23 Feb 01
So it's been a little while since I've written here (had a lot of
activity at meep.livejournal.com yesterday), but I've got a big mush-bag
of thoughts that I'd rather not inflict on the livejournal crew (not
because they're not worth it, it's just that when we all tend to read
posts on our friends pages, a huge screed, paean, tirade, what-have-you,
etc., et. al., opus dei, um, what? Oh yes, a big block text from one
person going all over the place can be off-putting. As I have often
noted before, since you have decided to inflict yourself with the task
of reading long passages of text from me, you get what you so thoroughly
deserve.
So where to start? Well, a couple thoughts about being in academia:
boy, is it fun. As well: boy, is it easy to be unproductive. More to
the point, one finds one's self producing =too= many ideas, many of
which have no basis in reality. A couple of quotes I found in the March
2001 _Notices_of_the_American_Mathematical_Society_:
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
(Albert Einstein)
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice there is." (Yogi Berra)
What ideas have I spun off lately? Let's take a look:
- Writing a LaTeX macro to generate Paint by Numbers puzzles
(after I discovered an =excellent= book on graphics: The LaTeX Graphics
Companion (only bitch: LaTeX on the cover looks wrong)), and using my
new-found graphics abilities to make the full-fledged poker & fractal
books I have always wanted to.
- Digital image processing tricks to make a Hilbert curve draw out your
picture, or horizontal lines of varying widths, or crystalline regions
of lines...
- Latest phrases: "intellectual masturbation", "womyn web
weenies". They are joining the ever-popular "spiritual
constipation" and "spiritual enema" as images I am particularly proud
of. (spiritual enemas are =good= things, and I'm likely to give myself
one the moment I can actually get a little spring around here. The
doodling session with my nephew Joel was more of a good shit than an
enema (as Stuart and I were discussing the other day, sex is so often
over-rated as a pleasurable activity and a satisfactory bowel movement
under-rated. I suppose that's why some combine the two sensations. (If
anyone reading this is shocked (just =shocked=) at this talk, I believe
I have warned many before that these writings are for adults. You know
who you are. If you find these things distasteful, I understand. There
are plenty of other web diarists out there so don't bitch at me. (It's
times like this that make me wish I use emacs... damn, I have to count
the parentheses now. That's what I get for not keeping track. (Hah! I
have just thought of a "purge stack" parenthesis, which I shall call
")*" (the quote marks keeps it from being invoked... but here goes: )*
Ah, that feels better. I'm glad so many programmers are lazy. I tried
assembly language once (a laziness in itself, in that one isn't using
machine code) and after switching two pieces of info in memory, had
enough of that technique. For all my crowing of writing 2 pages full of
instructions for a robot to make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, it is
not a method of programming I enjoy.
Some people would think it odd that I freely divulge all my ideas,
esp. if some can make some money. But first of all, it's more important
that these things be implemented than implemented by me. And secondly,
you can't patent my idea, because if you do, I'll hunt you down like the
dog you are and prove that this file was last altered on Feb 23, 2001,
and thus I had the idea first! If you add anything to my idea, then of
course, feel free to patent it. I'm not selfish.
One last little bit before I go to a thoroughly enjoyable on the tirade
of the fuck-ups of the NCTM, a quick word from our friend the strange
mathematician:
"What I tell you three times is true." (Lewis Carroll, "The Hunting of
the Snark")
And that is very likely. I try to not repeat lies I tell people, not
just because of the memory problem, but also when I lie, I do it to
conceal information. By repeating the lie, I make it more clear that
information is being concealed. Of course, my favorite way to tell a
lie is not to tell it even once, but let others create it in their own
minds. This is not because culpability is lifted from me (it's not,
because I'm doing these things deliberately), but because people believe
their own lies more often than ones that come from outside.
I was going to talk about optimal strategies for poker bluffing, but as
these kinds of maximization puzzles need some massaging, I need to
create a set of numbers to begin with. Suffice it to say, to win money
at poker, you need to be able to bluff, and more to the point, know how
to not overdo or underdo it.
That's enough for today. Class dismissed.