Update To Gutsy Gibbon Ubuntu 7.10

Last Sunday night, I backed up my computer and performed the update to Gutsy Gibbon. Overall, the update process was very easy. I had one slight problem upon re-start but that didn’t take long to figure out.

I purposely held on this post using this week to play around with Gutsy, correct any problems and develop some opinions. Full post includes: Problems with the Install, Things I Like About Gutsy, Things I Miss About Feisty and Overall Opinion....

I. Problems With The Install

Restart Issue: The Ubuntu Bootloader automatically selects the first choice in it’s menu. However, this is NOT the latest install. Below is a pic of the selections:

Ubuntu 7.10 + version 14 or 15 = Kernel Panic, use version 16 (highlighted). This was pretty easy to fix. Gutsy has a “Start-up Manager” that lets you edit the boot process. I changed the default and did some other tweaking to shorten boot time.


"Undefined Mode Number"?: I got this error message during the boot process. It never prevented boot-up but well, it was disconcerting to say the least. It appears the problem is somewhat common and can be fixed. I found these very helpful instructions. It took less than two minutes to correct (five if you count rebooting to verify the fix).

Did Not Mount My External HD: Thankfully, Gutsy has a new menu option called “Storage Device Manager” where you can correct this.

If that doesn’t work there’s always GParted which will also allow you to mount other hard drives. However, Gutsy still has trouble during boot-up. Gutsy assigns the partitions on the external drive different designations each boot-up (which is particularly annoying for linking to my music library). Also, it automatically loads the Dell Utility folder for disk partitioning – WHY? I have no idea. Usually, this only opens if I open the partition editor application. None of these prevent me from accessing my data. I just have to spend a bit each boot-up figuring out where my computer’s establishing the links to my data. Still, annoying....

Will Not Recognize My Flash Drive: Initially, Gutsy acts like its not even there! It shows up under “Storage Device Manager” when hot-plugged but I can’t mount through there. There’s also a discrepancy between filesystems. GParted identified my flash drive (correctly) as fat32 whereas “Storage Device Manager” says it is ntfs.

In order to access the flash drive, I have to go into GParted and manually mount it. However, it still doesn’t appear on the “Places” menu or my Desktop. The only way I can open files is to create a launcher. Also, it does something funny to my user privileges. I don't have read-write privileges for the drive. I've tried changing the user settings several different ways and none have worked. It's my biggest open issue right now.
UPDATED 2/26/2008: FIXED!!! After a couple hours of dedicated troubleshooting tonight. Solution that worked for me was opening the 'fstab' file and editing it. Command to open file:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Go to the line that lists your usb drive (it should have a line even if it's not mounting correctly). Make sure your file system is correct (mine was nfts instead of vfat). Add the following after the file system designation:

noauto,users,rw,umask=0 0 0

From this post.
If that doesn't work for you, go through this thread on the forums. Many possible fixes are listed; there's no real pattern on what works for whom so it's well worth it to try several things. It appears this is a bug with the gnome-mount application (hal?) and is fairly prevalent.

MIRO did not play videos: This replacement for Democracy player initially did not play a single video of any type. Thankfully though, I came across this thread in the Ubuntu help forums which recommends the installation of the “libxine1-ffmpeg” package. One command line later:

Sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg

And I could play videos with no problems. Before I found the thread, I installed the VLC multimedia player. It’s quite good. They allow you to do some nice modifications to the images as the video plays. I think I’ll keep it as a backup as Miro appears to be a bit buggy for me.

II. Things I Like About Gutsy

Integrated Theme Management: While I loved the versatility of Ubuntu themes, the settings were scattered over several menus (background, windows/controls, etc). Gutsy puts all of that under one tabbed menu:

Very handy.

Expanded Property Tabs for Disk Places: I noticed this during my troubles with the external HD and flash drive. It’s not much of a change but I like it.


Removable Storage Devices Menu: This may have been under Feisty and I missed it. Although it couldn’t help me with my flash drive issues, I really liked that you can set the standard actions for various plug-in devices. Easy to use and covers a good selection of devices.


