WillWhim

Last post on blogspot

2005-04-10T23:33:00.000-04:00

I'm moving my weblog back to http://www.entish.org/willwhim. Please make a note of it. There's likely to be a few twists and turns on the way.

I may be a Unitarian Jihadist

2005-04-09T15:49:00.000-04:00

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Sword of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

(But I'm a trinitarian).

We th ppl f th US (Compressing the US Constitution)

2005-04-07T08:59:00.000-04:00

As promised, a quick test of compressing the US Constitution to compare it to the compression rates seen by Jean Véronis for the European constitution.

It's interesting to note that the compression ratio went down with the addition of the Bill of Rights. Not surprisingly, the other amendments have the biggest compression ratio There are a number of copies of "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." in the later amendments--I've never understood why some amendments have this proviso, and others don't.

In any case, even at its highest ratio (indicating the most redundant text), the US constitution does well in contrast to the European constitution. And taking the original constitutions head-to-head? No contest: 65% vs. 75%.

Of course, take this with a grain of salt. Compression was done using gzip. By the way, Jean Véronis's text compression (for his post in French) is 52%. Apparently, he's a good writer.

Compression as indicator of document quality

2005-04-06T08:30:00.000-04:00

Jean Véronis describes an informal experiment in compressing different texts, including the European constitution. (Original in French, Auto-translated to English). He notes that normally, French texts compress at about 60-65% of the original, but the EU constitution compresses at about 75%. He puts this down to "jargon, puffery, redundancy..." in the constitution. I wonder what the US Constitution is (before and after any admendments added after the Bill of Rights). To be determined...

By the way, Google's translation provider translates ""jargon, baratin, redondance..." as "jargon, sweet talk, redundancy..." Which makes me wonder about the compression ratios achievable on flattery.

Dropping Lambda

2005-04-01T11:36:00.000-05:00

Shriram Krishnamurthi, that bad boy of the Scheme community, announced today (April 1) that PLT Scheme plans on removing LAMBDA from PLT Scheme 3.0.

So I posted this note:

A group of us are pretty upset that the PLT Scheme Team has announced plans to drop LAMBDA from PLT Scheme v300.

We agree that dropping FILTER and MAP is a good idea, although for different reasons. We think that (filter P S) is almost always written more clearly as:


(((lambda (f)
    ((lambda (x) (f (x x)))
     (lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y))))))
   (lambda (f) 
     (lambda (r)
       (if (null? r) '()
    (if (p (car r))
        (cons (car r) (f (cdr r)))
        (f (cdr r))))))) s)

So, we are announcing that we will be forking the PLT Scheme codebase, into a new project, tentatively named "Lorenzo's Oil." Version 1 will remove MAP, etc. We expect Version 2 to further cleanse the language. We are embarrassed, for example, that we left in the IF statements.

-- The Lorenzo's Oil Team

So, are you in, or are you out?

Tradition

2005-03-30T20:17:00.000-05:00

I remember that once, when I was a little boy, my Ma was cooking a pot roast, and she started by chopping off both ends of the pot roast before putting it into the pot. I asked her, Ma--why did you cut off the ends of the pot roast before putting it in the pot? It seems to me that you cook pot roast differently every time you cook it.

Well, she said, my Ma always cooked pot roast a different way each time. Sometimes she'd cut off one end, sometimes both ends, sometimes neither; sometimes she'd use lots of pepper or garlic or tomatoes or even, one time, mustard, anise seed, and dill. Why did she do that, I asked. Well, you'll just have to ask her, she said. So the next time we went to Grandma's house I asked her why she always cooked the pot roast differently each time.

My Ma, she said, was a terrible cook. Her pot roasts were as tough as leather and dry as toast. I decided that when I had my own kitchen things would be different, so every time I cooked a pot roast, I'd try a little experiment. That's cool, Grandma, I said. Do you still do that when you cook?

Oh don't be silly, she said. I ruined a lot of perfectly good pot roasts with those crazy experiments. One day I finally went out and bought a decent cookbook, and now I make a pretty good pot roast. Maybe I should lend it to your Ma.

One suppon a time

2005-03-29T18:43:00.000-05:00

I member when me an two a my brothers were walkin home late one night an we found ourself in a graveyard. Lookit here, said Dave -- this guy lived to he was 87 years old. Huh, I said. I seen a grave a minute ago had a guy who lived till he was 95. Stevie called us over and said here's a guy who was 250 years old! What was his name, I asked. Lemme see, said Stevie, lighting a match -- oh, yeah, here it is: His name was Miles, from Detroit.

(My brother Steve was almost complaining that my posts have been a little too erudite lately).

Kunonga watch I

2005-03-29T18:03:00.000-05:00

From Archibishop Ncube Urges Mugabe Overthrow

Although Mugabe is regarded as evil incarnate by Zimbabwe's Roman Catholic hierarchy, he does have friends elsewhere in the Christian Community. Zimbabwe's Anglican primate, Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, has used his pulpit at St Mary's Cathedral in Harare to support Mugabe and his land reform programme.

He was rewarded by Mugabe with one of the farms, St Marnock's, outside Harare, confiscated from its previous white owner, 25-year-old Marcus Hale. The bishop installed his son in the 2000 acre farmhouse, which overlooks a lake and sweeping fields of wheat and soya. The bishop also evicted 50 black workers and their families to make way for his own staff.

From his pulpit, Kunonga has compared opponents of Mugabe as "dogs against an elephant" and described them as "puppets of the West". During one of his pro-Mugabe sermons, the choir began singing hymns to drown out his words. The choir was subsequently sacked by the bishop along with the cathedral wardens and cathedral council.

Anglican priests critical of Mugabe have been transferred to tough rural parishes and many have resigned. A plethora of legal cases between Kunonga and his disillusioned flock are stuck in Zimbabwe's chaotic court system. In place of priests who have resigned, he has appointed men who have pledged not to criticise the head of state.

