The Libertarian think tank CATO recently published a small, trite piece that attempts to establish The Case against Literary (and Software) Patents. Being a Libertarian, I actually agree with the position; I just don’t think that this article fully explored the issue. Here, I seek to provide some links to more fundamental content.

It begins with the hypothetical existence of a ‘Literature patent’. I consider such an idea to be terrible at face value, and the article actually dismisses it as much. It would be ridiculous to expect every author to carefully comb over their work making sure that it doesn’t infringe on any registered plots or (worse!) plot devices (good buy holodeck!) Acquiring knowledge of registered patents would be prohibitive for a beginning author, they’d have to rely on publishers/editors. This significantly raises the cost of creating an innovative work. Not to mention the human effort the government must spend to maintain consistency in it’s patent database, and the legal costs and liabilities for the inevitable infringement.

The article then proceeds to demonstrate what happens in patentable areas. Immediately, there is a land grab on the ‘low hanging fruit’. During this process, established market leaders tend to benefit, because the have the resources (both funds and people) to make a large number of claims and file the required paperwork (economics of scale apply to paper shuffling too). Typically only a relatively few companies will be successful in this endeavor. The initial grab might also appear to be an ‘economic stimulus’, as it will show a remarkably steep and sudden interest in the field, resulting from the underlying similarity of the tragedy of the commons. After the market settles, a few incumbents then use their patent portfolios to threaten up-start competition. As the article points out, in the world of software patents, so much of the field is so obvious, that agents without an explicit interest in software will find themselves infringing as a normal course of their business but will be without their own patent portfolio and unable to make a bargaining counter-threat.

Another economic phenomenon that happens as a result of the patent system’s existence is economic stalemate. This actually happened with the sewing machine, as recorded by Adam Mossoff in A Stitch in Time: The Rise and Fall of the Sewing Machine Patent Thicket, which was blogged about at the Volokh Conspiracy. He recounts how the marketing and distribution of the sewing machine was actually encumbered by the patent system, because the machine required the combination of several innovations, and no single agent held all patents on the functionality. History also demonstrates the practice of ‘patent trolling’, whereby a company, which doesn’t actually produce anything, seeks to profit by legal threats of infringement and licensing agreements on its patent portfolio. The resulting stalemate was finally resolved through the explicit creation of a patent-holding company, whose sole function was to share the patents and resulting profits of all involved manufacturing firms.

So we can see that for areas where copyright is already established practice, the introduction of an extension of the patent system results in litigation and paperwork and encourages the preservation of an established regime of a few powerful companies working in loose collusion, both of which tend to outweigh any potential benefits to development and innovation

Now, I’d like to go out on a limb here, and reject the very concept of ‘Intellectual Property’. Richard Stallman has spoken out against its use, and continuously advertises the fact that it’s deceptive and misleading. At the root of the issue is that ideas and physical matter behave differently. That is, copying != stealing. The reasoning behind this position is fairly simple, when an idea is copied that does not deprive the original possessor from the idea. When you tell me about your theory of X, you don’t suddenly forget after telling me. In contrast, if you give me an apple, now you no longer have that apple. Ideas are part of a different realm of existence.

Finally, I’d like to point out the slippery slope, what happens if we go too far with this property idea: we might lose The Right to Read, or watch How creativity is being strangled by the law.

I hope that through these references, you can see where, how, and why I’ve developed my position on the patent issue; I’m firmly on the side of maximum freedom (and that includes the opening up of all media: open-music, open-software, open-hardware, open-design, open-architecture, open-video, open-government, open-literature, etc…)

Recently the ever popular doughnut chain, Krispy Kreme, got in trouble for supporting our new political administration.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc. (NYSE: KKD) is honoring American’s sense of pride and freedom of choice on Inauguration Day, by offering a free doughnut of choice to every customer on this historic day, Jan. 20.

Somehow, the wording of this rather innocuous invitation for free doughnuts, has led some to accuse Krispy Kreme of being “pro-choice,” which translates to pro-abortion; which is also a party political position of the Democratic Party. Of course, the American Life League would take it that way, given their entire existence is predicated on that viewpoint.

Upon discussing this bit of hilarity with my friends, we almost immediately jumped to the conclusion that ZFA set theory must be pro-abortion because of the (highly contentious) Axiom of Choice. This must be what separates the Democratic mathematicians from the Republican ones. It’s not all that nonsense about the Banach-Tarski paradox, it’s about Abortion! I get it now!