Compiz Replacing Beryl: While I loved Beryl, the thing I loved best was the emerald theme manager. Compiz lets me keep that without the really counterintuitive Beryl settings manager that I didn’t really use. Compiz can be activated under the Desktop Theme Menu and there’s an option for medium-performance computers (like mine). Also, if you get the Compiz settings manager, it is worlds better than the Beryl one. Very intuitive and what everything does is very clear. You can get it via a single command:

Sudo apt-get install compiz-settings-manager

Overall, Compiz is much simpler than Beryl while also possessing tons of features so I can understand why this was chosen for beginning users. You can probably expect a Compiz-dedicated post sometime in the future as I play around with the settings and embedded screenshot function.

Re-Install Adant Windows Navigator: Original version was for Feisty only (removed during update). I reinstalled it in a very painless process and it came with the elusive extras package I hadn’t been able to install in Feisty. The end result is a more versatile docking platform. Also, it’s a bit more responsive in Gutsy which is good when I’m switching between windows on different desktops.

Gjeweled has NO Music: While I love this game, it was kinda annoying to turn off my music every time I opened the application. The soundtrack was just this looping techno-sounding jingle but it interfered with regular music, sometimes really confusing both myself and my speakers. It’s a nice little tweak that I appreciate.

III. Things I Miss About Feisty

Having XMMS as a Launcher in AWN: For some reason, I am no longer allowed to do this. The AWN manager allows me to fill in the launcher creation form but no launcher appears in either the menu or on the actual AWN dock. At least, AWN allowed me change the icon for an open Xmms window; the default icon is not scalable and quite ugly.

IV. Overall Opinion

Satisfactory. I had too many issues for me to call Gutsy “Great” but there are several improvements that I appreciate and can see real value-added in. The problems with recognizing USB/flash drives are significant enough that I hope they correct it for Hardy Heron. In the absence of those problems, I likely would be going with “Great”.

Next up, resizing my Ubuntu partition! Windows wouldn’t let me shrink its partition during my permanent install so I’ve cleaned that section up a bit. It makes no sense that Windows is two-thirds of my HD and I only use it once every six months (less if I can help it).

Link to full post.

Existential Risks & The Lifeboat Foundation

I don’t recall how I wound up there, but I recently dropped by the Lifeboat Foundation’s website. They are a very interesting group, dedicated to preventing or acting against any possible threat to our future as a species. Basically, they want to prevent anything capable of wiping out humanity or permanently countering our progress.

Full post explores a report explaining the basic premise of the Lifeboat Foundation and provides some of my own thoughts.

On their site, the Lifeboat Foundation provides this thought-provoking report on what are possible existential risks and what can be done to avoid them. As the report points out, we as a species do best by learning through trial-and-error but an existential risk is one where that approach is disastrous. One error and you’re done. Considering my thinking last summer on planetary defense, I was quite glad to come across this website and report. While I focused on alien invasion, they are dealing with some (currently) more likely scenarios. There is repeated mention of nanotech disasters (or other risks causing nanotech disasters).

However, I greatly appreciate that they included “technological arrest” as a possible risk. For instance, if a world government arose and used the technological risks as justification for authoritarian controls suppressing technological development, they would be actually making it harder for us to prevent other forms of existential disasters. This isn’t the only trade-off available in the list of risks they discuss. One possible option is to make certain forms of risk due to terrorist actions less possible, not just through hunting down existing terrorists but through making it more and more taboo/unnecessary (less people consider acts of terrorism viable/needed means of expressing political dissent). Once upon a time in the West (and still in some parts of the world), violence to other people was exceptionally common in the form of dueling, blood feuds, etc. Nowadays, these are considered barbaric by the Western mainstream. But it is still excused in some cases where a totalitarian (or perceived totalitarian) government does not allow for non-violent dissent.

With social evolution to eliminate both the causes and excuses for terrorism, we could render terrorist-style violence less likely*. BUT, reducing our species’ capacity for violent acts could leave us vulnerable to hostile aliens by reducing our ability to effectively counter their actions. While the current probability for the latter is low compared to the more likely terrorism, this could result in a situation where the minimization of one risk, increases the severity and probability of another further down the line. These are exactly the sort of questions we need to ask in assessing countermeasures.

Also, the report discusses a quite interesting phenomena, story-bias. This is where we focus on the possibilities outlined in our fictional entertainments even though these options are selected for their narrative quality as opposed to their severity and probability. Our fictions are overflowing with disaster scenarios and while they may help raise public awareness, they may also provide a false sense of confidence or a false understanding of the problems. My thinking is that the sheer diversity of fictional scenarios may act as a counter measure here. Different scenarios present similar developments with different levels of concern.