(Kunonga used to be a friend of mine. He is now an Anglican bishop in Zimbabwe, and very supportive of dictator Robert Mugabe.)

Follow-up on "all lavish of strange gifts to men"

2005-03-29T06:21:00.000-05:00

Warren Steel, who is at the Department of Music at the University of Mississippi, had access to the original poem, by Edward Young. His "Night Thoughts" was a popular series of poems--Blake illustrated them, for example. Steel wrote on the Sacred Harp mailing list:

I have a copy of Young's Night Thoughts handy. Night 4 is the Christian Triumph.

--in his bless'd life,
I see the path, and in his death, the price,
And in his great ascent, the proof supreme
Of immortality. --And did he rise?
Hear, O ye nations! hear it, O ye dead!
He rose! he rose! he burst the bars of death...

The theme, the joy, how then shall man sustain!
Oh the burst gates! crush'd sting! demolish'd throne!
Last gasp of vanquish'd death! Shout earth and heav'n
This sum of joy to man: whose nature then
Took wing, and mounted with him from the tomb!
Then, then I rose; then first humanity
Triumphant pass'd the crystal ports of light
(Stupendous guest!) and seiz'd eternal youth,
Seiz'd in our name. E'er since, 'tis blasphemous
To call man mortal. Man's mortality
Was then transferr'd to death; and heav'n's duration
Unalienably seal'd to this frail frame,
This child of dust--Man, all-immortal! hail!
Hail heaven! all-lavish of strange gifts to man!
Thine all the glory, man's the boundless bliss.

So, since the resurrection, the poet views man
immortal; it's he being hailed first. Then heaven,
or God is hailed as generous of gifts that are
strange (i.e. immortality). The glory belongs to
heaven, the bliss belongs to man. So I read it.

I think he's right. I'm also convinced now that "all-lavish of [strange gifts]" is a adjectival phrase, like "God almighty" or "God all-powerful". Note the parallelism in the poem to "all-immortal".

Thanks, Warren!

"All lavish of strange gifts to man"

2005-03-28T08:55:00.000-05:00

I posted the following questions to the Sacred Harp discussion list. This will be of interest to only those people who are interested in both grammar and Sacred Harp. I may be the only one in this group. However, hope springs eternal ...

In Easter Anthem (236), the poetry ends:

Man, all immortal hail,
Hail heaven, all lavish of strange gifts to man,
Thine's all the glory,
Man's the boundless bliss.

I'm having trouble parsing this. Maybe you can help...

Question 1. Who is hailing, and who is being hailed?

I think it's 'Man' and 'Heaven' hailing God, but it could be we are hailing 'immortal Man' (i.e., Jesus, I assume) and 'heaven.' (i.e., God, I assume).

Question 2: What does 'all lavish of strange gifts to man' mean?

It seems to me that 'lavish' has to be a noun, grammatically. If so, it probably means something like 'lavisher' or 'giver'--i.e., 'heaven, giver of strange gifts to man'; or 'the lavished', or 'blessed', i.e., 'hail heaven, O ye who are lavished with strange gifts.' Any thoughts?

Seven last words

2005-03-25T02:31:00.000-05:00

Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).

Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43).

Woman, behold your son: behold your mother (John 19:26f.).

Eli Eli lema sabachthani? (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34).

I thirst (John 19:28).

It is finished (John 19:30).

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46).

Plagiarism detector

2005-03-22T15:58:00.000-05:00

I learned about Copyscape.com today via rebecca's pocket. Copyscape allows you to tell whether you've been plagiarized elsewhere on the web. I checked a number of pages, and found that I was feeling a bit sad that nothing I'd written had been worth plagiarizing ... until finally I found that my description of C++ in my Real Quick C++ tutorial showed up at http://support.maguma.com/doc/reader.php?docset=sdkdocs&page=oop.html. Now I don't know whether to be flattered or angry...

Irish-American

2005-03-17T15:32:00.000-05:00

My ma was an O'Shaughnessy. My da is a Fitzgerald. It's St. Patrick's Day, and we're celebratin' here at NASA. I've been asked to "take time to remember the enduring contributions of those Irish-Americans who have given this country ... so much," I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean I can take off the rest of the month. Did you know that "Nine of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Irish-Americans?" When did they become Irish-Americans? During the act of signing? At the end of the revolutionary war? What were they before that? Irish-America-the-continent-not-America-the-country-ians?

Yes, I know, I'm being daft.

left-right blogosphere

2005-03-16T09:37:00.000-05:00

I haven't read the study, but I like the pretty picture. (via 3 Quarks).

Ascii mandelbrot set movie

2005-03-09T10:02:00.000-05:00

Ascii mandelbrot set movie.

in the midst of business

2005-03-07T21:04:00.000-05:00

I'm very busy -- but John took me up on my suggestion that he'd look cool in front of a BRLESC-II. Also, <brag_alert="on">daughter Jane (6th grade) got a 530 on her SAT--56%ile for all SAT takers.<brag_alert="off">.

englishdroid.com

2005-03-03T23:11:00.000-05:00

Much fun about teaching English as a foreign language, as I did in a former life; including a bitter essay that pretty much explains why I stopped teaching EFL.

After the age of 40, English teachers are burnt-out, skill-less and unemployable, their working lives a wasteland, their future oblivion. Suicide attempts are not unheard of. A former colleague of mine, a charming and talented but fatally lazy Scotsman who was well on his way to drinking himself to death, was recently found in a pool of blood, having tried to finish himself off by slashing his wrists.

(via languagelog).

Better to light a candle ...

2005-02-27T17:04:00.000-05:00

Bess says she wants to cross-stich the final version: Better to light a candle....

Why I love Lisp

2005-02-25T14:19:00.000-05:00

In what other language could I write a function like this:

(defmethod subject-to-variable-bound-precondition-p ((operator (eql '%%eql-if-bound))) nil)

Some publications

2005-02-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

Gee, I just discovered that two short technical reports I wrote at the Canadian National Research Council are available on their document site: Models for Cross-Cultural Communications for Cross-Cultural Website Design and Integrating Internationalized Websites with Databases and Email Systems: Working with Multilingual Texts.

