O.T.H.E.R.

Christmas

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:56:23 GMT

My dad warned my sister that he might change a recipe slightly and she started to get upset until my dad explained that he just meant that he is going to add a little lime. She added with horror that someone she knows is going to have ham instead of turkey. *gasp* Holidays are about doing the same thing over and over again. It's called 'monotony'. Or is it 'tradition'? One of those two.

A few years ago I tried to convince everyone we should celebrate Jewish Christmas (not to be confused with Hanukkah). Jewish Christmas involves getting Chinese takeout, seeing a movie, and wondering if killing Jesus was possibly a bad idea. Well, I was just voting for switching from the big turkey dinner to Chinese food.

Christmas dinner got crazy for a few years. This time Christmas seemed relatively stress free. Well, I say that even though I am not involved in preparing a big dinner for 17 people. I mean that the crazed stressed-out panic isn't there anymore. It was nice. I wasn't feeling that we just throw out the whole thing and go Jewish Christmas on it this time around.

That's not to say that it went smoothly. My sister had to take out from the oven the wieners-wrapped-in-bacon-and-covered-in-a-brown-sugar-sauce h'ordourves early as something got spilled and was smoking. She had me try them out to see if they were okay. "Jamie seems okay, so go ahead." Anyway, an hour later, I got a headache and went to bed right after dinner. Hmm, maybe the Jews had it right about the bacon.

On Boxing Day, the pipes got backed up and our non-motorized sewer snakes didn't fix it. We rented the motorized snake and there is now a lot less roots and tampons 70 feet out then there was. Did I mentioned that the connection to the sewer line is in my room. I might need to sleep somewhere else tonight.

Anyway, I got tons of used orginal xbox and xbox 360 games (that I picked out) and two Dexter books (the 2nd and 3rd ones), so score.

Books to read over the holidays

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:18:45 GMT

I've been trying to figure out what to read over the break. I think I found it: George Lakoff's books. They looks like what Pinker's Playboy Forum essay was trying to get at.

I found his books through an interesting coincidence. I was reading a bit of Pinker's How the Mind Works. I'm trying to force myself to finish it. The book summarizes a lot of interesting work in psychology, but the interesting stuff is thrown at to you as asides and the only reason I know they are interesting is because I've learned it from somewhere else. One aside I didn't already know is on page 339. It deals with how the difference parts of mathematics have their roots in basic psychology activities. Hmm, interesting... oh wait, we've moved on to something else.

I've been interested in mathematics lately. I haven't done real math for ten years, so I'm trying to get my headspace back into a mathematics mode. I've been flipping through All The Mathematics You Missed... But Need For Graduate School. I was looking at the preface for the Nth time and for some reason this time I looked up a book mentioned that gives an overview of mathematics. Wait a minute this looks familiar. Oh, it's the guy I just read about in Pinker. In the article, it says:

Mac Lane informally discusses how mathematics is grounded in more ordinary concrete and abstract human activities. This section sets out a summary of his views on the human grounding of mathematics.

Huh. Whenever I think about "my philosophy" is always starts with a rejection of Platonic mathematical truth for something biological/psychological, but it doesn't quite get off the ground. I took a cross-listed undergrad/grad course in the philosophy of mathematics back in '99 and everyone thought I was either crazy or joking when I tried to explain this.

The page linked to a similar book by Lakoff and Núñez. Not only that, but Lakoff has this book whose task is "rebuilding Western philosophy in alignment with three fundamental lessons from cognitive science: The mind is inherently embodied, thought is mostly unconscious, and abstract concepts are largely metaphorical." Whoa. Another that looks at the neuropsychology of political views.

[Clicks Add to shopping cart.]

DATGPIMTY 2009!

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 02:19:36 GMT

The annual gagliarchives top 100 prog albums of the year is out and so begins my annual "Discover All The Great Prog I Missed This Year" event. This means that I'll have to start listening to something other than Magma, so it is kind of bittersweet.

Speaking of Magma, now that exams are over I can get to the project of using Audacity to split up Magma tracks so that I can make up the definitive set list. The tracks Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré I, Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré II, and Kobaïa need to be split up so that I can add in the longer versions from Hhaï. There might be some other edits as well.

