complaints

simply gourmet III

2010-07-14T13:22:00.007-05:00

Back in business! (See in business and out of business).

This time as Something Sweet. We went in there once. Chocolates were crazy expensive. Never again. Notice bench has been moved to such a more appealing location. Click on photo for exciting details.

How to get a teaching license in MA

2009-08-20T10:13:00.006-05:00

You can get a so-called "preliminary" license without having to take any education courses. You need to:

--take and pass two MTEL exams
--have a bachelor's degree in or close to the subject.

MTEL exams:

Communications and Literacy. Everybody has to take this one.

Subject matter. If you want to teach English, you take the English test. Math, the math test, etc. Details. Do the registration checklist which includes registering, deciding on which tests you want to take, and paying. Exams are given every three months.

Some subjects have practice tests. Check if your subject has one. If so print it out and go through it carefully. Depending on the subject, that may be all the preparation you need.

Of course, just because you have a license, doesn't mean a public school system will hire you. It only means that they could hire you, if they wanted to. You will be competing with dozens or hundreds of others, many of whom have bachelor's degrees in Education, at least.

where are the flagmen?

2009-04-08T08:37:00.005-05:00

In the early winter the gas company dug a hole in front of my neighbor's house in Lynn, with a cop doing the flagman's job. Last couple of weeks they've been digging up Bartholomew St. in Peabody, with a cop doing the flagman's job at either end.

What happened to the flagmen? I have yet to see one.

MTEL/DOE infinite loop, or dead end?

2009-03-19T11:03:00.043-05:00

I've signed up to take more MA licensure exams in May, this time Foundations of Reading and ESL. In a similar fit of validation craving three years ago, I took the Communications and Literacy and English Literature exams (described here), which allowed me to get the English Lit preliminary teaching license.

Communications and Literacy is required for all subjects. Foundations of Reading is required for specialties such as Reading Specialist and Moderate Disabilities. In the case of popular tests such as these, the testing company provides practice tests which, if memorized or at least studied carefully, effectively function as source material.

For most exams however, there is no practice test, only a "Test Information Booklet" (list here). The booklets essentially reiterate the requirements set down by the state (here). The booklet for the ESL exam has a couple of example questions. Here is one:

In the early stages of second-language development, which of the following factors in the classroom environment is most likely to lower English learner's affective filters, thereby lowering their inhibitions about using English?

Which brought my little question to mind--where to get a listing of source material to study, to prepare for questions of this nature? I called the DOE and after the usual wait and poke through the menus reached a human to ask this question. As soon as she heard the word "test", she said oh we don't have anything to do with the tests, call the testing company here is their number goodbye.

So I called the testing company (ex-National Evaluation Systems since taken over by Pearson Education Inc., in Amherst MA, to which the DOE has outsourced the creation of all these exams, and which is hiding behind a web site designed to look like part of the DOE) and the woman said, it's all on the web site. Well no it isn't I say. All you list are the requirements--you must understand this, you must understand that, with no corresponding mention of what materials you should avail yourself of, to gain this understanding. It says on your web site after all that "on this site you'll find test preparation materials". She repeated, all we have is on the web site. You could also, she said, check with the school dept. where you're interested in working. I said, I would look for an available job once licensed, not the other way around. Furthermore, it's supposed to be a standardized, state-wide test so by definition not dependent upon the recommendations of a particular school dept. Finally, the school depts. are of course part of the DOE, who directed me to you in the first place!

Frustrated at this dead end, I asked to be connected to a supervisor. You can't do that of couse, but a supervisor will call you back. Which they did while I was out. They effectively repeated what the first woman said (they even said so). Their suggestion was that I ask "coworkers" who had taken the test before, what they had studied. Assuming I have or had coworkers who knew anything about any of this. And that it's their policy not to endorse specific training materials. How convenient for them!

Apparently it is not the responsibility of either the DOE or the testing company to provide a listing of materials you should use to prepare for one of their tests! It's a perfect closed system--self-contained and impenetrable.

simply gourmet II

2009-03-08T06:09:00.018-05:00

Out of business, alas. Simply Gourmet, we hardly knew ye. Now it is Simply Gone thus, using Perl:

$gourmet="Simply Gourmet";
($gone = $gourmet) =~ s/(.*Go).*/$1ne/;
print $gone;

Simply Gone

For some reason gourmets weren't attracted to this charming location. Their sandwiches were too expensive. The last time I went I got a falafel sandwich. The proprietor didn't have any falafel made, so rather than saying so he made a batch while I stood there for 20 minutes watching Fox News. He rushed the job, made a terrible sandwich-- falafel patty the size of a hamburger instead of smaller ones--too well-fried on the outside, raw dough on the inside. Uck.

This grimy little spot is not conducive to a business with any pretense to the upscale. Who next would like to have a go? Maybe something more along the lines of "Stavro's Fresh Chili Dog's", "EZ Bail Bonds", or "Rocky's Collection Agency".

recursive label

2009-03-07T11:00:00.010-05:00

Pause from your dumpster diving for a moment, to ponder the matter of labels in blogger. What good are they? If you attach labels to blog entries, but do not display a list of all your labels, what is the good of the label? If I create a blog entry, say, this entry, discussing labels and label it "label", what will happen? The usual risk of recursion--that the universe might disappear into its own belly button. Let's cross our fingers and give it a try.

Are we still here?

If you click on the "label" label at the left, you'll arrive here, under the heading "Showing posts with label label." Which, sure enough, is what it's about.

How do you display an image of a label? Labels are by definition labels of something else. Little units of Heisenberg uncertainty. (Oops, put a "conflation" label on that sentence. It's the observer effect.) How do you refer to a label itself? The only thing a label cannot label is itself. With another label I guess, that says "label". Pictured here are labels. That's different though.

the Globe and the material life

2009-02-20T19:00:00.010-05:00

The Boston Globe which has historically earned its living publishing materialist porno such as this Decorating DERRING-DO article from a year ago, is having trouble adjusting to the new realities. One of the owners of a "charming property in the Berkshires" makes a token acknowledgment of the virtue of thrift, or rather what a rich person imagines this curious notion of "thrift" might be like. They have "given themselves a renovation budget of just $15,000 a year". A pittance!

"Neither of us likes debt. So if you are looking at faucets, and the one you like is $1,400, you don’t just buy it,” Holben says. “You keep looking till you find the one you like better for $230."

A real pennypincher! Here's a nice Moen one-handle for $229.67 at Home Depot. Acceptable! But Holben's thrift does not extend, of course, to for example the 708 faucets available for less than $100. We do have our standards, after all.

More recently we see an article Closet Case, in which a young woman laments that she has 250 pairs of shoes, and so many clothes that her bedroom closet collapsed. Oh dear! Solution? Re-examination of materialist values? No, silly--hire a consultant to turn an extra bedroom into a walk-in closet!

The current "Spending Smart" series includes an article Gardening, is easy, thrifty, which compares the savings of growing your own tomatoes to the $3 you might pay for a single tomato in "some pricey groceries". And don't forget to plant some fancy heirlooms, to "impress your friends". That's spending smart!

tooting your own cheesy horn

2009-02-20T12:33:00.028-05:00

We are lucky to live near the Market Basket in Salem, where can be found Macaroni and Cheese, Made with Real Cheese! Calling attention to the fact that On-Cor, unlike those other producers, proudly declines to exploit an apparent legal loophole that allows a product to be called "Macaroni and Cheese", even if it contains no cheese!

No such deceit for these guys, no sir. In the high stakes world of macaroni and cheese advertising, they've boldly drawn the line at the cheese, and taken their stand by God. Imagine the marketing work behind this. The frozen foods section of the On-Cor account assigned to some junior advertiser (or maybe those high-stakes guys on "Trust Me") who dreamt once, perhaps, of the DeBeers account, pondering the product differentiation. Can't really use a nutritional angle, so comes up with this. Next stop, the ravioli--"Good source of calcium and protein!"

the high stakes world of advertising

2009-02-10T10:45:00.021-05:00

The trailer for a new TNT show "Trust Me" runs this blurb:

In the high stakes world of advertising, only the best of friends will survive.

Google "high stakes world of advertising" to see its use, not ironically, by the consumerist-mad Boston Globe, in an article about amateur ads, Shopping.com selling a Mad Man Wall Calendar (wow, talk about high stakes!), and other places.

"High stakes" advertising is an oxymoron. A lot of money changes hands in advertising of course, but that doesn't mean that any of it actually matters. What their job boils down to:

Here are the two stars of Trust Me:

The one on the left used to be on uh,
Sex and the City no--Will & Grace. He's thinking, is the cheese too orange?

The one on the right was on Will & Grace no--something called "Ed". He's thinking, are the wedges of cheese wide enough?

If I close my eyes, I cannot these two guys apart.

cheese grating jobs

2009-01-26T21:15:00.023-05:00

Get you some!

New coffee maker with the cappuccino attachment. I need it! What's cappuccino, anyway. Get a new fridge. SUV. You could use some new clothes. Who doesn't need another pair of Nikes. Cashmere. Fur-trimmed chainsaw. Marble-topped kitchen cabinets. Patriots buy red white and blue Harleys, whether they have the money or not! 35 hp router. Replacement windows. Telescopes. Fishing reels. Pimpstar wheels. Too-high heels.

Because at some point, our jobs all became like Senior Product Manager for Deluxe Cheese Graters, Stainless Steel Division.

Growth requires that people consume more than they need. If you don't buy a stainless steel cheese grater because you already have one, or because your aluminum cheese grater is good enough, or because you don't have enough money to buy a cheese grater, or because you don't even eat cheese or even, most perverse of all, because you simply choose to get by without a cheese grater, the Senior Product Manager is out of a job. And so, eventually, are you, because you like most people have a job that depends on people buying shit they don't need.

So the government has to push money into the economy, to get people to stop being afraid of spending, and get them to start buying those cheese graters again, so we can keep our cheese-grating jobs.

That's the solution.

danger everywhere II

2008-08-18T20:18:00.009-05:00

This common coffee cup, produced by Dopaco, Inc., seems innocent enough. No sign of danger. But wait, what's this? What hidden danger lurks within its deceivingly harmless structure? Could you cut yourself on its sharp edges? No. Might you drop it on your foot and break a toe? No! Absurd. Could your child fall into it and drown, or swallow it, or choke on it? No, no, and no. And yet...

...we anticipate danger. It could pose a risk. As a result of your action. If for example you were to fill the cup with something dangerous in some way, the ensuing risk accrues to the cup. If you filled it with lead shot, the cup would then be heavy, and pose a risk to your foot if you dropped it. If you filled it with used syringes and then sat on it, the cup would pose a health risk. Surely these are not the fault of the cup, and it is not the fault of the cup maker, if you fill it with dangerous material. And yet...

The cup may contain strychnine, or razor blades, or radioactive barium. Yet out of all the risky contents you may decide to put in this cup, the cup maker feels the need to warn us only of this one. The contents may be hot.

danger everywhere

2008-06-03T14:06:00.006-05:00

Found on the side of a box of Aunt Jemima waffles. The result of a lawsuit?

Our child burned the house down toasting your waffles unsupervised. How were we to know about the danger! You should have put a warning on your box. It was negligence on your part not to do so. We hereby sue for $10M or will accept a settlement of $100,000 to go away.

city councilors "blast" firefighters ha ha

2008-04-18T16:48:00.005-05:00

The Boston Globe's article about "blasting" firefighters leads with this quote:

"If this practice is happening, it's not right, and it's not fair to the people of Boston," said Councilor Salvatore LaMattina. "It's not fair if people come to work and fake injuries, and then go on workman's comp and disability."

That's blastin em, Sal! Take that!

If it's happening!?? If?? Of course it's goddam happening. It's a matter of public record.

The other examples of city councilors courageous "blasting" of the firefighters, from the article:

"For the last few years we've had diminished funds, and if these allegations are found to be true, we will certainly see to it that the practice is ended," Councilor at Large Stephen J. Murphy said in an e-mail. Murphy added that the actions of a few could taint "an otherwise honorable department."

Councilor Sam Yoon, a strong supporter of the firefighters' union, said he hoped the probe would "provide some much-needed transparency and accountability to the department."

Such withering blasts!

Seventeen-year-old kids have to pee in a cup to work at PetSmart, but Boston firefighters will only consider drug testing if it's part of "contract negotiations". In other words, we'll submit to a drug test if you give us more money. How about they get as much money as the kids at PetSmart?

simply gourmet

2008-04-06T09:34:00.013-05:00

Sunday, 9:30 AM. Ah my quaint lovely neighborhood. The Sandwich Maker on the corner has changed hands yet again. Now it's Simply Gourmet. They didn't bother with a new sign--that's the old Sandwich Maker in the chef's hat. They just painted over the old name.

This place, it practically shouts "Gourmet", doesn't it. And, they have bagels! What better time for a bagel than a Sunday morning. There's a big Now Open sign on the wall, and two Open flags out front. But, it's closed. No bagel for me.

It's open and closed!

Note the bench. Makes you want to sit right down and spend time with your bagel and coffee. I can barely resist the urge. Click on the pic for a better view of this charming spot.

how to program the unit

2008-03-26T10:28:00.003-05:00

For optimal function place the unit within the range of earthly temperature. Unit controls provide multidimensional functionality for your convenience, depending on Mode. Modes are as follows:

Automatic. Pre-program this Mode to cause the unit to automatically not do what you have specified due to pre-programming error on your part.
Manual. Program (do not pre-program!) this Mode to cause the unit to not do what you have specified in "real time" due to programming error on your part.
Manuel. Program (or pre-program) this Mode to make the unit not do what you have specified in the future (manana). (Update using tilde Mode where available.) Do not intermingle or otherwise mingle with programming in Manual Mode or Automatic Mode.
Vibrate/dishwasher. Use this mode to provide sensual delight at inopportune moments such as when Rev. Teabag visits. Vibrates by default, unless another default was specified when in Automatic Mode, or default was disabled when in Manual Mode, in which case the no-default default action as specified by the no-default default action menu item, is initiated. The default no-default default action is to wash the dishes.
Plagiarism detection. Vibrate, emit gong sound (ed.: check for existence of name of sound emitted by struck gong) or wash dishes, depending on default setting, if reference to Rev. Teabag is detected to be plagiarized.

Failure to specify Mode prior to programming will initiate "Modeless" Mode in which results are not guaranteed.

Batteries are not included with the unit. Obtain and insert batteries upon arrival of the unit. Replace batteries before suboptimal performance of the unit manifests in the physical realm. Replacement batteries are unavailable unless otherwise specified. Replace only with batteries approved by the Dept. of Usuriously Overpriced Replacement Parts. Use of non-approved, disapproved or unapproved batteries will void the warrantee unless otherwise specified.

Replacement of flange, flywheel, gasket or rotational cog interface will likewise void the warrantee of the unit unless the warrantee has been voided already for other reasons in which case the result is moot. See The Warrantee of the Unit, Sections 1.1 through 27.12 and Section 27.16 "Cases in which actions that would normally void warrantee are moot".

Do not lose the unit. Loss of unit reduces functionality and is not covered in the warranty. If unit is lost proceed as follows: 1. Find the unit. 2. Do not re-lose the unit.