Spead the meme: captchaservice.org

2005-02-23T11:06:00.000-05:00

Spread the meme: captchaservice.org provides a web-served captchas (testat that are easy for humans, but hard for robot spammers, to pass). Created by my wizardly friend Tim Converse and hosted by CommerceNet.

Montréal

2005-02-21T17:22:00.000-05:00

We just returned from Montréal. The main purpose was to celebrate the wedding of our niece Margaret Lipsey to Chris Kassab. They're both chefs, and the wedding was held in a 30's vintage restuarant, the Lion D'or. Margaret and Chris planned the wedding (Margaret even made marshmallows for the late night chocolate bar), so I took a picture of her behind the coat check.

I also got to visit friend and colleagues Daniel Lemire and Anna MacLaughlin, with whom I worked at the Canadian National Research Council, which was great fun. The weather was clear and cold, but we hit a major winter storm on our way home, forcing us to stay an extra night in a hotel on the way back. All in all, a good trip, and a chance to brush up on some of my favourite aspects of Canadian culture.

Roseville muralist

2005-02-19T12:10:00.000-05:00

I grew up in Roseville, Michigan, an anonymous Detroit suburb of no distinction. It's among the least beautiful places I've ever seen--the homes are non-descript, the businesses are strip-maill ugly. My father still lives there, so I visit it from time to time. One point of artistic light is a funky little studio run by Ed Stross, who has painted a large mural on the side of his building with portraits of Mother Theresa and Princess Diana. So, of course the obvious thing to do is to threaten to send him to jail for including a bare-breasted Eve.

His studio is kitty-corner from the Roseville Theatre, one of the only interesting buidlings in Roseville, where I spent a lot of time as a youth watching double features such as my favorite combonation ever: The Paper Lion and The Yellow Submarine. It now shows indie films and is a band venue. I have no idea where they get an audience for indie films in Roseville.

(Story via boingboing).

First century texting

2005-02-16T11:25:00.000-05:00

Jean Veronis has interesting post about the use of abbreviations in an ancient Christian text. He points out that later (medieval) texts had a much higher use of abbreviations, and suggests that perhaps the use of translations for Lord, Jesus, etc., were to mark "membership in a tribe" in addition to compression.

Ne retrouve-t-on pas là le double besoin qui se fait sentir dans l'écriture "texto" : gagner de la place, sans doute, mais aussi marquer son appartenance à une tribu, à un groupe à part ? Il y avait trèsprobablement un tel sentiment chez les premiers chrétiens, comme nous le rappelle l'étymologie du mot église : du grec ek - klesia, "qui a été appelé hors de"...

There one can see the double need that is met by "texting": to save space, no doubt, but also to indicate membership in a tribe. There was, very probably, such a feeling among the early Christians, as the etymology of the French word for "church" (église) tells us: from Greek ek-klesia, "those who are called out."

My French is pretty bad, so I relied on Google's translation into English, which was as good an extended automated text as I've ever seen. Still, it translated canon as gun -- i.e., "the construction of the gun by the Church", and the latin expression Nomina Sacra as nominated crowned. The English translation above is mine, based on the Google translation. I had thought that the English word church derived from ekklesia, too, but according to Online Etymology Dictionary, it derives the Greek for "the Lord's house," which means its etymologically related to economics.

Rovers and Whegs

2005-02-16T11:09:00.000-05:00

Is the Rotundus the new Rover?

And check out this movie (35mb) of wheg robots.

Thanks to Robots that chase burglers (or...prisoners??) at Mirabilis.ca

A study of a web quotation

2005-02-14T12:32:00.000-05:00

A study of a Web quotation (via mrh, who also has a nice picture of the Gates--Thanks, Mike!)

Ash Wednesday

2005-02-09T07:22:00.000-05:00

T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday:

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

And the Origins of Ash Wednesday.

Latasha, Latisha, Lontonya, Lantanya, Latosha, LaToya, Latrice

2005-02-08T10:48:00.000-05:00

Man o' man is this cool: interactive chart of name popularity.. The chart here shows the popularity of names starting with LAT; it was interesting to see the decrease in people named 'Jane,' (our daughter's name) over time--it really does seem like an 'old lady's name,' as Jane often complains. No Britneys before the 1970s, or Khalils before the 1980s. (The chart only has data for the 1000 most popular names per decade). Via Metafilter.

YACPDS

2005-02-02T17:35:00.000-05:00

Yet Another Cell Phone Distraction Study. Study size: 20. Findings: talking on a cell phone is distracting; young people react with the slowness of older/drunken people; old people react with the slowness of slightly older people. Six of the 20 rear-ended the (simulated) pace car (four while talking on a cell phone).

“If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone. It’s like instantly aging a large number of drivers,” says David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the study.

via Slashdot; also heard on the radio.

Canadian English

2005-02-01T08:07:00.000-05:00

A good Globe ad Mail report on what they claim is the "first-ever full-fledged scholarly conference on Canadian English", the Canadian English in a Global Context conference, which took place this past weekend. Going to the conference site leads to this link for Canadian English studies. The CBC did a show on Talking Canadian when I lived there, but I missed it, unfortunately.

Ratios and percentages

2005-01-15T22:36:00.000-05:00

Daughter Jane is taking the SAT test next week as part of a program to foster academically talented junior high students. We're fairly confident of her language skills (today she asked me what 'subcutaneous meant), but she's fairly math adverse, so Bess asked me to tutor her a little. It's hard to know how to prepare a 12 year old for the math section of the SATs, but today we spent about an hour discussing odds and percentages.

It was interesting to watch her think. "There are twice as many boys as girls in the class, which has 120 students. How many boys were there? Girls?" She did this by trial and error: taking multiples of 10 for the girls, doubling it, and adding the sum to see if it was 120. She got it fairly quickly this way: she had a good intuition of the size of the numbers needed (and that they would be multiples of 10).