Looking over the top 100 list, I think my quick overall thought is that there is some good stuff there, but most of it seem to be retreading familiar ground. My favourite, Frost*'s Experiments In Mass Appeal, came out in 2008 in the UK and 2009 in the US. I ordered mine from the band in 2008, so it feels out of place here. I've listened to Porcupine Tree, Riverside, I.Q., Beardfish, Indukti, Wobbler, The Mars Volta, Wobbler, Circa, O.S.I., Satellite, Steven Wilson, Transatlantic, and Pure Reason Revolution [although some more than others]. All pretty good, but nothing all that new and I prefer earlier albums. Sorry. The Keith Emerson Band album is basically an ELP album, but the production here is excellent. Oh, that's 2008 as well, so that might explain why I liked it.

Oh ya, I've figured out why I'm lukewarm about Satellite's new album: I hate the keyboard tone bank. I absolutely hate it. What the keyboardist is playing is quite good as are the songs, but the keyboard sounds are awful. I want to lock them in a room with someone like Jem Godfrey to fix this problem. It should be a much better album than it is.

What is not on the list but should be? Agents of Mercy is basically a Flower Kings album and is excellent. Jannick Top's [ex-Magma] album was very good. Muse was good. The album I've listened to the most is Mute Math's Armistice and I probable listened to their demo, first album, and various EPs more then anything on this list. Oh ya, the new Oceansize was good as well.

So, now I have to find out: were there actually some stand out prog this year? Any recommendations? Or should I write off the year and start hunting down more Magma bootlegs?

Exams

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:08:17 GMT

I had my micro exam a few hours ago and macro is tomorrow.

I keep going back and forth between believing that a) there is a lot of material in econ and b) there is actually very little material, but it just seems like a lot because they are dancing around to avoid saying "partial derivative" and other scary math terms. Right now I'm leaning more towards that there is little there once you can get past the obtuse obfuscation and skip to the math with one big comprehensive model. Mas-Colell et al is in the mail and I suspect that spending some time alone with that will get me leaning back in the other direction.

Close Christmas Call

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:51:29 GMT

My eldest sister asked me what light fiction I'd like for Christmas, so I said the Dexter books. I'm curious to see if he's still not quite human in the books. She forgot what I said and almost picked up the Twilight books instead. Whoa. Close call.

Archivist

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:56:26 GMT

I had an idea. I don't know if it is a good one, but it is an idea.

I applied to a technical writing job last winter, but since I'm unpublished, they couldn't really hire me. I do however have tons of half-written material just sitting around. Joel wants people who are smart and gets thing done, so I should work on that last one.

Maybe I should throw all my related scattered half-finished writings into a dozen or so topics and self-publish them. I mean a private self-publishing on lulu just for myself at first and then I can go through them and see if I can make something of them.

A lyric/poetry book would be very very short, but the easiest to finish. I could assemble all my notes for my unfinished scifi anarcho-capitalist novel trilogy, The Ascetic Sheep Are Mooing, which I was writing in high school. I could finish that Tarot deck (Hmm, the only one who'll let you do individual decks is $65 each + shipping. Ack!) and an associated book. All my aborted Objectivist textbook notes. My issues of darkmatter and other silly bits could be thrown together. I meant to assemble my undergrad essays and unify them somehow. LJBook has my livejournal entries taking up 3000 pages and lulu has a 800 page limit, so there are four books right there.

There is a potential shelf full of material, but not really much that I can add to a resume or let other people buy.

Happy Endings?

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:09:09 GMT

Jon Stewart must write a positive statement beforehand for his interviews so that he can end on a cheerful note. The teleprompter must come up with "[Wrap it up]. So unicorns are going to fly out of our butts and spam will taste like grass feed steak, right?"

This usually works out, but sometimes he says something that is the exact opposite of what the interviewee has been saying. Yesterday's interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin for his book Too Big To Fail had this about changes in the rules concerning the banks.

Jon Stewart: "Well, you, but you, you're feeling good. You're thinking there is going to be progress and there will be accountability?"
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "NO! That's my... That's what I'm telling you."
Jon Stewart: *Hits head with the very large book and throws it on the ground*
Andrew Ross Sorkin: "You're gonna break the floor."