Warning: Contents of the unit may be hot! In cases in which the unit has contents, which may be hot. Applies only to certain models except where otherwise specified in which case, applies to all models.

in times of peace...

2008-03-23T16:56:00.003-05:00

Cartoon by Grant E. Hamilton, circa 1900, from The American Past by Roger Butterfield, p. 290. Click on the image to see a larger version.

my arabic book sucks

2008-03-23T15:27:00.018-05:00

Course materials for learning Arabic are apparently famously awful and doubtless contribute to the perception that it's a difficult language. Put another way, it's a difficult language made even more difficult by lousy course materials. There are enough examples of this awfulness to fill a separate blog, which time creating however would be better spent studying the language. Here is one example though.

Here's the word for "feminine", introduced on p. 7 of the textbook Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya. It's pronounced more or less, "muwa'nnath". It reads right-to-left. The sperm-shaped thing above the first loop (letter m) is a damma indicating the short vowel "u", thus "mu". The little slashes are fatHa indicating the short vowel "a" thus "wa", and "na". The single dot and the triple dots are part of their respective letters taa and thaa. The backwards 2 is a hamza which is a glottal stop, like a little coughy "eh" sound. The little w is a shadda which means you hold the consonant underneath (in this case the n) a double beat.

All well and good. This is a "fully vowelled" word which is how kids and foreigners first learn to read. Actual normal writing however dispenses with the short vowel markings because adults don't need them anymore thus, once introduced, the book presents the unvowelled form in the next para, as part of the weaning process:

Now the helpful sperm thingy (damma) and the two slashes (fatHa) are gone. The dots remain because they are part of the letters. I'm not sure why the backwards 2 hamza remains but the little w shadda is gone. I guess the shadda is considered part of vowelization but the hamza isn't. Okay, you're the textbook.

Just be consistent, is all I ask.

But what's this! Next paragraph:

Now, the sperm guy is back (the damma, short vowel for "u"), but the slashes aren't back (the fatHa, short vowel for "a"). And the shadda is back! Er, now...what the heck is the pattern here? What are they trying to demonstrate?

But wait, there's more! Turn the page and:

A variant of the second version, with no short vowel markings (sperm and slashes gone), and with the shadda back again!

I know, I'll look in the glossary in the back! And find this.

Hmm. This time the damma is missing, the first fatHa is missing, but the second one is there!

Five variations. This is indeed "hard" because there's no pattern--but it's not the language's fault.

Here's a pedagogical principle to try that's so nutty, it just might work: present words in a particular way and stick to it. If there's a reason to change the presentation, say so, then stick with the change.

the fastest way to learn a language

2008-03-14T08:55:00.003-05:00

RosettaStone's TV ads claim it's the "fastest way to learn a language". Last year the Peabody library got a multi-language license allowing members to use RosettaStone at home, for free. This was so successful among library patrons that RosettaStone wised up and backed out of the deal, so it's no longer available. While it was I had a chance to try it out and as far as I got, it seemed excellent. Level 1 of Arabic costs $209.

The claim of being the "fastest" though, is absurd. Putting "fast" and "learning a language" in the same sentence is preposterous. "Efficient", maybe. A woman in one of the TV testimonials claimed to learn more in a couple of weeks using RosettaStone than "months of formal classes". She must have been sleeping through her classes. Anyway it's not a race, and there cannot be a hurry. You can only retain new information at a certain rate. Marketing to Americans though, the emphasis has to be on go-go-go. And it's funny, you never hear a word of another language, in their ads. People don't want to hear that, they just want to know that it's fast.

I don't think RosettaStone even has a textbook, nor does it include any training in writing a non-western script like Arabic, or composing sentences. Different people learn in different ways. I don't like being tied to the computer, and do better with a textbook and an iPod. Creating playlists of vocabulary, setting the iPod to repeat, and going for a walk suits me.

2007-04-17T11:28:00.001-05:00

carrottop frisbee

2007-02-08T16:19:00.000-05:00

So the Archdiocese is giving up the CarrotTop Frisbee chain.

Quick turn up the radio to hear that again oh, Caritas Christi. My two kids were born at "Caritas" St. Elizabeth's in Brighton, and I am going deaf. Another channeling of the old man--why is everybody mumbling! Scuba diving didn't help. Though of the five senses, hearing is maybe the one I'd miss the least. On any given day, I could do without hearing about 95% of what I hear. I already watch TV with the mute on most of the time, because it's obvious what they're saying.

Be careful!
We have to talk.
Now listen to me, I have something very important to say:
Carrottop Frisbee!

We Have to Talk

2007-01-28T12:05:00.001-05:00

I hate this. Like "talking" is some discrete activity separate from what we were doing when you just said that.

We already are talking! Just keep talking!

Similar to common movie/TV trope:

Are you listening to me? Listen to me. Are you listening? I have something very important to tell you. Are you ready? Okay, now listen...

...then they're shot before getting the words out.

If you've got something to say, just say it.

Children of Men and other wasted premises

2007-01-27T11:50:00.001-05:00

I read Children of Men by PD James about 15 years ago because of its cool premise--sudden worldwide infertility. It takes place in the near future. Years pass. The world's youngest person is a reluctant celebrity at age 18. Then, a girl is pregnant...

I saw the movie recently. Terry Gross on Fresh Air interviewed the director Alphonso Cuarón. They spend a lot of time talking about the technical difficulty and resulting fabulousness of a continuous shot of Clive Owen dashing through a street in mid-battle between British security forces and revolutionaries, on his way to delivering the pregnant girl to...well I never understood to whom.

The movie and the book both waste the premise by using it as a mere backdrop to a chase movie. The mechanics of getting two persons from Point A to Point A may make for movie thrills, but are not interesting. What is interesting are the social implications of no kids. The loss of hope for a society with no future. But books and especially movies have to personalize whatever issue they bring up, for the sake of "story".

Two other movies that likewise wasted a premise:

Jurassic Park, in which the cool concept of smart, small dinosaurs wreaking havoc on an island off the coast of South America, was wasted by keeping them on the island and having them chase half a dozen humans around. Yawn. Imagine the movie, in which they get loose into the mainland, and are too quick and small to be defeated by any conventional means. The typical movie of this type focuses on a large threat but large creatures are easy targets. These are more akin to supersmart carnivorous rats--hard to kill! Societies break down as these invaders breed and spread, while the world is slow to react to this new threat.

The Day After Tomorrow, a dreadful flick in which a new Ice Age is used as the backdrop for intrepid Dennis Quaid schlepping through bad weather from Washington DC to New York, to reunite with his teen-aged son Jake Gyllenhaal. Millions perish while we are expected to care whether Dennis gets to give Jake a huggie at the end.

reggie film

2006-12-07T22:04:00.001-05:00

I hope somebody at the Globe feels embarrassed about this one.

immaculate correction

2006-12-05T10:27:00.001-05:00

As a devout ex-Catholic I find this mistake depressing. Maybe it's the time of year--I find everything depressing. Is the Globe now run by heathens? The Catholic Encyclopedia explains the difference: Immaculate Conception is about the Conception of Mary. The virgin birth on the other hand, is about Joseph being cuckolded by the Holy Ghost. The distinctions make me nostalgic:

The formal active essence of original sin was not removed from her soul as it is removed from others by baptism; it was excluded, it never was in her soul.

The "formal active essence"! Our essence, Mandrake! Or, in terms a Catholic child of a certain generation might understand, the milk bottle representing Mary's soul was white from the start, not stained black like yours. And it wasn't black and they fixed it either. It was white to begin with. No baptism necessary!

The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded.

Vietnam veteran

2006-12-03T09:30:00.000-05:00

Paul Morin of Chicopee MA, the National Commander of the American Legion, claims "I am a Vietnam veteran", but according to the Boston Globe the closest he got to Vietnam was Fort Dix, N.J.

Morin says neither the US government nor the Legion itself makes the distinction between "Vietnam veteran", and "Vietnam-era veteran". Convenient for him! The government makes no such distinction because it only needs a single term to describe that group of veterans eligible for particular benefits--those who served for at least six months between 1964-75, regardless of their location.

Morin was in the '71 lottery and drew number 36. This meant he was "facing the draft in '72". Ordered to report for induction in June Morin enlisted in July of '72. By the time he finished basic training in fall of '72 the chances of him being sent to Vietnam were slim to nil. It was late in the war and we were getting out. The total troop level in Vietnam in '72 was only about 24K (table at the bottom, 1972), down from 156K in '71, and 334K in '70.

I was in the '72 lottery, "facing the draft in '73". It turned out no one from this lottery was drafted regardless of their number, since the last draft order was in '72, for the same reason--we were getting out of Vietnam and were out in '73. So I have never met a Vietnam vet as young as me, and notice when someone close to my age makes the claim. When one of my childhood friends, two years younger than me, died, his obituary said he was a Vietnam veteran. But he could not have been in Vietnam during the war--he was too young.

My older brother was in the Navy in the late sixties and "Vietnam" is on his grave marker, even though the closest he got to Vietnam during his service was Rekjavik, Iceland. Evidence that indeed the government doesn't make the distinction and fair enough as the marker was a government benefit. For Morin to stand in front of real veterans who know better, and say "I am a Vietnam veteran" is another story. It is the height of gall. It's honorable enough to be a Vietnam-era veteran, but disingenuous to claim more than that.

As time passes and people get vague on the chronology, more people like Morin can take advantage and conflate wartime service with in-country service. If he were the head of the Chicopee Chamber of Commerce maybe it wouldn't matter but as National Commander of the American Legion? Come on. He's a phony.

book review rejected by Amazon

2006-11-30T21:19:00.000-05:00

Here's a book review of The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, submitted to Amazon before Thanksgiving, and not posted. It's been modified slightly to include links. I should know better than to be co-opted by Amazon. They pretend to welcome diverse review opinion but not if it might harm book sales.

I presume they wouldn't post it even though I gave the book three stars, because it expresses cynicism about Gates' hucksterism, and recommends reading the standard edition first (which Updike also does). That wouldn't do for a first review. So "be the first person to review this book" remains up on Amazon.

You have to be a literary Uncle Tom, to get published "in the house." "Yes Mas'r Amazon, a fine book--a fine fine book!"

The review:
-------------------------------------------------------------

John Updike reviews this new edition in the Nov 6 New Yorker, which is available online and which I recommend. With 100 pages to go, Updike tired of the "irritable sniping from the sidelines" and switched to the standard Library of America edition.

The Boston Globe interviewed Henry Louis Gates for its Nov 12 issue. In the interview Gates is quick to toss the accusation of racism--"the book is dripping with--how do I put it politely, contextual racism. I made a list of every time Stowe uses the term 'woolly headed niggers.' She must have used that phrase 200 times....That kind of racism makes it hard to get new black readers through the first chapter."

200 times? If blacks are disinterested in the novel because they think it's racist, Gates doesn't help by exaggerating the frequency of the use of the term, then equating that with racism.

Unless it's calculated. He seems to be playing to one audience when speaking--one that will react favorably to a facile accusation of racism, and to another when writing, one that is actually interested in the historical context. Ostensibly he's trying to attract the first to join the second, and uses the "intrusive" (the Globe's term) annotations, he calls it a "call and response", to provide a format more familiar to blacks. Like how black people talk back to the screen at the movies, he says.

After claiming the work is racist, he positions himself as its righteous heckler. Thus under the guise of making the novel more attractive to black readers, he can be both a member of the black audience at the movies, free to heckle on the one hand, and a "literary critic" on the other. Since the former is exempt from criticism he can then use it as cover to take potshots that another literary critic couldn't get away with. He gets to have it both ways.

In the annotations themselves though, he and Hollis Robbins explore the nuance and complexity of racism missing from his interview. Rather than tossing off some flippant "200 times" remark, they praise Stowe for her accurate rendering of slave speech. "Use of the appellation 'nigger' in slave-to-slave conversation contrasts sharply with the demeaning racist term 'nigger,' used by Haley in chapter 1. Stowe's depiction of dialogue among the slave characters is very contemporary sounding and surprisingly accurate..."

And later: "Again, Stowe is uncannily accurate in her depiction of playful conversation between these two male slaves."

I read Uncle Tom's Cabin in a book group a few months ago, and reviewed it here in Amazon (as "Nils Kelly"). This edition contains a wealth of useful background, including a lot that went right over my head when reading the original. But if you're interested in reading it, and you should be, do what Updike did. Get a standard edition and read it through--it's a cracking good read. Let the book stand on its own, without the distraction of the "editorial heckling" (Updike's term). Then when you are finished, have a look at this edition.

reincarnation via lousy metaphor

2006-09-16T10:26:00.001-04:00

"Little Buddha" was on TV the other night. 1993, with Keanu Reeves dressed up as Siddhartha, Bridget "brainiac" Fonda as a math teacher and mum of the reincarnation of a Buddhist monk in Seattle, and Chris Isaak as the dad. Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.

An elderly monk, trying to explain to the sceptical dad that though the body is merely a temporary vessel, the mind is eternal, breaks a cup of tea. The cup he says, is no longer a cup but the tea is still tea! He takes a cloth, wipes the table and wrings out the cloth, and tea drips out. Well then that proves it I guess.

Except it's stupid. The teacup is swept up, put into the garbage and trucked to a landfill where it will slowly decompose into its constituent elements. The tea goes into the carpet and evaporates. Any particulates in the liquid will remain in the carpet until it's vacuumed, and the vacuum bag is emptied into the garbage and trucked to a landfill...

In short, there is no difference between the teacup and the tea, in terms of longevity. Complex systems whether solid or liquid break down and reformulate over time. When the human body breaks down and ceases to function it is disposed of and returns to its simpler elements. To think the mind which is a byproduct of correctly functioning brain chemistry in the first place outlives the material component that creates it is wishful thinking. Our minds are us. Wouldn't it be cool if mind lasted forever! Religion caters to this wishful thinking. No wonder it's so popular.

the mother of all stupid birdhouses

2006-06-22T05:39:00.001-04:00

The sort of thing a crazy unemployed person does. To be stained or painted in the fall. The roof is indoor panelling, not meant to be wet. It should be stained soon to keep it from warping. It's only temporary anyway. The left and right fronts come out like separate windows so in the morning the right panel can be removed and Bella's little cage can be hung, with him in it. Replace the panel, open the outer door, reach in and open his cage door, and he has the run of the place. There's a water pool, a hosta, a swing, things to chew on, bugs, doodads to play with. Room to fly from end to end.

I wouldn't mind living it it myself, if I were a bit smaller.

But he's miserable of course. He just sits in there facing the back door and occasionally emitting an ear-splitting peep. All he wants is companionship. Which means sitting on my shoulder ever at the ready to bite ear, or in hand sitting on thumb being held like ice cream cone getting neck stroked by index finger, ever ready to bite hand. I know he has bonded to me because he bites me slightly less than everybody else. Nobody else bothers with him because after one or two of those little can-opener type bites you say, screw you little bird. Kids are scared of him. So, I'm thinking of a $20 parakeet with his own cage could be hung on the left side, see how they get along. Then build a nice big (not this big) cage for the keet inside.

I want a timid bird disinterested in humans. Bella's too needy which we'd be happy to accommodate if he didn't chomp. Finches are neat but you can't house them with hookbills because of the ah, killing problem. A canary would be ideal, I'd like a singer but he'd be at risk too I think.

the law of infinitesimals, as seen on TV

2006-06-15T16:58:00.001-04:00

We have a sat image of the house Captain. Don't know how much good it will do though--it's from twelve miles up.

