Bluejack

Retreat.

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 17:39:25 -0800

As a new experiment, I am taking January off from all social media. No Twitter, no Facebook, no G+.

And this, too, although given the paucity of posts, that would not actually be noticeable as a “break.”

Those familiar with my situation will know that the past few weeks have been a pretty intense time. I did great damage to a loved one, and the consequences have substantial.

In February — or sometime thereafter — I may take Bluejack.com in a new direction & may or may not maintain a presence on tumblr. Will post with the outcome of the experiment, though.

See you in February.

My first cello-related injury. I was returning a loaner cello...

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 17:03:53 -0700

My first cello-related injury.

I was returning a loaner cello that I’ve had for over a year. For the first time ever, the end pin caught me, just as I was putting it in the car. (The case it came in has a hole in the bottom for the endpin to stick out.)

I have to conclude it was trying to give me something extra to remember it by.

HBO Online

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:36:00 -0700

Brilliant idea: Take My Money HBO — and very popular. But the nay sayers are coming out of the woodwork. There are a number of finance and infrastructure counterarguments, from HBO’s perspective. Ryan Lawler, on techcrunch, argues that the numbers no longer add up when you take the marketing and distribution into account, services currently off the books in the cable arrangement. Put those costs onto HBOs books, and the economics of online distribution no longer work out.

This based on a faulty assumption, namely: “Going direct to online customers by pitching HBO GO over-the-top would mean losing the support of its cable, satellite, and IPTV distributors.”

Lawler states this, but offers no support. There are any number of mechanisms for preventing this loss of support, or transitioning it. (Best I’ve seen so far: start at a high price point to limit cannibalization, and pump some of the proceeds back to the cable system. Another: pull a hulu and limit access to current shows, require the full cable subscription to get access to back inventory.)

Moreover, Lawler completely ignores the potential upside for HBO of slipping out of the cable noose. Cable limits the potential viewership both regionally and economically. Imagine an immediate global audience for an established product that has heretofore been restricted to a very small demographic slice. There are few companies that would walk away from that without giving it serious consideration.

So, let’s be honest: what’s really going on here is that HBO is owned by the cable company itself. Time Warner is calling the shots and acting not in HBO’s best interests or the viewer’s best interests. They are acting in the cable company’s best interests.

Most people think of cable companies as a necessary evil. With the advent of cloud based media (Netflix, Amazon, etc.), Cable companies are losing their grip on “necessary”.

My advice to Time Warner would be: you’re already losing your monopoly, so why not reposition and rebrand in a way that convincingly rejects the evil?

In conclusion, the biggest argument Lawler misses is the simple good will that HBO currently has by virtue of producing consistently excellent programming. Rather than abuse that good will to bolster a dying business model, why not leverage it to invent a new one?

wtwdeclaration: It’s Gender Equality for Dummies! Equal rights!...

Fri, 18 May 2012 11:21:14 -0700

wtwdeclaration:

It’s Gender Equality for Dummies! Equal rights! Equal Pay! Everything your great grandmother fought for!

www.wtwdeclaration.org

anticapitalist: Our real first gay president The new issue...

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:50:31 -0700

anticapitalist:

Our real first gay president

The new issue of Newsweek features a cover photo of President Obama topped by a rainbow-colored halo and captioned “The First Gay President.” The halo and caption strike me as cheap sensationalism. I realize airport travelers look at a magazine for 2.2 seconds before moving on to the next one. I grant that this cover will probably get Newsweek a 4.4 second glance. I also understand that Newsweek is desperate for sales. Nevertheless, I doubt that the Newsweek of old, before it was sold for a dollar, would have pandered as shallowly.

The caption is a superficial way to characterize an important development of thought that the president — along with the country — has been making over recent years. It is also entirely wrong. Like the mini-furor a couple of months back about the claim that Richard Nixon was our first gay president, the story simply ignores that the U.S. already had a gay president more than a century ago.

There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too — he was not far into the closet.

