The Fourth Checkraise

Cool, spiky and spacious

With the decade soon rolling over, I almost missed two smaller numerical milestones located on the right sidebar. First, my SiteMeter just rolled over past 200,000 visitors with the daily average approaching 400 (and then there are all of you reading this through RSS who the SiteMeter doesn't see), and second, my Flag Counter also rolled over to 100 countries, new faraway lands having dripped in about once per week and somebody in Tunisia being the visitor to finally break into the triple digits. Yes, it was probably some wayward Google search, but even so. This is turn reminded me of one Finnish short story that I read back when I was a kid: for his amusement, the narrator places a phone call to a random number somewhere in Africa, then later chuckles to himself that it cost him a pretty penny but at least he got a good story out of it to tell his wife, and somebody over there in Africa is now wondering who the heck called! I'll now move on to the Christmas mode and most likely won't be posting until sometime the next week, but it being Christmas and all that, maybe my virtual readers could now write in the comments something about yourself and why you are reading this blog. Or whatever you feel like writing: consider this an open thread of sorts. Never had one of those, and this is as good time to have one as any.

The tabs and scrollbars of life

Even though I am such a well-known people person, I have never studied usability or human-computer interaction, except for one textbook that I read years ago in my own time. On the other hand, I have read all the usability columns of Jakob Nielsen; who knows, maybe that counts at least as a 101 in some third-tier community college. I can see the basic idea of "Don't make me think", which is not any kind of anti-intellectualism, but that a tool should not constantly interrupt the user's flow of thought about his actual task. Another basic idea, this one about web usability, is that unlike other applications, website users spend most of their time on other sites, and therefore a website must do all things the same way as other sites, since otherwise the confused users (who have an attention span of a gnat while surfing the web) will go elsewhere. Then again, as I have noted before, based on the material and handouts of other courses that I have seen lying around in my classroom, the amount of knowledge you need to pass a 101 isn't always that much. And it's not like knowledge even separates to "school" and "elsewhere". For example, I recently ended up the course notes and exams of Bryan Caplan's "Econ321 Labor Economics", and I was surprised to note that I already knew everything there just from what I have gleaned from the econ blogosphere.

Oh Dario boy, the vihuelas are calling

The last time when I was in the city, on an errand to pick up the final exam of one student who took it separately, I didn't have a weekly GTA pass any more so I bought the unlimited TTC day pass, since I was making a library run afterwards. Since tokens will soon be getting more expensive, they were not selling them any more but only tickets that expire in a month, because otherwise thrifty people would hamster these tokens. Which I find odd, since you would need to buy quite a few tokens this way to save enough money just to buy a cup of mocha, and if you travel that much, you'd probably be better off with the monthly pass anyway. Anyway, when I lined up to the booth, this old lady paid for her purchase with coins that were packed in small see-through plastic pouches that she dug up individually from her purse, each pouch carrying maybe three or four coins. Yeah, I wish I knew what that was all about. Later that day in the subway, I happened into a car that carried a four-man mariachi band, clad in sparkly regalia and playing peppy Christmas songs for enthusiastic passengers. Funny how something can be so very delightful when it's rare, and become a walk-past bore if it happens daily. Plus, I learned that "Feliz Navidad" is actually the same song as "I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas".

The right strain

Noticing similarities and analogies between different games is both satisfying and confusing: for example, I realized that the two modes of Omaha poker, high-only versus hi-lo, somehow correspond to playing a bridge hand in notrump versus trump, but I have nilch idea of what to make about this observation. During my most recent library run, I picked up another bunch of new-to-me bridge books, including "Bridge Master versus Bridge Amateur". For some reason, I have grown accustomed to the idea that bridge books must be at least two decades old in both style and contents, and seeing a bridge book written and typeset in the style of the present day is bit unnerving. Anyway, this excellent book examines what exactly distinguishes an amateur from an expert in bridge, and claims that this difference is not at all in knowing all the obscure squeezes and coups, since they come along in actual play far too rarely to add much to your EV: mastery of fundamentals and maintaining your concentration are far more important, in the spirit of how being "pound wise, penny foolish" is far better than the other way around. The book even claimed that one could be a bridge master without knowing the squeeze plays at all, which I found rather unbelievable, though.