If you want something positive, stop interviewing people about the economy. At the very least stop interviewing people about Goldman Sachs and AIG. No shiny happiness will come of it.

It reminds me of Colbert's interview with Paul Krugman back on July 13th.

Colbert: "Everything is either totally bad or totally better, you have to pick a side."
Krugman: "No, things are getting worse more slowly."
Colbert: "Excuse me?"
Krugman: "Things are getting worse more slowly. We were losing 700 thousand jobs a month. We're probably at this point losing 300 thousand jobs a month."
Colbert: "Can you say anything cheerful? Can you say anything cheerful at all?"
Krugman: "I think I just did. Didn't I?"
Colbert: "'Things are getting worse more slowly'? Really?"
Krugman: "Well, you know..."
Colbert: "You're dying, but you'll linger."
Krugman: "Yeah, uh, this will..."
Colbert: "It's painful, but it'll last!"
...
Krugman: "You do need people to know where the bodies are buried and maybe the best people are the people who put the bodies there, but ah, but I think not quite in this case."
Colbert: "That's the cheeriest thing you've said so far."

Second Year Econ

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:27:46 GMT

I keep wanting to write some stuff about 2nd year, but it's a muddy area. It's in between the economic intuitions that try to make everything supply-demand charts and mathematical models. The math is starting to be introduced, but Calculus is not a requirement, so we can't get very far. I just know enough to say really stupid things.

I also want to give theories about getting out of recessions, but I don't really have the tools to get into the models to convince myself either way. I do have some unjustified half-thought-out intuitions though, three in fact. I like to think of these three as textbookie, sorta crazy, and bat shit insane, respectively.

The textbookie one is targeted inflation around 2 or 3 percent. It's a pretty standard thing to do and I'm not sure why the Fed isn't doing that. Unemployment is high and inflation is around 0%. The textbook stuff is usually the other way though (i.e., the sacrifice ratio), so I'm not actually sure if this is a good idea.

The sorta crazy idea is basically try to get prices to be more flexible. Not just adjusting prices with inflation, but have structural changes so that prices can change quicker. My intuition is that prices can change quicker now. Websites like Amazon.com can who can change prices through out the day and restaurants who have colour printers to print out updated menus should be able to out-compete companies that can't do those. (Seriously? Companies still print catalogs?!?) The more flexible prices are throughout the economy, the shorter the short-run should be and recessions should be quicker.

My bat shit insane idea is along the same idea, but with wages instead of prices. I want to make wages flexible to shorten the short-run. I'd like to index wages to something like the difference between unemployment and the natural rate or GDP and it's natural rate. The idea is that wages will automatically go up in booms and down in busts. Maybe just the minimum wage adjust, but probably more than just that. This is a horrible idea for so many reasons, but it was nice for Krugman to recently make fun of it in his blog.

Philosophy survey

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:58:59 GMT

Philosophy survey results.

Not enough flavours!!

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:52:41 GMT

The Earl Grey style green tea wasn't giving me enough caffeine, so I've upgraded my daily drink.

I first put in a Earl Grey with vanilla tea bag. I then added a green tea bag to it. To finish it off I add in one of those single Crystal Light packets. Usually lemon-lime Crystal Light, but it can be any flavour. Today is Strawberry Orange Banana flavour Crystal Light.

Everyone thinks this is disgusting, but I need my flavour overload.

Family's IT Guy

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:43:09 GMT

I come down home and have to fix everyone's electronics.

Apparently my sister's laptop has a button quick button to disable the wireless card and Vista can only tell me that the driver isn't working. I only realized it was there after the light underneath it flashed when I unplugged the ethernet cable. Now she knows why her laptop's internet will periodically stop working. That's the dumbest feature I've ever seen.

I learned a neat trick that doesn't completely work. My parents have a old tv whose colour is off. The TV doesn't have a degauss button, so wikipedia told me that if you put the tv screen-to-screen with a computer monitor with a degaussing button, you can partially degauss the tv with the monitor. It's only half degaussed, but now that they believe me that it is an easy fix, they are actually going to bring it in to the shop after two years.

