say "as pure as virgins" or "like virgins" or "as nifty as virgins", it says "they are virgins" and in particular that they "were not defiled with women."

If we can say that that's a metaphor, we can say that anything's a metaphor.

I mean, I can say that my theory that the Universe was created, and is ruled, by a committee of eighty-seven radishes named Fred, is perfectly Biblical, and where it talks about there being One God, that's just a metaphor for the wonderful consensus that exists among the Committee of Freds. And where it talks about Jesus being made in God's image, that doesn't mean that Jesus was actually a committee of radishes, it just means that he was as awesome as a committee of radishes.

It's a metaphor.

What else?

The little daughter (who I think I mentioned is apparently twenty years old) now has a driver's license! This is utterly terrifying, and also extremely convenient. She drove us all to a fancy restaurant last night or sometime to celebrate.

The kitten is still alternating between sleeping and pouncing anything that moves. M says she is much bigger than when we first got her, and M is always right about stuff like that (and, objectively, the kitten can no longer fit entirely into my sandal). On the other hand she (the kitten) still seems very smallish and kittenish to me, and I can still easily hold her in the air above my head in one hand for extended periods of time.

She makes the cutest baffled little faces when I do that, too.

(We have a million kitten pictures in the camera, but who can be bothered to extract them, y'know?)

I have a new little art gallery in SL, and I'm playing with ideas for a build for Burn2, wherein I have reserved a plot to build stuff on, which should be fun.

I want to write about partial-reserve banking sometime, because a couple of times now I've heard people decrying it as The Source Of All Evil, and this seems weird to me, or at least worth writing about in my weblog.

But I don't think I'll write that tonight.

Here is Full Metal Disney, which is pretty funny.

Oh, and speaking of YouTube, my Second Life self has his or her very own YouTube channel ("channel"), where I have thrown a couple of trippy Thingmaker videos. So now I am a certified XXIst Century Person, 'cause I have a youtube channel!

Also, the dentist has just sent me a Facebook Friend Request.

Shudder. ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100820.html#20100826 We have now been doing this weblogging thing for eleven years, incredibly, and as is traditional I am sitting and writing this in a rental house somewhere on the coast of Maine, and will probably post it, back-dated, when we get back.

It's Just Like The Old Days, in that there are eight of us in the house, and we're on the eastern shore of Linekin Bay. We're just a tad closer to the head of the Bay than the house that we started doing this in, all those years ago. It's a very nice house, with huge open windows, lots of light, and a good wireless internet connection projected from the studio up the hill a bit where the owners live.

The main difference from the Old Days is probably how enormous the children are. The little daughter is twenty now, which is just absurd, and the other children are older roughly in proportion.

We've been doing a whole lot of nothing this year; I think everyone is tired. I've been calling into daily phonecalls at work to help The Project with my sage advice, and doing the very occasional checkin. While that sounds like it might be annoying and stressful, I actually finds it helps with the relaxing, because I don't have to worry that I am out of touch and not keeping up with things and all. This way I know that I am, and I can nap and play WoW and log into Second Life and read cheap paperback and eat lobster with a clear mind.

(Although the Buddhas of all the millenia still don't really approve of the lobsters, I don't think, given the method of preparation. The flesh is weak!)

It rained significantly yesterday (so I got a bit wet on my phonecall, because the place where I can most reliably get an intelligible cellphone signal is out on the little lawn, between the side door to the house and the steps down to the dock; and we got quite wet dashing into and out of the restaurant for lunch). Today it is sunnier and gorgeouser. (I am writing this on let's see Thursday; I vaguely think it's been clear a bit, cloudy a bit, and raining for one day, but durn if I can recall the details.)

Haven't gone to Wiscasset (except to pass through it on the way in), or the sand beach, or any lighthouses, or out on any boats. I have, though, taken a (very brisk and bracing, one might even say incredibly farking cold) dip in the Bay, and the kids even did the same (well, three of them) later the same day. This house has a wonderful advantage in that area, because it has a "hot tub" of all things, and one can get into that when one emerges, chilly-fleshed, from the sea.

Napping down on the floating dock is great, too.

Also unlike in the Old Days, M has an "iPad" device with her which can pinpoint our location within like ten feet, and show a startlingly clear image of the roof of the house on the screen. Which is a bit frightening. And everyone has their "cellular phones", and I have this computer of course, with which I can even get to the Rational Team Concert repository at work and do checkins.

We have gone into Boothbay a time or two for the shops and icecream, and into the tiny East Boothbay a couple of times (once for lunch and once for dinner; eating and mailing letters being pretty much the only activities supported by the town). In Boothbay proper I did my usual sweep through the Used Book Sale at the Library (twenty-five cents per book for the books on the porch; I got eight!).

In roughly descending order of size: "Exons, Introns, and Talking Genes: the Science Behind the Human Genome Project", which I might actually read at some point; "The Select" by F. Paul Wilson, a "medical cliffhanger" of the kind that one is vaguely surprised ever came out in hardcover; the February 15, 1982 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, for obvious reasons; "Blue Champagne", a collection of short stories by John Varley that I might possible not have already read; "Where the Dark Streets Go" by Dorothy Salisbury Davis, a paperback murder mystery; "Give the Boys a Great Big Hand", by Ed McBain, a (wait for it) paperback murder mystery; "clarion II", edited by Robin Scott Wilson, "An Anthology of Speculative Fiction and Criticism", which I've finished, and really wasn't all that impressed by; and finally John Creasey's "The Toff and the Great Illusion", a paperback murder mmystery, which I've also finished and was fun and just what one would expect.