Our SAT prep book suggested a system of creating a 'box' that looks like this:

	Boys	Girls	Whole
Ratio	2	1	?
Times	?	?	?
Number	?	?	120

Eventually, you fill things out by adding 2+1 to get 3, diving 120 by 3 to get 40, then multiplying to get the final number:

	Boys	Girls	Whole
Ratio	2	1	3
Times	40	40	40
Number	80	40	120

It works from a number of starting points, and it's nicely 'plug-and-chug.' Still, Jane's intuition helped her make some leaps to correct answers without doing all the math--and, of course, some leaps to wrong answers, too. I continue to wonder how to encourage her interests and abilities in math and science. I might get the opportunity to hear Sally Ride talk about this next week, when I travel to Ames for my (nominally) monthly visit to the Apex lab.

(Sorry about the poor table formatting. Limits of Blogger, I think).

More Michigania

2005-01-08T08:33:00.000-05:00

I came across a You know you're from Michigan when... list, and it had the following item:

When giving directions, you refer to "A Michigan Left."

Hmm, I've never heard of this, but searching the web I found this: The Michigan Left-Hand Turn, complete with diagrams. Fortunately, we don't have any of these in Kalamazoo, although they're a bane whenever I drive Gratiot Avenue when I visit my father near Detroit. Grr. I'd rather be known for Vernors.

Michigander dialect

2005-01-06T17:03:00.000-05:00

From: Do You Speak American / Sea to Shining Sea / American Varieties / Midwest:

Indeed, it is not uncommon to find Michiganders who will claim that the speech of national broadcasters is modeled on their dialect. Even a cursory comparison of the speech of the network news anchors with that of the local news anchors in Detroit will reveal the fallacy of such claims.

and

As long as Midwesterners are viewed as average, boring or otherwise nondescript, their speech will be seen through the same prism.

Iyat least they're tuckin' abuut os.

Update: Here's a nice dialect map by Labov et al. showing (among other things) the extent of the Northern Cities Shift.

Update 2: Here's a good example (MP3) of Michigander speech, from the International Dialects of English Archive.

Happy New Year

2005-01-01T17:36:00.000-05:00

We spent New Year's Eve the way we usually do--with a group of friends we've been celebrating with every year for more than two decades--the Aldermans, the Neevils, and the Robbins (participating via instant messaging from Honduras), plus Bess's sister Jean and her two boys. Mark was off to a 'black-tie' party of this own (having found a spiffy tuxedo for $20 dollars--shades of Napoleon Dynamite--at a thrift store).

We played our usual guys vs. girls games--we had a hoot with Catch Phrase, where we learned how differently kids and adults remember and image things: 'Poison Ivy' was primarily a movie character to one nephew, and 'Crankshaft' only a cartoon to another. This year--for the first time in many years--the guys beat the girls. I guess I should disclose this only happened because I persuaded Kathy Alderman to play on the guys' team. (We're pretty sure Kathy is telepathic, at least with respect to word and drawing games).

We got to bed at 2 a.m. I somewhat foolishly got up at 7 a.m. to sing Harmonia Sacra down in Goshen, Indiana. This is similar, but not identical, to Sacred Harp. A tune I really like is the first one we sang: Amboy, which is not in the Denson book.

Best wishes to all for a happy new year.

Powell transcript

2004-12-27T15:01:00.000-05:00

A transcript of a luncheon interview with Colin Powell. Worth reading.

The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker

2004-12-26T07:29:00.000-05:00

From the New York Times review of 'The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker' by Walter Kern:

[O]ne does sense that the cartoons have done the job they first set out to do: purging any lingering puritanism from their relatively well-heeled audience and replacing it with a smart-aleck self-awareness that suddenly -- just look around -- feels useless, lonely and crippling.

I just received this book as a Christmas present. My first encounter, I think, with the New Yorker cartoons was in college, where they were scotch-taped on the doors of the offices of professors and grad assistants in Wells Hall, which housed the mathematics and linguistics departments.

The obsessive in me enjoys owning all 68,647 cartoons from the first 80 years of the New Yorker (and worries a bit about falling behind). The nostalgic enjoys remembering great cartoons. I also read a few together with my daughter Jane: for example, two large crackled-edge holes on a frozen lake titled, "Sumos on Ice!" She surprised me by 'getting' the joke.

OK, if I read one cartoon every ten seconds ...

Penguins!

2004-12-22T16:33:00.000-05:00

This was fun.

The secret to programming is having smart friends

2004-12-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

The story behind the Apple graphing calculator. (via /..)

Lots of cool pictures

2004-12-17T10:48:00.000-05:00

Lots of cool blimp pictures, and more, at the Moffett Field Museum website.

Someday I'd like to meet ...

2004-12-13T08:30:00.000-05:00

... someone who makes 'real' marshmellows: using the sap of a marsh mallow. I'd eat them, not make them into peeps or Balrogs. Even though their Latin name indicates marsh mallows are useful for healing, you should be aware of the dangers of a marshmellow plant.

Christmas letter

2004-12-09T22:53:00.000-05:00

Our 2004 (and 2003!) Christmas newsletter.

Christmas addresses

2004-12-08T08:56:00.000-05:00

Every year I attempt to update our address list, especially in order to send out Christmas cards. The original database of addresses I created is gone; I can't remember what I originally used. Last year was too choatic to do anything. This year I decided to create the list from scratch. In fact, I decided I would just write out addresses in an address book.

In the end, though, I had a brainstorm. I used Google's phone book search to look up names and phone numbers. (For example phonebook: william fitzgerald kalamazoo). I estimate that about 75% of the time, this got me to a correct address and phone number. Since I'm notoriously bad at transcription errors, this helped ensure I got the addresses and phone numbers right. Of course, Google's address database isn't perfect, but it was pretty good.