Today, I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual. Fifteen years ago, historian John Howard, author of “Men Like That,” a pioneering study of queer culture in Mississippi, shared with me the key documents, including Buchanan’s May 13, 1844, letter to a Mrs. Roosevelt. Describing his deteriorating social life after his great love, William Rufus King, senator from Alabama, had moved to Paris to become our ambassador to France, Buchanan wrote:

I am now “solitary and alone,” having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.

Tl;dr Newsweek go fuck yourself. We’ve had a gay president before. Stop being a sensationalist piece of shit.

modida: Via We, the Women.

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:31:50 -0700

modida:

Via We, the Women.

Richard Stallman in the Doctor's Office

Fri, 11 May 2012 07:53:00 -0700

A few points of reference:

For some years, Richard Stallman was something of a hero to my young techie self.
After a while, however, Richard Stallman seemed at best cuckoo and at worst not very good at what he thinks he’s good at anymore.
Then I learned that Richard Stallman may well be a pedophile. If nothing else, he is on record questioning whether “voluntary pedophilia” should be illegal. (As well as offering guidelines for best practices in incest (use a condom) and necrophilia (get permission from next-of-kin), among others.)

So, my esteem of him has been in pretty much steady decline since the early 90s.

However, his legacy to the world may well be his transformation of contract law to support intellectual property protection for open source software. Thus, this account of Richard Stallman actually asking to see the privacy notice in a doctor’s office is pretty funny. It always bugs me when I am asked to sign that I accept a privacy policy or other form of license without actually being provided with the appropriate document. To learn that said document may not even exist and/or be available is almost laughably unsurprising.

I don’t want to do it, but I love the idea that there is someone going through life calling bullshit on these guys. I may not love much else about Stallman any more, but for a minute, he’s my hero again.

Common Sense and Theoretical Physics

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:13:04 -0700

There are a lot of smart crackpots out there who regularly publish refutations of relativity and quantum mechanics. There are good reasons to do so: both theories are highly counter-intuitive. There are good reasons not to do so: both theories have consistently held up under experimental scrutiny. There’s a big problem: these two theories contradict each other.

Nonetheless, they are the cornerstones of contemporary physics, upon which far more grandiose (and far less stable) theories have been built.

So, it’s absolutely delightful to see one of the grandfathers of contemporary physics apply the common sense “sniff test” to the whole grand edifice: Behold, Roger Penrose.

Pretty much every word he utters in this interview is something I think on a regular basis, when I think about theoretical physics. That doesn’t mean I’m worthy to fetch the man his evening scotch-on-the-rocks, but it is very gratifying to learn that it’s going on.

Your brain literally gets bored and starts scaring you

Thu, 03 May 2012 15:44:22 -0700

Your brain literally gets bored and starts scaring you:

mcjulie:

When I tried the image they have set up to demonstrate the Troxler effect, where the outer circle is supposed to disappear? I was literally trying to make it happen and I couldn’t seem to. I would get a hint of the fading out and then I would feel compelled to blink or shake my head or something and would go right back to seeing the outer circle.

Is this why I can never see those “Magic Eye” pictures? Does my brain panic when stuff starts to disappear? I don’t know!

I simply couldn’t repro. I stared at that red dot for like two minutes. Felt dizzy, the blue circle blurred from time to time, sometimes there was a little wave in which one eye or the other seemed to lose part of it, but it never disappeared.

I really want to do that staring at my face in the mirror experiment however. I am pretty sure that the monster that appears is interesting information about what the brain thinks of its own identity. I’m hoping my mishap with the dot and the circle is not indicative of an inability to view myself as a monster!

College Sucks

Thu, 03 May 2012 09:12:00 -0700

My friend McJulie posted a link about education. It’s an interesting article, and McJulie’s response is spot on. I started to repost it, but realized I have more to say on the subject.

Much more.

The main point is simple: University as vocational training is a new concept, and I suspect it is one that is about to make an exit. It’s simply not the right tool for the job.