Can you get in any closer? We know there's a patio table next to that garage, with a red table cloth. We need to know what Newt had for lunch. He claimed scallops, but we think he's lyin.

I may be able to adjust the image subluxation parameters. How's this?

Much better. Can you clean it up?

Let me just tweak the pixel refractorizing algorithm. Give me a minute. This is tricky, the garage casts a shadow...how's this?

Well whaddaya know--clams, not scallops! Get over to Lily Mere and arrest that Newt bastard and his rat cousin too.

Clams!

TV and movies have both come to rely on this conceit, most commonly to zoom in on a license plate on a van, at night, from tape taken from a security camera. Blade Runner pioneered this bullshit twenty years ago. Now every TV crime show uses it routinely. Without a Trace, CSI, even Law and Order which used to know better, has succumbed. It saves the screenwriters so much time, it's apparently irresistable.

Not that I watch TV mind you.

At the rate they zoom, each pixel would be the size of a bus. This is the digital graphic equivalent of homeopathy, in which by diluting a substance with 99 parts of water, diluting one part of that solution etc to achieve dilutions of 1/1,000,000 at least, you get a result with--absolutely no value? Au contraire--a super-potent medicine! It's the "law of infinitesimals".

the prehistoric hair salon

2006-06-11T09:50:00.000-04:00

Don't be late--catch the Express!

The first graphic I uploaded to my "personal web site", circa 1996. I don't know what it means, probably nothing. Done in MacPaint. From a folder of old graphics, just found. That's me third from the right, between the kid with the mohawk and the rabbi.

Which reminds me of the common TV conceit, the "infinite zoom".

submission and taming of FF

2006-05-24T23:09:00.001-04:00

For Internal Use Only. RE: high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) injections. Craving is satisfied in standard measure regardless of delivery mechanism. Target consumer is a "fat fuck" (FF), typically low-awareness easygoing lemming/tool model, willing to part with high portion of disposable income for near-hourly fix.

HFCS's value is its adaptability to disparate delivery mechanisms, samples as follows: Coca-Cola, Oreos, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice, Stove Top Stuffing, Snapple, Wonderbread, Lifesavers, Heinz Ketchup, Eggo Waffles, Miracle Whip, Pop-Tarts, Fig Newtons, Robitussin, Ritz Crackers, NyQuil, Cool Whip, Breyer's Yogurt, Wheat Thins, B&M Baked Beans, Mott's Applesauce, Cherry Garcia ice cream, Girl Scout cookies, Smucker's Grape Jelly, A-1 Steak Sauce, Wish-Bone dressing, Lunchables, Campbell's vegetable soup.

FF is conditioned to crave any one of the above, and more, at interval of ~90 mins. Satisfaction of craving requires purchase of delivery mechanism produced cheaply relative to selling cost, exploiting FF's mental and disciplinary limitations while optimizing profit. HFCS extracts maximum revenue from the FF channel at minimum cost thus is the ideal transfer protocol for moving value from FF to Government/Commercial sektor.

Future enhancements include increased addictive property, brain cell deletion material to accelerate reduction of awareness, and in the longer term, introduction of "purchase triggers" directly in the HFCS, timed to control the frequency and duration of craving. Beyond use of FF as a consuming unit and wealth-transfer device, target will ultimately be subject of chemically induced mind control via HFCS. To be accomplished under the pretext of national security.

GlassFish terminology update

2006-05-24T02:41:00.002-04:00

When last we visited the GlassFish site in December, I complained that it was not clear what GlassFish actually was--a community, a project, a server? It seemed to be all of those things and yet...if you downloaded, installed, and started the server, the term "GlassFish" never appeared within it, leading you to wonder if you installed the right thing. Uh, didn't I just install "GlassFish"? Why doesn't it say "Glassfish" anywhere?

I also suggested that what the so-called GlassFish download actually downloads, namely the "Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9.0", is ridiculously named. I suggested instead the "Sun Jas9".

Here five months later is progress, of sorts. GlassFish is still a project and a community. Now it's a technology too! But at least they no longer refer to it as a thing unto itself. The term is now correctly used only as an adjective. That is, they no longer talk about downloading or installing "GlassFish". Instead they say things like "this is the place to download general distribution releases related to Project GlassFish", and they refer to the above ridiculously-named thing as the "SJSAS PE 9.0", which doesn't exactly roll off the tongue but they have to keep their precious "Sun Java" coupled in there, even if it makes the acronym unpronounceable thus useless.

Still, their attempts at explaining themselves remain terrible. On the new GlassFish page is this at the bottom:

Sun Microsystems, the inventor and leading advocate of Java technology, is releasing a preview of the Java EE 5 SDK . the next generation of enterprise Java which includes(1) the Beta version of the Sun Java System Application Server PE 9.0 (SJSAS PE 9.0). The SDK is a defining release because the newest version of enterprise Java makes building robust, scalable enterprise applications easier than ever and is the perfect platform for implementing SOA and Web 2.0 applications. The Java EE 5 SDK is built on(2) the SJSAS PE 9 which is based on the bits developed by the open GlassFish community, led by Sun, who is developing an open source Java EE 5 application server(3).

So:

(1) The Java EE 5 SDK includes a beta version of the server (SJSAS PE 9.0)
(2) The Java EE 5 SDK is built upon the SJSAS PE 9.0, which means it is built on a subset of itself. This is the software equivalent of being your own grandpa. Try to draw a picture of it.
(3) Sun is developing an open source Java EE 5 application server. What, another one, in addition to the SJSAS PE 9.0? No, not a different one--the same one they just mentioned at the beginning of this same sentence!

The downloads page claims that the GlassFish project is an implementation of the Java EE 5 specs. But a project cannot be an implementation of anything. Elsewhere on the page they get it right: the GlassFish community provides milestone builds that implement the current version of the spec.

The Idiot and dependency injection

2006-05-05T19:53:00.002-04:00

Detail from The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, Hans Holbein, 1520. This painting plays a central part in Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot which our book club has just read. At the same time, reading about Dependency Injection in the Spring Framework caused conceptual conflation between Christianity and object-oriented programming, as follows.

Prince Myshkin the "idiot" is supposedly a Christ figure, though that was not obvious to me. His innocence waxed and waned depending on the requirements of the plot. But it got me to thinking about the elegance of the structure of Christian belief. Namely that Christ has suffered and died on the cross, to atone for sins you have yet to commit. He has pre-suffered for your convenience. Since as a fallible human you have sinned and (this is the key) will continue to sin, Christianity offers the attractive benefit of a pre-solution. Your problems have already been solved, by Christ's suffering, even before you have them. To take advantage of this great offer, you must merely sign up, to believe His word, and obey Him. In return for which you will get 90 virgins (oops wrong religion), salvation and eternal life in heaven with Him. But hurry, time is limited!

Similarly the Spring framework offers a pre-solution to the problems your Java bean classes will encounter, even before they have them! The Spring framework injects necessary functionality into your bean classes. To take advantage of this great offer, your bean classes must merely sign up, in the spring-servlet.xml file, and obey Spring.

In both cases shortcomings yet-to-happen have been extracted from the unit (a bean class, or you), pre-solved, then made available back to the unit. The result is an improvement in efficiency, at an affordable price!

A pattern that resurfaces in such different domains is compelling indeed.

giant buddhas

2006-04-24T12:07:00.001-04:00

Here today...
We saw The Giant Buddhas at the Museum of Fine Arts on Friday, a documentary by the Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei about the Taliban blowing up three 1500+ yr old statues in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan in 2001. The local Taliban were following a directive from the half-blind Mullah Mohammed Omar to destroy "un-Islamic graven images", which covers a lot of ground. (What's it to Omar anyway, I wondered, he can barely see in the first place...)

I enjoyed the theatre and the company and the dinner afterwards, but didn't think much of the movie itself which was a collection of related stories stitched together in a non-linear (so "artistic" I guess) way. We heard from an al-Jazeera journalist who at great peril managed to film the explosions, a local Hazari family living in a nearby cave, an archaeologist looking for additional giant Buddhas nearby, and a glamorous Canadian-Afghan actress/novelist whose father had visited these statues years ago. We heard the director's point of view through a narrator. They visited China too to seek out a re-creation in a Buddhist theme park that had been stopped by the government.

Frei's camera lingered on Nelofer Pazira's pale green eyes for much longer than necessary. It seemed like she was Frei's true interest.

Angry fundamentalists who as good anti-modernists didn't even have the technical skills to blow things up, needed to rely on Saudi engineers to complete the task. Technology itself as part of modernism is an abomination yet an exception is made for it only insofar as it can help you murder your enemies. Thus, yet another religion that conveniently disregards theological purity in favor of expedience when something actually needs to get done. More routine hypocrisy.

...gone tomorrow
And what effect could this gesture have on the beliefs of Buddhism? The Taliban are angry ignorant boys, acting out on the world stage. We'll show you! No one pointed out the metaphysical irony of the act. All they did was prove the Buddha's point--impermanence is the only reliable condition. Like their one-eyed Mullah the Taliban are blind, to their own folly. They do not think, they only follow, like militant lemmings.

Do my bidding, my lemmings! Not by my authority but rather, because It Is Written! Do not concern yourselves with the struggle of education--I will save you the trouble and interpret the holy books for you, freeing you to devote yourselves to prayer. The fact that What Is Written happens to be what I want you to do anyway is a fortuitous coincidence! Worried about death? No problem--I shall provide the optimistic certainty you crave. You will live forever in the afterlife, I guarantee it! And with full-breasted virgins feeding you peeled grapes, and pistachios and those expensive Medjool dates. And a flying carpet--why not! In return for which I ask only that you blow up, or get somebody to blow up for you if the math is too difficult, anything or anyone who displeases me.

Who, my lemmings, can offer you a better deal than that?

MTEL

2006-04-11T18:26:00.001-04:00

I took the Mass teacher's exams for English in March and the results arrived yesterday. I passed the Communications and Literacy, and the English subject matter tests. So now I'm qualified for a "preliminary" license. (But not the "initial" license because, in a terminology misuse reminiscent of "before you begin" syndrome, "initial" is not the first level of license, but the second.)

Everyone who wants to be teacher must take the Communications and Literacy test. Its proper name actually is, "Test to Exclude Non-Native Speakers of English." It focuses on such vital knowledge as the difference between a colon and semicolon, without which a teacher could not effectively communicate with his students. It is mostly a simplified version of the English subject matter test so if you are taking the English test, it's like taking the same test twice, only without the questions about Emily Dickinson. The test purports to test "communication" but mostly just tests picayune points of grammar. I bet it's because the testing company saved themselves the bother of designing a better communications test by just re-using questions left over from the English test. Less work for them and who does it harm anyway besides a few foreigners.

Non-native speakers of English have a difficult time with this test and that should be changed. Native speakers of English though ought to be able to get through it, at least with some study. The Globe published three stories of teachers who had failed these tests. For two, English was not their native language. For the third, a native English speaker with a master's degree in education, the problem was supposedly "test anxiety." I think anxiety is simply an indicator of your level of preparedness. It's a symptom, not a cause. And a person with a master's degree should be able to pass her subject matter test. I have some sympathy on the other hand--this teacher and one of the others they wrote about were dance or phys ed teachers. The test tests the wrong things for people doing these jobs. It has a kind of tone deafness.

I mentioned this to the members of a sparsely-attended meeting of my book club. One is a teacher retired after 32 years. I expected him to grouch, which I have heard from others in kneejerk fashion, about "low standards" but was surprised to hear him say, "you can't predict how people will react--people react differently." Some people won't fit into the cookiecutter of a standard test and we risk losing talented teachers as a result. But you do need some basis upon which to assess qualifications. Nothing is perfect but on balance testing seems like a reasonable solution. There ought to be some avenue of appeal, but that risks the development of yet another bureaucratic black hole.

The Globe also published a letter from a supposedly highly-qualified math teacher who seemed indignant that he was not considered highly qualified by the state since, apparently, he has not taken the math subject matter test. Shouldn't the solution to this grave injustice be obvious, to such a fine mind as his?

Sample question:

The paragraphs above contain:

--a spelling error
--a misuse of quotations
--a misplaced conjunction
--a sentence out of order
--none of these

java certification

2006-04-05T15:43:00.001-04:00

I passed the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) 1.4 exam this week, getting 45 out of 61 questions. It's as much a memory exercise as a test of understanding--if you can pack your brain with enough mnemonic tricks to retain dozens of arcane details, you can pass, even without understanding how they function together. No, that's not really true--the number of details necessary to remember to pass exceeds my capacity for remembering arbitrary facts.

It's easier to remember that which you can understand. Memory via brute strength is inefficient. Understanding happens slowly by encountering a plain fact in enough different contexts that eventually you create enough associations that the conceptual basis for "interface methods cannot be static" for example, becomes apparent. Then it becomes easy to remember or better yet, you don't have to remember, you can reconstruct what makes sense from the web of associations built around a fact. The contextual basis of memory.

Or something. I don't expect to make much sense while recovering from memory overload.

For most of the questions you either know the answers, or not. There is little or no "figuring out", because it tests knowledge rather than problem-solving ability. And the multiple-answer style of many questions (select the two correct answers among the six) virtually eliminates the benefit of guessing.

The pissant erstwhile strictness of the exam, which includes several threats, is obnoxious and comical. The woman in charge of giving the test, though "Prometric certified", was easygoing and allowed me, in a breach of protocol, to take my coffee into the test room, to make up for the fact that I had to wait. Though I was scheduled for 9:30, anytime that day was fine she said. Since she was having trouble downloading the test I went to the library for an hour. Some people say that last-minute studying does no good but that last hour helped me--I got two or three questions right thanks to that last review.

linkages

2006-03-28T08:40:00.000-05:00

From Richard Dawkins, Postmodernism Disrobed:

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.

Well that is rather harsh. Certain jobs such as White House spokesperson or manager require you to appear to be communicating even when that is exactly what you do not want to actually do. Jargon's purpose is to fill otherwise empty air with an illusion of meaning. Mysterious acronyms are added for extra obfuscation. Average listeners will assume that everyone in the room but them understands and that it is only their own ignorance of the topic that prevents their understanding. Perhaps they missed or dozed through the meeting in which the acronym was explained. Few are bold enough to risk exposure to interrupt a bath in the warm goo of this verbal pudding to ask "excuse me, what is KPF mode?" Keep the Plane Flying, of course. Everyone knows that. Haven't you been paying attention?

Such terms are needed to hide unpleasantness. "G-Dick" sounds less depressing than "your job just went to India". "Leverage" sounds better than "take advantage of" or simply "use", so "leverage the infrastructure" sounds like you're doing something clever when in fact it only means that you are using what's already there.