What else what else? Another largish difference from the Old Days is that I have well-controlled clinical despression, whatever the heck that is. I don't know how much of an effect that has on the experience of being up here, of listening to the seagulls and waves, of resting and thinking. Quite likely some, quite likely not very much.

(Also I still can't smell, which is downright annoying, because I'd like to be able to smell the sea and the wind and the coffee; I really ought to try to get that fixed...)

All sorts of things have of course been happening unreported, because I have not been writing here in the log much (as usual, it feels very good to be doing so again). I actually got the energy and organization up to go to the Second Life Community Convention and interact in person with actual other people in large bunches, which was quite a trip. It is, of course, written up more or less in detail or not in the secret Second Life weblog.

And I did mention the kitten. *8) She is at home, being cared for by the very kind and cat-experienced next-door neighbors.

It is lovely sitting and looking out over the Bay, admiring the various anchored boats, the occasional prosperous-looking people motoring out from the town dock to fiddle with their boats, arrange things, sometimes even raise a sail and sail off somewhere. Everything seems so well-groomed, neatly-arranged well attended-to. I have little daydreaming fantasies that I am the Lord of the Manor for the entire Bay, overseeing the boats and docks and shops and restaurants and houses, with the inhabitants coming to me now and then to help resolve their little disputes, their endearing uncertainties.

This is a very dangerous sort of place, it occurs to me, for people in actual power to spend significant time. But I'm afraid that they do, many of them. Hanging out on docks and at golf course restaurants and urban hotels where everything is neat and well-ordered and seen to, and everyone seems prosperous and content.

It's all too easy, spending time in that sort of place, to come to feel that what life is about is maintaining that sort of place, improving it, caring about it. And that other kinds of places, and the people in them, are just sort of unfortunate side-shows, things that one might make gestures toward, even work toward aiding, but not really in the center of one's concern, not something one thinks about very often. Because, well, that is there and this is here.

I also brought a number of books, and the latest New York Times Book Review, and some random magazines, from home. But I won't list those. M, on the other hand, has probably several dozen or several hundred books in her iPad, and thousands more available upon whim.

Which is pretty weird.

There is vague discussion of going out and doing things, if only we can get a few more of the kids to get out of bed. I will stop writing for now, probably write more later, and then eventually post this so that you can read it. Won't that be nostalgic?

So we went into town (into Boothbay) again, for reasons that slip my mind, and had seafood for lunch, and then went walking about, off to the antique (antiques?) store to find a thankyou present for one of the kitten-sitters, and the icecream store for icecream (I had an extra-thick chocolate and banana "frappe" (which is New Englandish for "shake") mmmmmm), and then we went to Enchantments.

Enchantments is this big crowded New Age and Water Pipes ("For Use With Tobacco Only") store that's been sitting there in Boothbay forever, where I've bought all sorts of inneresting books and things in past years (various of them mentioned here in the annual editions of the weblog). It is great fun.

This year I bought two books ("Sitting", by Diana St. Ruth; and "Blame it on the Buddhists", by Martin E. Segal) and one CD ("Bamboo", by Kazu Matsui, featuring Keiko Matsui on piano), bought because it sounded nice and cost less than twenty dollars and "Keiko Matsui" reminded me vaguely of someone in Second Life.

And now the little daughter and I have sat on the dock for awhile, putting our feet into the water and me reading my various books, and us both taking pictures of things and of each other; and that was nice.

Now there is discussion of dinner, and apple pies, and maybe going for swim in the Bay again.

The swim in the Bay was utterly delicious, the tide far ebbed, the water shallow enough, just barely, to stand, close to the dock, on one's tiptoes, and bring up interesting stones and shells from the bottom. It was cold, but not too cold, and I paddled around for some time (M's sister's husband for a bit less time, the little boy for not much time at all, having a higher surface-to-volume ratio or for other reasons).

Then the little boy and I soaked in the hot tub for awhile and that was omg idyllic also, lolling in hundred-degree (F) water, looking lazily out at the lengthening shadows of the deck chairs on the grass of the little yard, listening to the voices of people talking inside, watching the clouds moving, boats moving on the water here and there.

And now I am sitting with a glass of dark red wine, showered, in my nightshirt, writing this and watching people bustling around in the kitchen with ideas about apple pie.

And that is also very nice.

I wanna hold 'em like they do in Texas, please!

Now we have been sitting around while the apple pies bake (apparently there are two of them), being extremely gender-normative: the females have been doing crafts and reading and discussing things, and the men have been playing poker.

Poker is kind of fun! I was winning most of the time (due to having good "hands"), until the nephew (who seems suspiciously familiar with the game) went "all in" on the final "hand", and surged into the lead.

The last hand was interesting and random, being five-card draw with two draw rounds, deuces and one-eyed jacks wild, no round-the-corner straights, as chosen by the nephew, who was dealing, as a fittingly weird final hand. (Myself, I am very fond of round-the-corner straights.) He won the hand with five queens; our second five-queen hand of the night (the previous one being mine, on I think it was a hand of seven-card "play what you're dealt", deuces and likely some other stuff wild).

There was some discussion as to whether a wild card can legally be used as another card that is already in one's hand, as is required to get five-of-a-kind; we decided that house rules would allow it tonight, whatever the Global Consensus on the subject is.

