Month: June 2002

Crime Stoppers!

Matthew

I love how the Bush administration, in an attempt to deflect criticism and distract attention from the 9/11 congressional hearing, has trotted out this guy they captured last month and is giving themselves a daily pat on the back by citing all the things he would have done if they hadn’t stopped him. All of the news articles about the “dirty bomb” suspect started with “Ashcroft today announced that the US had apprehended a man in the process of planting a full-made and armed ‘dirty bomb’ in a preschool” and then go on to explain, in paragraph two, that despite the fact that Ashcroft has already printed up Crime Stopper! certificates for everyone in the Justice Department, the captured guy had really just “thought about exploring the possibility of perhaps making a dirty bomb someday maybe.” (Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz even came out and admitted “I don’t think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk”) Then, today, officials say that the suspect plotted other attacks, including blowing up gas stations. Wow, we thwarted a dirty bomb and a gas station blowing-up, all in one week — waytago guys! Tomorrow we’ll find out that he was also planning to send junk email, strangle kittens, cut you off in traffic and cancel Everybody Loves Raymond.

I try not to be so partisan, but this one’s really getting my goat. Sheesh.

L7

Matthew

You may think that, just because I have bought a house in the suburbs, I’ve lost my “edge,” that I am no longer as “cool” as I once was. Well, I’m here to tell you that that just ain’t so. Why, just the other day I went to a move called “American Pimp”! And do you know what it was about? Pimps!

Although, admittedly, it didn’t really “go to see it” — I watched it on DVD. With, uh, my wife. We would have gone out, but I was tired because I’d spent the day cleaning out the gutters. Oh, and the movie was … ummmm .. a documentary. But I did get kind of buzzed on merlot while watching it, which is edgy behavior is ever I’ve heard it.

Jesus. Could I be more L7?

Three Pints of Pith

Matthew

I firmly believe that there are two types of people in the world: people who like to blow soap bubbles, and people who like to pop the soap bubbles that other people have blown.

Note: I don’t actually believe this. But it seemed so pithy I had no choice but to post it here.

Books: Journey Through Genius

Matthew

In a desperate attempt to appear “hip,’ to “connect” with his teenage students, my high school math teacher compared geometry to Dungeons and Dragons. “You all love D&D, right?” he said, assuming we all did since, in 1987, it was the fad du jour. “Well, geometry is just like that: it starts as a few, basic, fundamental rules, and then builds a whole bunch of secondary rules to handle special cases. So in D&D you have basic rules for fighters, thieves, wizards and whatever, and in geometry you have rules for circles, squares and triangles. And from there you build more and more guidelines until you have an entire system!”

At the time I hated math, so I rolled my eyes at this amazingly lame analogy right along with everyone else. But now, years later, I can’t help but wonder if he might have been on to something. In the decade since high school I have become fascinated both with games and math, and I now understand that the two are intimately connected. Indeed, reading Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics was a lot like reading a rule book for the natural world.

Author William Dunham chose a dozen or so theorems, each of which advanced — and, some cases, revolutionized — the world’s understanding of mathematics. It starts with the ancient Greeks and the problem of “squaring” various shapes. (One “squares” a figure by turning it into a square with sides of a known length, which, in turn, allows you to determine the area of the original shape. “Squaring the circle” was, for quite a while, the holy grail of mathemastics, until it was proven to be impossible.) The first Great Thereom demonstrates how to square rectangles, then pentagones, then hexagons, and so forth. This discovery paved the way for such other revelations as Pythegoras’ Theorem (a2 + b2 = 2) and the value of pi, which, in turn, served as building blocks for still more profound insights. Journey Through Genius almost seems like a mystery novel, where clues are slowly revealed and more and more conclusions are drawn.

The most fascinating part of the book, I though, was the depiction of mathematicians as gunslingers in the 17th century. Up and coming mathematicians would challenge established scholars to “duels,” where the participants would swap tests and see who could stump whom. He who could crack most of his opponent’s questions would become (or remain) Mathematics Fastest Gun; the other would be shot down in ignominy. An unfortunate consequence of this institution was that mathematicians who discovered new methods of solving problems would be reluctant to share their secrets, instead hoarding their knowledge and using it to win in these gun fights. Who knew that Math Guys could be so ruthless?

I freely admit that I didn’t really follow the Theorems presented in the last four chapters, although Dunham still explained the role and importance of each. Overall I found Journey Through Genius to be a fascinating read, and one — like all the books on mathematics I read these days — which made me wish I had cared more about this stuff when it was being taught to me to free. Criminey, if I had listened to my geometry teacher’s advice and treated mathematics like D&D, I could have been a Level 13 Trigonomiter with a +2 Slide Rule of Sharpness by now. Ah, wasted youth.