Abstractions achieve the status of concrete nouns over time. "Efficiency", abstract enough to begin with, has become a noun measurable enough to be countable so can become "efficiencies". Which you can then attach an "action verb" to, to sound dynamic, thus "drive efficiencies". A "linkage" can be "linkages", as concrete as sausage links. "Synergy" is likewise an abstraction you can treat as a concrete noun, and "leverage". This language shares with poetry a purpose other than plain communication. Its purpose lies beneath the words--to evoke anti-meaning, to sooth, to mesmerize. A manager has the soul of a poet. Here we explain why your job just went to India:

While eating our own dog food
I will open my kimono to display
the linkages
to the plane that we keep flying
that keeps the boat afloat
that leverages the synergies of the infrastructure,
and drives efficiencies into the regions.

farewell, my lovely clam

2006-03-24T18:25:00.000-05:00

I discovered today that my favorite clam shop, Bob's on Highland Ave in Salem, has gone out of business.

Fried clams are in my blood. As a kid we lived next to the "Famous" Clam Plate at the south end of Brown's Pond in Peabody. It had a big sign with a blinking arrow pointing to the restaurant, wrapped around a smiling woman holding a big plate of yummy clams.

"Famous" seems to mean "owned by Greeks", in Greek because every dinky little sub and pizza shop in the area labels itself "famous", and they're all owned by Greeks. It could also mean "not famous."

Many Fridays my mother would just send me over there for a clam plate so she didn't have to deal with cooking fish. I got a take out and ran home and ate it by myself on a little tray in front of the TV. Clams, french fries, coleslaw, tartar sauce, ketchup. Heaven! In those days clams were cheap. Sometimes I'd get a seafood plate for the scallops too.

Somebody set fire to the Clam Plate in about 1966, then set fire to it again the next year. They said the owner had gambling debts. I live in the same neighborhood now and pine for that joint.

Later when we lived in Nahant I got my clams from The Tides. Clams were still cheap. I used to get a large box and eat the whole damn thing sitting on the rocks on the beach, behind the restaurant. The Tides went out of business and changed hands about five times. Now it's owned by some out-of-town company, and they couldn't be bothered with local food--it's all frozen. You can get tilapia and Chilean sea bass there, but not a fried clam from Ipswich.

When I lived overseas after several years away the only things I missed about home were clams and the Bruins. My sister who has moved to New Mexico is similarly afflicted with the yearning for clams. When she visits she makes the trek to Woodman's whose clams are good of course but it's too far to drive. I don't like that you have to go out of your way for clams. Our mother found Bob's. It's across the road from Wal-Mart and next to a storage place. It was completely lacking in character--the lighting was harsh, the decor yellow formica and brown panelling. Most of the clientele were elderly from the senior ghetto across the street. Unlike Woodman's no one travelled more than ten minutes to go to Bob's. But its clams were as good as Woodman's any day.

Twenty years ago at Digital I had a computer named "exclam". Computer names were limited to six characters. Its motto was "Once a clam but no longer--Ex-clam!".

Now, till I find another clam joint nearby, that's me. A man without a clam. An ex-clam.

noun string contest

2006-03-10T16:47:00.001-05:00

A noun string is too many nouns strung together as adjectives. They are a classic example of bad writing, because you can't keep track of what modifies what, so can easily lose your way in the sentence. Sun and Open Source documents are littered with these. Here's the reigning champ:

the Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8 runtime deployment descriptor

The tech writers at Sun must toil under the heavy shadow of some lawyer-inflated style guide, and readability be damned. They're so afraid somebody will hijack the word "Java" that they say "Sun Java" every time. Yea we get it, you invented Java. And what about "Platform"--what is that? Isn't it enough to just say server? Isn't a server a platform that applications run on? And "System" is pointless--it adds no value. So all of this:

the Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8

...is just a long way of saying:

the Java Application Server

As for the edition, is there an Edition 7? An Edition 9? Do you really need a different runtime deployment descriptor for each edition? Isn't it just version info--you only need it under the "About" in the help menu, you shouldn't put it in the name of the thing.

But if indeed the version is somehow critical, how about an acronym? The Sun JAS8! Guess not--lawyers are fainting, left and right. If an acronym is too racy, then here is an improvement that jettisons the version number, the pointless "system", and the redundant "platform", for the sake of readability. It's still too long, but breaks up the noun strings with a helping preposition at least:

the runtime deployment descriptor for the Java Application Server

Too simple?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Runner up:

this Sears MasterCard Choice Rewards Certificate coupon...

Not a mere certificate or coupon, but a Certificate coupon!

where Mad magazine led me

2006-02-27T13:20:00.009-05:00

As for so many of us who did not encounter them in our native habitat, my first exposure to Jews was in the early '60s through Mad magazine. All these nutty, fun-to-say words--ferbissiner, schlep, schmuck, chutzpah--where did they come from? They were Yiddish. The Mad magazine people, the "usual gang of idiots", were Jews, from New York. They were funny in a new way--subversive, outrageous, ridiculous. Poking fun at everything, including themselves.

What a relief to discover that there were other wisenheimers out there. I was not alone. The Three Stooges, another seminal influence on my early worldview were Jewish too, but I didn't realize that till years later.

At St. Newt's Prep we learned more about the Jews including actually meeting some, and watching movies like Night and Fog, about the Holocaust.

I went to Europe in 1975. In Berlin I worked for a month as a volunteer at the Sankt Gertrauden Krankenhaus in Wilmersdorf, a giant state-run nursing home. Many of the patients had been soldiers in WWII--real Nazis. Our job was to feed them, give them their schnapps and their pills, and just provide a bit of humanity. My Mad magazine Yiddish didn't get far but a few knew some English or French. Our primary task was to give them baths. Many were missing arms or more commonly legs. A few didn't want to be given a bath but it had to be done so some wrestling was involved. They were tough codgers and some were pretty big. I picked up a little German to add to my Mad Yiddish.

I spent December in Egypt, visiting friends I had met working in Holland. Then I flew from Cairo to Amman and spent a week in Jordan. I crossed the Allenby bridge and went into Israel where I spent ninety days. I worked for most of that time in Eilat, first for Israelis at the power station, then after being fired, for two Arab brothers who used day laborers to help provision ships docked or anchored at the port. The Israelis were by and large arrogant, abrupt, quarrelsome. They ridiculed and harassed the local Bedouin and had no interest in we few westerners whom they termed "beatnikim", and regarded as dabblers in adventure whereas they were true macho guys and lived the real thing. I took solace in the notion that for all their bluster their country would collapse in a month without massive subsidy from my country. The Arab brothers on the other hand though rough were honest and funny and I got along well with them.

Returning to Jordan over the same bridge on Easter Sunday of '76 I met Peter Jennings in the bus and talked to him. He was returning from a report from the West Bank and was with a blonde woman and a cameraman. Debonair! He spoke Arabic to the border guards. I continued my trip passing through Syria and Turkey. I noted again and again the cordiality of every other group of people in the region, in contrast to the rudeness of the Israelis. Old world manners versus frontier society gruffness. I made a distinction between Jews and Israelis, and developed a prejudice against the latter as a result of my experience with them, that took some time to overcome.

Back in Germany in '76 I worked for five months in Bavaria in the kitchen of a US armed forces recreation center on Lake Chiemsee between Munich and Salzburg. It had been used by the German army in WWII. The baker had worked there since the war. He showed us pictures of Nazis standing out back next to the dock, including him. Hitler's "Eagle's Nest" was just down the road in Berchtesgaden.

One day I visited nearby Dachau.

I saved most of my wages and in the fall travelled through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India on the way to Australia. As an American I was popular in Iran. Everybody wanted to be my friend. I had an opportunity to remain there and teach, but declined. Three years later in '79 the revolution came. I was living in Japan and watched the Iranians on TV with their "Death to America" placards and later with American hostages and thought but surely, this cannot be! Didn't you want to be my pal, not so long ago? I realize you must engage in theatre, to say anything the tyrant of the day commands you to say, in order to survive. I understand. But don't expect me to take the sincerity of your outrage seriously, next time.

Over time my anti-Israeli sentiment faded. I appreciated their disinterest in religion, and came to terms with their brusque, unpleasant persona since it is after all a reaction to the docile public demeanor of their European ancestors, which contributed to their demise. The Nazis exploited the old-world manners of the European Jews. Their tendency to be polite and go along, in an effort to fit in to these cultures that barely tolerated them anyway, rather than make a tsimis, led them right into the trains. Thus, never again. Before it was "Don't make trouble!" Now it's "Don't fuck with the Jews". Better to be feared than liked, was the lesson. Fair enough.

And I've come to be wary of superficial friendliness. "Come join me for tea, my very dear friend!" is to be taken as seriously as "You have delivered a grave insult to my religion!" The friendliness and the anger are both ostentatious, theatrical. As if to say look, see how friendly I am! And look, see how angry you have made me! Such talk is designed to obscure the true, underlying motivations. But you can get too suspicious too. Much cordiality is genuine. But when is it genuine, and when is it not? It's hard for the dinky shallow Westerner to tell and you risk offense of course, by guessing wrong.

So maybe you put up with the rude jerks if they make their intentions clear at least. And maybe you put up with the sweet talkers without ever quite relaxing around them. Such prejudices and irritations swirl and simmer and reformulate themselves around the most recent outrage emanating from the region. Who do you trust today? Sift through the layers of history and intrigue again each time. Americans have no natural feeling for these layers that everyone in the Middle East carries in their bones. Bush the typical dumbass New-World simpleton only gets history as far back as cowboy movies. Yer with me or agin me. You're for democracy as defined by me, or you're with the terrorists.

And many in the Middle East who know better choose to ignore the complexity and seek to stir up the rabble for the venal and irreligious goal of remaining in power. To distract the populace from their miserable lot, claim your authority is divinely inspired, and blame an external agent for your shortcomings. The Jews! Though dishonest, it's too convenient a formula to give up. Religion is the opiate of the people, and anti-Semitism is the crack cocaine of prejudices. The addiction to it is completely reliable. Feh.

official business

2006-02-25T19:30:00.001-05:00

Twice last week I received documents via the post, containing, ma foi, official business! Obviously of greater importance than ordinary, unofficial business, I made haste with the letter opener, only to discover that these were alas only missives (one a "public notice", the other a mere "notice" so, presumably not public) from "Suzuki of Lynnway", and Pride Hyundai, also on the Lynnway, urging me to hie myself thither and avail myself of two "three day only" events. The public notice was for a "special market test program". The regular notice was for a once in a lifetime event.

One piece of official business emanated from the "Regional Disbursement Center", whereas the other came from the "Regional Notification Center". Both Centers have a Dept. of Communications, in an Electronic Mail Section. I wonder if they are at risk of consolidation? I'd be worried, it seems like a bit of overlap.

Though from the Electronic Mail Section, the papery feel of the documents indicated to me that these were not "email" in the usual sense. I wonder who handles their electronic mail--the Paper Mail Section?

The information for the Postmaster, if the Postmaster concerns himself with the delivery of presorted bulk mail, is surely helpful. Regulation F010, Section 4.1, remarkably, exists, as does the "official DMM" which is the Domestic Mail Manual. This information provides the Postmaster with the information he needs to conduct the research necessary to direct the letter-carrier, if the document is undeliverable as addressed, to throw it in the trash.

I am especially fond of "Attention Recipient. Deliver directly to addressee". No funny business. Don't put the notice in your pants and caper about. Don't hide it behind your back and ask, which hand! No sir, you must deliver it directly to the addressee.

And as if the recipient and the addressee were two different people! In fact I, as "United States Postal Customer" (Pride Hyundai) and "Resident" (Suzuki of Lynnway), was both the recipient and the addressee! I therefore amused myself at their expense, by passing the documents from one hand directly to the other, and back again! Ha, the joke is on them!

And I think you would agree that threatening the recipient with punishment for obstructing the mail is quite unnecessary and in fact casts a pall over the entire official business. The Electronic Mail Section must not think much of us recipients. Or perhaps it lacks self-confidence and blusters like a bully to cover a fragile ego. Relax I say! I, the recipient, have no intention of obstructing the U.S. Mail. In fact since I, the recipient, have received this document, which perforce I have since I am reading the warning which is addressed to me, I cannot obstruct its delivery to me because it is, at the point I have reached, a metaphysical impossibility.

Oh Electronic Mail Section, free yourself from your suspicion and bitterness! We, the recipients, and the addressees too, await you, arms wide, ready to embrace, to forgive, to love.

Who are we to judge?

2006-02-16T12:30:00.001-05:00

Visiting David and Ahmed in Montreal in January, the issue came up of a rather disturbing quasi medical/religious practice, metzitzah b'peh, done commonly in New York as part of the tradition of some nutty religion. Ah but who am I to say--what right do I have to judge! (Check for yourself.)

Thus David who is an AIDS-and-human-rights consultant lent me this book. Though not a subject of interest to the general reader I suppose, Ruth Macklin's writing is unusually clear for an academic. Most anthropology and sociology writing is impenetrable, full of jargon and bloat.

Macklin presents a variety of problems facing human rights workers worldwide. Generally they demonstrate the conflict between the wish to provide "universal" human rights to persons within cultures in which those rights conflict with traditional practice. A common argument against the application of a universal human right that conflicts with local tradition is that it is ethical imperialism--that you (ie the Westerner) have no right to impose your values on our culture--there is no "better" or "worse" set of values, only yours, and ours. You do not have the right to criticize the practices of a culture, from outside that culture. Thus do many customs considered abhorrent by the "west" find justification in this "relativist" rationale.

You can go back and forth on this issue. On the one hand it is useful to be reminded that you are after all a product of your own culture and so cannot think much outside the limits of its assumptions. Much as we think we are independent thinkers, we are not "neutral". Mostly we are merely reflections of the common values of the society in which we happen to live. Just like everybody in other societies.

On the other hand if you refrain from criticizing the practices of other cultures because of this relativism, well there goes any notion of universal human rights. They keep slaves in Mauritania, to this day? Well that's their right. Families in China kill baby girls because boys are worth more? Well, who are we to judge!

So Macklin dives in, and tackles issues like female genital mutilation (keeps the women from being promiscuous!) , informed consent or not, for medical decisions, the definition of death, organ transplantation, the reproductive rights of women, and the rights of individual women vs the rights of their families. Macklin describes each case then picks her way through it, to arrive at a well-argued conclusion.

Now I have an idea what a "bioethicist" does. Since reading the book I have mentioned a couple of the dilemmas described, and am surprised to see how quickly people propose an answer to the thorniest of problems.

For example, anthropologists are trained to observe the culture they study, but not to interfere, so as to avoid potential damage to the culture and to their own research. Feminists have an obligation to help other women. What should a anthropologist who considers herself a feminist do when confronted with a situation in which a woman is being abused, and asks for help?

What can be considered "abuse" from outside the culture is considered normal behavior (eg, wife-beating is common Kenya), inside the culture. Is abuse a universal concept, or relative to the culture in which it occurs?

Asian regimes charge that western notions of human rights have no place in their countries because of the notion of "Asian values", in which the common good supposedly transcends individual rights. But Macklin says "...we should not fall prey to the threat posed by "Asian values" to the universality of human rights because the arguments in favor of that perspective are flawed and self-serving tools of leaders seeking to maintain their power by preserving the status quo."

A western-trained doctor who has an obligation to explain the risks of surgery so that a patient may make informed consent, confronts a Navajo who will simply reject the surgery if he hears about the risk, due to the Navajo cultural prohibition against talking about things "in a negative way". What should the doctor do?