It’s been 4 days since Californians voted to deny rights to a certain minority of its population. Let’s look at a few of the arguments against gay marriage:

• It protects our children from being taught in public schools that “same-sex marriage” is the same as traditional marriage.

This argument was loud and clear in a TV ad that depicted a child showing the children’s book “King and King” to her mother. The mother of course was absolutely aghast. The ad then threatened that passing Proposition 8 would prevent such dire consequences. This was countered with an ad in which our Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell publicly stated this would not happen. Clearly, since almost everyone in CA came out of the CA public school system, we should all know how it works, and which of these two scenarios is the more believable. In actuality, the CA public education system never actually teaches anyone about its own organization; So we’ve all graduated without any knowledge about the system itself.

So, lets look at the law, CA Education Code Section 51933:

• …
• (b) A school district that elects to offer comprehensive sexual health education pursuant to subdivision (a), whether taught by school district personnel or outside consultants, shall satisfy all of the following criteria:
  • …
  • (7) Instruction and materials shall teach respect for marriage and committed relationships.

So clearly issues regarding marriage will be mentioned in class, and CA schools will be obligated to mention that gay marriage is legal within the state. We also have code 51932, which reads

• (a) This chapter does not apply to description or illustration of human reproductive organs that may appear in a textbook, adopted pursuant to law, on physiology, biology, zoology, general science, personal hygiene, or health.
• (b) This chapter does not apply to instruction or materials that discuss gender, sexual orientation, or family life and do not discuss human reproductive organs and their functions.

Which means that sexual education materials must be non-discriminatory, and thus corroborates that gay marriage will be taught in schools.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here, the education code still might not require that a child learn about gay marriage, because parents are allowed to remove children from school regarding certain types of education. Codes 51937-51939 which provide notice and parental consent regarding “comprehensive sexual health education¹, HIV/AIDS prevention education, and assessments related to that education” in order that parents can remove their child from such education are unfortunately too specific. That is, parents are not required to receive notice about materials regarding marriage, nor would they be able to pull their child from school². (although any local school could certainly inform parents during a PTA meeting, and simply look the other way when a child is absent)

So I have to counter this with an open question: What is so bad about a kid learning that CA approves gay marriage? To do otherwise would deny them knowledge of the fact that gay couples do get married. Besides which, fact-based education isn’t the same as an endorsement. Besides, CA allows gay couples to adopt children; so learning about gay marriage doesn’t harm children at all. No credible study has ever found that children are negatively impacted by being raised in a lesbian or gay household.

• All major world religions and civilizations have historically condemned the practice of homosexuality.

First, anyone remember the Greeks and Romans? what about Hindu and Chinese art that depicts homosexuality? We don’t have universal historical condemnation of the practice. But even if we did, that wouldn’t necessarily make it wrong. Inter-racial marriage was condemned for a long time, but is completely accepted practice now. It’s time to grow up.

• Being gay is a choice.

Really, and I suppose that you are in full logical control of your attractions? That you are fully conscious and aware of the reasons for your attraction? That you’ve never questioned why you felt an attraction? or felt that your attraction was illogical? People don’t really choose who or what they are attracted to, it’s something that strikes them from within, that doesn’t follow the laws of society or rationality. We don’t choose who we are attracted to or why; we only rationalize it after the fact. For many people, being gay isn’t a choice, it’s the nature of their life.

• Homosexuality is a crime against nature.

This argument actually dates way back, at least all the way to Plato. See the previous blurb about choice. Or look at all the documented cases of homosexuality in nature, in zoos, and among monogamous animals. The fruit fly has a gene that practically guarantees strict homosexual mating practices.

• Homosexuality is dangerous. (Religious)

This argument can get very interesting: Supposing you believe in an omnipotent deity that dislikes homosexual practices, and has been known to destroy entire cities for committing such sins. Then you could reasonably argue that allowing such practices endangers society. But it simply doesn’t hold up to the historical record. People have been gay (and practicing) since before Plato; What happens between conscenting adults won’t bring down the apocalypse. (Or that would have happened already, your deity has had plenty of time and opportunity.)
As an aside, a variant of this argument was used to persecute christians during the Roman Empire because they refused to make sacrifices to a certain pagan god, and thus endangered the city.