I then cut and pasted the address into an Emacs buffer, eventually deleting the extraneous links to maps. More search-and-replace allowed me to put in tab field delimiters, and I then slurped the data into Excel, where I cleaned things up a bit. Creating a merge document in Word was then relatively simple.

When personal computers were first coming out, and people asked what they were good for, one of the standard answers was 'keeping an address book.' You'd think it would be obvious how to do this, and dead simple as well. Who knew that PCs would be really for video games, email, and blogging?

Translating Canadian

2004-11-19T08:17:00.000-05:00

The New Yorker has a somewhat amusing application form for disgruntled Democrats who want to move to Canada, which includes this question:

Translate the following statement: "Cripes, grade thirteen! Here's a loonie — buy a Coffee Crisp, eh?"

Geoff Pullum can't make heads or tails of it. But (having been a Canadian resident for several weeks and author of The Canadian Quiz, I think I'm on the case:

Oh my, [You had to attend] a fifth year of secondary education! Take this Canadian dollar and buy yourself a confectionary sold only in Canada, won't you?

However. 'Cripes' is used in the US, and Coffee Crisps are sold in the US too (you can sign the petition to have it sold throughout the US). And some of us Michiganders, especially Yoopers, say "eh." It's those East Coast media at it again.

Words and music

2004-11-15T18:50:00.000-05:00

I created a new Sacred Harp page: Words and Music.

[Boston] [cream pie] and [Boston cream] [doughnuts]

2004-11-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

I remembered a post by Mark Liberman about disambiguation of complex nominals when I visited a doughnut shop today. The post points out that, when trying to determine automatically whether a phrase like "sickle cell anemia" is (say) sickle-type cell anemia or an anemia of sickle cells -- i.e., whether it's [sickle] [cell anemia] or [sickle cell] [anemia]--you can do something very simple, which works very well in practice: count the number of times "sickle cell" and "cell anemia" occur in a large body of texts, and the more frequent is likely to be the right grouping. "Sickle cell" is much more common than "cell anemia" in Medline, so, based on counting alone (with no semantic understanding of sickle cells or anemia), the best grouping is [sickle cell] [anemia].

OK, so in the doughnut shop I saw signs for the various kinds of doughnuts, and one said:

Boston cream

Hmm. Are these Boston-style cream doughnuts, or doughnuts made of Boston cream? [Boston] [cream doughnuts], or [Boston cream] [doughnuts]?

And what about Boston cream pie? Boston-style cream pie [Boston] [cream pie]? Or pie made of Boston cream [Boston cream] [pie]?

So, firing up the answer box (Google):

Boston cream: about 31,600
Cream pie: about 1,230,000
Cream doughnut(s)/cream donut(s): about 10,300

Apparently, it's [Boston] [cream pie] and [Boston cream] [doughnuts].

At first, this seemed a counter-example to the counting trick: Shouldn't they both parse the same way? On second thought, though, I realized that the sign said "Boston cream" not "Boston cream doughnuts," and, really, a "Boston cream doughnut" is a doughnut made with "Boston cream pie cream," which one might just call "Boston cream."

I suspect this trick indicates (again, without doing anything but counting) that Boston cream pie predates Boston cream doughnuts.

I also saw a recipe for [sour cream] [doughnuts] along the way--that's just wicked.

Election 2004 mini-analysis

2004-11-03T22:11:00.000-05:00

Michigan went for Gore in 2000, and for Kerry in 2004, by relatively small amounts: Gore got 51.3% of the vote in 2000 (with 2.6% going to 3rd parties). Kerry got 51.1% of the vote in 2004 (with 1% going to third parties).

Voting was up 13.7% over 2000. Most interesting is the disparity between Democrats and Republicans: Democratic voters were up 13.3%, but Republicans were up 18.1%.

It's interesting to pull out two counties: my own (Kalamazoo) and Wexford, a largely rural county in northern lower Michigan (the county seat is Cadillac, where my sister-in-law Jean and her family just moved--and she immediately jumped into the Democratic get out the vote).

Kalamazoo actually voted more Democatic in 2004 than in 2000: 51.3% vs. 48.5% (with 1% and 3.6% going to 3rd parties, respectively). This shows in the increase numbers: Democratic voters were up 25.9% vs. 18.4% for Republicans. Wexford Democrats matched the statewide Democratic increase: 13.3%, but the Republicans were up 24.3% (Kerry got 39.8% of the vote in 2004; Gore, 41% of the vote in 2000; with 1.1% and 3.4% to 3rd party candidates, respectively.

Apparently, local "GOTV" efforts do make a difference--or, perhaps, just a peer feedback loop ('rich get richer' in voter increase). I did see a strong increase in people excited to vote Democratic: I just didn't see my strong the increase in the Republican voter numbers was. Maybe I should spend less time reading Salon.

Data from the Michigan Secretary of State: official 2000 data, and unofficial 2004 data.

So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast

2004-11-03T07:29:00.000-05:00

I was wrong about Florida and Colorado, and apparently about Ohio. I was very wrong about margins. Zogby was wrong (although not about Bush winning the popular vote); Breslin was wrong.

(moves to corner; licks wounds).

The final vote projected:

2004-11-02T14:33:00.000-05:00

My projections: Kerry: 320, Bush: 218 electoral votes. Also, although there might be some question about some states' final votes, I predict the differences will be large enough that we'll know pretty well by tomorrow morning.

See also Breslin's final regular Newsday column.

How my vote went

2004-11-02T09:07:00.000-05:00

I voted in Kalamazoo, Michigan; our district uses optical scanners. I arrived around 7:30 am. I vote at the school my daughter attends, and I walked her down. The line was quite long -- it was cool and a bit drizzly, but I didn't sense that people were leaving. I got out at 8:40. I noticed that I was the 101st voter; the previous voter was right ahead of me. So, with the polls opening at 7:00, this means they were handling about 1 voter per minute. The slow point was the number of booths--for some reason, they only allow six per precinct.