A useful example is to compare how wormholes are treated by the “Stargate” universe versus the “Farscape” one. Both introduce the concept of wormholes and provide some basic rules of their function but the specific nature of both the physics presented and the socio-political situation in each universe contributes to a vastly different interpretation of the dangers. “Stargate” treats wormholes as phenomena capable of being useful tools for intergalactic civilizations while not shying away from their potential as weapons. “Farscape” presents them as phenomena with horrible potential for abuse as weapons so much so that one powerful civilization restricts dissemination of the knowledge and will even kidnap or destroy those who learn about them. Watchers of both shows are provided with a larger, balanced understanding of both the good & bad possibilities and what specifics could change their nature from one to the other**. When it comes to public policy, such variety in fictional universes could create a large audience used to comparing and contrasting differing scenarios and understanding of how a specific, relatively small detail can change the threat assessment posed by a potential existential risk.

When discussing mitigating techniques, the report stated something quite refreshing for me:

“Creating a broad-based consensus among the world’s nation states is time-consuming, difficult and in many instances impossible. We must therefore recognize the possibility that cases may arise in which a powerful nation or coalition of states needs to act unilaterally for its own and the common interest. Such unilateral action may infringe on the sovereignty of other nations and may need to be done preemptively.”

In light of the existential threat posed by terrorism and recent history, I can only state that I very much agree with this assessment and the discussion that follows this quote. Being liked by everyone is great but ultimately, preventing deaths and disasters is more important. If we can accomplish things without unilateral actions, then great. But we shouldn’t be too wedded to a particular form of solution.

Of course, they followed this discussion with a weird pro-superintelligence stance that I find a little strange. The argument is that even if superintelligences can pose a threat, it would still be a good idea to develop one because it could help us mitigate other threats. The advantages of this trade-off are not as obvious to me as they are to the author of this report. Also, the Appendix discusses possible “whimper” scenarios with a strange focus on the potential counter-evolutionary nature of “hobbyists”. While those with familiarity with the topic might understand it better, I found the author’s focus on this possibility and some of his assumptions unclear and not as self-evident as presented.

Thinking through these types of problems also holds additional benefits. It’s quite likely research into existential risks can help make our civilization and species more resistant to smaller risks like hurricanes, epidemics and political instability. The Lifeboat Foundation is definitely worth watching for future developments (check our their project list). All in all, I am quite glad someone’s dedicating serious thought to these sorts of problems.

One final endnote, I cannot believe there is such a thing as a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement! They were referenced in the Lifeboat report. The idea of pursuing a goal so pessimistic and self-hating as species-suicide is utterly and thankfully beyond me. The only good outcome I can think of is this movement could result in people with weak will-to-live de-selecting themselves from having an evolutionary effect (no kids = no passing on / distributing genes that promote susceptibility to this kind of thinking). Still, as wacko as they sound and as much emphasis as they place on their peaceful intentions, I don’t believe this movement is remotely benign. Moral busybodies of any flavor are usually incapable of limiting themselves to their own decisions. At some point, they want control over others to make everyone’s decisions “for the greater good”. Imagine a world where a die-hard proponent of this philosophy had access to technologies capable of wiping out humanity or was in a position of power that would give them access to nuclear codes or something similar? (shudder)

*Of course, it only takes one. We would not be able to eliminate the threat of terrorism on any scale, merely reduce its probability and perhaps the severity (with countermeasures of some kind).

** For an military sci-fi exploration of wormholes in both “Stargate” and “Farscape” universes, I recommend “The Lost Warrior” series by Neil Gartner. It’s a work of crossover fanfiction assuming both universes are true. Just as a warning, it’s not a happy tale.

Link to full post.

Japan – Land of Helpful Signs

I’m not sure how this got started but somehow, yesterday was “Wacky Japanese Sign” day at work. A few of the exchanged pictures are simply too good not to share. Some pictures were taken by my co-workers while others are from the wonderful Engrish.com.

In deference to my love of warning signs:

I will be cropping and shrinking this into an icon soon (to go with my “Hand Smash” icon).

Here’s a slightly cultish Kentucky Fried Chicken picture.

I wonder if any Japanese were offended by this gross mis-use of the rising sun motif?

While smoking is rarely banned, there are certain rules of etiquette to be observed.