Wayfarer

Now that there is only a week left of this whole decade, and then a new one begins, I reminisced again how neatly the stages of my life have so far fit the division into decades. Oh, what amazing technological wonders, fashions and other advancements we will be seeing, but how will my life change? When we were recently shopping for Christmas presents, I picked up a teeny tiny 2 gig flash drive that was no bigger than my thumbnail, and somehow it took me back to the cassette tape era and the thought of what my present-day life would seem like for my teenage self, if he could somehow see it from his level of experience and not take all these things for granted. As I have mentioned before, the funny-haha thing about "Neuromancer" and other novels of that genre is how badly wrong their predictions were (but that's how scifi works: examine every possible future except the one that actually happens), but I guess that as far as my 15-year-old past self is concerned, Neuromancer would for all practical purposes be a reasonably accurate description of my life today. Minus all those drugs and cybernetic killers clad in black leather, of course. Perhaps one day my dream of living in the world of Blade Runner ("What, that was supposed to be a dystopia?") will also come true, and sometimes it's kinda like we're already halfway there.

Dance, monkey, dance

Our old Playstation 2 sits under the television collecting dust, unused for years now. My wife was much more of a gamer than me, playing through Lara Crofts and Spyros and other similar games as soon as she bought them, but other than Civilization 3, I haven't really played any games that are not played against human opponents. The older I get, the more allergic I have become to usability issues, and the thing with one-player games is that the challenge that the player has to overcome is some artificial difficulty, such as having to jump at the exact right moment. And that is just silly: weren't computers supposed to do all these mundane tasks for us so that we humans could concentrate on the important stuff? All challenges of a game should emerge naturally from the structure and design of the game, instead of being artificial add-ons; for example, would live poker really be much improved if you had to toss your chips inside the bucket sitting at the middle of the table for your bet to count? I think that it was over a decade ago when I read somebody pointing out that he can't even remember the last time he played a [one-player] game in which he paid any attention to his score. The game mechanism itself has to be entertaining for the player; otherwise, what's the damn point?

Adrift in the knowledge space

For lighter but still very educational reading, I finished "Where Am I?" by Colin Ellard. This book examines the mechanisms that humans and various animals use to mentally locate themselves and navigate to where they want to go, over both short and long distances in real world and artificial mazes. The book starts off with landmark based navigation, familiar to everyone in Toronto area since we can use CN Tower as a superb landmark to immediately know our location and distance, and this is made even easier by the fact that CN Tower is located practically on the shore of Lake Ontario. I would imagine that similar navigation has also recently become far easier in Dubai, where they, assuming I understood this correctly, don't even have street addresses. Later chapters examine the way that people who get lost tend to move in a dense forest, and introduce interesting psychological tests of whether, for example, a blindfolded person placed in an empty room can walk back to his starting point if he is first walked to the other two corner points of the triangle. The final chapters examine how space at home, office and city is best arranged for maximum efficiency and enjoyment, with some deserved slamming of the lunatic ideas of Le Corbusier.

Dirty rats and trickster coyotes

In the spirit of the season, the new-to-me graphic novels that I got out have been in the genre of hardboiled crime fiction. First, "Back to Brooklyn" tells the tale of a mafia stone killer who one day inexplicably shows up at police station to become a turncoat, but he first has to go get his wife and kid from Brooklyn before he can start singing... but of course it won't be that simple, since he's been found out. And since the story was written by Garth Ennis, you know that blood and gore will flow aplenty before the story is over and the reason for this hardened mobster's U-turn is revealed. The artwork is not the unifaces of Steve Dillon this time, though, but some more painterly and static fellow, giving the story the feel that it takes place underwater. Next, "Scalped" is a gangster thriller whose twist is that the story is set in a dirt-poor Indian reservation, and the main character, an undercover FBI agent who left that reservation ages ago, now comes back to join the crew of the local casino kingpin (or would that be a "bigwig"?) who is also the local chief and the local sheriff, but who was also in his previous life an Indian rights activist who killed two FBI agents and informants. So you know that it's going to be both entertaining and educational at the same time: I finished the first two collections, and now have the remaining three on hold.

Infinite fest

Back when the news of the death of David Foster Wallace hit the netwaves, I didn't even have any idea who he was. Earlier this week in the library, I came upon his essay collection "Consider The Lobster", and picked it up to see what all that fuss was about. The most educational essay in this collection examines a sumptuous festival of salty pink flesh that revolves around simple but somehow profoundly alien creatures whose artificial hard exterior shell covers a surprising internal complexity and emotional life, and the thorny questions of morality of enjoying these delicious pieces of meat for our pleasure... but enough of the Adult Video News Awards depicted in the essay "Big Red Son", let's go read the titular essay about lobsters instead. I now understand the praise for Wallace and the references to his style, as this essay starts as an encyclopedic article about the biology of lobsters and the history of their commercial use, then turns into gastronomy and from noting that lobsters are the only food that is boiled alive and for some reason this is not considered horrifying, turns into a philosophical examination of pain and morality, and the extent that the subjective experience of being an invertebrate resembles that of higher animals in that the concept of "pain" is even meaningful.