A Laotian woman brings her baby to a western doctor, who notices burns on the baby's abdomen. It turns out the mother has burned the baby in an effort to cure a folk disease, by passing a burning reed dipped in hot fat over the skin. If the skin blisters then the baby will recover. If not the baby needs to be seen by a shaman who must perform a spiritual ceremony. In this case the burns numbered five, but as many as eleven burns may be needed. Is the mother abusing the baby? She means well. Who are we to judge?

The book is full of such puzzles.

winter diving

2006-02-13T19:58:00.000-05:00

Diving on New Year's Day with the "Dive Society", at White's Beach in Manchester-by-the-Sea near Gloucestor.

Water temp was 41F, air a relatively balmy 27F. Four of the eight of us wore wetsuits, four dry. Wetsuit is okay for one dive--you may be cold when you're done but so what, you're done anyway. That is me 2nd from left.

They go out every Sunday starting January, in winter. I went again on Jan 8, but not since then. Wearing wet gloves I was fine on Jan 1, but hands were very cold on Jan 8. Don't know why. I do have "dry gloves" which attach to the dry suit and are warm. Next time. Fussing with all the gear in the cold before and after, and cleaning the gear at home later, is a lot of overhead for a small amount of fun. After the Jan 1 dive we had a cookout on the beach, and had a big gas burner to stand around while drinking beer and coffee, and eating hot dogs and cake--it was Don the dive leader's birthday. That was fun.

Visibility was for shit but that doesn't matter much because there isn't much to see in winter anyway. The fish are in Boca Raton playing canasta and the lobsters are out deeper. The dive leaders are always upbeat and emerge saying things like, "Have you ever seen so many flanged nudibranches!"

Lots of people get scuba certified locally but only dive in the Caribbean, because the viz there is fantastic, the variety of sealife is amazing, the diving itself is easy. The water is warm and clear so you don't need bulky suits to stay warm, or much weight to get you to sink.

Local divers joke that Caribbean diving doesn't build character. If being scared out of your fucking mind counts then I must have developed plenty of character because I have experienced panic twice and near-panic once by now. I suppose there is something to it. In Bonaire last year though diving four times a day, the word "insipid" crept in. Too much beauty, too much fabulousness? Do I prefer being cold and frightened?

I like diving locally because once you've made the initial investment of $23 million, it's cheap. Unless you go on a boat. I don't care if the viz is more than 10' because usually I'm close to the bottom looking at stuff nearby anyway. I can't bring myself to give a shit about nudibranches, and have no interest in photography which is a specialty the shops push as a means of selling you more gear. Everybody takes the same pictures below so I can just get copies.

I do it mostly because I like the sensation of floating in the silence, listening to my own breathing, and trying to maintain neutral buoyancy. Just being a neutral breathing unit, only kicking enough to move along, feels like a step back along the chain of evolution, to a more contented state of being, mindless yet still aware.

wakey wakey

2006-02-11T12:52:00.004-05:00

Insomnia's diurnal twin is narcolepsy. Whatever sleep I lose at night, there's a corresponding time during the day when my body expresses a strong wish to make up the deficit, and I can konk out in a matter of seconds. Once I nearly fell asleep on my motorcycle on Rte 128, driving home from work in the evening rush hour. I've since sold the bike. I have gotten sleepy scuba diving too.

Falling asleep during the day is distinctly different from nighttime sleep. The sleepiness manifests as a feeling of luscious warmth in the area between the shoulder blades and up the back of the neck, as if the upper spine had turned into warm syrup. It's a luxurious irresistable sensation and the surrendering to it is delicious, unlike any I experience in bed while trying to officially sleep for the night.

Insomnia is an eye-of-the-camel problem. You can only overcome it by not thinking about it. At night while insomniated I read books so boring that they can send me to sleep in less than a minute if I look at them during the day. Insomnia vs boring reading material is a clash of the consciousness titans. Dostoyevsky, Enterprise JavaBeans--no topic is boring enough to defeat insomnia.

mind control--I wish!

2006-02-09T19:54:00.001-05:00

Daniel Dennett from Tufts has a new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. He's making the book tour rounds and appeared on WBUR's On Point interviewed by Tom Ashbrook, and on meaningoflife.tv interviewed by Robert Wright. Ashbrook the "interrupting chicken" was completely unable to slow himself down long enough to get any depth out of Dennett. Ashbrook is so jacked up by his time constraints he keeps one eye on the clock no matter what the subject, yet still manages to yammer on:

"Our time here is short! Daniel Dennett take us on a tour if you will, of your sense of what it means to be Dennett in the here and now. Give us the gist, the flavor, the back and forth, the trip into the provocative new journey of ideas that is Breaking the Spell. Very briefly please! Right after this break!"

Wright on the other hand can take his time and actually knows something, so does better. In Wright's interview, in the topic of consciousness, from about minute 2 to 4, Wright and Dennett really get somewhere.

Dennett says that consciousness is merely "fame in the brain"--an ongoing political battle among "contentful events" vying for control. The event that wins at any given moment is what you are conscious of and that, simply, is what consciousness is. It's not that the winning contentful event in turn kindles some further thing that is consciousness.

This deromanticizes consciousness, which is fine by me. And it matches my prosaic perception of my own consciousness. And therefore must be right! No, I do not claim that because I feel or think a certain way, that it is therefore the case. I do not believe I can influence my health by thinking positive thoughts. I think my thoughts do not matter and that they affect nothing. I think nearly all of my thoughts are trite and fleeting, and are only the result of excess processing power of the frontal lobes. I am Homer Simpson, distracted by butterflies.

Sometimes I walk through Lynn Woods alone, along various routes which take a little more than an hour. Recently along one route I found my mind cranking through one "contentful event" of recent years. Events in the past are stored in the brain as narratives burned into the synapses. Once begun memories of the event invoke the same predictable tedious rationalizations and emotional reactions, in the same predictable sequence. Then after a few minutes, it was on to the next contentful event. Which seemed familiar in turn, at a particular fork in the road.

To my dismay, I realized that not only do contentful events replay themselves with remarkable internal consistency, but that when I go on this walk, they occur at the same point in the walk! At minute 17 of the walk, my thoughts are x1, and so my mood is x2. At minute 26, my thoughts are y1, so my mood is y2. And that whenever we engage in an activity that occupies the body but leaves the mind free to churn, the mind is apt to replay its little collection of anecdotes, in the same sequence, again and again.

Do we have any control over this? Can we direct our own minds, for more than a few moments? Can we "not think" some given contentful event, and think about something else instead, by means of the exertion of will? Grrr, I'm not going to... No. You cannot exert conscious control of your own mind for more than brief moments. It runs on autopilot, not under the control of "you". Off it goes at first chance, either to its habitual list if unoccupied, or to the unselfconscious task of solving whatever procedural chore is at hand otherwise.

Recently I met a guy who had been laid off, who said, "I can be sad about what has happened, or I can think of it as an opportunity to explore new ideas." I thought, that's bullshit. You can't choose how you think or feel about things. You do not have that level of control, because there is no place for "you" to stand outside your thoughts and emotions, to exert control over them, because consciousness isn't a separate place beyond them.

What you can do is practice self-delusion. In which if successful is to be found solace. And you can practice vigilance in keeping stray bits of the stream of consciousness from getting through, by using interference--headphones, radio, chitchat about the weather, even meditation. Or keep it occupied with mundane tasks. Anything to avoid hearing your banal little mind recite its paltry repertoire yet again.

No wonder people are so willing to allow some other agent to drive--the imam, the guru, the vodka.

Meat engines, that's us. Smart lemmings, proceeding zombie-like through the days, reacting predictably to the same stimuli, our minds churning endlessly through the trivial detritus of our puny lives, all the while thinking we are so grand and unique with our deep minds and eternal souls. What greater proof of the existence of god do we need, than our own magnificence!

I hate those blue bin people

2006-01-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

The Lynn DPW sent out a 2006 calendar to show when to put your recycling bin out with the trash. You have a green bin or a blue bin, and alternate weeks. You stick the calendar on your refrigerator so you can see if it's your week or not on trash morning, so you don't put out a bin that they won't collect.

Only problem, green is blue, and blue is green. Are the colors transposed, and green bins go out on days marked blue? Or is the text transposed, and the days marked in the right color on the calendar?

On January 9, blue bins and green bins were out all over the city. Green bin people guessed that the text was transposed and that the calendar colors were correct. Blue bin people guessed that the colors were transposed and the text was correct.

On that same day we received a corrected version in the mail. Too late for that day though. You might think for a publication whose only purpose is to distinguish green from blue, that they would get it right the first time. But it's so easy to carp, to be a critic!

It turns out that the text was correct and the colors on the entire flyer were transposed. Green bins go out on green weeks, and the blue weeks were now the green weeks.

So January 9 turned out to be a blue day, not a green day, and the green bins left out were uncollected.

I have a green bin. I hate those blue bin people. They're so smug. They think they're better than we are. And I hate the ones who guessed correctly most of all. Elite holier-than-thou types. Snobs.

One day they'll get their comeuppance. Comeuppance!

memoirs of inauthenticity

2005-12-26T11:08:00.000-05:00

Before seeing Memoirs of a Geisha I thought my objection would be the de-Japanification of that exactly most specifically Japanese of all topics--geisha, for the sake of commercial viability. I was wrong, that is only one of my objections.

The movie plods oh how it plods. The Chinese actresses who play the three main characters do their best but have been cast only with an eye to box-office appeal. They are all better draws even in Japan than any Japanese actress. Though fabulous, especially Gong Li as "Hatsumomo", they don't look Japanese, or convey geisha or Japanese-ness. They can't. It's not simply a matter of acting. Is this a quibble?

There is the language problem. Dubbing and subtitles are box-office poison of course but this alternative, in which everyone speaks English in a slightly British, over-deliberate halting manner, abstracts the characters right out of their setting. Japan without the Japanese language misses most of the point of the place.

The conceit is that you are equipped with a universal translator, or that it's just a really good dubbing job. This conceit breaks down if you introduce actual English speakers into the movie which they do. When the Yanks arrive Sayuri speaks English to one of them (hey, it's Stottlemyer from Monk!) without missing a beat. Huh? Michelle Yeoh speaks beautiful real English to Ziyi Zhang who is obviously just speaking English phonetically.

I used to watch Sumo on NHK TV. You could hear the commentary in Japanese or in English. Even though I couldn't follow all of the Japanese commentary, I couldn't bear to listen to the American announcers. It was excruciating, because a Japanese art, minus its native language, becomes a travesty. The language is woven into the art.

People wonder why Americans can't tell the difference among Asians. We often just use the term "Chinese". But Asians here will mix it up if there's a buck to be had in the blurring of the lines. Chinese restaurants serve cheap sushi and sake at their luncheon buffets. Few of the knife-twirling cooks at Bisuteki are Japanese, but they pretend they are. We are none the wiser. Who cares, a bit of non-threatening faux-exoticism is enough for us. Beyond that and whoa, easy on the details, Poindexter-san!

This would all matter less if the story itself were not so leaden. Eight-year-old Chiyo falls in love with the "Chairman" after a five-minute exchange? How old is a Chairman? It is absurd. Fifteen or whatever years later, after surviving the war, she is now in her mid-twenties, so he is now what, sixty? Chiyo has grown into the adult Sayuri, while Ken Watanabe looks as if he has aged about a month. An apparent 30-year age difference is reduced to a more palatable say, fifteen-year difference at the end, but if you do the arithmetic, the result is preposterous not to mention creepy. Will she be happy for long, spoon-feeding him his tofu in his dotage?

Hatsumomo and Sayuri get into a fight and start a fire in the okiya. Hatsumomo further lights the joint up by spilling oil lamps, and...nothing? The whole neighborhood would have burned down. What happened?

The deprivations of war changed everything, forever, says the narrator. World War II is a picturesque distraction consisting of a couple of trucks rolling through "Gion" or Thousand Oaks, CA, and a shot of planes overhead. These years pass in a minute. Then we see Michelle Yeoh again, expecting her to have aged terribly. But she too seems to be little the worse for wear, having also aged about a month. Her deprivation seems to consist of changing to a modest gray kimono and leaving her hair untended for a day or so.

Bah! Too bad. Compare this turgid plod to Kar Wai Wong's hallucinogenic 2046 also starring Gong Li and Ziyi Zhang, and the House of Flying Daggers, to see what Zhang is capable of. And of course, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to see Zhang and Yeoh fly.

My favorite Asia-through-the-eyes-of-clueless-Americans movie is Green Berets made in 1968. Starring John Wayne, and featuring such local talent as Jack Soo (Det. Yemana from Barney Miller), and George (Mr. Sulu) Takei playing South Vietnamese Army officers. Wayne, Aldo Ray and a crew of paunchy, freshly shaved and scrubbed middle-aged farts lumbering around Georgia among the arid pine forests playing soldier in the jungle. The pine jungle. It looks about as much like Southeast Asia as Norway.

before you begin--oops, too late!

2005-12-22T11:26:00.001-05:00

Here is email to first time users of an online course, with instructions on how to get started:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have been enrolled at OnlineExpert. You may log on at http://computer.expert.com
Your logon e-mail address is: xxx@xxx.com
Your password is: xxxx

For first time users, before logging onto your course, please do the following:
This.
That.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This drives me bananas. Put the thing you have to do first, first. Here is the correct sequence:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have been enrolled at OnlineExpert. First time users, please do the following:
This.
That.
Then, log in at http://computer.expert.com/
Your logon e-mail address is: xxx@xxx.com
Your password is: xxxx
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the first, stupid case, I start to log in assuming that the first thing they tell me to do is the thing that I should do first. Then I get to the next step, which says to do something else before doing the first thing.

This mail is generated when you register. It's only of any use the first time, when you need to do the extra steps. If I'm not a first time user, the mail is old and doesn't contain any steps I must do--it just holds the access info.

Asking the reader to skip ahead past an unnecessary step is okay. Asking the reader to go backwards to do a step before they have already done a step is not okay.

This is a variation on the inane Before You Begin syndrome. If I'm reading your Before You Begin, it's too late, I've already begun. Name it something else.

Before I began, I was in the kitchen eating a peanut butter sandwich.

It's as if they were writing the steps then somebody said ooh wait, they have to do this first. No wait, they have to do this too, and this! And the writer didn't make the effort to rename the steps. Writing by afterthought. Thus:

1. Before the Before the Before You Begin
2. Before the Before You Begin
3. Before You Begin
4. Begin
5. Do this before beginning
6. Do this step first.

Do not put anything before the beginning. Before the beginning there is nothing, by definition.

Begin at the beginning, and nowhere else.

bartleby otsuka pynchon RAQ

2005-12-20T10:06:00.002-05:00

Bartleby the Scrivener is a short novel by Herman Melville written in 1853, about an office clerk famously known for his refusal to do work by repeating the phrase, "I would prefer not to." Blog commenter Bartleby has twice now expressed curiosity about how certain entries in this blog relate to certain lyrics found in Japanese pop music.

The first comment to "Brother Linus channels the SubGenius", posted on 11/01/05:
Interesting. Can you explain the significance of the lyrics "Koi suru onna no ko no Victory" by Morning Musume?

The second comment to "A is not Q's patsy", posted 12/20/05:
But how does this relate to Otsuka Ai when she chimes "waratte waratte kimi to ashita aitai" ? Could it be related to the crying of lot 49?

I will address the second comment first due to a mood of LIFO-ness.