• Homosexuality is dangerous. (Secular)

Because of the dysfunctional, unhealthy and changeable nature of homosexuality, legitimizing it as “marriage” constitutes irresponsible and reckless public policy that endangers the future of our children and grandchildren. But I disagree. Driving a car is a reckless act of self-endangerment, yet completely legal (even encouraged). The use of any of a number of household chemicals or cleaners is certainly unhealthy, yet also completely legal (even encouraged through advertisement). Ensuring that people behave in a functional, healthy, responsible manner through the drafting of law nearly always fails. It confuses what is moral and what is legal. There are many behaviors that one might consider immoral (eating horse meat) but that should certainly be legal. Just because your moral code tells you not to do something, doesn’t give you the right to demand the same of everyone else.

• Legalizing gay marriage will lead to legalizing polygamy or bestiality.

Not necessarily, we could easily outlaw marriage between a man and a horse, and simply stick with defining it as being between two people. Canada legalized same-sex marriage, and they aren’t having a sudden outbreak of polygamy or polyandry, nor has the country gotten appreciably hotter (gone to hell).

• But defining marriage doesn’t take away their rights.

Firstly, Separate but equal is not equal. Though, I would actually love for CA to complete remove all references to marriage from all of its current legal code and replaces it with the term ‘civil union’, and then make some small change that grandfathers previous marriages to be civil unions, and out-of-state marriages to be CA civil unions. Then the religious conservatives can have their precious marriage. This is not a workable solution.

CA has a code³ that converts valid marriages in other states into valid marriages in CA. I’m sure that many other states have similar codes. I’m also sure that other states have no such clauses regarding what would become a CA civil union. So, no couples leaving CA under this proposed change would be recognized in other states; and there’s nothing that CA can do about it. For largely historical reasons, the term marriage is in the legal codes, both in CA and elsewhere. Thus, for practical reasons, this forces CA to extend marriage to its homosexual citizens, and not to declare everyone as having a civil union.

• It Preserves Traditional Marriage

Ok. Then we should support arranged marriage? Or disallow divorce? Tradition isn’t always right, sometimes we need to move on.

• Marriage is for Procreation, not Recreation

This argument is found in The Somerville Paper. It argues that �Through marriage our society marks out the relationship of two people who will together transmit human life to the next generation� and further argues that marriage �is not a recognition of the relationship just for its own sake or for the sake of the partners to the marriage�. These are not necessarily true statements. We already allow infertile couples to marry, and the principle reason that people get married is because they love each other, not because they want society to continue, or because they get a tax break. Marriage is about having a long-term loving and stable relationship with another person; it’s not about gender, and it’s not about procreation. [it actually the other way 'round: all the laws regarding marriage are actually cruft that lets society recognize/endorse the pair bonding]

Marriage should be what brings us together today. It shouldn’t separate us. It should be about true love.

This issue is really one about civil rights. Homosexuals are being denied their civil rights, as were blacks, women, and inter-racial couples before them. Having the progressive state of CA deny marriage to homosexuals, feels like being stabbed in the heart. I expected more from my state of California. The U.S. expected more from California.

1. CA education code 51931 (b) “Comprehensive sexual health education” means education
   regarding human development and sexuality, including education on pregnancy, family planning, and sexually transmitted diseases.
2. one of these days I’ll write something about how mandatory education is wrong. Principally, it’s because of issues like the current one only arise in massively coercive systems.
3. CA Family Code 308. A marriage contracted outside this state that would be valid by the laws of the jurisdiction in which the marriage was contracted is valid in this state.

Last night I was embroiled in a long argument with my flatmate about the Government. I used the typical Libertarian claim that the government was an immoral institution because it uses coercive force to collect taxes. Of course, he countered by saying my residency in a country implies a contract with the government, and the government is only using retaliatory enforcement should I breach the contract by nonpayment. Technically this is true, I could vote with my feet. I usually use this argument myself to defeat claims of economic exploitation. I was very nearly had by this, until I realized that because the U.S. grants citizenship by birth, I was entered into a contract without conscent, even though I could void the contract by leaving, it’s impractical to do so (and all the other countries are worse).