This is just the second time that optical scanners are being used here. While I was in line, the scanner started beeping--a person had 'over voted' (voted for two candidates for the same position, for example). But he left before either he or the poll worker had noticed. The scanner wouldn't allow the next voter to insert her ballot until this was acknowledged by the poll worker--apparently, this was the first time it had happened this morning.

I was a little chagrined that people in line could effectively see how others voted as the ballots were fed into the scanner, unless the voters took care to cover the ballots. No one seemed to be worried about this--not the workers, not the voters, not the poll watchers. The MoveOn people were there, as well as Democrats. There may have been some Republicans, but I couldn't tell.

(Posted as a comment to Jason Kottke's thread How'd your vote go?.

One last pre-election essay

2004-11-01T16:29:00.000-05:00

I wanted to write a final essay on why you should vote for Kerry in the presidential election. But, as is often the case, Peter Norvig did it first.

DON'T LET THEM DOWN!

2004-10-28T16:23:00.000-04:00

This election is for them (picture of a white soldier, a white mother and child). DON'T LET THEM DOWN! Strong defense and security, a commitment to protecting America, to protecting or families--Our President, our Commander in Chief George W. Bush is the strong and steady leader we need. Without your vote, he'll be forced to step down and surrender his position to an upredictable and risky candidate with a completely different set of priorities for America.

Don't surrender, President Bush! Never give in to al-Kerrida! You're our Commander in Chief! Be strong, be strong and steady! And predictable!

(Quotation from a RNC that arrived at our home today. Sheesh.)

Struck and White

2004-10-28T13:55:00.000-04:00

Geoff Pullum has a great anti-Struck and White rant, which he says is:

a horrid little compendium of unmotivated prejudices (don't use ongoing), arbitrary stipulations (don't begin a sentence with however), and fatuous advice ("Be clear"), ridiculously out of date in its positions on appropriate choices among grammatical variants, deeply suspect in its style advice and grotesquely wrong in most of the grammatical advice it gives.

Struck and White was (I think) the first book on writing style I ever read, and I fell in love--mostly, I think, because of White's introductory essay. The advice "Omit needless words" and "Use the active voice" might be fatuous and arbitrary. Still, when I take the time to ask: Is this word needed? and "Should I be using the passive voice here?" my writing is clearer. And White told me something I didn't know: that writing and reading can be a beautiful thing.

Snarky Bush joke

2004-10-20T11:09:00.000-04:00

Snarky Bush joke.

The post-modern presidency

2004-10-16T21:54:00.000-04:00

[The senior Whitehouse aide] told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

From Without a Doubt, a NY Times Magazine article by Ron Suskind.

Bush or Kerry? One Canadian's view

2004-10-15T08:33:00.000-04:00

Tim Bray recommends:

If you’re running a company and there’s a general perception that your CEO is [an expletive for fool], eventually it won’t matter that much whether he really is or isn’t; the perception will become an obstacle. And right now, the United States of America is facing that obstacle.

Bush-Kerry Debate (III)

2004-10-13T23:04:00.000-04:00

People always want "knock-out blows" in a debate, but there weren't any, of course. Bush usually sounded less desparate than he did in the first two debates; he always seems more intelligent when he's calm. Kerry's performance was exactly the same as in the first two debates: "presidential," in a word. CBS's instant poll of undecideds said a plurality thought Kerry had won the debate.

I could be wrong, but I think this debate shows that the right's use of "liberal" as a scare word is dying. Bush, at least, didn't seem to make any headway with it. Kerry as to the left of Ted Kennedy--hah! I don't think anyone will buy that who's not already a dittohead.

OK--I'll predict that Kerry will beat Bush in the popular vote with approximately the same margin as Gore beat Bush in 2000. Whether he'll win the electoral college vote remains to be seen.

Kennedy's inaugural address 1961

2004-10-12T17:40:00.000-04:00

Fill in the blank, Mr. Bush:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of ________.
______________ [is] our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace.
Let us never ____________ out of fear. But let us never fear to ____________.
Let [us] formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of _______—and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of ___________.
Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"—a struggle against the common enemies of man: ___________ , ___________ , ___________ , ___________, and ___________ itself.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what ______________________.

See Kennedy's inaugural address 1961 for the answers.

What's cool about working for the Federal government

2004-10-10T17:30:00.000-04:00

Having Columbus Day off. Grazie, Cristoforo!

Bush-Kerry Debate (II)

2004-10-08T23:01:00.000-04:00

Watching this debate, I found myself much more interested in the horserace--who was winning? who was losing? It seemed clear to me that the President was on the defensive; he even sounded desparate to me (although he seemed to calm down during the last 20 minutes or so). Kerry seemed, well, presidential and wise. Both candidates wandered off a little too often and a little too far from the questions they were asked--but this is a problem that's bothered me for 30 years or so. It seemed like President Bush was prepped to answer the question, 'What has been your greatest mistake?' but was not ready to answer the question he actually got--name three mistakes. He's either pathologically unable to admit error, or sociopathologically guided by his poltical handlers to remain 'steadfast' at all costs. (He admitted to some bad political appointments--big deal).

I was glad that the audience was able to ask questions that seem less likely to come up if we expect a news reader or reporter: about abortion, about stem cell research. Even answering questions about health care and jobs is a bit different when you're addressing an everyday citizen than when you're addressing a reporter. After all, the citizen is likely to actually care about the answer; the reporter is more likely concerned about his or her reportorial role or 'getting' the candidate.

In any case, a clear choice. I took the dogs out for a walk today (if you know me, you know that's very unusual). Around the block, I saw a dozen, maybe twenty Kerry-Edwards signs; only one Bush-Cheney sign. This probably doesn't portend much (although I think our precinct voted about 50/50 for Bush and Gore in 2000).

(Update: my local precinct actually voted Gore: 434, Bush: 265 in 2000.)