The line is the chorus from Otsuka's single "Smily", which has sold more than 300,000 copies:
"smile smile, I want to see you tomorrow"

Otsuka Ai or Ai Otsuka when she's filling out her US visa app, is a highly-popular, 23-year-old typical 95-lb super-cute ("kawaii") J pop singer. "Kawaii-sugi" (too cute by half) if you are as sick of "kawaii" as I am. But that's the mold. She'll be a beautiful woman someday if she ever grows up. She has that thin nasal voice demanded of the genre, but plays the piano and writes her own lyrics at least. The Smily video is online. There's even a Smily ringtone!

The Crying of Lot 49 is of course the trippy convoluted '60s Thomas Pynchon novel, assigned to me in senior-year English class at St. Newt's Prep. (How did Bartleby know this?) Like most books assigned at school, I never got through it, but remember its later fame for being among other things the source of several references in the '84 movie The Adventures of Buckeroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension ("no matter where you go, there you are"). Mostly notably perhaps, the Yoyodyne corporation, workplace of the Red Lectroids. The protagonist in Lot 49 was Oedipa Maas, a young woman (like Otsuka--hmm...) who inherits her boyfriend's estate when he dies. Lot 49 was an auction lot containing her boyfriend's stamp collection. "Crying" a lot is what they call the bidding at an auction.

But this is all preliminary. A complete explanation of the relation between Q is not A's Patsy, Otsuka Ai's Smily lyric, and The Crying of Lot 49 will require months of further research. Until that time you may amuse yourself by looking at my old Tokyo home, which I shared with a certain Chris Bartleby among many others, and which could have fit into a Pynchon novel, no problemo.

A is not Q's patsy

2005-12-18T09:18:00.001-05:00

(In which A responds to perceived bullying by Q and rejects one of Q's criticisms of the FAQ.)

A. I don't answer to you, you pompous windbag.
Q. How dare you?

A. Your questions serve only to advance your narrow agenda, not to provide illumination.
Q. You presume to lecture me?

A. Indeed it is in the answer that the knowledge lies, not in the question.
Q. Are you questioning our arrangement?

A. The question is subordinate--merely the path to the answer. The answer is the destination, the goal.
Q. Do you seek to undermine my authority?

A. The phrase "asked question" is not necessarily redundant.
Q. But did I not force you to agree, that unless a question is asked, it cannot exist?

A. A statement is only truly redundant if it is redundant from every possible perspective.
Q. What are you talking about?

A. Though a question must be asked to exist, it is also valid to consider, for example, how often the same question is asked. One question may be asked rarely ("Where are the Crispins of yesteryear?"), while another may be asked frequently ("Where did I leave my goddam keys this time?").
Q. What is your point?

A. Distinguishing between questions that many people ask, and questions that few people ask, and answering the former, is not only an efficient means of conveying information, it is also a non-redundant perspective on the phrase "asked question".
Q. Can you run that by me again?

A. Unless the phrase is redundant from every possible perspective, the phrase is not redundant. I have provided a non-redundant perspective of this phrase, therefore the phrase is not redundant.
Q. Do you think anyone will listen to you?

A. Indeed "asking" a question, is the most common thing people do with questions. In fact, since someone must ask the question for it to come into being, it is not only not redundant, but necessary.
Q. Surely you don't think you can get away with this, do you? How will people pronounce FQA?

A. To ask the question is the most common way to convey it. For example, you ask "Where are my keys?", and you can ask the question "Where are my keys?" (Redundant, or not? you be the judge!), but you cannot just question "Where are my keys?".
Q. What about posing a question? Pondering, bringing up?

A. Yes, and you can "question" authority. But authority is not a question. I need only demonstrate that "asked question" is not redundant from every perspective. My work here is done.
Q. Wait, don't go. I'm not done! Don't you want to hear my next question?

A. In conclusion, unlike your questions about the redundancy of the phrase "asked question", your questions about the hypocrisy of the FAQ writer just making up questions with no idea of their actual frequency, showed promise. Perhaps some day you will ask questions (!) worthy of my answers.
Q. Can we meet again?

CL smites the defilers

2005-12-17T12:11:00.001-05:00

The Catholic League is shocked (shocked!) at the defilement in the South Park episode "Bloody Mary", described in control my life, please.

In a news release, they request of the nearest available Catholic, Joseph Califano who is on the board of directors of the company (Viacom) that owns the company (MTV) that owns Comedy Central, that he intervene to get an apology to Roman Catholics and a pledge that this episode be permanently retired, and not made available on DVD. Failing that they ask that Califano issue his own statement of condemnation.

Take that, Butters! But if the Queen Spider couldn't stop Red Hot Catholic Love from getting on DVD (season six--in stores now!), probably Califano won't be able to stop Bloody Mary, either.

And not a word about the point of the show which was the ease with which we give up our self-determination in favor of relying on whatever hint of a greater power happens along, no matter how ludicrous.

Oh that's right, encouraging the worship of Mary's face in a window stain or a bagel is the business they're in.

the why FAQs suck FAQ

2005-12-15T19:55:00.001-05:00

Q. Isn't the act of asking a question, what makes a question be a question?
A. Yes. It is the asking that brings the question into being.

Q. Can an unasked question exist?
A. No! For it is in the asking, that the question comes to be. Left unasked, it does not exist.

Q. Isn't, then, the phrase "asked question" not only redundant, but downright stupid?
A. Yes.

Q. There would be no point, then, in creating a FUQ, for frequently unasked questions?
A. As a Zen koan, perhaps. And it would be more fun to say than "fack". But though an amusing concept, such a list would be impossible to create due to the metaphysical contradiction alluded to in the earlier questions.

Q. Would not "FQ", meaning "frequent questions", be a better term?
A. The purpose of the A in FAQ is to provide pronounceability of the acronym. "fack", though a hideous word which sounds like you are ejecting a hairball from the throat, is easy to say. "FQ" is too much trouble to say. Redundancy and stupidity is the price we pay for this convenience.

Q. "Frequently asked" implies some mechanism for sending questions to you, the FAQ owner, such that you can tally them up and answer the ones you receive most often. Is there such a mechanism?
A. No. The implication is deceitful.

Q. How then, do you know what questions are frequently asked? Or even asked at all?
A. One question at a time please. The answer to both is the same. I do not know.

Q. Are you just making up what you imagine people might ask, because you have no way of actually knowing what they might ask?
A. Yes it is true. I make the questions up because I have no way of actually knowing.

Q. Are you aware that the practice of providing a FAQ with a new product is inherently dishonest, because a new product has not been available to those who might ask questions about it long enough to count up the questions to determine their frequency?
A. Boy you got me on that one.

Q. How do you live with this hypocrisy?
A. It is a source of unending shame.

Q. In fact is not a developer the worst person to come up with the questions in a FAQ, because that person knows the product too intimately to put themselves in the position of the very person who needs the FAQ the most, a person who has just come to the product knowing nothing, who looks to the FAQ for informational sustenance?
A. I am forced to admit that you are correct.

Q. Is a FAQ just a lazy way of writing your documentation, because it's too much trouble to organize the information logically, by topic?
A. Yes, it is true.

Q. Is the real reason you have a FAQ, in spite of in your heart knowing it is deceitful and lazy, that you think people expect you to have one, because everybody else does?
A. Yes my friend. You have revealed the truth.

Q. Are you aware of the fallacy known as ad populum or "appeal to popularity", which states that because most lemmings approve of a claim (in this case, that a FAQ is necessary or good), that the claim is therefore true?
A. Yes. At one time most lemmings thought the world was flat. But that did not make it so.

Q. Do you resolve then to get out of the FAQ-writing business, and pledge yourself to righting this wrong by being honest with your readers?
A. I so resolve. Henceforth I pledge to write either proper topic-based documents, or provide the less pronounceable but more truthful QIGPMABIFHNFIITW--Questions I Guess People Might Ask But In Fact Have No Fucking Idea If They Will.

Q. When encountering a new object, what do you suppose is the most frequent first question about the object?
A. What is it?

Q. What is GlassFish?
A. I don't know. The question is insufficiently frequent to be addressed by a FAQ.

the GlassFish breathmint floorwax dilemma

2005-12-15T14:36:00.001-05:00

After a couple of months I have begun to dip my handsome new toe back into Java. It's a world where words mean anything--how I missed it!

"GlassFish", for example. What is it, exactly? Go to the GlassFish page and figure it out.

First, the page header is "GlassFish Community" but you are in the Projects tab, not the Communities tab. You might think, naive you, that they would explain what it is, not who they are. (A rude secret: I do not give a shit who they are--I only want to know what it is!) They are a community! But it looks like a project--there's a button on the left after all, that says GlassFish Project Home. Maybe it'll say what it is there! Click on it and surprise, it goes back to the page you're already on, the community page! So I guess it's a project, about a community, that is building a server.

Maybe the FAQ will explain what it is. Hmm the first question is not what is it, which would seem to me to be frequent question Number One, but rather, where can I get it. [12/17/05 Since modified! Now they say, What is Project GlassFish? first--still not What is GlassFish, but closer.] No worries, I see on the FAQ, a "New to GlassFish" link. I'm new--I want to know what it is. Follow this link and hmm...this link says it's a project, after all. I can introduce myself to others participating in the GlassFish project, I can become a part of it, I can even request a feature!

The GlassFish project provides a structured process...

So, I know that its community is building a server, and its project is providing a process. I just don't know what it is.

Let me click on the Communities tab at the top, to get my bearings. To see a list. At right is the list of communities but what's this--GlassFish is not listed! Ack where the hell am I? Thank goodness for the Back button.

Of course, I am being coy with you! I know what it is--it's an application server. They re-use the name of the community, and the project, for the actual thing. And not just any server, but an "Open Source Java EE 5 Application server". Which I installed. At least I think I did. When I run the server, the title is:

Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 9.0

Uh...did I do it right? Do they have enough goddam nouns in there? Sun is the noun string champion. "Platform Edition"--what's that? Is it like the "Platinum Edition"? Is this in fact "GlassFish"? If so why doesn't it say so? Otherwise why did they bother to call it GlassFish in the first place? Where's the little fish logo? And on the bottom of the Welcome page is a link to Project GlassFish "Sun's open source application server", with no acknowledgement that this is that server! Isn't it?

Oh how I remember now, why I fled screaming from these semantic tanglers. Where Apache is a software foundation, a project, and a web server and it's up to you to figure out which one they're talking about at any given moment. How about "Apache Tomcat"! It's why so many people think Tomcat "runs on" Apache. Why isn't it "Jakarta Tomcat"--it wouldn't be confusing enough?

How can such brilliant people be so lousy at explaining themselves? Why are they so willing to attach the name to the community and the project, and so timid about attaching the name to the only thing that actually matters. Come on then, out with it. It's: the GlassFish Application Server! And put the name in the product! If GlassFish is not its name, then don't call it that in the install, and toss it on the dustheap of useless terms like "Jakarta".

Here is my suggestion. The most important information to convey about a thing is, what is it. Not who are the nice people in the community that builds it, and not that the project provides the nice process that helps you build it. But, WHAT IS IT. Say that first.

toe job

2005-12-14T15:53:00.000-05:00

Upon deciding to "retire" I quickly contacted an orthopedist in Brookline (reminiscent of J'aurais voulu avoir un marchand d'épingles a cheveux en Belgique--I would like to contact a hairpin salesman in Belgium) to whack off that cause of much pedestrian grief, the excess bone at the base of the right big toe, that looked like a bunion but was not. Known as a "dorsal" bunion because it looks in X-ray like the dorsal fin of a fish, it is not in fact a bunion at all but rather a bone spur, a byproduct of hallux rigidus which is Latin for "stiff toe". Latin can make anything sound impressive.

So it is a faux bunion. Change the first and last letters and you get a Paul Bunion. (Ya I know, he was a Bunyan.)

The deed was done as an outpatient, at a remarkably efficient orthopedic clinic/factory (saws buzzing, knees, feet and elbows flying every which way), on Sept 13, using local anaesthesia. I was able to recuperate on the company nickel with a few days off, followed by a few days of "working" at home.

The picture at left was the unveiling two weeks later.

The surgery fell into a gray area--not cosmetic, but strictly speaking not necessary either. "Elective"--the sort of thing you could live without, if you don't mind wearing sneakers for the rest of your life. How about showing up for that job interview in sneakers! Well Mr Keefe we would have offered you the job but your footwear, I'm afraid, does not meet the high standards we set here at Bratwurst, Longjohnson and Feen... However it is cosmetic in the sense that it does not repair the underlying ailment, which is arthritis of the joint, and of which ze bump is but a mere symptom.

I had had the left one done two years earlier, by a different hairpin salesman. The most famous victim of this ailment is Shaquille O'Neal.

Now a mere 90 days later, I hobble carefree again! Well not quite. The joint still hurts when wearing shoes or standing en pointe in my tutu, but tant pis, more motion is gained, and I was sick of looking at it anyway. And if not then, never. Complete benefit of the surgery takes six months. I got some Percocets out of the deal at least and the urge, for some reason, to toss high-school French about.

Meanwhile other arthritis advances. Gains a toehold. The neck is going a bit stiff when turning to the right, a condition most obvious when backing up the car. Soon I will be one of those old coots who backs up using the rearview mirror instead of turning around to look.

Attention, un vieil imbécile conduit!

control my life, please

2005-12-12T10:52:00.001-05:00

In the South Park episode "Bloody Mary", the sensei lectures Stan's karate class about "serf-disciprine". His dad Randy then gets pulled over for drunk driving while giving the kids a ride home. His sentence includes attending AA meetings, where he is forced to engage in the twelve-step program. Step One is to admit that he has no control over his alcoholism, because it is a "disease".

Since he has no control, he confines himself to a wheelchair, continues to drink, and waits for the only possible cure, divine intervention. He is finally "cured" by visiting a statue of Mary that is miraculously shooting blood out of its ass. It is then revealed that the statue is not really miraculous (!) and that therefore Randy must have, albeit unwittingly, cured himself. Stan suggests to his dad that this is perhaps an indication that the cure for overcoming a personal weakness is to be found within oneself, by means of "serf-disciprine".

Funny, I have the same objection to AA. Step One: admit that you have a "disease", so are powerless and must rely on God to cure you.

My brother went to AA meetings for ten years till he drank himself to death at the age of 39. But, AA was and often is the only game in town. What about alternatives? How about Rational Recovery?

My mother went to a few Al-Anon meetings, for the relatives of alcoholics, but she did not gain comfort from listening to more of the travails of families with drunkards. She needed less, not more exposure to the problem--perhaps "Al-Anot"--meetings of people whose relatives were not alcoholics. If such people exist.

The closest I've come was attendance at satsangs or devotional meetings, for the followers of the Guru Maharaj Ji who was quite big in the 70s. Once at UMass on a lark, and again when I lived in Sydney. A neighbor, relatively sane for a cultist, was a devotee who, tired of my ridicule said that I shouldn't poke fun unless I saw for myself, which, after taking steps to assure that I would not be murdered and sacrificed to the guru, I did.

Devotees took turns rambling on with the familiar tale of redemption--how they were lost, helpless on their own (sound familiar?) until they found AA I mean the Maharaj Ji, and how he had changed their lives since.