The fun thing about poker (at least the poker we were playing) is that each hand is different, because the dealer gets to mix and match any of the relatively large stock of available rules each time. We didn't actually play any loball, or hi-lo, or anaconda, but it's nice knowing that the dealer could have chosen them on a whim.

(I haven't been able to find on the Web a standard term for my favorite quick hand: everyone gets seven cards, face down, and makes the best possible hand from them, using whatever wild cards the dealer has seen fit to declare, with a single round of betting and no fancy-pants "draws" or "flops" or "rivers". A game for men with mustaches! If any readers know its name, send the information along; assuming and of the sending-along mechanisms still function.)

And now I might go into Second Life and work on ideas for my Burn2 build, having splurged on a site reservation with some money what I made scripting and stuff. I might write more tomorrow, even though it will technically be Friday, and I will probably date this entry Thursday for narrative and bookkeeping purposes. I know you won't mind. *8)

Friday was again lovely, in weather and also in relaxing sorts of things. We had pancakes for breakfast, and I did my morning work call (things seem to be coming along pretty well without me, somehow), and then drove my kids and the little nephew out to Popham Beach, where there is actual sand and surf and beach-like stuff like that.

We spent a few hours there; the tide was high so we just hung around on the narrowish strip of sand and went in the water now and then. When the tide's low, as it's been other years when we visited, you can walk across the sandbars and play in the tidepools and wade out to a rocky island and things. But it was fun just getting chilly in the surf also.

And now we've more or less packed and I'm staying up too late writing this, and tomorrow we will drive home and I will probably post it then.

It will be good to be home.

P.S. Home safe! *8) ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100723.html#20100728 Well, the big huge news is that we have been adopted by a kitten!

Can I hear an "awwwwwwwwwwwww"? *8)

In much more minor news, our narrator in Le diable au corps has, at the age of twelve, sent a love-letter to a classmate, and then there is some rather obscure stuff, in French, that I have not yet figured out.

And this spam made me smile for some reason, so I am sharing it. The original was like triple-spaced (and I have slightly obfuscated contact details, names, etc).

Acme Trading Services
4th Floor, Atlantic House 4-8 Circular Road ,
Douglas, IM99 2BB Isle of Man, UK .
Tel: +44-[redacted]
Fax: +44-[redacted]

We wish to confirm you with full cooperate responsibility that we are end seller ready, willing and able to transact and sell the commodities, with the following specifications, terms and condition.

Sales and purchases will be based on the following procedures: The product is used Train Rail Scrap with the specification of R50 & R65 as confirmed to the ISRI codes.

Manufactured in Russia & Ukraine . The origin is South Africa & Nigeria.

Quantity: 360,000 MT (Three Hundred and Sixty Thousand Metric Tons) Contract period: Twelve Months. Price: USD $ 130 per Metric Ton FOB.

Payment Terms: should be Standard Bank Letter of Credit (SBLC) or Bank Guarantee (BG)

Chemical Composition: International Standard as follows:

R50.67kg/m COST 7173-75

C:0. 67-0.8%
Mn:0. 75-1.05%
Si:0. 13-0.28%
P: max. 0.035%
S: max. 0.045%
Ar: max. 0.15%

R65-64.72kg/m COST 8165-75
C: 0.6-0.082%
N: 0.75-1.05%
Si: 0.13-0.28%
P: max. 0.035%
S: max. 0.045%
Ar: max. 0.15

Please confirm if you are willing to close down the contract as to enable us schedule and arrange for your urgent trip to Africa for inspections of the material and signing of the contract.

Finally, be informed that upon your acceptance to this offer, you will be provided with all the related documents for your perusals before coming down to Africa for the signing of the contract.

For more detail and proceeds Contact person:

  Engr. Nzuma Edwin
Email: engredwin@atlas.cz
  engrnzuma7@live.com

Yours Faithfully

Asher Serah
Acme Trading Services

Disclaimer and confidentiality note: everything in this e-mail and any attachments relating to the official business of Amce Trading Services to the customer is confidential, legally provided and protected by law. Atlas Trading Services does not own and endorse any other content other than the information enclosed on this email. Views and opinions are those of the sender. The person addressed in the e-mail is the sole authorized recipient. Please notify the sender immediately if it has mistakenly sent to you. Do not disclose or use the content in any way. Atlas Trading Services cannot guarantee that the confidentiality of this communication has been maintained or that it is free of errors, virus, interception or interference.

If anyone needs a few thousand metric tons of used Train Rail Scrap, drop me a line and I'll forward the actual details... ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100723.html#20100726 The yellow face, it burns!

This must be, I reflected to myself on getting out of the car yesterday at the Bagel Store to buy bagels and feeling the heat beating down, what is it like much of the time in places where much of the time it is like this.

Whew!

Anyway, I have this book. I took it, on impulse, from the Book Exchange rack down in the lobby at The Lab, because it was thin, and had an attractive cover. I did realize also that it was in French, and that nearly stopped me from taking it, but at the last moment something whispered "be brave!" into my ear.

I sort of vaguely but not really speak French. Where by "speak" I mean "can read", and by "sort of vaguely but not really" I mean that I took it for a number of years in High School, and then took the placement test my freshman year of college and got placed into French 1, and then took it enough in college to satisfy the language requirement, and then stopped.

French has many many words!