Magma

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:57:28 GMT

I've been listening to Magma non-stop lately. Okay, I've been listening the new album by Jannick Top (Magma's bassist) as well.

Vander wrote so much in the 70s that he is still in the process of recording it. Their latest album Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré has stuff that's been worked on for the last 30 years. Some of it appeared in earlier form on Hhai and Üdü Wüdü. This makes all of the double trilogy finally recorded. Well, there's never been a Theusz Hamtaahk studio album, but it's been performed live many times. Zëss another long piece, supposedly over 3 hours long, but the longest excerpt on an official bootleg is 32 minutes long, so maybe that'll be done in the studio sometime soon.

So what is the 4.5-hourish double trilogy about? No friggin' idea. Vander invented his own language and everything is sung in that language. There are some Kobaïan to English dictionaries out there, but they are only have a small faction of the words in it so they aren't any help. There are always periodic controversies that Vander thinks Hitler is the only one who got it right, but we're told that the lyrics are religious instead and aren't particularly pro-Hitler. I have no idea. I don't speak Kobaïan. Funny or die believes it is about a philosophy war (Goy Robot Chicken! Hey Hey Hey I Wish to Borrow Pakistan! So eh Gandalf very soon?).

I still think my favourite album have to be Live/Hhaï, which was the first one I heard. All but one track is from the double trilogy. The thing that makes it special is that a 17-year-old Didier Lockwood is playing violin on it giving the album a more Jean-Luc Ponty feel to it. I'm not very familiar with many of their other albums, so maybe I'll have a new favourite soon.

I feel I should end this with a Kobaïan salutation, but I have no idea what is going on there.

Titillating Dreams, or Aters will be Aters

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:12:11 GMT

I've been dreaming original songs lately. The one last night was performed by T. Lil' Ater or possibly T. Lil' 'ater.

I guess the 'T' stands for 'Tit'. I'm not sure why they didn't go for T. Lil' 8'er myself, but that is why I'm not in charge.

Dentate Gyrus is not the same thing as Vagina Dentata

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:21:18 GMT

Every time 'Dentate Gyrus' comes up in physio psych class I start giggling as it makes me think of 'Vagina Dentata' or worse 'Vagina Dentata Gyrating'.

Just one flaw...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:17:09 GMT

The first text editor I used when I started using Win 3.1 on a 286 way back when was... Clipboard.

It was a great text editor. I liked it much more than the text based editor I had used on the Commodore 64. It had one quirk though. Sometimes when I switched to another application and then switched back all my text was mysteriously changed to some short bit of text. I just had to make sure that I saved my text before switching to another app and just reloaded it if it had changed. Other than that, it was great!

Scale Errors

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:03:20 GMT

One of my favourite bits from the psych class is an odd thing that happens with two-year-olds.

The toddlers are in a room with large toys that they can climb into like a plastic car. They leave the room and when they come back smaller versions of the same toys are there. They recognize the toys and they recognize their size, but somehow they can't quite merge those two things together. They can't figure out why they can't fit into the smaller car. The explanation is that object identification is done with the ventral stream of the visual system and the dorsal stream recognizes the size, but these streams are not communicating properly yet.

How Information Systems Analogous to the Mind Works

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:11:28 GMT

I'm almost half way through How the Mind Works and I've pretty much lost interest. It's not jibing with me.

I guess it's the "Computational Theory of the Mind". I'm not sure why functional equivalence with respect to information tells us anything. That doesn't seem particularly important. So for me Turing Machines and Chinese Rooms seem kinda silly and irrelevant.

Right now I'm taking a course on physiological psychology. That course is on how the nervous system and the brain affect our psychology. Now that seems significant. You know, biology and psychology rather than mathematical informational systems.

Meh.

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:34:51 GMT

Sure, Ikea might have just been revealed to be a cult, but who wouldn't drink Kool-Aid out of stylish yet affordable Vänlig glassware?

Whoa, the 80s

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:21:11 GMT

"To the heroism of the Resistance Fighters--past, present, and future--this work is respectfully dedicated"
- Opening dedication to the 1983 V miniseries

Wait, what?