Later back in the US my housemate's brother moved in with us, and satsanged about the Maharaj Ji over the phone for hours each night, because he couldn't reach the meetings because he didn't have a car because he couldn't afford one because he couldn't hold down a job because he was out of his fucking mind. He was also a rare male anorexic, who ate according to the dictates of Arnold Ehret's Mucusless Diet Healing System, until he died.

Alcohol, Maharaj Ji, Jesus, the Pope, the will of Allah, mucus avoidance...is there no end?

Relinquishing our self-determination to whatever "greater" power happens along during a time of weakness, is humanity's most compelling urge....

sunk cost

2005-12-10T10:32:00.000-05:00

Barry Schwartz, in The Paradox of Choice (which I finished so can cross off my list), talks about "sunk costs". He mentions those expensive shoes you bought that are sitting in the back of the closet. You keep them even though you know you're never going to wear them again, because to get rid of them would force you to acknowledge a loss.

Similarly, people hold on to stocks that have decreased in value because selling them would turn the investment from a potential loss into an actual loss.

What should matter says Schwartz, are the prospects of future performance, but what seems to actually matter is the level of previous investment. He believes that "sunk-cost effects are motivated by the desire to avoid regret rather than just the desire to avoid a loss". "Regret avoidance" is a stronger demotivator than simple "loss avoidance" because taking the corrective action forces you to acknowledge the source of the regret, which is your personal responsibility for an initial decision which has turned out to be flawed.

His final example is Vietnam, and is apropos of the suddenly-legitimate argument, thanks to Jack Murtha, that we should get out of Iraq quickly:

And arguably, why did the United States persist as long as it did in Vietnam, even when it was plain to virtually everyone involved that no good outcome could result from continued involvement? "If we get out now," people said, "then all the thousands of soldiers and civilians who have died will have died in vain." This is thinking in terms of the past, not the future. Those who had died were dead and could not be brought back. The questions that should have been asked (all moral and political considerations about the appropriateness of the war aside) concerned the prospects of soldiers and civilians who were still alive.

Maybe we should leave Iraq soon, or maybe we should remain "as long as it takes". But the reasons to stay should not include that otherwise those who died did so in vain. Or that leaving would force us, or more specifically the President, to acknowledge and therefore take responsibility for, the error of the initial decision.

These are powerful, but not valid, reasons to remain in Iraq. They represent the fallacy of the sunk cost.

purity of essence, webcam division

2005-12-09T12:39:00.001-05:00

The Globe having published a cool article about how to build a better webcam, I followed the procedure at Dennison Bertram's site.

Simple! Just build a 3"-square box. Well, not so easy for the slovenly woodworker. The first attempt, done in a cavalier manner with power tools was charming in its primitiveness, but unsuitable for mounting a lens. You cannot or at least I cannot cut square 3" pieces of wood only 1/4" thick with a table saw or circular saw--an exercise similar to whittling toothpicks with a chain saw.

After gouging the iron patio table twice, and the aluminum top of the table saw once, with the blade of the errant circular saw, I finally took a look at the blade--oh my. Really ought to change it every ten years or so, or after every second attempt to drive it through an iron table. The blade of the table saw was likewise missing a few teeth and sporting a fine coat of rust. Maybe from that summer it sat outside...

Attaching the metal ring from the old camera onto this flimsy wood was a challenge. The ring has holes for screws which must be small enough to lie flush, otherwise the lens won't screw on, but have enough bite to hold the ring tight in the soft wood, to withstand the sideways pressure of twisting the lens in.

The whole lot was held together, barely, with carpet tacks. The pieces were off-kilter at every angle possible. The spot at the bottom is blood from a stuck thumb.

This travesty led to a realization. I had visions of Zen and the Art of making a 3" Webcam Box but when it came to actually doing the work, realized that I am a slacker content to do a lousy job.

This haphazard little pile of sticks had turned into a metaphor for my haphazard approach to life. Leading to a visit to the garage in search of better tools and more important, purity of essence. And to the library to read up on woodworking. Where I learned things like using separate blades depending on what you're cutting, keeping your power tools out of the rain, and wearing safety glasses. Boy those guys are so fussy! But they have purity of essence by the bucketful, with their hours of fastidious blade sharpening, jig assembling, and fine, ever so fine, cabinet making. They had so much purity of essence they kept extra stored carefully in cool dry places, more than I could ever hope for.

My tools on the other hand were lying about neglected, covered in years of rust and grime. Like my personal finances, my clothes, my books, my hair, my garden, my fishtanks, my computer programs. All in some manner of mess--in piles, dirty, or held together with carpet tacks. Zen and the Art of Being a Fucking Slob--that was my book.

The second attempt, which began with a week of garage cleaning, then tool cleaning, fared better. It included a satisfying contemplative three-hour stint sorting a mountain of random bolts, screws, washers, nails, twigs etc, aided by the powers of concentration afforded by two Percocets.

V2 was built with hand tools and glued together. No tacks. And included long machine screws in back to set the focal point of the CCD chip to the correct length from the lens. The result is mechanically solid but has a focal point too distant for my purpose (hah--as if there was a purpose to any of this)--it can read sheet music 20 feet away, but I want a wider view and greater depth of field. No matter--for now the carpentry is under control at least, and I can swap lenses out, if I ever get another lens. My plan now is for this to be deployed out the back garage window, pointing to the neighbor's birdfeeder. A purpose if not exactly Zenlike, at least frivolous.

Pieces of the original box were then redeployed to a structure more appropriate to my skill level, "Casa Bella", which thus far Bella refuses to enter, but enjoys chewing at least. We'll see what kills him first--the acrylic paint, or one of the cats. When he dies the wood can be redeployed yet again, as a parrot coffin.

(Tip o' the pin to to Gen. Jack Ripper of Dr. Strangelove, for "purity of essence".)

network this

2005-12-08T09:48:00.000-05:00

Fresh from a two-day "How to get a job" class at Root, Foonweather and Lemming (ROFL). I am not looking for a job now, but the class is a benefit that expires, and I'll be looking for a job eventually, when the kids get a little more gaunt and we run out of furniture to burn to stay warm.

Casual assertions mixed with false specificity brought corporate Powerpoint presentations to mind:

64% of jobs are gotten through "networking"
80% of people don't like their jobs
25% of your job is what you are actually good at or like
the chances of getting a job via the "internet" is 16% or 4%, depending on the day of the seminar, and is greater if you are "technical"

It is apparently insufficiently authoritative to say that "many", or even "most" jobs are gotten through people you know as opposed to "cold" contacts--it has to be backed up by a "statistic"--64%. Whose specificity (not 61%, or 66%), and presentation as a pie chart, implies that quantifiable data is available to prove the point. When in fact 64% is simply shorthand for "many", or "most". The problem with saying "many" or "most" is that the statement is then self-evident. Of course most jobs are gotten through people you know! Thus the old definition of sociology as the science of belaboring the obvious.

The term "networking" is bloviation--so nebulous as to be useless. As evidence of its value we are asked in turn how we got our current jobs and sure enough, for the most part we got them through somebody we knew. But hearing about a job by chance, a common occurrence 20-30 years ago during various hiring booms, and actively hunting down leads now in a diminished job market through your various contacts, are quite different activities, and should not both be called "networking". The former (hey they're looking for people with a pulse at DEC!) should not be used to pad the "statistic" of the likelihood of success of the latter.

And the question is posed, if 64% of jobs are gotten by networking, and only 36% are gotten by other means such as the "internet" or cold calling, why do people spend a disproportionate amount of time pursuing these unlikely means, rather than on networking?

The "pie chart of shame":

To which we answer, slightly ashamed at having been exposed foolishly looking for jobs in the wrong place duh, we don't know...but the question is an assertion we didn't agree to in the first place. Who says people spend more time doing cold calls or looking on the internet, than "networking"? Where did you get this statistic?

When, at the risk of seeming to be a churl or an ingrate, you challenge the premise behind these assertions the response, in a patronizing manner, is well for you technical types, we realize that the whole thing is more an art than a science, and that these numbers are just to "give you an idea". As if you were a geek wearing a Star Trek uniform and rubber Spock ears shouting in an adenoidal whine, "statistical anomaly! statistical anomaly!"

A company such as ROFL whose business is coaching the art of the job search must for credibility's sake appear to be scientific in its approach. Just don't look too closely.

This is not to say that you should not pursue leads through the people you know. This is to say that it is obvious, and that we should stop using the term "networking" to describe this self-evident activity.

the other dirty weed

2005-12-05T16:01:00.000-05:00

This is a 10 cigarette-pack dispenser--a carton's worth. It is a relic of the 1940s and maybe older. It's on the wall next to the laundry room in the basement. Attached is this bit of doggerel, quite popular in its time:

Tobacco is a dirty weed: I like it.
It satisfies no normal need: I like it.
It makes you thin. It makes you lean.
It takes the hair right off your bean:
It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen:
I like it.
-Cornwall Industries

It looks like a coffin standing on end. Maybe that's part of the joke.

Though the folks at Cornwall Industries didn't see fit to provide attribution, it was written by Graham Lee Hemminger in 1915 for his campus humor magazine, when he was 20. It was widely reprinted.

This insouciant attitude is rare now--we live longer than ever before, but are nervous health nellies. Living forever is serious business--no jokes allowed. A hundred years ago, if you lived long enough that it was tobacco that killed you, that wasn't too bad.

Aunt Ella, a heavy smoker, got cancer of the jaw in 1961 but after they removed one side of her jaw (I'll never forget the "unveiling" afterwards), lived another 30 years and eventually died of just being ancient. Aunt Betty who did not smoke but lived in the same smoke-filled house got cancer of the tongue but died of being old and fat (I believe the medical term is "diabetes"). Uncle Walter smoked cigars and died of heart failure. My father didn't smoke but drank too much and died of colon cancer.

Hemminger lived to the ripe old age of 55.

precious instruments

2005-11-18T17:39:00.000-05:00

Visiting friends in Grenoble a few years ago, I asked if I could send email. Oh yes replied Christian, right this way! He opened the door to a room in their small apartment reserved for the computer. The system was covered in a big white sheet. He removed the sheet, powered the computer and monitor on, and we waited while it booted. Once booted he got his daughter to log in. Finally I could open a browser and use email.

When I was done Christian shut the computer down, turned off the monitor, covered the system with the sheet, and closed the door to the room. They went through this procedure every time they used the computer. The idea of leaving the computer on all the time was preposterous to Christian. The computer was a precious instrument.

Recently I started clarinet lessons again. I had taken lessons briefly as a boy, inspired by the playing of Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. It didn't last--I didn't like my teacher Jimmy Mosher who though a great musician was no Larry Fine. Teaching nine-year-olds was beneath him.

I bought a clarinet several years ago in the hopes that one of my kids would pick it up. One was playing alto sax so eh, it could happen! I got the other kid to go to a few lessons. She picked it up quickly since she could read music and seemed to have a knack, but was not interested. She said if you're so interested, why don't you do it.

Once in a while I'd assemble the clarinet and give it a try. I treated it the way Christian treated the computer, and the way my aunts treated their living room. Precious!

Every time I felt like playing I'd take it out of the case, assemble it, play for five minutes, then disassemble it and put it back into the case. Which was too much of a bother to do very often.

When I somehow realized I could just leave it assembled and on its stand, and it only needed to be taken apart to transport and for cleaning, the ridiculousness of the "precious" approach immediately became obvious. What was I thinking? Who knew--I thought that's what you did!

Now when I happen to walk by it's there, beckoning--Neil, spiel es noch amol! Maybe in a few years I can achieve Larry Fine-ness or even, my hands are trembling--Naftule Brandwein. Der Yid in Lynn!

turtles all the way down

2005-11-03T08:05:00.001-05:00

The novice asks the master, "Oh wise one, what keeps the world from falling into the abyss?"

The master replies, "The world is supported on the back of a giant turtle."

"But what supports the giant turtle, master?"
"Another turtle, my child."
"And beneath him?"
"Sorry, it's turtles, all the way down."

Begging the question is a phrase I heard more often than I understood. That's what this is.

Intelligent design similarly relies on an infinite stack of turtles. If a structure is (seemingly) too complex to have evolved by natural selection, it must therefore have been designed by an entity that is in turn too complex to have evolved by natural selection. And who designed this entity?

Sorry, it's intelligent designers, all the way down.

(With thanks to Crawford Washington.)

Brother Linus channels the SubGenius

2005-10-31T23:57:00.002-05:00

I did so poorly as a freshman at St. Newt's Prep that they thought something was wrong with me. As a result of my entrance exam score I was put in the second highest "Official Class", OC 1 . The classes ranged from OC 0, the "vegetables" who were mostly geniuses imported from New York--and which contained a couple of Jews, the first I had ever seen, and even two black kids, to OC 6, the "zoo", whose kids got into the school because their fathers were alums, or because they were useful football team gruntage.

Something was wrong that's for sure. They expected students to study three hours a night. What? I'm only 13! Half an hour a night, maybe. I just didn't have the metabolism for it. What is the urgency? (Since become a lifelong refrain.) Why are we racing through the curriculum? Let's take a break. Can we go over that again?

The boys of OC 1 were bright and aggressive little snots, used to being smarter than most. I fell behind in all subjects almost immediately, most perilously in Algebra and French which were difficult, and Religion which, I'm saying to myself, are you kidding with this stuff! Didn't we do enough already with the nuns?

Poor performance by a student reflected poorly on the selection criteria. The task of determining the cause of my floundering fell to Brother Linus. Beloved by all right-thinking students, he taught freshman Religion (I was in his class), coached the hockey team and was a guidance counselor. There was no escaping this guy and of course as a loser, I couldn't stand him nor he me.

One of the few things I got right on a Religion test (the very idea is appalling) was a matching question--A. Spilled his seed. Q. Onan. Thus "onanism" which was one of the few fields of study I was motivated to apply myself to for the recommended time. Beyond that I just couldn't manage my Bible facts whose study struck me as a mental exercise similar to and slightly less satisfying than counting the number of holes in each ceiling tile in the classroom.

Oddly enough I had no trouble memorizing years of Catechism back at St Pius's. Apparently I had achieved sentience in the meantime.

So beloved Brother Linus in his role as guidance counselor called me into his office, in an effort to understand this gawky dork of a kid who wouldn't learn his Bible facts, who had pimples and thick glasses and probably wasn't interested in sports. In short, not made of the right Catholic boy stuff.

Nevertheless he puffed on a pipe whose sweet aroma he probably thought was soothing to the troubled lads. Put them at their ease, so they would open up, such that he might get a peek into their... paltry little psyches. Oh Brother, let me reveal myself unto you!

Brother Linus leaned back in his chair, drew on his pretentious utensil of comfort and, inadvertently channeling the not-yet-existent Bob the SubGenius, fixed me with his best patronizing and wise look and asked,

"Well Mr. Keefe, is there anything troubling you--anything on your mind?"

Though not yet able to articulate for this beloved Brother the SubGenius doctrine of Slack, I was not too young for self analysis, and was aware enough of the sources of my misery. But I wasn't about to tell him, being part of the problem, after all! Smug Catholic prick, secure in his musky status quo, surrounded by his well-adjusted boy soldiers, who gave the likes of him their unquestioning loyalty, in return for a secure place in the Papist army.

Was that Old Spice I smelled, beneath the Cherry Blend tobacco?