This book, which is in French, is called "Le diable au corps", which I take to mean "The devil in the body" or perhaps "The devil in the corps" (Marine Corps, that sort of thing). It is by Raymond Radiguet, and it is a roman, which I remember is French for "novel". The back of the book says that Raymond Radiguet est l'auteur de deux romans (two novels): this one here (qui connut un succèss considérable), and also Le bal du comte d'Orgel (which perhaps didn't connut so much succèss, since the book doesn't say).

I liked the first sentence of the blurb about the book itself on the back, because I could mostly make sense of it, and it sounded plausible.

Ah! que la guerre est jolie quand on a 15 ans et que l'on aime !

which I take to mean more or less

Ah, how pretty war is when you're fifteen years old, and in love!

or perhaps

Ah, how pretty war is when you're fifteen years old, and someone loves you!

or possibly even

Ah, how pretty war is when you're fifteen years old, and how you love it!

hm or come to think of it...

Ah, how pretty war is when you're fifteen years old, and how it loves you!

which choice of translations gives you a reasonable idea of my abilities in French.

I've read about half a page of the book so far, and I am enjoying it very much. Here is my current couple of paragraphs; they are lovely!

Je n'ai jamais été un rêveur. Ce qui semble rêve au autres, plus crédule, me paraissait à moi aussi réel que le fromage au chat, malgré la cloche de verre. Pourtant la cloche existe.

La cloche se cassant, le chat en profite, même si ce sont ses maîtres qui la cassent et s'y coupent les mains.

Isn't that great? Currently I'm reading it as something like:

I have never been a dreamer. What seems dreamlike to others, more credulous, seems to me as real as cat-cheese, or a bag of water. Because the bag exists.

The bag closes, the cat profits, whether or not their masters close them, or clap their hands.

Cat-cheese or a bag of water!

Of course I somewhat doubt that that's what it actually says; but the experience of reading it that way is very enjoyable. It's like being in an odd half-understood waking dream, where the cat profits and its master claps his hands (or perhaps strikes him, or something).

The next paragraph seems to be about how the narrator had a girlfriend called Carmen when he was twelve, which is also promising. No sign of the cat yet... ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100702.html#20100702 To: The Editors, Reason Magazine
Subject: "Where Do Libertarians Belong?" (August/September 2010 issue)

Dear Editors,

Thanks to Brink Lindsey for reminding us just what a devil's bargain the 'fusionist' alliance [between libertarians and social conservatives] has been.

Thanks also to Jonah Goldberg for showing his true colors when he writes that libertarians have a nice comfy home with the Republicans "where it actually matters most: economics". This is typical of all too many self-styled libertarians, willing to turn surrender civil liberties (preferably someone else's) to anyone that will promise to lower their taxes.

And in the same way I will believe that Matt Kibbe's Tea Party has escaped its Republican astroturf roots when the rallies start to feature speakers denouncing the drug war, warrantless wiretaps, and the Presidential power to detain and torture citizens without trial.

But there I go forgetting that that's not what actually matters most...

David M. Chess
Mohegan Lake, New York

(The article in question isn't on the website (yet). I trust the gist is more or less clear. :) ) ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100618.html#20100624 I am once again on a train, going from one place to another!

(I was thinking that there ought to be a longer form of "train", like "airplane" or "aeroplane" is a longer form of "plane". I guess it would be "railroad train", as distinct from "wagon train" or "mule train". I am on a railroad train!)

If I were less lazy, I could look it up and see if I've previously observed here that every time I leave Newark Airport I find myself leaving by a completely different path. Either there are some vast number of different routes between the Newark parking lots and the Garden State Parkway, or they change them regularly.

(The problem is compounded by the fact that all of the signage around Newark Airport is regionally idiosyncratic. Rather than saying pedestrian things like "Grand Central Parkway East", the words on the signs are based on regional knowledge, or on some particular favorite small town or fond childhood memory of the signmakers. So you get "Grand Central Parkway -- Long Island", or "Fibbstown / Chutney", or "Aunt Dot's", or "Route 95 -- that burger joint where I met Marie".)

I mention this, not because I've been anywhere near Newark Airport lately, but because the same sort of "different every time" effect occurs at the Penn Station station in the New York City subway. Usually when I get off at that stop I find myself in Penn Station (a different part of Penn Station every time, but at least recognizeably Penn Station). Other times I find myself on some New York City streetcorner within sight of Penn Station.

Today, though, I found myself on a streetcorner apparently nowhere near Penn Station. In fact, from the amount of wandering about I did subsequently while looking for Penn Station, a streetcorner not even in the same borough as, and perhaps not in the same state as, Penn Station. Good thing I had plenty of time until my train.

It's theoretically hard to get lost in Manhattan, 'cause of all the streets run either north-south or east-west, and they're numbered with consecutive small integers. So with just a couple of exploratory one-block walks to get the direction of the axes nailed down, it should be possible to figure out where just about anything is.

But that's only in theory.

Finding myself on I think it was Sixth Avenue, and having some reason to think that there might be a Penn Station entrance on Eighth Avenue, I went a block in the east-west direction, figuring that I'd either come to Seventh Avenue and know I had to continue one block to Eighth, or I'd come to Fifth Avenue and at least be confident that I could turn around and walk three blocks to Eighth. So I approached the next Avenue-axis sign with a certain amount of optimism.

Unfortunately what it said was "Greeley Square", which was less than helpful.

Eventually I relented and, after walking some distance in a more or less straight line in a vain hope of encountering something enlightening, I asked someone waiting for a light to change (or, this being New York, for the traffic to clear).