So, I moved to claim that irrespective of my complicity or acceptance of a contract the arrangement was immoral. That is, I could voluntarily conspire with another in order that we murder a third. The fact that I voluntarily joined the agreement does not make such an arrangement a moral institution. So, by residing in the territorial confines of a government, and participating in it’s voting system, and receiving its benefits (safety, public education, etc..), obeying its laws, means that I have formed an agreement with what I claimed is an immoral institution. But because I’ve received benefits, and maintain residency, I’m implicitly accepting the contract, so collection of taxes is contractually enforced. Not to pay constitutes a breach of contract that warrants retributive force. So, I had to concede that it was no longer the enforced payment of taxes that made the institution immoral. I could have parried this by pointing out that I was conscripted into the contract via my birth in the U.S. (BTW: I don’t at all agree that entering into a contract via birth is moral or even legal. Though my flatmate thought it acceptable.)

So, I tried a different strategy. I claimed that the government involves itself with immoral behavior in killing others, both during war, and via the death penalty. I thought I might win with this, because I could easily demonstrate our initiation of force on other sovereign peoples, and that because governments regularly do this it is therefore an immoral institution. But he claimed that in doing a blame calculation you must pin it on the people involved, not the institution, because it is ultimately the people who carry out the wishes of the government. Unfortunately, I’m not very well equipped to defend this point, though I did mention that you can easily sue both companies and the government in court (they have legal status as a person) and that because the government has a large number of people it is always able to replace the executioner with an individual that is willing to comply (that is, the institution can ensure an immoral action takes place even when the majority of the members would passively resist by resignation). [I didn't even bother to appealing to the Milgram experiment to demonstrate coercion]

Finally though, I was shot down:
Only a sentient being can have morality.

So institutions can’t be moral or immoral, it doesn’t apply. The government, as an institution, has no intrinsic morality. I had to withdraw my object to the government on moral grounds.

Also, I’ve never found anyone that agrees with me that our ultimate goal with regard to government should be to get rid of it. I find that some people agree when I claim that we should make it smaller each year, but that nobody agrees we should get rid of it altogether. Typically, they ask for a replacement system, which I don’t have. But that still doesn’t invalidate the goal. I like to argue that via a long process of whittling, we might be able to achieve it. But more importantly: if we don’t state that as an explicit goal (even if unachievable), we won’t have a mark to aim by, and government bureaucracy will grow steadily (as evidenced by history).

I claim lack of imagination. After all, there are many unachievable goals that are revered as noble. (ex: living you life as a perfectly moral being) In the end I’ve noticed that people tend to assume that anarchism necessarily implies unorganized militant chaos. I should probably work to dispel that myth. But it’s really hard when I’m unable to propose a workable alternative. Nobody strictly follows the logic, rather they follow their beliefs about anarchism.

My next argument will probably be about “what will Libertarians do about emergency services”? My current roomate thought in my ideal world without taxes or subsidies, there’d be no incentive for anyone to form emergency relief services. (honestly, he voluntarily donates time to Habitat for Humanity and still argues this cynically about his fellow humans)

Of course I should probably also look into the morality of contracts based on territoriality. The inconvenience of moving is pretty coercive.

I’ve seen much recently piggy-backing on the Wisdom of Crowds. Much of the Web 2.0 seems highly focused on exploiting this phenomenon:

• Datamining the crowd: Yahoo and Google both have an Answers service that purports to harness the wisdom explicitly.
• Ranking results: Digg, Newsvine, Technorati all use forms of distributed social voting to determine quality.
• Finding the Diamond: StackOverflow uses ranking to filter the ‘most useful’ answers to the top.
• CrowdSorcing (use the crowd to do your work): Image Search has been turned into a labeling game
• Web Search is dominated by Sergey and Brin’s PageRank algorithm which uses hypertext links as the voting system.
• Google’s new Book Search (quotation finder), which is geared to work across languages, correlates text samples across different media, counting the number of occurrences of a phrase.
• Prediction Markets, fundamental Democracy, etc…

I’m sure that there are many more examples that I’ve neglected to mention.

Unfortunately, the effectiveness of Crowd Wisdom relies heavily on some assumptions which may prove shaky in the real world:

• Independence of participants. The crowd is wisest when it’s composed of independently thinking individuals. Lemmings and mobs make very foolish crowds, aka herds. If each of the participants uses the popular reasoning “what’s good enough for everyone else is good enough for me,” we have a crowd with very many inter-dependent voices.
• Diversity of Opinion. The crowd is wisest when it can draw upon widely varied knowledge and experience.