“Coats are expensive”?! Because honestly, someone exposing those around them to carcinogenic chemicals dispersed in the air actually cares about other people’s dry-cleaning bills?

I have no idea what this means...

Perhaps an advertisement for a mechanical device of some kind? It sounds vaguely dirty.

They even cover some remotely possible mis-uses of various facilities. See rule #2.

Imagine a murderer who has already dragged a dead body into a crowded train station.
*digs in pockets for change, glances at sign*
“No dead bodies allowed! Well, I’ll just bury him in my backyard then…” *Turns and leaves, dragging body behind him*

Please identify what’s wrong with this picture.


Finally, my absolute favorite:

Link to full post.

The 21st Century’s Greatest Engineering Challenges

According to the National Science Foundation. With the aid of several experts they have developed a list based on furthering human “sustainability, health, reducing vulnerability and joy of living”. Even better, they are asking everyone to vote on how to prioritize between these goals. Here’s my ranking system with comments (from lowest to highest)

14) Engineer the tools for scientific discovery (kinda vague, isn’t it?)

13) Enhance virtual reality (cool, great applications but not strictly necessary)

12) Reverse-engineer the brain (cool and I’m sure useful but not a big deal for me)

11) Advance personalized learning (YES! Again not strictly necessary but we really have to stop mass-producing education per a 20th century industrial society’s needs)

10) Manage the nitrogen cycle (I only ranked this one so low because I’m not sure why it would be useful – I might up its priority later)

9) Make solar energy affordable (This is kinda underway so I don't believe it rates a high priority for government action)

8) Provide energy from fusion (Not in top because I’m kinda sick of everyone talking about it and it never happening)

7) Advance health informatics (Better info goes hand in hand with better medicines)

6) Secure cyberspace (I would add a caveat that Security does not and should not equal Control. Nor does is there a provable inverse relationship between Security and Privacy.)

5) Provide access to clean water (It’s really sad that this is something that still needs to be done.)

4) Engineer better medicines (duh!)

3) Develop carbon sequestration methods (I put this ahead of the alternative, low-carbon power options because there will be a lot of holdover technologies still working even if solar & nuclear fusion are mass-adopted.)

2) Restore and improve urban infrastructure (Too many of the world’s cities were designed and laid out via long outmoded urban values and technologies.)

1) Prevent nuclear terror (I would remove the nuclear-specific aspect. Number one for me because if you don’t survive, you don’t do anything else)

Go cast your vote for the most important challenge.

Link to full post.

Traveled to Acuna, Mex for the Day

Number of hours spent at plant: 6

Total Hours on the road: 6+

Time Spent At The US Border: 1 $&@!%#$*! hour

Seeing this car at the gas station:

Worth every minute.

Link to full post.

The Way Toward More Women Engineers (NOT!)

Via Ace of Spades, I read this article hyping an idea which has so many things wrong with it I can't even fathom how someone besides a woolly-headed academic would even consider it.

The big idea for graduating more women engineers *drumroll*:

[The curriculum] emphasizes context, ethics, and communication as much as formulas and equations.

See full post for some very all-over-the-place thoughts on why some women have trouble in engineering.

Now, all three factors listed in the big idea are important for engineering work don't get me wrong but, um, math is just a teeny bit more important I think. Math, physics and all that are kinda primary skills. If you don't have those, (male or female) engineering is not the place for you. "Context, ethics and communication" are what I call secondary skills. They make life easier sure but they aren't strictly necessary. Not to mention the examples of "innovative" activities described in the Chronicle article don't sound particularly challenging or rigorous as far as design projects go.

These two commenter's pretty much sum up my feelings here:

Note to educators: It’s not supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be effective! If people drop out, GOOD. I don’t want the lazy thinkers working for me!

AND

No, I wouldn’t ride in a jet or rocket or ride a bike designed by someone who had a curriculum made easier for them because their feelings got hurt.

This is idea of feelings being hurt is especially dangerous because the design process is one, long, painful experience. You design something, take it in front of a group of people and they trash it. If you work for a good company, they may even do it politely. They do it because that's how you catch things, because that's how things get better. But, at the end of the day, you will invest a great deal of time, effort and emotion into things regularly criticized, taken apart and changed sometimes against your wishes. You should not be working as an engineer if you can't deal with being disappointed, occasionally outclassed by those around you and even totally ignored by those who overrule you. THIS IS THE DESIGN PROCESS PERIOD. Male or female, you need to get over it or find a new career.