"Excuse me," I said, "do you know, where is Penn Station?"

He pointed back the way I had come.

"Just go straight," he said.

And I did, for quite several blocks, and eventually there was a corner with a Penn Station entrance on it. So that worked.

It would be good if they would paint, on the pavement or even the sidewalks themselves, Helpful Directional Indications, like "8th Avenue This Way", or even "Penn Station".

Unfortunately they probably don't have the money to do this. And if they did, half the Helpful Directional Indications would probably say things like "Greeley Square". And perhaps "Aunt Dot's". ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100618.html#20100622 Last night I attended the first part of a group discussion of the philosophical problem of personal identity. But I didn't stay long; I made a quick excuse and flew up into the air and teleported away.

Yeah, this was in Second Life, so I could fly, and the moderator was an Amazonian woman wearing nothing but holstered weapons belted around her thighs, and one of the latecomers appeared as a female Green Lantern who twirled on her head for a few seconds before transforming into a small pink snail and sitting on a tree stump. But none of that is why I left (those were all reasons to stay, actually).

I left because (there were other things I druthered be doing, and because) I don't really think there is any philosophical problem with personal identity.

Am I the same person today that I was yesterday? For legal purposes, certainly. For some other purpose, well, I dunno. Is it important?

If what makes me the same person that I was yesterday is mostly continuity of memory, what about when I come half-awake for a moment in the middle of the night, not awake enough to remember anything, or to remember in the morning that I wa awake. Is that still the same person? Well, for legal purposes, almost certainly. For any other purpose, I dunno; does it matter?

If we have a super-scientific process that separates all the molecules of a person's body, evenly distributed from all over the body, into two clouds of molecules, and then fills in the missing halves from a molecule-store, and that results in two apparently identical people, both with all the memories and behaviors of the original, and equal numbers of the molecules of the original, are they both the same person as the original? Or neither? Or somehow one and not the other?

For some reason these don't strike me as particularly interesting questions. At least no more interesting than the question of whether, if you replace the blade of an axe one year, and the handle of the axe the next, it's still the same axe. For legal or ownership purposes, I guess it probably is. For any other purpose, it doesn't matter; it's just a question of what form of words to use in an edge-case that isn't all that interesting.

Even the question of what it would be like, subjectively, to be one of those two people technologically conjured from one person, doesn't seem to me any more interesting than the question of what it's like to be me, right now. Presumably (if the technology actually works as advertised), what it's like is that you go to sleep for a little while, and when you wake up there's someone over there who looks and acts just like you.

Which would be weird, but I don't see any big philosophical implications.

It's sort of like the question of whether a big pile of sand, when divided in half, yields two big piles of sand. I dunno, sometimes, often, it depends what you mean by "big"; whatever.

There are lots and lots of practical problems around personal identity in these hypothetical cases, of course; and to a lesser extent in some real-life edge cases.

If Fred is duplicated, and there are now two people who look and act just like Fred, what is his wife Mary going to do? Presumably she will find them both equally lovable and/or annoying, and they will feel the same way about her. Could get awkward; or not. But is there a deep philosophical problem? Not seeing it.

If Fred was guilty of some crime and supposed to be incarcerated as a result, what do we do now? Put them both in jail for that same amount of time? (Probably.) Put them both in jail for half the time, or put one in jail and let the other go free? (Probably not; but really if you have some reasonably complete theory of incarceration, you can probably read the answer off pretty directly.)

In real life, if someone serving a sentence for a crime has a stroke and suffers actual amnesia, is he now a different person who should no longer be punished? His lawyer is free to try to convince a judge of that, and if you have a good theory of incarceration you can again probably just read of an answer, but is there some deep philosophical problem? And the same for milder questions, like whether promises made before the stroke are still binding.

Subjectivity, consciousness as viewed from the inside, is deeply mysterious in these cases, but then it's deeply mysterious in all cases. Fred's consciousness before and after the duplication seems no more, and no less, mysterious than my consciousness right now. Since I don't understand how matter and subjectivity relate at all, it's not any more mysterious how consciousness gets duplicated when you duplicate Fred.

Of course if it turned out that when you duplicate Fred you always get one Fred and one inanimate body, that would be very interesting. Or you get one Fred and one body that mostly acts like Fred but insists that it has no soul and no inner subjectivity, that would also be interesting. But we're very far from being able to perform that experiment, and what little evidence we do have so far suggests that in fact we'd get two fully-functional and conscious Freds.

So I dunno, maybe I'm overlooking the interesting questions here, but I don't see the question of personal identity as usually construed to be any more interesting or philosophically important than the question of sand-pile bigness.

Explanations of what I have overlooked are most welcome. *8)

Now, about China!

China is, potentially, becoming really strange. The One-Child Policy officially restricts more than a third of the population to having no more than one child (per couple). It was put into place, apparently, for relatively simplistic population-control reasons, but the potential implications are much wider than that.

Most of the people covered by the policy live in cities. The policy has been in place for a bit over thirty years. So a big chunk of the urban workforce that is coming into middle management and significant technical positions in China are only children.

Imagine! *8)

We only children tend to be smart, and spoiled. While we do play well with others, we also tend to be loners. And apparently we tend to like the idea of having only one child ourselves; or at least many of the only children in Shanghai feel that way.

What does it do to commerce and industry when enterprises tend to be run, at least at the day-to-day level, by only children? What does it do to education, to society, to politics?