Wikipedia readily identifies what I see as the fatal flaw:

Surowiecki studies situations (such as rational bubbles) in which the crowd produces very bad judgment, and argues that in these types of situations their cognition or cooperation failed because (in one way or another) the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently.

So, what happens then when the world’s knowledge is aggregated by these algorithms? Our collective knowledge becomes stricken by a dangerous positive feedback loop. Due to time constraints we prefer superficial syncophantic opinions to in-depth analysis. Everyone will use the results of these tools to form their own opinions, which undermines the assumptions the tools are built upon. Because of this self-inconsistency the Wisdom of Crowds algorithms should be looked upon with reservation and skepticism.

The Wisdom of Crowds is too unstable and should find itself becoming the tool for the Misinformation of Crowds.

Aside: Already we have evidence of real-world damage caused by such algorithms and social psychology. United Airlines stock crashes because Google News posted a six-year old story about bankruptcy as if it were current.

I’ve been watching the videos of last year’s Singularity Summit and noticed that, along with all other conferences I’ve watched, questions from the audience are completely inaudible to the sound recorder. There is a very simple solution that I haven’t seen anyone using: The parabolic dish and microphone set that makes such great spy equipment. Just have one of the A/V people point this at the audience member asking questions, and their question can be clearly recorded (and transferred to the PA system in larger halls), with the added convenience that nobody should have to shuffle and squirm all the way to audience-deployed microphones. Not only would it provide better quality recording, but it should also benefit audience-speaker interaction.

Today I read about one of the most ironic events of which I’ve ever heard. You can’t make this kind of thing up. The atheistic PZ Meyers (a biologist and associate professor University of Minnesota, Morris), was kicked out of a private screening of a now highly controversial ‘documentary’. Events proceed roughly as follows:

1. PZ is approached to perform an interview about a film titled ‘Crossroads’ which is to be an ‘analysis of the intersection between religion and science within the context of biology’. Basically, both he and Richard Dawkins were deceived into giving interviews for the film.
2. PZ goes on the web, and through the interface provided by the filmmakers, reserves a seat for himself, family, and his guest Richard Dawkins. He does not falsify his name (or anyone else’s) in doing so.
3. While standing in line at the theater, he is approached by a guard and told he must leave.
4. Ultimately he complies, without any fuss.
5. Richard Dawkins, and the rest of PZ’s family get to see the movie.

So the major points of irony?

• He got kicked out of a movie in which he appears on screen, and for which he is thanked in the credits.
• He’s an associate professor, and was expelled from a private screening of a movie titled: “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”.

Of course some major deceptions get spread about the entire affair. Instead of listing those, I’ll just let the people involved speak for themselves.

• PZ himself posts about the experience here, here and here.
• A video of a discussion between PZ and Richard about the affair, with disparaging comments on the quality of the movie itself.
• Two examples of the ‘official’ account now being spread about the incident: here and here.

And in other (re|be)lated news. In the movie they have used a clip, from Harvard, about some of the molecular mechanisms within a cell; The same clip (mentioned in the above discussion) that has been completely plagiarized by the minions of the Discovery Institute.

So, a mirthful smirk to the ID folks for providing me and the rest of the blogosphere a really good laugh.

Once a long time ago (2003) I took an English course to satisfy UCLA’s bureaucratic notions that I should have a ‘well-rounded’ education. As part of this course we read short stories, and were required to write a mini-essay each week about those readings. The grading system was arranged such that 1 of the grades on those essays was to be dropped, essentially we were given 1 freebie. About the middle of the course, I became rather tired of writing essays about short stories, and thought it would be more instructive to write a short story myself, and hand that in instead. (I was also feeling rebellious, and curiously wondered about how the graders would respond to this ‘daring creativity’). It was customary to receive last weeks graded essay in the TA session when we turn in this weeks homework. To my great amusement my paper was marked “see me after class”, whereupon I had a small discussion, and stated my reasons for rebellion, and ultimately caved in by agreeing that this was how I chose to use the freebie. My grade didn’t really suffer, but I was disappointed that the TA and teacher didn’t really seem to care that I’d tried my hand in creativity rather than analysis. So much for English majors caring about creativity.