Peculiar

To continue yesterday's post, certainly the most incomprehensible thing about gay men for me is how they actively defend the right of their HIV-positive brethren to keep infecting them. If my lifestyle was similarly threatened by a communicable deadly disease carried by some of my peers, my first and only reaction would be "Find them and keep them the fuck away from me!", perhaps reflecting some fundamental worldview difference underneath. And as I have said before, my biggest annoyance with gay men is not the gayness itself but the way the trendoid faghag left idolizes them and bends over backwards in ridiculous "unprincipled exceptions" that would be plain embarrassing if expressed about some less emotionally charged topic. For example, you know how humans have nothing innate or immutable in them but everything is determined by their nurture and environment... except for homosexuality, which is innate and immutable? Or how all sexual differences are socially constructed... but somehow this innate homosexual desire recognizes and is only ever attracted to biological men? Or how "It is sexual harassment whenever the victim feels that it is!"... unless a straight man doesn't want to shower with a gay coworker? Or how quarantining the carriers of HIV is pure evil... except when the liberal icon Fidel Castro does it?

Free to be you and me

As I noted earlier, these days seeing AIDS activism is pretty rare, since even the most ardent progressives seem to give it mere lip service. Even so, I came upon somebody asking people like me to "do more" to "fight AIDS". You know, frankly, I am confused of what exactly I am expected to do here. The cause of AIDS and its likely transmission mechanisms are perfectly known, and I am powerless to even try preventing anyone from voluntarily partaking in activities that are known to likely transmit HIV; in fact, if I ever tried to "do something" to discourage them from doing so, I would be instantly denounced for it, also probably face legal sanctions. So I am certainly not going to take a slightest bit of blame or responsibility for something that I did not cause and have no control over. As a helpful analogy, imagine if lung cancer patients similarly campaigned that other people must "do more" to "fight lung cancer", but every time somebody pointed out that lung cancer is caused by smoking and perhaps people should not smoke so much, they would loudly assert their right to smoke as much as they want wherever and whenever they fucking feel like, and sneer and loudly mock anyone who doesn't 100% share their view. That would be pretty much the textbook definition of chutzpah, right?

Overstandable

American Spectator: "The Blind Men And the Elephant"
Joe Bageant: "Cultural Orphan of the Class Struggle"
Boatang & Demetriou: "The Theft of the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' Sign"
Mike Brotherton: "Why Was Snape Such a Bad Teacher?"
Darwin Catholic: "The Banal Evils of the Police State"
Dot Physics: "Student Evaluations"
Hertzlinger: "If There Is a Pro-Fossil Fuel Conspiracy" (funny how so very few people seem to be able to follow the logical implications of the conspiracies they are proposing)
Joel Kotkin: "The Green Movement's People Problem"
Marquette Warrior: "You Might Be a Liberal If..."
The Oatmeal: "Why It's Better to Pretend You Don't Know Anything About Computers"
Rhymes with Cars and Girls: "The Smart People Crowd"
Slate: "Nordic Quack" (seriously, the Swedes do that too?)
Wired: "Uranium Is So Last Century"

The voice of dissent

Speaking of movies, today's Star has a fawning article about Borat, listing it as number nine in the top ten most important works of the decade. I certainly can't even begin to imagine the immense courage that it would take today to sneer at and mock middle class Americans, since as this article points out, there are actual physical dangers in such edgy and transgressive iconoclasty in addition to just risking being shunned by the intellectual community; Cohen and his crew were "nearly lynched" after their little stunt at the rodeo. And this is not hyperbole at all, since that really happened! All those tobacco-chewing inbreds that we saw attending the rodeo were literally already swinging the rope over the first sturdy branch, just like they still do to negroes and queers on a weekly basis as we all know, but fortunately Cohen managed to sneak away. Of course, Cohen's tremendous bravery did not end there, but a few years later he risked his life and safety again as Bruno, boldly challenging and confronting the homophobia of the despicable white Christian bigots of the heartland America. I am at awe at how one man can singlehandedly expand the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in art and culture. Unlike us petty and unimaginative little people, Sasha Baron Cohen is truly a free man who has no taboos to constrain his art.

Dances with Fern Gully

I wasn't really interested in seeing Avatar in theaters, despite the technological advances that it promises, but based on what I have read about its story online, it doesn't seem like I am missing very much. There is certainly plenty of finger-quotes "irony" in spending in the ballpark of $500 million to create a screed of how money and the only culture and worldview that makes the existence of movies such as Avatar and their authors living past the age of 40 possible in the first place are innately evil, with audiences happily lapping it up. Then again, modern liberalism is pretty much nothing but impotent and narcissistic rage against reality anyway, with all the internal consistency of baby shit (for example, is being a "warrior" something admirable, or something despicable? Does a geographical area belong to the group of people that has lived there for centuries, or should all borders be abolished so that everyone could move wherever they want?) On the other hand, as one commenter noted, the story of a noble, tall and beautiful folk who live in close "blood and soil" harmony with nature of their motherland as they maintain the traditional values of their ancestors but are then threatened by an invasion of ugly and short moneygrubbing and materialistic corruptors isn't exactly original either.