What, one especially wonders, happens when an aging Communist bureaucracy is faced with a population heavily salted with smart spoiled loners?

It's going to be an awfully interesting experiment... ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100521.html#20100523 Hello again!

The little daughter is back from college for the summer. We went down and brought her and her things home yesterday. While we were down there, the little boy and I got haircuts (while waiting for the ladies to be done in the consignment shop, which takes a surprising amount of time!).

So now our necks and ears get cold. *8)

Today the little boy and I cleaned up fallen branches, and cut logs, from the yard, and the little boy mowed, finally. So the place looks less jungle-like.

On Mother's Day I put in petunias on the front porch. They are even still alive! I am so proud. (Here is M on the subect, with pictures.)

What else what else?

The Jehovah's Witnesses have been coming 'round, pretty much every weekend, and we sit out on the front porch and go through this little book they have, a section or two at a time, about stuff they believe.

It's been going pretty well so far; we are all very nice people and they are not at all aggressive.

Today was probably the most contentious so far, because we started on the "how we know that the Bible is the infallible Word of God" chapter.

I told them that I don't actually believe that, and that the part of the chapter that quotes places in the Bible that say that the Bible is the infallible Word of God did not strike me as very convincing.

The little book says, also, that we know the Bible is the infallible Word of God because it contains scientifically-accurate stuff that people back then didn't know.

It cites one passage in particular, that the nice man had me read aloud (this is one of their methods that has great psychological validity: they get you to say things that they believe, presumably knowing that saying something aloud has great power).

The little book says that the passage in question gets the shape of the Earth right, which is impressive because at the time people had lots of wrong ideas about this.

I was kinda disappointed by it, in fact:

There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers, the One who is stretching out the heavens just as a fine gauze, who spreads them out like a tent in which to dwell.
-- Isaiah 40:22, Jehovah's Witnesses translation of the Bible

I pointed out, politely I hope, that there is no astounding scientific accuracy there. A circle is different from a sphere, and "the circle of the earth" is probably just a metaphor, like the stretching out of the heavens like a tent. Or, if the passage is supposed to be taken literally, then even overlooking that a circle is not a sphere, there is the problem that the heavens are not in fact anything like a tent.

Can't have it both ways, I said.

They smiled and basically went on to the next paragraph of the little book.

The man (today the people who came were a man and wife, who've come before when my primary contact can't make it; they are somewhat less convincing than he is, although they are all very nice) also mentioned Leviticus in passing. The little book says that there is scientifically accurate stuff in Leviticus about "quarantine and hygiene" that people in general didn't know at the time, and intepreted broadly that may be true. On the other hand, Leviticus also contains some weird stuff about how women are "unclean" for a week around menstruation, and anyone who touches the bed of a menstruating woman has to wash all of his clothes, and so on.

As far as I know that's not scientifically accurate at all (menstrual blood isn't particularly infectious); it's just that these particular nomads found it icky.

I didn't bring that up with the nice people today, though.

I finally watched Primer on Netflix Live or whatever it's called. It was good! You should watch it.

It was also very confusing, but that was the point, really.

Also it was very good for having been made on a very tiny budget by a very small number of people. A good example.

I do want to know what the deal was about their handwriting getting worse; I wonder if that was an idea that the writer / director decided not to go anywhere with after all.

I wonder if Netflix Live has "Memento"... *8)

I am writing very short sentences tonight! ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100430.html#20100505 Many things have been occurring again!

The little boy has had his Carnegie Hall debut. Really! Well, not all alone on the stage juggling eels or anything, but definitely up there on the stage among the basses, playing music with the best of 'em.

That was neat. (M has pictures!)

M and I dropped him off at the bus and then drove down some roads in a generally southward direction until we were in Manhatten. We parked in a place that lets you park if you pay them (Early Bird Special!), and then we walked around.

We went to the American Folk Art Museum, which is near Carnegie Hall. It used to be called the Museum of American Folk Art, but they changed it.

For the obvious reason. *8)

(I can think of two possible reasons: to be nearer the beginning of alphabetical lists, and to make it ambiguous whether "American" modifies "Art" or "Museum", thus giving them more leeway to display non-American (or even un-American!!) artworks. More explanations may be available on the World Wide Web, but I am currently sitting in the lounge at the music school again (the same music school as previously, although in a different building, thus raising interesting questions about identity over time), and their wireless is either too weak to reach the laptop here, or not sufficiently promiscuous for me to connect.)

Ummmmm, what? Oh, right! The American Folk Art Museum was having various inneresting exhibitions (exhibitions? shows? something like that), including one all about folk art by women (M's favorite part), and one all about what the famously unusual Henry Darger had hanging on his walls, and one Approaching Abstraction, which was probably my favorite part.

Approaching Abstraction was all full of more or less nonrepresentational folk art, which is slightly unusual or at least atypical or astereotypical. Folk Art is usually associated with roosters, people riding sleighs, flowery quilts, and so on (although come to think of it crazy quilts and other geometric or otherwise nonrepresentational quilt patterns are examples of folk art where abstraction isn't particularly surprising; how about that!). But this exhibition was all full of variously nonrepresentational flat art and also sculpture, ranging from geometric or mathematical to wildly expressionistic to just plain odd.

It was great!

I particularly liked the stuff by Eugene Andolsek (here's the American Primitive Gallery's section on him; read the words and then click on "works"), which are gorgeously colorful and intricately precise and completely abstract, and also the Philadelphia Wireman (wikipedia entry, as updated by me after we got home, unless someone's reverted it).