During this process, I also learned that I’m not especially good at creative acts, my talents lie more in analysis, picking apart logical deductions and revealing the fallacies, or in applying work that others have already done to solve problem. This is why I’m a programmer, It’s a relatively well-defined task, and offers the constraints that I need to bounce off of during algorithmic construction. When presented with the much freer realm of linguistic expression of pure Ideas, I feel presented with too many choices and not enough of a formalism to help guide me towards the ‘optimal’ choice. I can construct when my world is made of Legos but not when made of clay.

Fortune is Fated.

Fusilli was painting a portion of the New Jersey coast, grand and with a truly beautiful sunrise; a masterpiece of Meaning, Purpose, and Form. Thousands used these docks everyday, loading and unloading ton after ton of raw cargo with giant skeletal cranes, while millions more depended on the efforts of this monotonous labor. None of this was reflected in the painting. In place of a fish carcass was rendered a glint of sunlight, the cargo ships were transformed into pastoral dinghies holding fisherman bronzed from the sun, the entirety of the docks were sunk into a deep blue ocean, rich with aquatic life. The New Jersey coast was replaced by something resembling the Ideal.

At the pinnacle of his career as an artiste, Fusilli’s work was compared to the grandmasters of the business, Da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt. He produced works of Beauty owned by financial tycoons but held in museums and frequented by the public. Through his renditions patrons caught a glimpse of Truth. The hidden meaning of their experience was communicated by still shape and color alone, an utterance beyond words.

As the sun made its slow path toward midmorning Fusilli realized that further painting would have to wait for another day, he had to prepare himself. Tonight he must make an appearance at an exhibition of his work hosted by the Guggenheim. Many fabulously wealthy capitalists and persuasively powerful art critics would be in attendance. His personal servant washed his brushes and stowed the canvas in the trunk, while he entered the limousine and reflected on the Beauty he had so far recorded.

As expected, the museum was populated by batty intellectuals, accompanied by their silenced mistresses adorned in the most expensive jewelery and precious gowns, in fervid discussion over the artwork. There were grand and eloquent speeches together with diminutive cocktail weenies. The artwork supported the walls and was gazed at in awe. When Fusilli finally arrived, having planned a fashionable entrance, he was much praised and fawned over. With people lauding him as he traversed the halls he waded to his favorite piece, The Grandure of New York.

He stood to gaze and appreciate the majestic power he had captured in this piece. So absorbed was his admiration that he became immune to all around him, without sound or movement he stared. It was a gigantic work, 10 feet high, it caught the Empire State as cleanly as an architectural landscape. With lofty cotton clouds and royal blue sky the building stood as a monument to mans constructive power. The windows, like mirrors, sublimely reflected the surround structures as if they were made of Oriental porcelain.

Slowly, Fusilli came back to reality, and in so doing became aware of snappy conversation near him. An elderly man, bedecked in ordinary tuxedo, enhanced with a crimson rose that was mirrored by impeccably shined pearl black shoes. His aged face held noble austerity with twinkling eyes framed behind gold rimmed glass, which spoke more of his vast wealth that the old fashioned silk top hat. He was nonetheless enjoying himself in heated conversation with some creature left vilely garbed in a raincoat. Though young, his eyes lacked the sparkle of the old mans, and were kept hidden as he refused to speak in any forthright manner. His shoes were beaten and ragged, his hat an ordinary bowler. Indeed, having dressed minimally for the occasion, his entire demeanor seemed to subversively seek out and destroy all the pretensions of fashion.

“But don’t you see what is behind the painting?” cried the gentleman.

Curtly, and with no attempt to look deeper, the truant replied, “Impossible, the painting covers it up.”

Fusilli had to put a stop to this conversation. This man’s view was dangerous. Ideas like that could infect the entire art community. They’d stop funding his work, he’d be destitute once again. Oh! How hard it was to appreciate Form and Beauty when only he could see it. Bitterly, he remembered the hunger that ate him alive as he sacrificed food for canvas and paint. He must stop this foreigner.

“But the Beauty, It is real!! I captured it for you to look at,” Fusilli tried in vain to tell the man.

“All you did was put some color on some matte, and not very well at that.”

Pleading hopefully, “You see the Form, though, behind the work. Its Meaning and Purpose?”