Engineers are somewhat masochistic folks. We like challenges, especially if we don't know if we can do something to start. As terrible as the design process can be, you put up with it because it gets results. Because by the time you complete each project, you're going to be a better engineer. And that only happens if you push yourself, if you place yourself in a work environment that pushes you. I'm not always comfortable at my job. And that's a very good thing.

Also, there is a fundamental flaw with studying engineering at an all women's college. Where they will have minimal interaction with men as teammates. Without this experience, these women will go out into the world and work in a mainly male environment with male co-workers. And, unless they have five brothers, they will be wholly unprepared for that situation.

Based on my college experience, some women who don't complete engineering degrees are turned off not because of any harassment but because they're terrible at dealing with men as men. Too many women expect men to stop acting like men around them. I'm not talking about a "Boys Only" clubs or using "boys will be boys" excuses for poor behavior. Rather, I am referring to understanding that how men look at the world is different from how women look at the world. To be able to navigate that difference without giving or taking undue offense.

In my experience, most women have no trouble either expressing a female point-of-view or feeling secure in it. The problem I usually saw is that some women had real trouble acknowledging the male point-of-view or even feeling intimidated when confronted with it. (Note: I'm not referring to intimidated=scared, more like intimidated=you're-disagreeing-with-me-and-it-hurts-STOP!).

My Mechanical Engineering college was about one-quarter female. We weren't the majority but at least it wasn't, well, the Electrical Engineering school (< 1/6f). I saw women of many different personality types, ethic backgrounds, intelligence levels and socioeconomic tiers succeed in working with their male peers and with the engineering coursework. And the women who didn't last? Well, it wasn't the math that put them off. It was the criticism, the constant questioning and the fact that most engineering guys will be impressed with the fact you're a girl for about 5 minutes and then, they want to know what you can actually do.

Male or female most drop-outs in engineering are due to the following:
1) The fact that most engineering schools have a high dropout rate due to leaving kids hanging in two years of "cull the herd" classes (somewhat intentional: If you can't cut it, they don't want you designing bridges or cars....I don't blame "them")

2) The design review process which gets emphasized more & more as you move up toward advanced classes. At any time, you will be expected to justify and explain your decisions to a skeptical audience. This is hard but it isn't unfair; you get to do it for all of them too.

3) The fact that there is no arguing with math proofs, with common sense or with a basic understanding of physics. While women can have trouble with this too, I can think of at least three guys who switched out of engineering because they got sick of being told they were wrong and didn't want to learn what it took to be right.

I don't think the problem is with graduating female engineers. It's with enrolling them, getting young women to the point they are confident enough in their genders AND intellects to embrace this somewhat frustrating career where you are always exposed to questioning and criticism. The problem is teenage males are preternaturally confident in themselves in that they are risk-takers, less afraid of criticism. Teenage females? Not so much. The average high school girl-group (sometimes even among nerds) is a lesson in how to establish a merciless heirarchical system based on lethally wielded criticisms of those around you. Why would young women pursue a career that purposely exposes them to more of that?

Honestly, I'd greatly prefer if they quit with these special programs (which really they're like the academic version of "magic bullets"). I don't want a lot of women engineers. I'd rather have a few good, hell even great, women engineers. No double-standards or special accommodations*. This is not to say there shouldn't be mentoring and such. Just focus on the math! Focus on the design process and the self-confidence required to navigate it. I think that approach would be loads more effective. Of course, it's also a lot more work so I doubt it will happen.

*Except a women's bathroom. I like the guys I work with but I don't want to share a bathroom with any of them.

Link to full post.

Astronauts on YouTube

And they're showing some really cool stuff.....Here's eating tea with chopsticks in micro-gravity.

Link to full post.

Movie (and Commentary) Review “Amazing Grace”

A friend loaned me “Amazing Grace” over the weekend. To me the abolition of slavery is one of the most important historical achievements of Western civilization. Having said that, I didn’t expect to be as affected by this movie as I was. I knew most of the major plot points and was familiar with most of the major characters through Adam Hochschild’s fabulous “Bury the Chains”). However, my familiarity didn’t reduce my enjoyment one iota. The movie managed to be an utterly thrilling and moving experience. All involved should be commended for not just telling this story but telling it well.