These (and for that matter Henry Darger, although he's been a bit overexposed I think) are fascinating both because of the art (which is cool, evocative, neat, beautiful, unique, enigmatic), and because of the stories that the art comes embedded in (in which the art comes embedded).

We love stories 'round here!

Eugene Andolsek would sit at his table after work, with a ruler and pens and ink and I think graph paper, and create goregous things to help him escape from or otherwise cope with his day job and taking care of his ailing mother, and then toss them into a corner or a closet or whatever, because he was all about the making of them, not the end products. And when eventually his mother died and he retired, and he kept making them, and finally in the nursing home a caregiver noticed the amazing things he was doing, apparently he said he thought they might make pretty placemats or something.

Or, as it turned out, get shown in art galleries all over th' place.

No one knows who the Philadelphia Wireman is, or was, or whether it was one person or more than one, whether it is, or was, a man, or even from Philadelphia. Someone just found these hundreds and hundreds of lovely odd intricate little, well, scuplture, art, things... in some garbage bags in a poor neighborhood in Philadelphia.

Has anyone written a book about that?

There were also, I recall but can't find in the online catalog, a few strange little sculpted insects or montsers made out of who-knows-what, glued-together castoffs, like but unlike the Wireman's works, sitting in a glass case, with a card saying that they had been purchased at some time in the past, at some random tag sale or something, and no one really knew who'd made them or where they came from or what they were.

This reminds me, come to thnk of it, of my own first NaNoWriMo novel, with its dirty subterranean room full of mysterious anonymous sheets of paper, covered with odd pictures and odd words.

So maybe I like these things because they resonate with some features of my internal landscape.

Or vice-versa.

So anyway now I am back home with a network conneciton an' all (I have scrolled upward and filled in the link to M's weblog where the pictures of the little boy are). And I will close with today's Selected Viral Memes:

• My personal favorite o' the day, th' Facebook grou An Arbitrary Number of People Demanding That Some Sort Of Action Be Taken; join us!
• The one you've probably already seen just today: Telephone: the Afghanistan Remake,
• Recently expired: Boobquake (via a Dale Innis photo),
• And today's Classic Meme: Boxxy, just because.

Also, hi! *8) ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100409.html#20100411 If you are reading this, I have remembered how to update the ol' weblog! *8)

We just got back from the new Alice in Wonderland. It was fun!

Notes:

• Shouldn't it have been called Alice in Underland?
• The monster is the Jabberwock, dash it, not the Jabberwocky! The latter is the name of the poem. (The little daughter says that they must have known this, and varied it for some conscious aesthetic reason; I agree with the first bit, but so far can't imagine what the reason would be.)
• The little daughter is, by the way, home visiting from college, and it was all four of us, and The Boyfriend, at the movie, and that was fun.
• I think I have seen too many movies (although I really haven't seen that many all told). These days I always feel like the action is a bunch of stock scenes glued together ("okay, Crisis of Confidence here", "okay, Battle Scene Part where the secondary character suddenly appears and saves the day here", "okay, plucky female eye-candy here"), and what differentiates the movies one from another is mostly just the special effects.
• Speaking of special effects, given how much build-up we had about the Vorpal Sword being a powerful force on its own, I'm very surprised that in fact it did nothing to speak of that any other sharp metal thing couldn't have,
• And speaking of plucky female eye-candy, Mia Wasikowska is, I have to say, gorgeous; the camera loves dwelling on her face and shoulders, looking fresh and plucky and un-made-up (through, I kinda suspect, the expert application of make-up), and generally swoon-worthy,
• And the White Queen was definitely evil (she made me think of Tim Curry in Rocky Horror somehow, but M says I'm just weird); I was pleased that she didn't officially turn out to be, though; a little moral ambiguity is good,
• And finally, how did they do that with Helena Bonham Carter's head?? I mean, zomg! hahahahaha!

All sorts of various other things have occurred. I got in a car crash! I did not lose my hair, but the airbags did deploy, and that scratched up my arms a bit and dazed me, and I got an ambulance ride and some x-rays, which showed that I was just fine.

My old (1996?) Honda Accord wagon, on the other hand, was not so fine; just replacing the air bags would have cost more than it was officially worth. So now I am driving a zippy new Honda Civic sedan or whatever it's called, which is a nice deep red color (M's idea, I promise!), and gets 'way better gas mileage, and isn't all full of junk, but still makes exactly the same old noise when I open the door with the headlights still on.

So that is all good.

Work has been crazy busy, I am "leading" a "team" of people who are making "software", which is a computer-thing. This has involved doing "email" and "programming" and "PowerPoint" far into the night now and then, but I have still had time for far too much World of Warcraft (mostly Spennix), and in some sense not really enough Second Life; it's better and more worthwhile in some deep way, but when I'm sufficiently tired, just running around mindlessly grinding honor or running instances in WoW is where I often find myself.

Or napping. *8)

There've been various other things where I've thought to myself "I should write that up for the weblog!", but then I always forget them. They were probably about politics and popular culture and stuff; you know.

We've had some days of lovely cool sunny Spring weather here. This makes me feel simultaneously energized and sleepy, both in a good way. I sit there feeling the air and looking out the window and thinking "I should get out into the woods!", and then I play WoW and take a nap.