“If by form you mean the blobs of color, yes. But meaning and purpose, there is none. Not in anything. You haven’t even painted the real thing. We’re in New York, it looks nothing like that.”

This man was obviously stubborn. He wouldn’t be swayed by visual appeals to the idealistic, nor would he listen to statements of the Divine. Fusilli needed desperately to convince this critic. “I was on an observation deck when I painted this, And this is what I saw. I painted Life: the Air that gives it breath, the Water that quenches its thirst, the Fire that ignites passion, and the Earth that supports us all. Can’t you see the Divine?”

Cold-heartedly, came the crushing response. “You painted a fantasy, a delusion in your mind, though shared by many. You have painted the Maya. That is no skill; to paint what you think you see.” The cloaked man turned and left. Walked slowly away with the burdened footsteps of Atlas.

Fusilli with tears in his eyes, on bent knees, his World being taken away called out “I painted Beauty!! I painted Beauty!!” while other critics and investors eyed each other knowingly.

My thoughts are as entropic as the leaves falling off the trees this season (just about as colored too).

1. Graduate School Applications

<rant>I really dislike forms; actually I frothingly detest them. I don’t know why, but I have always hated pushing paper. Writing down all that information about myself, just so that it can populate some fields in somebody’s (probably insecure and unorganized) database. It’s disgusting. I already know my name, rank, and serial number; repeating it 100 times won’t change that.</rant>

Seriously though, I don’t really get graduate applications. I understand that all Universities receive more applicants than they have positions, so they are forced to make selection. But basing that decision on something as scant as a couple pages authored by the idealistic applicant corroborated with a half-page letter from three people chosen because they 1. like/friends with the applicant, 2. applicant believes they will give good testimony, and 3. that this will sway the minds of the decision committee; just seems like an injustice. I don’t think that there’s enough information that can be crammed into that paper that would justify a mutual commitment of 6-8 years and several hundred thousand dollars on equipment, time, education, etc.

I really believe that having a screening process closer to that of major businesses would be more effective. I should be able to submit a brief resume and slowly work my way through phone and personal interviews. I don’t mind having to provide contacts that would need to give their opinion about my qualifications, nor do I think they would mind being contacted about such. I feel that due to the extended nature of this approach, it would result in much greater knowledge on the part of both parties. Graduate schools have a much clearer idea of what subject focus each student has/needs and the student would have a clearer idea of what was expected of them at that department. Even those facing rejection would benefit, as they’d stand a better chance of picking up on a few things that they would otherwise be missing should they try again.

I know that this is far too much work and time to expect an ordinary faculty member given the current demands of research, papers, and grant proposals (and would be a waste given their pay scale); but this work could be farmed out to those seeking tenure, assistant profs, post-docs, or current grad students. Optionally, I can see universities outsourcing this effort (but I ultimately think that’d be a disservice to everyone involved). It could also be set up so that the lower ranking candidates get shuffled into a curriculum more suited to their demeanor, as I hear Germany does with its trade schools. (Pushing the non-academic into a theory class just doesn’t work out that well, it doesn’t play to the hands-on talent of the individual)

Ultimately, even if this interview-centric approach was taken up, I’d still rant about the foibles its implementation, yet I’d probably be better off. Ideally, I would wish for a system that removes all the subjective assessment that goes into hiring/recruitment decisions; but I don’t think that’s viable in the real world. I’d also like the current system to be much more flexible; classes should be more interchangeable among universities, so that moving from one school to another is no more difficult than moving to another group within the same company. Erdös really takes the cake on mobility.

2. Side Project

For a long time now I’ve been wanting to make a self-serving altruistic contribution to the Free Software movement, and the world at large, by writing code that others would find useful. I’ve landed on 3 such ideas, but am currently having a tough time choosing. Inspired by the pet-project rule at Google, I’m going to devote every other friday to one of these activities regardless of approval by existing management. (That’s right: I’m going rogue!)

• Pdf Editor

Several times at work I have found myself in need of a pdf editor. I know that pdf is supposed to be a finalized, published document; yet when you don’t have access to the original, it’s nice to be able to edit the copy you do have. I hear that the format is pretty ghastly for an editor to deal with though. Personally, it’s also a low-priority need, so I probably won’t do this. Still, I know that the community could really use one, and it would make a killer addition to KDE.