First, a quick take on history.

Before WWII, University was something extremely rich people, or would-be academics, attended. The rich people did it for prestige — their future was assured in any case. The pre-academics did it because for that one vocation, college is the appropriate apprenticeship. A college — a subdivision within a University — aimed to create well-bred 1%ers, and steer would be academics in the right direction.

For the working class — including skilled and specialized workers — there were other forms of education, mostly centered around on-the-job training. Apprenticeship being the most common pattern.

In the U.S.A., the G.I. Bill opened the college experience to a new generation, which meshed well with the changing needs of American business. The increasingly corporate world needed workers who could read, write, employ logic, understand figures. College was, perhaps, overkill for the skillset, but a college grad could generally be relied upon to write a memo.

But where are we now?

The needs of business have moved on. A general purpose facility with basic math and language is, of course, still handy. But the college experience has diverged from its original mission, and business has developed far more specialized needs. To a certain degree, these developments are related — but it’s not working very well. There are two fairly big problems.

1. Universities are run by the academics. Remember those interlopers in the ivy-covered halls of privilege? They’re still there. They’re still doing their vocational training and going on to become professors. But rather than being tasked with expanding human knowledge (which is what they want to do), or stamping out new young men and women of privilege (which is how they used to earn their paycheck), now they are asked to prepare young men and women for professional careers.

You see the problem? The academics don’t know a goddamned thing about professional careers. The training that kids come out with is at best inconsistent, and frequently completely useless.

2. Specialization is the enemy of general education. Not only are kids not graduating with useful skills, they are not graduating with much education at all. There was a time when going to college guaranteed a certain common language. The classics. A foreign language (probably a useless one). The “major” or other direction was an expression of interest, but the education was guaranteed to be broad. A chemistry major would have as much exposure to history, philosophy, and literature as someone preparing for law school.

You see the problem? College no longer offers a good education.

So: Bad vocational training and a bad education?

Of course there are exceptions. Lots of exceptions. And there are exceptional people, lots of them. And some vocations are different from others. It’s a crazy confusion of inconsistencies, so drawing any general rules is risky.

But let me introduce some anecdotal evidence from my current career.

I’m a software developer. I interview a lot of recent graduates, both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. And I despair of the state of computer science education. Graduates in computer science rarely demonstrate the fundamentals of how computers work. Instead, they have typically been exposed to a smattering of languages, and a sprinkle of concepts. They have probably done several big projects, which generally have little to no real-world benefit. And because those were group projects, it’s often hard to figure out what this student right here actually did, if anything. As often as not, the project was the idea of a T.A., and implementation and architecture were guided from above as well. This process can continue on through the master’s degree, wherein a student, again with a group of peers, works on some professor’s current research. These are sometimes cool projects that I wish *I* had an opportunity to work on. But it has no bearing on real-world software development, and any given student may or may not have learned a single useful thing over the course of the work.

Some schools are different: some schools specialize in real-world training and aggressively pursue valuable internships for their students. Not surprisingly, graduates from these schools are much more in demand than graduates from other schools. Universities aren’t stupid, and more schools are starting to attempt this alignment. But Universities are big. They have competing interests. They are slow to change. And individual professors are often resistent to change. Like I said, it’s a crazy confusion of inconsistencies.

So, uh: You’re saying people shouldn’t go to college?

Of course not, and to the link that started it all: young people should pursue their passions. If those passions are academic, or the best way to pursue them involves a tour through academia, by all means. Go to college. For as long as it takes. But if what you want is vocational training for a “good” career, take a good long look at that career to see if college is the right answer.

Let me briefly tour my own history: I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do, but I come from a family of academics, so college was not even a question. I went to public school in a wealthy town, which was a lot like going to private school: pretty much everyone was heading off to college, and there was a pecking order of who got into what. I got into the school I wanted to, but I couldn’t afford it without enormous loans. My parents being academics, I had a great opportunity to go to a state university instead and graduate without debt. Which I did. I ended up majoring in philosophy, which had the final result of convincing me that contemporary academic philosophy is completely bankrupt and I have no interest in pursuing it or anything else academic. So, I graduated with a “useless” degree and no debt. Could have been a lot worse.