Followup on the search for 'vice presidential debate'

2004-10-08T09:01:00.000-04:00

A followup on post about searching for 'vice presidential debate', which Tim commented on.

First of all, I really wasn't complaining about (say) Yahoo Search's lack of results from the 2004 debates--it was just odd and a bit disorienting to be thrown back to 2000. I even clicked on an audio stream of the debate and got a 'this stream is no longer available' error message--it was then that I realized this was a link for the 2000 Lieberman-Cheney debate.

Second, I think Tim's a bit wrong when says they don't "just don't grok the intertwingliness of the future which is now." (That is, Tim says the web was not yet up-to-date, and the search results just reflected that). In fact, going back to the search today, I notice a couple of things that Yahoo groks that I didn't see before. Yahoo Search shows me Yahoo News links to the debate coverage. Also, the sponsored links give me information, too, including one link which would have got me what I was looking for: a way to watch the debate on-line (I'd have had to pay, and I wasn't going to do that, but it was relevant).

Usually, I don't see sponsored links as very valuable to me, although I understand the value to the search engine companies. The main exception is when I'm looking for product information. But I learned something here: sponsored links (as well as the news links, of course) should be scanned when looking for more recent information.

Names for believers

2004-10-08T08:56:00.000-04:00

Names for believers.

Factcheck.org

2004-10-06T07:59:00.000-04:00

I didn't know about FactCheck.org before the debate, and before Cheney mentioned it (and erroneously called it FactCheck.com, which, apparently overnight, is now a link to a George Soros site). It's a very useful, non-partisan site set up to check the claims made by politicians. They have a great essay on why it's legal for politicians to lie to us.

A heartbeat away

2004-10-06T07:42:00.000-04:00

Gwen Ifill asked Edwards, "What qualifies you to be a heartbeat away?" Cheney's follow-up was interesting:

FILL: Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds.

CHENEY: You want me to answer a question about his qualifications?

IFILL: That was the question.

CHENEY: I see.

Well, I think the important thing in picking a vice president probably varies from president to president. Different presidents approach it in different ways.

When George Bush asked me to sign on, it obviously wasn't because he was worried about carrying Wyoming. We got 70 percent of the vote in Wyoming, although those three electoral votes turned out to be pretty important last time around.

What he said he wanted me to do was to sign on because of my experience to be a member of the team, to help him govern, and that's exactly the way he's used me.

And I think from the perspective of the nation, it's worked in our relationship, in this administration. I think it's worked in part because I made it clear that I don't have any further political aspirations myself. And I think that's been an advantage.

In other words, Edwards' main qualifications are his ability to pick up some votes, and his main focus will be on running for president (in 2008, said Cheney--not 2012!). I suspect the polls will show that Cheney ''won the debate.'' If so, exchanges like this will be the reason. Say what you want about Cheney (and there's plenty to say), there's no denying his experience and his competence in getting things done. The wrong things, of course, but effectively done nonetheless. Edwards' response to this question ("The American people want in the president and in their vice president basically three things ... we know from this administration that a long resume does not equal good judgement.") seemed cliched, clearly scripted, and just a tad desparate.

Searching for 'vice presidential debate'

2004-10-05T22:58:00.000-04:00

It's interesting that as I've searched for sources for the vice presidential debates tonight, I'm getting a lot of hits from the debates (both presidential and vice presidential) from 2000. I guess this has to do with "page rank," but it seems odd. This CNN link, for example, was the fifth link on Google for 'vice presidential debate. Four out of the top five results for 'vice presidential debate' from the beta search engine snap, as well as Yahoo search were from the 2000 election.

Cheney-Edwards Debate

2004-10-05T22:40:00.000-04:00

Initial reactions: Today, I'm optimistic about America. Our local paper reports that about 96% of Michigan residents who could register to vote, have registered to vote. It's clear that this election has stirred interests in and emotions about the political life of our country in ways that haven't happened in a long time. The candidates were clearly different (as in the first presidential debate) and each gave a 'very good and forceful presentation of themselves' (as I just heard on the radio).

The Bush/Cheney administration has been, if not disastrous, at least destructive for America. Edwards did a good job of presenting this case, and for the Kerry/Edwards plan for repairing the damage.

At home with the Munsters

2004-10-05T17:21:00.000-04:00

A little piece of my childhood. (via boingboing.)

Passports with RFID tags

2004-10-05T13:09:00.000-04:00

According to Bruce Schneier, the Bush adminstration wants to put RFID tags in our passports.

Unfortunately, there is only one possible reason: The administration wants surreptitious access [to the broadcast information on the passports] themselves. It wants to be able to identify people in crowds. It wants to surreptitiously pick out the Americans, and pick out the foreigners. It wants to do the very thing that it insists, despite demonstrations to the contrary, can't be done.

(via boingboing.)

Bush-Kerry Debate (1)

2004-10-01T08:07:00.000-04:00

Bush was well-briefed, articulate and scowling. Kerry was well-briefed, articulate and, well, presidential. The debate centered, justifiably, on the war in Iraq, although Bush kept wanting to make it a debate on who is more steadfast. Kerry didn't quite make the point he should be: that, when you make a mistake, it's muleish to be maintain the same path. Bush hammered on the "steadfastness" theme:

"People know where I stand. "
"The best way to defeat [terrorists] is to never waver, to be strong..."
"The way to win this [war on terrorism] is to be steadfast and resolved and to follow through on the plan that I‘ve just outlined"
[World leaders are] not going to follow somebody who says, “This is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
"I decided the right action was in Iraq. My opponent calls it a mistake. It wasn‘t a mistake. "
"I think what is misleading is to say you can lead and succeed in Iraq if you keep changing your positions on this war."
"And you cannot change positions in this war on terror if you expect to win. "
"You cannot lead the war on terror if you keep changing positions on the war on terror."
"The way to make sure that we succeed is to send consistent, sound messages to the Iraqi people that when we give our word, we will keep our word, that we stand with you, that we believe you want to be free."
"But by speaking clearly and sending messages that we mean what we say, we‘ve affected the world in a positive way. "
"I think by acting firmly and decisively, it will mean it is less likely we have to use force [in other venues]. "
"But what I won‘t do is change my core values because of politics or because of pressure."
"If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy."
"By being steadfast and resolute and strong, by keeping our word, by supporting our troops, we can achieve the peace we all want. " (second to last statement in his summing up).