Ioan Gruffudd gave an amazing performance as William Wilberforce. Also impressive were Michael Gambon and Benedict Cumberbatch as Lord Fox and William Pitt respectively. And I’m exceedingly happy to report Rufus Sewell do NOT play a bad guy. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him be anything but a villain that I found his performance as Clarkson quite refreshing. In some respects, the structure, tone and characters in this film hearken back to an earlier era in movies (and I mean that in the most complimentary manner possible). The film ended with a surprisingly powerful rendition of the title song “Amazing Grace”. All in all, this is a must-see for both the quality of the product and the historical value of the story itself.

On a related topic, I also highly recommend the commentary track for this film. I was, for the most part, quite impressed with director Michael Apted’s approach to this film. He repeatedly emphasized that he wanted to make a film about politics and the good that could be done through the political process. He discussed how cynical modern audiences are of the politics but that, especially for this period in British history, the political process resulted in “a British revolution without blood in the streets.” This informed a great deal of the film’s focus on the parliamentary history of abolitionist movement as opposed to the facts of slavery. He also mentioned that they included a couple dream sequences with slaves to demonstrate Wilberforce (and many others) didn’t have much direct experience with slavery. Both he and lead Ioan Gruffudd emphasized showing a balance between Wilberforce's political and religious lives. They both appeared to have gone to great effort to demonstrate the genuine faith of the persons involved. Regarding how to show prayer in film, Apted even states at one point “Don’t make them look buffoons. Just get to the moment”.

My favorite portion of the commentary was Apted’s mention that the anti-slave arguments were not crack-pot ravings but actual valid economic and political arguments. He mentions in several places he didn’t want to minimize either the complexity or the historical context (French Revolution & Napoleonic Wars) of the anti-slavery movement in England. This is particularly interesting to me because I had an experience in my high school US history class where we initially were quite scornful of the compromises on slavery that lead to the ratification of the US Constitution. Our history teacher got revenge by re-creating the Constitutional Convention as a graded class debate and assigning the most scornful students the position of pro-slavery delegates. By recreating those debates, we were forced to ask the question “If not compromising on slavery prevented the Constitution for being ratified, would it be worth it? Or would we rather found the country and then, address this issue later?”. In the context of the film, it was a debate between “an imperfect order” (Wilberforce) and a perfect order (Clarkson). Needless to say, I immensely enjoyed listening to the commentary. Though I didn’t agree with everything said, it is clear a great deal of care was taken in presenting this film in an interesting and historically accurate manner.

Link to full post.

Overheard at Work, part 11

“Ohhhhh, I could be like Princess Leia!” – My (male) supervisor while wearing a Styrofoam headdress......Yes, really.

Link to full post.

Authoritarianism " for the Greater Good"

Via Coyote Blog, here is yet another example why people don't trust environmentalists.....

Having argued that democracy has failed humanity, the authors go even further and demonstrate that this failure can easily lead to authoritarianism without our even noticing. Even more provocatively, they assert that there is merit in preparing for this eventuality if we want to survive climate change. They are not suggesting that existing authoritarian regimes are more successful in mitigating greenhouse emissions, for to be successful economically they have adopted the market system with alacrity. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power.

So basically, because we haven't done what is necessary (according to them), they need to establish an authoritarian government in order to compel and coerce us to do what is necessary (according to them) and because they're in it "for the greater good", we shouldn't worry about it? Hmmmmm....Where have we heard this before?

Dear Environmentalists,

This is just a humble suggestion from a lowly engineer. Perhaps, the reason why so few people take you seriously is because when you fail to convince, you complain like a bunch of 5-yr old girls. Not to mention the whole advocating fascism thing. It's not a strategy to make friends and influence people. FYI...

Thank you for your time,
Jessica

There's also this gem: "Society is verging on a philosophical choice between 'liberty' or 'life.'" Look, people I don't believe it when the President says we have to make this choice for terrorism and I don't beleive it coming from a bunch of scientists either. Although, it does remind me of a Terry Pratchett quote:

"There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side."

Link to full post.