I guess I haven't watched 80s stuff in a while, so I'm a little startled watching the old miniseries. I'm only a half hour in and I'm constantly saying stuff like "What? You're kidding? [After someone reassuredly says 'Ah they say they come in peace'] Is he being sarcastic? Oh wait, he's not. [After 'Unbelievable'] You are correct sir. Really? Oh come on."

After the pro-terrorism dedication, it opens with a helicopter attack on some paramilitary unit. People are thrown somehow by the bullets coming from the helicopters but they are otherwise uninjured. One person dies, so the leader stands his ground with the helicopter missing all its shots, he shoots the pilot, and the helicopter flies up, to its right, and just out of shot and then an explosion happens somewhere nearby but clearly not where the helicopter is. Someone says "unbelievable" in all seriousness. Soon after that a helicopter attempts to shoot the people in a car by flying down in front of it so the car has so turn to not ram it and the helicopter still misses most of its shots.

I shouldn't have watched this right after Generation Kill.

Okay that was the first four minutes. Later, there is the girl who says she doesn't want to die a virgin and just about every cliche out there is used. People are acting a second too early and otherwise seem to be directed rather than reacting.

Ah the 80s. How I don't miss you.

Dexter

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:41:37 GMT

I keep thinking that while I really enjoy the TV show Dexter, I prefer the first season. In that season there something not quite human about him. In particular, he seemed completely asexual. In later seasons, he just seems like a normal guy most of the time with an unfortunate hobby. We can mostly identify with him now.

Then I worry that I might be alone in thinking this.

Econ Models

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:05:26 GMT

Okay, so all these long-term and short-term economic models I'm learning are fine for junior undergrad classes, but when are we going to get to the time-dependent models with exogenous price and wage resistance coefficients? Price is neither market-clearing nor sticky, well except for when t→∞ and t→0 respectively.

Oh come on, not every article has to be about the Health Care debate

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:34:46 GMT

"The pig is the ideal animal to look at lifestyle and health issues in the United States"

Goddess of Love

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:22:21 GMT

This is going to bug me until I figure it out.

I was listening to Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music - The Platinum Collection last night and while listening to Goddess of Love, I realized that I know the chorus (~ 1:00-1:21) from somewhere else. The keyboards and harp bit in particular.

I thought U2, Marillion, or somebody covered it, but the only cover I can find is by co-writer Dave Stewart and that doesn't have the bits that sound familiar. Google doesn't seem to find really find anything about the song past the lyrics and reviews that are cut-and-pastes of the same line. I couldn't find mentions of someone stealing the chorus, sampling it, or putting it in some movie. I'm pretty sure I never watched Vanna White same named movie, so that's not it if the song is in that.

Update: It might be reminding me of You're Gone by Marillion.

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:39:19 GMT

Ever write an entry re-living past opinions and then after the Nth time rereading it you suddenly find yourself saying "What the hell?! I don't believe any of this crap. It's trivially wrong." and click delete?

I've been doing this a lot lately. If I start to reread entries from years ago, I'm pretty sure I'll delete this whole blog.

Minors and Thesis

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:52:51 GMT

Today had a bit of running around to do some administrative stuff. It now looks like I'll add on a psychology minor and an economics minor to my honours philosophy degree when I graduate next term. That'll make it easier when people ask me my major. "Well, officially it's philosophy, but I have a physics degree and right now I'm actually just taking economics and psychology courses to kill time until the recession is over" can be shortened to "Physics and philosophy with economics and psychology minors".

The undergrad adviser convinced me to finish my thesis. It'll be ten years late and my supervisor has already retired. I don't need to finish it to get the degree, but right now I have two F- grades because of it and both courses will turn to whatever I get on the paper. This is if I can find my pre-draft. I think I have a thesis binder at my parents' place. Wish me good luck finding an electronic version. Oh ya, this is also if I can remember anything about mediaeval dialectical logic. Oh man, and it is if I can find a new adviser who know anything thing about mediaeval logic (i.e., down to maybe one guy) and has time to supervise (i.e., not sure). Otherwise, I need a new topic and a new adviser.