Snowing

In world news, I see that the Copenhagen climate conference finally ended with results that are fortunately thin at best: on the other hand, as one Finnish blogger noted, having the representatives of 180 countries to agree on what time lunch is served would already constitute a minor miracle. I also couldn't help but notice the difference between the media treatment of the peaceful leave-us-alone tea parties "terrorists" in America, versus the totalitarian "concerned activists" climate demonstrations of Copenhagen fighting with the police, which kinda smells double standardy. Even after the Finnish delegates sat on the floor waiting for Obama like their Messiah (leftism is religion for people who think they have no religion), no agreement was reached for actually cutting carbon emissions, and it's not like China and India would be stupid enough to obey such edicts anyway. But at least the developing nations that have now been developing for about, what, fifty years, will receive $100 billion (or, as another Finnish blogger observed, 10,000 Learjets) to help them to adapt to climate change. Or as Coyote Blog already summarized it, "work for food". Really, they should just deposit this cash directly in their Swiss bank accounts.

That's how they roll

Around here most of the cars you see are of American and Japanese origin, although in this era of globalization, who knows who owns what and where what is made. I occasionally see a Volvo or some other European car, but yesterday I realized that this illusion might be caused by something else entirely. Today on the bus, I amused myself of trying to identify the manufacturer of each car that I see along the way, and within a couple of minutes it became clear that I can't, since all these cars made within the last decade look the same to me. Then again, this might be different for someone who actually cares about cars and watches Top Gear. Similarly, sometimes when I watch some movie from up to the early nineties, I wonder why the supposedly middle-class characters drive such piece of shit cars, and then catch myself of this stupidity. I noticed in the news from the old country that the Swedish auto manufacturer Saab is shutting down its operations, this way ending an era. As one Finnish blogger reminisced, in his youth Saab was viewed among regular folks as sort of a "luxury" brand, highlighting the fact that ever since Finland imposed a "temporary" punitive >100% tax on all automobiles over fifty years ago (Milton Friedman is chuckling is his grave), Finns have driven the dinkiest cars of the entire civilized world.

Voting with your links

While my wife is watching Survivor finale, which I haven't cared about for about nine seasons, I am going to sit and and see what the rest of my nearby blogosphere has produced during the past week before Christmas.

Wipe them out, all of them

Now that the Christmas is coming up, even I get busier than usual, but I sure was not too busy to laugh my ass off at the 7-part YouTube series "The Phantom Menace Review" that lists and explains the many things that were wrong with the Star Wars prequel. As I have said before, I was never that big on the original trilogy either, but surely they are parsecs ahead of the prequels. I saw the parts two and three... whose names I can't even freaking remember right now on television, but for the life of me I could not tell you anything that happens in them. Both movies were just chaotic video game runs with wooden cutscenes spliced in to explain why the characters need to enter the next level. Well, at least the way that Star Wars fanboys, despite all their cursing and moaning, were powerless not to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to go see them over and over again, was certainly amusing in a grim and revealing way. As for me, the last fantasy movie that I actually enjoyed with real awe and excitement was the first Lord of the Rings: after that, every other movie with the essentially same characters, sets and overall visual style has had zero excitement, and this includes the second and third parts of LOTR.

The freedom from having to free others

I admit that there is certain perverse beauty in doing all your memory handling explicitly yourself when you program data structures and algorithms in C, trying to teach these things to others really makes you appreciate what a massive life-simplifying luxury garbage collection really is. These days garbage collection techniques are so advanced that for most applications, they don't even slow down the program at all, and even if they did, processor cycles are so cheap (the proverbial "too cheap to meter") and fast that it wouldn't make any observable difference anyway, so trading them for programmer's brain cycles is one helluva great trade. I realized that my implementation of "Gimme Rotation" creates a whole bunch of objects 25 times a second to perform the rendering, and figured that such memory waste might cause trouble if the program runs a long time, but when I played it with task manager open, the memory use line remained one flat line the whole time. Again, the wisdom of not optimizing turned out to be true. I added some simple memory optimizations anyway, and also made it so that the game starts with 10 balls already in the field, to get the game sooner to the interesting and addictive (at least for me) part where you are surrounded by stuff in all directions and have to plan your every move with care to clear a pathway out.