• Kapers

I recently discovered that I’ve collected enough academic articles that I’m in need of an actual organizational system if I’m ever going to remember what I’ve been reading. Over in the land of Apple this is a solved problem, and everyone can have their own Personal Library of Science. Well, since I can’t reasonably kicks the habit of reading peer reviewed articles (esp. considering my career change back into academia), I should probably help out fellow researchers by coding up a clone for KDE. This has the fringe benefit of helping out a community which I believe provides the hidden force on which the world turns. This seems to be closest to my abilities as a programmer right now.

• Stock Market AI

This one has been thought of before, but that doesn’t make it any less appealing. It’s a great opportunity to learn from a wide diversity of subjects: Statistics, Mathematical Finance, Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, AI, software architecture, etc…and there’s certainly no shortage of data to work with. If I actually succeed (and some have) then I can pour that money into other things. I’d personally love to guarantee funding for several important scientific endeavors: Immortality (yes, I share the vision propounded by Aubrey de Grey and Ray Kurzweil) or Nuclear Fusion (it’s only been 20 years away for the last 40 years) or general AI (We’re close already). I’ll probably hold off on this one, saving it for a side-project when I’m in graduate school.

Qt is a really wonderful and nice toolbox, and I thoroughly enjoy working with it, so it’s unfortunate that I’m using it for my example of one of the many things wrong with C++. In my opinion C++ is a kludge for bolting the Object Oriented paradigm onto a language barely more sophisticated than assembly. This unholy marriage has resulted in a language that is rife with special-case exceptions and horrifically complicated syntax. Just take a look at the STL and you can actually feel the hemorrhage of pre-mature optimization.

Anyway, Pointers are long known to be the most problematic concept for students of C/C++. Truly grokking pointers took me about 2 weeks initially, and I still get to enjoy learning another nuance about every other month. The ability to control the memory of your machine is a power not to be accepted lightly. We had an opportunity to leave pointers behind with Fortran and Lisp, but K&R apparently enjoyed living at the machine level. To this day we still get to hold pointers responsible for much of program ailments. (buffer overflow, memory leaks, null dereference, etc…)

One of the other real sticky issues that novices have to deal with is the difference between the stack and the heap. This is usually introduced alongside the introduction of pointers, because the two concepts are rather intricately related. But all this just makes the conceptual cliff a bit steeper. Eventually, the junior programmer develops a nice intuition about allocation and optimization, and when to use stack vs when to use head and handle the memory yourself. Then, the awesome power granted to us via pointers rears its ugly head.

Straight from the Qt Documentation on QString

Note for C Programmers

Due to C++’s type system and the fact that QString is implicitly shared, QStrings may be treated like ints or other basic types. For example:

     QString Widget::boolToString(bool b)
     {
         QString result;
         if (b)
             result = "True";
         else
             result = "False";
         return result;
     }

The result variable, is a normal variable allocated on the stack. When return is called, and because we’re returning by value, the copy constructor is called and a copy of the string is returned. No actual copying takes place thanks to the implicit sharing.

Well, isn’t this nice? Because of pointers we are permitted a really handy optimization. But, most of the time strings aren’t long enough to justify the sacreligious violation of hard-won intuitions. The real problem here is that nothing apparent in the syntax of this little snippet that lets the programmer know what’s really going on. It looks like everything is being copied from the stack to the return value. So we are obligated to read the documentation (which you should do for any toolkit, as they all do things like this) or possibly shoot ourselves in the foot.

Now this particular optimization is fairly well known, and used in many container classes. I’m not faulting Qt here, I put the blame squarely on the design of C++. This is a premature optimization, that messes with things behind-the-scenes, and it violates our intuitions. I would be willing to accept this type of behavior if there were some syntactical clue, but there isn’t. Programmers, esp. those writing toolkits, are really smart people, and I recognize their superior skills in crafting the incantations that permit the journeyman to have optimized code nearly by accident. But it’s still magic, and the language’s we use should be more explicit.

Note: This particular design has never caused me any troubles. I’m writing this from a linguistic design point of view. I don’t think it’s safe to give ourselves this type of power, because, ultimately, I know that this behind-the-scenes style black-magic has been abused and subsequently gotten many of us in serious trouble. Violating user expectations is always a sin.