One thing young people should know: life has a lot of twists and turns. Our world offers many opportunities to reinvent yourself. The “good” career today may be a dead end tomorrow.

Personally, I got very lucky. There I was shelving the computer section in a bookstore. Well dressed guys in suits would come in and by HTML for dummies. I loved working in my bookstore (really, it was the best time of my life), but after a while I realized that just playing around with my 386sx and browsing a few books from the bookstore, I knew more than these guys in suits. (Ok, to be fair, I had always been an amateur computer hacker.)

In the mid 90’s, if you knew what angle brackets were, you could get a job doing web development. I did, and because I was passionate about it, and had the extremely good fortune to work with some really smart people, I got really good at it.

I can even say my philosophy degree helped: symbolic logic is a fools game, but it does help train the brain for things like recursion and code analysis.

What worked for me: passion and on the job training.

So, to bring this novel to a close. The university system is failing. It’s failing students (poor training); it’s failing society (poor education); and it’s just plain failing. Universities are being treated like businesses, and the numbers don’t add up. Government doesn’t want to subsidize it any more, and the corporate world is similarly skeptical. It’s a house of cards, and it’s going to collapse.

Here’s what we need:

1. Good general education for a white collar society. Every American should have the opportunity to learn the core requirements for a white collar job, if they want it. This should be the same old basics: good understanding of history, literature, basic math, a foreign language, scientific method, and a survey of the breadth of intellectual and professional areas of specialization. Ostensibly, this would be what high school does, but as we all know, adolescents stewing in hormones and home-town adolescent politics are in a terrible place to learn anything at all. A two or three year deep dive on general education — without any expectation of specialization — would do wonders to offering students the basic tools of thinking and communicating, as well as a common language upon which to build their future.

2. Good vocational training for professional careers. Here’s a great example: law. Becoming a lawyer is hard work, and it requires both on-the-job training (internships), broad familiarization with the field and its history, and deep understanding of the theory and practice. It is validated by a test that is reasonably hard to pass. It is not an undergraduate option. More professions should have this structure.

3. Societal support for academic research and true higher education. Universities are burdened with so many obligations they aren’t doing this very well anymore. But there is a reason that society needs these folks. R&D that takes place within the corporate world is extremely valuable, but it is also corruptible, and it is optimized for R&D that makes money. (Ok, university research is also corruptible! Fair point!) But we need a vehicle for today’s intellectuals and scientists to innovate creatively and explore areas of human understanding that do not have a short term profit center. This creativity makes all of our lives better, and results in ideas that change the world.

These three things are probably different things. But whether so or no, we need them. And we need young people with the courage to pursue their passion, regardless of a guaranteed paycheck. And we need them to be able to do this without selling their souls to a bank.

Whether we take a societally structured approach to transforming education or not, it’s going to happen. The current system is broken, and it’s not going fix itself.

And let’s not make it too rigid, ok? Let’s make sure that the bright kid who’s been self-educating for his whole life can still get work in the area of his fascination without being required to jump through 4-6 years of unnecessary training!

Update: I cannot for the life of me figure out how to comment or add a note onto my own blog entry. Tumblr fail, or am I just an idiot? Anyway, to Julie… I completely agree, but I see colleges failing even at this. I talk to young relatives who are in college now and are taking exciting classes that are very relevant to contemporary society, I’m sure, while missing out completely on the fundamentals. I would post examples, but I’m afraid it would just make me look like even more of a fuddy duddy than I actually am.

Bug Memorials

Wed, 02 May 2012 12:15:57 -0700

Bug Memorials:

wscheryl:

Holy cats, this is fantastic!

Yes! I love it!