Recently From Amazon

While at Amazon to pre-order Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica (finally!) and Stargate: Ark of Truth, I thought I'd check out some new music. I ended up purchasing the following:

Ok Go's “Oh No”
Vanessa Mae's “Storm”
The Detroit Cobras “Tied & True”
Ten Years After “A Space In Time”
Beck's “Guero”
Feist “The Reminder”

Seriously, I've bought more music in the last 6 months that the previous 6 years. Not to mention, I'm getting even more eclectic (which I didn't think was possible). Now, if only I could find a rockin' Peruvian pan flute/punk band, my musical life would be complete....Perhaps these guys?

Link to full post.

Commercials Gone WRONG

So last night, I'm watching "Stargate: Atlantis" (like I do) and a commercial airs that is one of the most cracktastic "What were the ad execs smoking when they wrote this?!" things I've seen in a long time.

A despondent, slightly mousy woman is sitting at what appears to be a secretary's desk. She sighs all dramatic-like before her chests explodes and her still beating heart lands on her keyboard. Unlike me in similar circumstances, she doesn't appear too disturbed by this, indeed her non reaction continues as her heart sprouts little spindly cartoon-heart legs and leaps off the desk. The heart starts walking toward the boss's office.

Where, the boss is eating what looks like a plate of raw meat while chuckling in a evil-overlord manner. I thought maybe it was supposed to be the hearts of other despondent employees because that's how the boss maintains his control over them. But, that turned out to be totally wrong! The heart just pulled out a little sign saying "I QUIT!" and then walked off into the cartoon-heart sunset, leaving the woman behind.

A logo for CareerBuilder.com pops up and the announcer says something but at this point I'm in too much shock to register it.....

WHAT THE FRICKITY HELL?! This is going in the same category as that weird Quizno's singing hamster video from a couple years back.

Link to full post.

Parabolas & Culture

Ok, this thing is huge....Don't click the link to the full post unless you really, really, really mean it.

After reviewing “The Archimedes Codex” recently, I got to thinking more about how Greek mathematics differed from our own system. Specifically, I wondered about the capabilities of the two systems and how it affected certain types of calculations. Full post compares modern methods with "the Greek way", specifically for various areas under and inside parabolas.....

Warning! Full post contains mathematics (mainly calculus with a little bit of geometry)
Warning2! I am NOT an expert in Ancient Greek society or mathematics. I make many generalizations about both. I could be wrong....

Archimedes developed this geometric derivation of the area of a parabola (starts on pg10 of the pdf). The use of geometry is unsurprising as most Greek mathematics favored geometry. Not to mention, for this proof Archimedes made large use of the lever principle (which he developed) and balancing of a triangle (which he also developed)....This is known as playing to ones’ strengths.

But I think it’s interesting to compare this method with how we would make the same exact calculation. Here’s my calculation of the area of a “basic” parabola:



There are several features to note about this calculation. Unlike Archimedes, our system describes the parabola with an equation not an arc (ABC). We go to great trouble to place the parabola in the correct location in space (“space” described by another modern concept, the Cartesian coordinate system). Greeks were also concerned about location but mainly in relation to shapes inscribed or circumscribed by the parabola in question. These relationships usually provided them with the identities and equivalences that allowed for complicated derivations. Also, look at the number of abstract concepts & symbols involved in the modern calculation which you have to understand in order to follow the solution: the integral sign, the equation and several theorems involving using substitutions to solve the integral.

Even though the system is very different from his method, this does correspond to Archimedes solution.


Where things begin to get interesting is when you consider the area underneath a parabola curve. There are a number of real-world problems involving these type of solution in physics but they were unheard of in Archimedes’ time.

First let’s look at how we would solve this problem:


It’s not too different from the first solution is it? And the solution is pretty easy to verify:


For both the area under the curve and the area inside the curve, we use Archimedes solution to check our own. In his day, these solutions were cutting edge thought. After two thousand years, we take them as bald facts whose origin is of no more interest to most students than the secret history of 2+2=4.

But what happens when we only want to calculate the area of a small slice underneath the parabola? For the modern system, it’s not too different than our other solutions:


However, I have no idea how or even if Archimedes would have calculated this. I attempted to recreate his parabola area figure and modified it as I felt appropriate for calculating a slice:


The problem with attempting to solve this geometrically is that there are too many variables and no clear way to relate them to each other. When looking at the curve as a whole, it’s easy to develop proportions to use in eliminating some variables. When looking for the area of a small slice, those proportions are no longer true. The relationship between what’s inside the parabola and what’s outside it changes depending on which slice you take. For instance:


There are a couple of reasons why I don’t think Archimedes or any Greek mathematician would have ever performed this calculation.

