11. March 2008 by emeris.

The shuttle is up again

bbc

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29. February 2008 by emeris.

People always say it is important to take the time to document your code, keep your work organized, and to write scripts that generate your figures all by them selves.

They are not joking.

Posted in physics, math, random | No Comments »

27. February 2008 by emeris.

In avoiding doing homework the other night I ended up in a conversation about when it is appropriate to add to the public discourse on a topic. On one hand it is important that everyone have a voice and in some sense impossible to not have a voice in a democratic system (as not saying anything is equiviolent to agreeing with the status quo). On the other hand it is not worth saying anything if you have nothing to say or are not qualified to say anything. For example are 20ish year old males who have not fathered a child qualified to talk about the emotional ramifications of abortion? It is easy to say how one would react in a given situation, however in my experience the way that one does react in tough situations does not always match how one would have liked one’s self to have reacted. All the logic in the world is useless if the underling assumptions are wrong.

This rapidly generalizes to a whole host of other issues, are only rape victims qualified to talk about rape? are only people in the military qualified to judge soldier’s actions during war time? (i say no, civilians must dictate how the military will behave)

Posted in meta, politics | No Comments »

23. February 2008 by emeris.

Some ideas, such as “Speak like a noun” days, are in general silly, this one takes the cake. If 3.14 is designated as such, does this mean I’m not allowed to talk the rest of the year?

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21. February 2008 by penny gwyn.

The deal between universal pictures and hasbro to make movies based on board games and toys (am I the only one super excited for how awesomely entertaining / messed up a monopoly movie would be?) prompted me to look into how my favorite board game franchise, Candyland, has fared since I last attempted to play said game… when I was 3.

 Inevitably, the metaphoric tides of change have come upon this sugar-coated board game, and clearly, the game was way more awesome when 3-year-old-me played with its plastic gingerbread man game pieces.  The changes start small– a character named plumpy is removed in favor of a new character called mama gingertree. I buy this– clearly any “plump” character is a bad influence on the kiddies and should be replaced with a character that can pass for both candy and a vegetable.  The molasses swamp has now also become a chocolate swamp.  This still disturbs me a bit more because playing candyland was the only way I would have known what molasses is– of course I already knew about chocolate! So minus 10 points from new candyland for decreased educational value.  Maybe the game could have been better updated by having the molasses monster listen to rap on his ipod while texting Mr. Mint?  Most sadly, Queen Frostine was demoted to Princess Frostine, and Princess Lolly was completely stripped of her title.  I think this is a statement on the opportunities for women in the land of candy.  Clearly, there is an issue on the translucent-hard-candy ceiling.  One the plus side, the candy land kids — the blonde-hair-blue-eyed children who are supposedly visiting candyland from WASPy land– have found multicultural munchkins of different ethnicities to be their pals.

Mostly, I’m just pissed that Frostine’s dress is way less pretty than it used to be.

Anyways,  I liked candyland better than chutes and ladders.  I figured out that neither game required strategy from playing chutes and ladders, and when the game does not involve ice-cream royalty, its no fun.  The big ladder that went through most of the board was pretty awesome. 

Posted in Unnecessary Sarcasm, Pop Culture, cause I feel like it | 1 Comment »

9. February 2008 by emeris.

Things like this make my head hurt.  How is this man taken seriously?

But earlier today, Huckabee disputed party leader’s assertion that McCain had locked up the GOP nomination and said he won’t quit the presidential race. “I didn’t major in math,” Huckabee told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting. “I majored in miracles.”

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/livecoverage/?hpid=topnews

a long year indeed

Posted in politics | 1 Comment »

7. February 2008 by emeris.

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.”

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/02/romney-out.htm

Posted in politics | 1 Comment »

7. February 2008 by emeris.

In my last post I refered to information cascades with out really defining them.   They are a form of collective behavior where each member of a group asynchronously making the same decision.   Each member of the group had private information known only to them and public information from the observation of how other members of the group have decided.   Each individual makes their decision based on their private information and the available public information combined in some way.    Because of this dynamic the consensus decision of the group will not necessarily be the same as the decision that would be reached if all private information.

A toy example of this is consider a group of people making a binary decision, up or down, who all have private information that says to choose down except for some very small subset.  Let the aggregation method be majority rule of the private information and last two decision taken.  If we assume that two of the people with the minority information for first and both decide up, then the third person will see two ups (from the public information) and one down (from private) and also choose up.  The same for the fourth and later people as well, thus the group will all choose up, even though a majority of the private information says to choose down.   One such example is choosing forks at a fancy place setting.  It is clear that this is a toy model and there are much more sophisticated  systems, however this displays the important behavior.

Posted in math, random | No Comments »

5. February 2008 by emeris.

Thinking one is clever is one of the most dangerous things to think. While it is true that cleverness can be a great boon for such things at solving math problems, cleverness can also be a great curse because one does not always see the true consequences until it is much too late. Hence, I am exhausted.

One such example in recent history is the Gulliani campaign method. It was greatly clever, ignore the small states and save money for the big ones, unfortunately it failed utterly because this momentum business matters. A lot. But, if it had worked it would have been brilliant and changed the dynamic of how the primaries are run. This does bring up the question of how much the media really matters in elections and what their responsibilities are. Edwards wasn’t doing that badly in the early races, but received very little media attention. After losing his home state he dropped out, arguably a victim of information cascade as much as anything else.

This raises the question if it is good that information cascades play such a large role in our political system, if political systems can exist with out information cascades (functionally or theoretically), or if any attempts are being made to control such cascades.

On one hand the cascade is a rapid way to bring a lot of people to the same view point, however it doesn’t prevent them from all flipping a different direction en-mass (see the realignment with in the republican primaries and Obama’s uptick after Iowa). They also serve as a multiplier of efforts.  If you can talk some number of people to your side, then some other people who may not have received any additional information other than that more people support you, will also join your side based on the judgment of others. This is the implicit reason that endorsements are good for anything at all.

I don’t think a system can exist with out such cascades, given the highly connected nature of this country, nor would it be desirable.  It is valid to extrapolate information based on how other people behave, ie you see people flocking to or from a candidate then it is worth looking into it to see why.

The far larger concern is if there are groups/powers that be that are trying covertly to manipulate the cascades (it is clear the candidates are overtly trying to manipulate them) and if we could even tell if someone was trying/succeeding at it.

Posted in politics, random | 1 Comment »

5. February 2008 by penny gwyn.

This is my new favorite word– http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/sardoodledom

Posted in vocabulary, cause I feel like it | No Comments »