Giving Conservatives Exactly What They Want

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:25:32 -0700

This is B.S.

I was once a young man who thought anarchy was cool. (Until I read Ursula K. LeGuin’s marvelously nuanced The Dispossessed.) I get it that young people want to rebel, and get arrested and get photographed and generally express their (justifiable) outrage at a crazy world that makes no sense and which does not seem to welcome their input.

I just wish they understood that this is exactly what conservatives want to happen, because it marginalizes liberals and forces even hippy mayors like McGinn to hand power over to the police. More importanly, it reinforces the fear that the center has of any kind of counter cultural expression of anger, and at least in the current environment, pushes the center to the right.

Some broken car windows, some slashed tires, a few broken bank windows, some minor damage to government buildings is trivial in the long run, but it’s just a huge hassle to everyone in the short run.

So, while they want to be changing the world, what they are really accomplishing is solidifying the status-quo as an increasingly stratified, polarized entity. Given enough time and dedication, efforts like these could even topple our democracy — and replace it with the dictatorship they pretend we have today.

I was really impressed with the occupy movement last year which accomodated the punk anarchist crowd without empowering it to violence. Unfortunately, there was no such moderation today.

John Cleese has done a lot of consulting and advising over the...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 17:10:19 -0700

John Cleese has done a lot of consulting and advising over the years. This is one of the better clips I’ve encountered, especially for people who need a creative boost. Some of it is pretty well-understood common sense amongst the creative, but he brings such a clear and persuasive manner of expression to it that it’s worth revisiting.

1. Why does this portal require a label? 2. What is the phone...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:41:13 -0700

1. Why does this portal require a label? 2. What is the phone for? (Taken with instagram)

Brogrammers Beware!

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:36:15 -0700

Must read for people in software:

This article is a riveting introduction to a new manifestation of the sexism inherent in the software development industry.

Particularly well put:

Adda Birnir … said she empathizes with a new breed of coders who are sick of the mainstream view that they are all undersocialized mouth-breathers living in their parents’ basements. “Brogrammers might lack tact, but they’re definitely marketing development in a way that appeals to a new subset of men,” she wrote. By recasting geekdom as an extension of the frat house, she believes, brogrammers are encouraging guys who might have headed to Wall Street to consider Silicon Valley. But if inclusion is the goal, she says, substituting “geek” with “bro” is equally problematic. “Because if there’s anything more alienating to women than a room full of geeks, it’s probably a room full of fratty guys.”

se-smith: [Image: Makpal Abdrazakova in traditional dress, a...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:21:48 -0700

se-smith:

[Image: Makpal Abdrazakova in traditional dress, a golden eagle perched on her shoulder. She looks pretty much totally badass.]

asiansnotstudying:

In Central Asia, hunting animals using golden eagles is an ancient, male-dominated sport. But 25-year-old Makpal Abdrazakova is the first woman in Kazakhstan who has taken the tradition to new heights.

(Source: Chicago Tribune)

I want one!

Once again we discover how hard it is to imagine anything more...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:32:18 -0700

Once again we discover how hard it is to imagine anything more terrifying than reality. James Cameron is probably doing his deepwater stuff for inspiration, more than anything.

Apparently there is a second album by Lechner and Tsabropoulos...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:18:33 -0700

Apparently there is a second album by Lechner and Tsabropoulos which I do not have, but which YouTube knows of. This is similar work, but with percussion!

This is “Bayaty” from one of the most amazing albums...

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:11:58 -0700

This is “Bayaty” from one of the most amazing albums ever: Chants, Hymns and Dances by Gurdjieff. Anja Lechner on Cello, Vassilis Tsabropoulos on Piano. This track is just one of the calmly powerful pieces on this amazing work — but there are some even strong pieces on the album. Because tumblr limits the file size, I’m afraid I could use my first or second choice.

Used by direct permission from Anja Lechner.

High spring waters below the library (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 07:58:02 -0700

High spring waters below the library (Taken with instagram)