The little atheist-to-be can not but squirm under the brutal thumb of his Inquisitor and after leaving his office squirm still more under the brutal thumbs of his young minions!

Another Brother gave me an IQ test, to be sure they hadn't made a horrible mistake. He asked me the population of the US and I said 200 million, which was pretty good for '67 I think. I also knew the capital of Bananistan, and that Bolivia exported tin, but he didn't ask about them. He did ask if I knew what audacious meant and I said it means chutzpah. I didn't mean to be a wisenheimer in that particular case, but couldn't think of any other word and anyway he ought to know from Mad magazine.

So at the end of freshman year my parents received a nice handwritten letter, in wobbly fountain penmanship, from Headmaster Brother Ricardo informing them of my fate. Expelled! Such is the lot of the Catholic shmendrik. Darn the luck. But wait!

My mother wrote back and said that her son had been unable to concentrate due to his distress over her medical condition. I had no idea she had a medical condition and probably wouldn't have noticed if she did. Anyway she didn't have one--she was fine. She had gone into the hospital briefly for a hysterectomy, described to me by my aunts as "a women's plumbing problem"--uck, that was as much detail as I wanted to know, and I never gave it a moment's thought.

Being wise in the ways of the One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church she also enclosed a check, and after a few weeks in Lynn summer school doing long division and typing with the other retards, I was back the next fall, in OC 3 whose kids weren't quite as smart and with whom I could keep up, with my customary study habits.

Years later I learned that beloved Brother Linus died from falling down a flight of stairs at the school. I didn't feel glad about it like a bitter person might, though I do have the urge from time to time to deduce meaning from the ridiculousness of the manner of his demise. As yet, to no avail.

logic as distraction

2005-10-30T12:25:00.000-05:00

I encountered these quotes in quick succession recently, coincidentally when I was plagued with a buzzing sound in the head, and given the "opportunity" to retire. They don't exactly contradict, but do glance off each other:

Bangkok 8, John Burdett. Police detective Jitpleecheep, a Buddhist:

I suppose it must be the delusion of the West, a cultural defilement caused by all those machines they keep inventing. It's like choosing the ringing tune on one's mobile: a logical labyrinth with no meaningful outcome. Logic as distraction.

A Devil's Chaplain, Richard Dawkins, on cultural relativism. Scientists may encounter a form of "philosophical heckling" that goes something like:

There is no absolute truth. You are commiting an act of personal faith when you claim that the scientific method, including mathematics and logic, is the privileged road to truth. Other cultures might believe that truth is to be found in a rabbit's entrails, or the ravings of a prophet up a pole. It is only your personal faith in science that leads you to favor your brand of truth.

How should scientists respond to the allegation that our "faith" in logic and scientific truth is just that--faith--not "privileged" over alternative truths? A minimal response is that science gets results. Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite... If you are flying to a conference of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there--the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field--is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sums right.

How to be Idle, Tom Hodgkinson, on work:

The truth about human life is that for most of the time there is nothing to do and therefore the wise man--or woman--cultivates the art of doing nothing.

Dawkins claims the scientific method is not merely another belief to have faith in, because unlike most beliefs, it has proven practical results. The other quotes don't advocate a different method, but they do poke a bit of fun at the value of much modern "scientific" work, (programming the ring tone on your cell phone), which so often arrives wrapped in hubbub and urgency, but is in fact arbitrary and trite.

Each remark makes sense. When work matters, approach it scientifically. But try to maintain a perspective, to distinguish between work that matters, and work that is merely a buzzing sound.

Pepi to Pepé to Peepee

2005-10-28T16:16:00.001-04:00

Picking up "A Whole New Bird" in a moment of finish-a-book resolution, which is about the creation of the red canary, got me to thinking about Tweety Pie (though she is yellow), and Sylvester, and Pepé Le Pew, and the wise guys at Warner Brothers making fun of my aunties.

I grew up at 11 Broadway, three houses away from this house which is 21 Broadway. "21" was built by my mother's family in 1926 and occupied by mum and her mother, five sisters and one brother. Somehow they had it built without the knowledge of the father with whom they lived, along with another brother, up the street in Peabody, until moving day. Surprise! Some pictures of the clan at that time, found in the attic here at 21, are here.

Uncle David, aunts Nona and Margaret, and my mother eventually married and moved out. Their mother, my Grammy McCarthy, died here at 21 in the 1950s while we were living in Italy.

We returned from Europe in 1959 and after a year at Fort Devens, my father was forcibly retired from the Army, at the same age as me now, and in a fashion eerily similar to my "retire or else" package from Coswell's Cogs this month. We did what retired people were supposed to do, moved to Florida, where I attended 2nd grade. But my father was unhappy there due to an inability to find a suitable collection of alcoholic peers upon whom to pontificate, so we returned to Lynn and moved into 11 the next year. I was sent to nearby Pope Saint Pius V school for 3rd grade, and continued in Catholic school for the next ten years, my education entrusted to the Sisters of Saint Joseph and the Xaverian Brothers, to whom I am in everlasting debt.

Still at 21 at that time were my three aunties Betty, Ella and Theresa, who never married. Having money and being apparently socially insecure they had had the house "done" by interior decorators from Paine's of Boston, each room according to some motif. The living room, the largest in the house, was a special victim of this treatment, crammed with uncomfortable Louis Quatorze chairs, figurines of some matching creepy Blue Boy and Girl on pedestals, oriental rugs, chandeliers, a Baldwin baby grand piano nobody knew how to play, and various ornate trinkets and gewgaws placed just so, around the faux mantle. All apparently considered fancy at the time. It was then closed off behind French doors for the next thirty years, too important and precious for daily living. I was not allowed to enter unsupervised--I might break something.

Aunt Betty, the boss, apparently thought this is what cultivated people do--they buy sophistication by the pound, mistaking the appearance for the fact. Eh, close enough! Similar to Saddam Hussein's Palaces full of imitation French Baroque furniture.

Puttin on airs. This was the "strive to be like somebody better than you" era, before the "be comfortable with who you are" era replaced it in those turbulent sixties.

The epitome of this store-bought sophistication was "Pepi"--a spoiled, expensive, horrible "French" poodle. (This image is not him, but it is a remarkable likeness--it must be a particular "look".) He was as yippy and neurotic as you might imagine a purebred could be, when raised by three childless and batty old ladies.

It is good that animals know not of humiliation, yet you wonder. Every couple of months he went to the "poodle parlor" and returned freshly pom-pommed and beribboned. Everyone hated him except Betty, Ella and Theresa because like the impressive furniture that you could not sit on, his unpleasantness was evidence of superiority. Naturally the likes of you could not appreciate such a chair or such a dog. He has hauteur--he is snooty--he is French! The more awful he was, the more he proved their point.

Of course they knew nothing of France other than that the interior decorators from Paine's had indicated that it was sophisticated. I wondered if Paine's just had an overstock of quasi-French hardware and unloaded it on these unsuspecting, grasping rubes.

Likewise my father harbored a misplaced aspiration to a European stereotype, but one of toughness rather than elegance. He put on airs of being Irish though he had never been to Ireland so had only a fantasy of the place. Hard-drinking, manly men--tough, but with a twinkle in their eye, ready to fight, or to sing about drinking or fighting, but mostly ready to drink and drink more than anybody else. I drink therefore I am.

Everybody in those days was identified not only by race but by ethnicity too--"that Greek from Peabody", "the Finn", "that Polack" among the charitable labels--even if they had been in America for a hundred years. In later years my father referred to me as Irish and I answered no pa, I've never even been there, nor have you. We're just Americans. He'd have none of it.

America was in thrall to the stereotype. Brucie Blasdale's family across the street also had a poodle, named "Pierre". Every goddamed poodle in America was named either Pepi or Pierre. In Fort Devens we had a Siamese cat named "Chan" after, I guess, Charlie Chan who wasn't Siamese but was "Oriental", sort of and again eh, close enough!

I loved my dotty pretentious aunties, because they spoiled me and I got to sleep over and watch the Jackie Gleason show and the fights on TV in their basement (now my basement, where I am typing this!) on Saturday nights. Betty cooked me hot dogs baked in bread crumbs with baked beans. Haut cuisine, fifties style.

And on the TV I saw Looney Tunes, and the character Pepé Le Pew, voiced by one of my childhood heroes Mel Blanc. Pepé seemed to have been designed specifically to poke fun at America's impression of the French as being sophistiqué.

By chance we got a cat marked like Pepé Le Pew, so she was named, of course, Pepé. But since her name is too close to that of Pepi, le chien prétentieux, we call her Peepee which is close enough to provide homage to the immortal Le Pew, and provides a source of amusement for the rabble who now occupy this house. Peepee--ha ha ha!

This is why I cannot finish books.

the object-oriented life

2005-10-24T08:21:00.001-04:00

Off to the local fitness center, to walk up stairs that go nowhere, to lift heavy objects that don't need moving, and to slog on that metaphor of pointless activity, the treadmill.

Exercise has been "abstracted"--removed from the original context of everyday life, and packaged instead as a separate module.

This is the object-oriented model--remove common tasks from the main program, because they obscure the purpose. Create clearly named modules optimized to perform each task, and move them elsewhere. The purpose of the main program, once stripped of its common tasks, should now be obvious.

Your object-oriented life is chopped into discrete bits that are sold back to you, the capitalist tool.

First, "create the need". Convince you that an activity, say food preparation, you once did as a normal part of life, is actually a burden. Exploit any resentment--if you didn't have to spend all this time tending the soup, you'd have more time to spend on your real purpose in life.

Then provide the solution, for a price. Pre-cooked meals--just add water. Is adding water too much trouble? Put it in the microwave as is. Don't bother to wash the dishes, that's a burden too. Eat the Hearty soup right out of the container you heated it up in, and throw it away. What could be better than push-button ease.

Once all these tasks--exercise, cooking, etc. have been abstracted, commoditized, and sold back to you, whatever remains is your main program. And its purpose should now be obvious.

What remains?

We are consumers of our own lives. We work to make the money to pay for the privilege of running on a treadmill, and consider ourselves lucky.

retire, or else

2005-10-14T23:02:00.000-04:00

Today was my last day at Coswell's Cogs. I took an "enhanced" early retirement, or EER. Engage the cliche generator, Igor!

What a long strange trip it's been. So long and thanks for all the fish. It's been great working with such a great bunch of great people. It's new beginning--a new adventure!

A load of malarkey, of course. Leaving like this sucks. People took the EER because they concluded that it might suck slightly less than sticking around. A gloomy calculation, disguised poorly by the tinny tone of the resolute affirmations made by its victims. Hear how sprightly I sound, as I dump myself out onto the pavement, for the good of the corporation! See how I demonstrate my devotion to the system that spits out its workers merely because of their age! Here's a buck, granpa, now scram and be thankful it's not a kick in the teeth. You clutch your buck and like a good capitalist tool express your gratitude. This sure is great, a new beginning! Not like those other, old beginnings.

It's the movie Logan's Run--the only thing you can't have in Logan's world is your 50th birthday. Unless you run away...

So I limp out the glass doors, swallowing the bile that rises when I think how our once-nimble and productive organization was changed into an army of petty bureaucrats, harassing an ever-dwindling number of actual workers.

Now I scrape by, fishing through rubbish bins for deposit bottles, with barely enough money to buy scraps of bread for my poor enfeebled babies...well a bit premature perhaps, as I've only been unemployed for six hours.

I'm so happy to be a part of this great new adventure!

books begun but not done

2005-10-12T23:21:00.000-04:00

I have begun but not finished these books in the last year. I have not been able to read anything serious lately--I guess I am distracted by the trivial-yet-insistent calls of is-it-done-yet from der Korporation. Literature competes (my theory anyway) for the attention of the same part of the brain that deals with the pissant crises of an info-job. I have zipped through other books meanwhile. Is there a pattern? No. Unless random is a pattern.

Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky. I read this in college on the third try, got halfway through it again this spring, and put it down. It lies opaque till you find yourself drawn deep, too deep, into Raskolnikov's famously fevered noggin. Frightening to be so inside a murderer's mind.
The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. Almost finished the first story, put it down.
Collapse, Jared Diamond, who wrote Guns, Germs and Steel which took me two years to get through. Mostly done--the Norse in Greenland chapter and one other remain.
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Only fifty pages in, then stopped. Years ago, read most of One Hundred Years of Solitude, then stopped.
The Paradox of Choice--Why More is Less, Barry Schwarz. Pop stuff--you can get the idea from the title. There is too much choice, it is true, and it is exhausting. But maybe I don't need to read a whole book to get the point.
A Brand-New Bird, TR Birkhead. About two Germans who created the red canary. Excellent! I made it to about page 70.

Like so many endeavors in my life, begun well then abandoned due to perseverance deficit.

the canard of fluency quacks unconvincingly

2005-10-12T07:01:00.001-04:00

With Condoleezza Rice recently in Carjackistan we hear once again the quack of the Rice-is-fluent-in-Russian canard. In June when she met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Ankara the BBC, which should know better, didn't question: "Although Rice is a fluent Russian speaker, the two spoke only in English, the official said."

Rubbish. Of course she isn't fluent. If she were, she would speak to Russians in their own language. If not then, when?

This US Dept of State page contains a transcription of a Rice interview with Alexsey Pivarov which is mostly in English until he switches to Russian at the end. Rice's responses are merely [In Russian]. Naturally we don't expect the State Dept to bother to translate her remarks back into English because for the State Dept, if it's not in English, it's not worth repeating. Or possibly because what she was saying in Russian was, "the weather in Volgograd is redolent of lemmings."

When people learn that I lived in Japan for a while they often say, you must be fluent in Japanese, right? To people who ask this question, life beyond the English-speaking borders is a fantasy land, and the only thing they know about learning an exotic language comes from James Bond movies in which the master spy becomes "fluent" in a matter of weeks. And once fluent, remains fluent without any need for practice. It's a term tossed about by people who have never studied a language because if they had, they would know better than to use it so casually.

Sean Connery has been in two movies in which his character is supposedly fluent in Japanese--the James Bond "You Only Live Twice", and the awful "Rising Sun". And when he opens his mouth and "Japanese" comes out, you cover your ears. Can't he spend an hour or two with a language coach? It matters so little?

I studied Japanese for years and only began to manage to read newspaper headlines. Four-year-olds spoke better Japanese than me. Expectations for English speakers are so low, similar to that of the talking dog, that if you say "the weather is nice today" in Japanese the response is inevitably "your Japanese is excellent!" Why yes, thank you, it is, isn't it. Today however, I will speak only in English...

Can Rice read a Russian newspaper, or just pick out a few words? I bet she could buy groceries and find her way around a train station. But "enough to get around" doesn't have the cachet of "fluent", does it, and it's hard to resist easy credit.

all I wanted was to send a frogfish

2005-04-02T14:57:00.000-05:00

No one buys film cameras any more. But many people who buy digital cameras are not computer savvy, so don't know how to distribute their digital pictures. They don't know how to crop, or save to an email-friendly size. So they email multi-mbyte pictures one-by-one thereby clogging mail systems. Or they burn CDs and send them by post, or drive them to your house.

The technology of data capture and distribution is unevenly distributed across the process, because the digital camera user is not necessarily a computer user.

This is a frogfish from Bonaire.