Mainly, this calculation involves ugly proportions and the Greek placed real value on “beautiful” relationships between numbers. Hence, they developed ideas such as “The Golden Spiral” and "The Golden Ratio". In general, the Greeks weren't interested in randomly-sized bits of things. They could and did manipulate proportionate pieces of whole objects. And based on Archimedes geometric calculation of the area of a parabola, they had no problem using small-bits of shapes as long as they were used to derive relationships between whole shapes. A random bit by itself had no interest.

Also, the Greeks had a much higher expectation of order in things than we do. In modern times, developments like Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics and Chaos Mathematics have led to a much less cultural expectation of order in the Universe (or at least much less expectation of "simple" order). Therefore, to the Greeks, to expect random slices of things to have any real-world meaning would be a little bit nuts.

I can’t even imagine a Greek mathematician sending this problem out as unsolvable. While Archimedes apparently liked to tease his competitors/colleagues, he thrived on his reputation as a master. I don’t really see him or any Greek mathematician sending a problem out stating “I couldn’t solve this” even if it was also to say “Here’s a frustrating little riddle that should keep your chickpea-sized intellect busy for a while”. Not to mention that Greek mathematicians were usually subsidized by rulers who kept them around because they could solve problems. If word got out they were stumped, it might hurt not just their prestige but their livelihoods. In Archimedes’ case, his patron was possibly his relative, Heiro II of Syracuse who made active use of Archimedes’ reputation for both military and diplomatic purposes. I don’t see any such ruler as being understanding about a drop in that reputation.

Still, before reading “The Archimedes Codex” most experts on Greek mathematics would have said Greeks also stayed away from infinities because they didn’t conform to their ideas about how numbers should work. We now know this to be untrue. It’s possible they tried other things as well and records of those calculations didn’t survive into the modern era.

If someone back then did give these bounded problems a shot, I would expect they focused on special cases which happen to have proportional relationships to the whole curve solution in order to get the variables to work out right. Also, if they sent it out to other mathematicians, I could see someone like Archimedes, knowing damn well their solution is special-case, saying “I leave the calculation of similar slices as an exercise for you.” This would allow them to present their solution (and intellect) while also teasing their competitors with a problem they would find exceedingly frustrating.

A slightly tangential point: Doesn’t the modern way strike you as almost terse and quite dense compared to the Greek methods? Their ways involve much more flourish and explicit delineation of concepts. The latter partly because they were the first to develop certain concepts so they had to explicitly delineate them. Our way really reflects our societies values of efficiency and “getting as much bang for your buck”. Each symbol represents not just itself but a whole body of thought. Each manipulation of those symbols portrays the results of hundreds of years of mathematical development.

This reminds me of a comment one of my English teachers once made that “poetry was compressed speech” where one word represented dozens so that the information provided in a poem was much larger than you would expect based on a word count. If this is true for words, I would expect it’s true of mathematics as well. It functions as a form of symbolic poetry where each symbol can express many things simultaneously. This has nothing to do with Greek mathematics specifically; I just think it’s cool.

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New Mammal in the House!

According to the BBC, the following creature is not the result of strange experiments on an island owned by renowned geneticist, Dr. Moreau but in fact, a naturally occurring wild animal......

I'm still leaning toward a cross-breeding experiment accidentally released into the wild. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Part rodent, part anteater, part cat(?) creature named the "Elephant Shrew".

Lack of posting is due to me working on a big post, not laziness. Once I'm done checking my math and scanning figures, you'll get a whopper of a post.

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FYI.....

Never, ever, EVER go grocery shopping on Superbowl Sunday......Nothing you buy will be worth it.

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"27 Dresses"

I saw this movie last night with some friends. Unexpectedly HILARIOUS. I mean, you expect a romantic comedy to be somewhat funny with quirky characters and funny situations but this was repeatedly and continuously laugh-out-loud funny. James Marsden, once again proves he's a comic genius and Katherine Heigl really surprised me with how wry and low-key her character's humor was. It was fitting that someone who was used to being a background character in other people's lives won't be too obvious about her sense of humor either. Best line of the night for me was:
"I feel like I just found out my favorite love song was about a sandwich."

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Secrets of "Real" Programmers....

Courtesy of xkcd....

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