(These have been gathered from MSNBC's transcripts). Bush really does believe that showing any wavering indicates a "change in core values." And it is the case that a strong and resolute offense against terrorism abroad is more effective than shifty policy. It's disingenuous , however, to suggest that any change in strategy or tactics is a change in core values.

Kerry's experience as a Vietnam vet and Vietnam protestor makes him uniquely qualified to lead us out of the quagmire that Iraq has turned into. Kerry famously asked, "How do you ask a man to the the last man to die for a mistake?" It may seem like cheap irony that Kerry may have to face this very question. But if anyone has the wisdom and experience to do this well, it's Kerry.

The debates served well to show the clear differences between Bush and Kerry.

Flubbed his dub (an ubdate)

2004-09-25T20:57:00.000-04:00

I was at a bookstore yesterday, and came across an American slang dictionary. "Flub the dub" was included, meaning to make a mistake. Google gives more results, including translations of American slang into Korean and Russian.

Via Yahoo Search: Flub-a-dub was a cast member on Howdy Doody. Flubadubya is a screen name on the Democratic Underground. And, finally, it even shows up in the Bible.

Too cool zipcode map

2004-09-22T21:37:00.000-04:00

Use the zoom! (via Anil Dash)

"Flubbed his dub"

2004-09-22T13:03:00.000-04:00

I was listening to Johnny Cash's version of "In the Jailhouse Now," which has the line:

Well Old Bill really flubbed his dub when he wore a tuxedo to the country club.

I did a quick search for "flubbed his dub" on Google, and only this Hindu Unity rant came back. You can find "flub your dub" a couple of times, including this bluegrass song. I assume that 'flub (your) dub" means make a big mistake; but how did this Southernism get to India?

Merriam-Webster Online gives this definition of "dub" (among others, of course):

to trim or remove the comb and wattles of.

(Here's a Mudcat cafe discussion of various lyrics for "In the Jailhouse Now").

I don't think I'll need to talk about wattle-trimming, but I think I might start saying, "don't flub your dub."

Political discourse and the destruction of political activity

2004-09-21T08:10:00.000-04:00

An amazingly cogent rant by Mark Liberman on the current political discourse, which centers on impossible to recall events of decades ago instead of the real issues:

We have free speech in this country, and access to a magnificently flexible and expressive language. This power of linguistic expression, granted to our species alone it would seem, is strong magic. We must be very careful what we do with it. This descent into slander and false memory recovery and document forgery and history denial and mutual accusations of cowardice and treachery is not the free discussion of political matters that the authors of the First Amendment envisaged for us. It is not political activity at all; it is the destruction of political activity.

Petals around the rose

2004-09-20T16:33:00.000-04:00

A cool puzzle: Petals around the rose. It told me I understood the puzzle after 16 turns (I started guessing correctly on the 10th turn). (Via BoingBoing).

Check 21

2004-09-19T23:54:00.000-04:00

Why haven't we heard more about this? It's a significantly different law about how personal checks are processed in the US. Here's the Federal Reserve Bank's page on Check 21. Tips from Consumers Union.

Duelfer report on WMD

2004-09-19T23:02:00.000-04:00

On Thursday, the US briefed reporters on a draft report on the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Although it states that Iraq clearly intended to produce WMD at some point, no significant evidence of WMDs have been found. This is very significant because:

The US went to war in Iraq citing the immediate danger of Iraq's WMD program.
The UN inspection program in Iraq argued that WMDs were very unlikely.
The UN inspection program was actively monitoring possible WMD sites in Iraq.
At this point, more than 1000 US solders have died in Iraq, to say nothing of thousands of Iraqi citizens.

Either Bush was lying about the justification for going to war, or he was mislead by his subordinates, or he and his subordinates were incompetent. In any case, it is clear that Bush is not fit to continue to be the president of the US. Charles Hanley of the Associated Press quotes Hans Blix: "There was a very consistent creation of a virtual reality" by the US officials, "and eventually it collided with our old-fashioned, ordinary reality."

Bush and Kerry's WW II Records

2004-09-16T12:28:00.000-04:00

Tom the Dancing Bug: Bush and Kerry's World War II Records Examined.

Nice big robot

2004-09-16T12:22:00.000-04:00

Jason Kottke has a picture of a 40-foot robot in Times Square.

Nader in Kalamazoo

2004-09-15T21:13:00.000-04:00

Ralph Nader visited Kalamazoo today. Among other things, he tolld the audience (according to the Kalamazoo Gazette article) to"vote your conscience." And, in general, this seems like a reasonable thing to say. But, of course, Nader is only on the ballot in Michigan because the Republican Party passed out petitions for him, because they hope (and not unreasonably so) that this will draw votes away from Kerry. My conscience says not to vote for people who cannot attract enough workers to get on the ballot. Not enough people learned the lessons of the 2004 election.

I talked to a dear relative of mine tonight, who's upset that the teapot tempest concerning the possible forgery of memos concerning Bush's military career is focusing on whether the memos were forged rather than what actually happened during these years. I personally find it interesting that the real issues of Bush's first term of office, and which administration would be better for the US in the coming years, are not being discussed. My dear relative does like Edwards though: he seems nice and talks well.

Is this thing on?

2004-09-15T21:08:00.000-04:00

OK, I lost the computer that I usually kept my weblog postings on, so maybe it makes sense to return to one of the free weblogging services. So, here I am back at Blogger. Yes, it is boring to read about changing weblogging servers, but it's difficult to write something interesting, just to have it disappear into bitlandia.