Which is all very nice, but doesn't get me any exercise for body-maintenance purposes. So I still do try to get to The Gym three mornings a week, and usually manage at least two.

And now and then I still write in the secret Second Life weblog, although not all that often there, either. I've been meaning to write something about Linden Lab's new Third Party Viewer Policy, but so far it's never quite bubbled up to the top of the queue. Over, say, napping; or actually using a Third Party Viewer to dive into SL.

So anyway! to close with some aforementioned Popular Culture, here are: If I were a Deep One (from Shuggoth on the Roof), and Cthulolita, just because... ]]> http://www.davidchess.com/words/log.20100212.html#20100217 So I got one of these:

the other day, mostly for curiosity and fun, and for the fact that you get a cute WoW pet for signing up, and perhaps tangentially to make it less likely that someone will steal my WoW password somehow and hence all of my gold.

Over the weekend I showed it to the Research Director of the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection at Dartmouth, who was baking a pound-cake in my kitchen at the time, and he was amused.

The fact that they are using two-factor authentication, we remarked, means that my bank tab in World of Warcraft (holding various tabards, magical gems, spare weapons, armor, raw meats, many many saronite bars, and stuff like that) is in a real sense more secure than my Web bank account out in real life (which, after all, holds only money).

Most likely it's more secure than your real life bank account, too, although when I was talking about this with a top programmer at IBM's major East Coast research lab (haha, this is fun), he pointed out that Paypal and some banks (mostly outside the U.S. from what I was able to find casually on the web) are also using it (and some have been for awhile).

So if you're using one of those, you may be as secure as my bank in Ironforge!

Although of course things can still go wrong...

(Interesting how most of these stories I'm finding are from like 2005 or 2007; what's been going on since then?)

Speaking of two-factor authentication, I've been reading Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" (a copy of which has, appropriately, appeared in my office via mysterious channels), and it's great, and also awful.

(Just as the other books of his that I've read have been, really.)

It's great because it's an adventure, it's escapism, it's wild and wooly and you know the good guys are going to win (even if some incidental good guys get killed along the way), it involves mysterious catacombs and historical buildings in Washington D.C. and oxygenated perfluorocarbons and Albrecht Dürer prints and stuff like that.

And it's awful because, well, it's awful. *8) As in the previous books, many of his characters are supposedly super-smart expert genius types, but for narrative and plot purposes they are constantly overlooking obvious things, making unwarranted assumptions, and generally behaving cluelessly. I'm not sure if it's because Brown actually underestimates how smart smart people actually are, or if he wants to let the reader feel superior, but either way it's annoying and/or amusing.

In "The Lost Symbol", the good guys are trying to unravel a centuries-old secret which is protected by a puzzle at about the level of a Sophomore Scavenger Hunt, or the Daily Crpyto-Quote underneath the crossword puzzle in your daily newspaper.

While I was sitting there waiting impatiently for Brown's hero Robert "Mary Sue" Langdon to realize that "Franklin Square" isn't necessarily a street name, I had little flashes of similar novels in alternate universes...

Balanced precariously on the balcony high above the rubble-strewn street, Robert thought furiously. "It isn't an eye," the mysterious voice had whispered over the radiophone. The world's finest minds had been puzzling over that phrase for hours now, roused from their beds by the joint FBI-CIA-NSA-NBC task force that had formed around Robert and his extreme cleverness.

But what could it mean? What wasn't an eye? And if it wasn't an eye, what was it? Could it be a nose? Or a mouth? Maybe a couple of teeth? Or could it be something else entirely, a bit of fluff, a shopping mall, or one of the attractive women who found Robert irresistible?

As the searing heat of the glowing lava began to burn his toes, even at this high altitude, Robert's mind began to swim. It isn't an eye, it's made out of pie, what do I spy? It isn't an eye, aye-aye sir, now what do I —

Wait, Robert thought dashingly, could that be it? Could the phrase be, not "It isn't an eye", but rather "It isn't an 'I'"? The word "eye" and the letter "I" were, after all, what scientific super-geniuses call "homophones", things that sound the same but are in fact different. The word "homophone", Robert reflected, was derived from Greek roots, and Greek was a language that only really elite people knew.

Suddenly, just moments before it was too late to save the world from destruction, he saw the answer. "It wasn't an 'I'" referred to the Crypto-Quote itself! He and the international team of amazingly smart people had been assuming that "W" stood for "I", because the encrypted 'word' WV occurred in the Quote three times, and most two-letter words start with "I", like "in" and "it" and "is".

But now Robert recalled that there were other two-letter words as well. The Hopi wise man that had schooled him in the deep mysteries of the human unconscious had used them: the word "to", the word "no", the word "of". So W in the Crypto-Quote might be T! Or N! Or even O!

While he did not quite see the solution yet, Robert knew that this was just the breakthrough they had been waiting for.

Now if only Katherine, struggling alone in the ruins of the old castle half a continent away, had managed to think of a seven-letter word meaning "a closed plane figure with three or more sides"...

Okay, so that was a bit cruel. Pretty accurate, and also lots of fun; but still cruel. *8)

(And don't get me started on the Terrible National Disaster that the crazy bad guy is threatening to unleash; omg! Maybe I will rant about that when I've actually finished the book.)

As is probably obvious, I actually love books like this, even (especially?) the parts that I rant about the awfulness of.

Maybe I will actually write this one up a bit when I've finished it; it's been 'way too long since I've updated the ol' Book Notes. ]]>