Directors, and Their Bad Bad Movies

Matthew

After this entry, a friend wrote to tell me I had to include more Movie Trivia Posts. So, here you go …

Orson Wells’ first film, Citzen Kane, is widely regarded as the finest motion picture ever made. But not all directors have such copious quantities of beginner’s luck. Match each of the “Best Director” Oscar recipients below with the film they made early in their careers.

1. James Camereon [Titanic] a. 1941 — Hysteria grips California in the wake of the bombing of Pearl harbour as an assorted group of defenders attempt to make the coast defensible against an imagined Japanese invasion in this big budget, big cast comedy. Members of a Japanese submarine crew scout out the madness.
2. Frances Ford Coppola [Godfather] b. Caged Heat — A girl is caught in a drug bust and sent to the hoosegow. The iron-handed superintendent takes exception to a skit performed by the girls and takes punitive steps, aided by the sadistic doctor who is doing illegal electroshock experiments and raping drugged prisoners. After a while the prisoners put away their petty differences and plan the Big Prison Escape.
3. Jonathan Demme [Silence of the Lambs] c. Foxfire — The Soviets have developed a revolutionary new jet fighter, called “Firefox”. Naturally, the British are worried that the jet will be used as a first-strike weapon, as rumours say that the jet is indetectable on radar. They send ex-Vietnam War pilot Mitchell Gant on a covert mission into the Soviet Union to steal Firefox.
4. Clint Eastwood [Unforgiven] d. The Hand — Jon Lansdale is a comic book artist who loses his right hand in a car accident. The hand was not found at the scene of the accident, but it soon returns by itself to follow Jon around, and murder those who anger him.
5. Ron Howard [A Beautiful Mind] e. Night Shift –A nebbish of a morgue attendant gets shunted back to the night shift where he is shackled with an obnoxious neophyte partner who dreams of the “one great idea” for success. His life takes a bizarre turn when a prostitute neighbour complains about the loss of her pimp. His partner, upon hearing the situation, suggests that they fill that opening themselves using the morgue at night as their brothel. Against his better judgement, he gets talked into the idea, only to find that it’s more than his boss that has objections to this bit of entrepreneurship.
6. Barry Levinson [Rainman] f. Pirahna II: The Spawning — A sunken US supply ship off a Caribbean island resort is the focus for a series of mysterious piranha attacks. Investigating the death of one of her son’s companions after a scuba-diving trip, Anne Kimbrough breaks into the morgue with holidaymaker Tyler Sherman, only to discover that the fish have wings and can fly. But the hotel manager refuses to call off the annual fish fry on the beach, with inevitable consequences.
7. Steven Soderbergh [Traffic] g. The Playgirls and the Bellboy — This sixties sexploitation teaser concerns a bumbling bellboy who takes an amateur detective course and sets out to prove that the lingerie models in his hotel are really hookers.
8. Steven Spielberg [Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan] h. Schizopolis — Fletcher Munson is a lethargic, passive worker for a Scientology-like self-help corporation called Eventualism. After the death of a colleague, he is promoted to the job of writing speeches for T. Azimuth Schwitters, the founder and head of the group. He uses this as an excuse to be emotionally and romantically distant from his wife, who, he discovers, is having an affair with his doppelganger, a dentist named Dr. Jeffrey Korchek. As Munson fumbles with the speech and Korchek becomes obsessed with a new patient, a psychotic exterminator named Elmo Oxygen goes around the town seducing lonely wives and taking photographs of his genitals.
9. Oliver Stone [Platoon, Born on the Forth of July] i. Used Cars — Jack Warden stars as Luke and Roy L. Fuchs–feuding used car-selling twin brothers who square off in an outrageous, all-out attempt to put each other out of business. Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell), Luke’s star salesman, is doing all the lying and cheating that he can in the name of the cause, but only in preparation for what he feels is his true calling–a career in politics! You’ll howl at the proceedings, which involve strippers on television and a 200-car chase that turns into a full-on demolition derby.
10. Robert Zemeckis [Forrest Gump] j. Young Sherlock Holmes — Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson meet as boys in an English Boarding school. Holmes is known for his deductive ability even as a youth, amazing his classmates with his abilities. When they discover a plot to murder a series of British business men by an Egyptian cult, they move to stop it

Answers [highlight to view]: 1-f, 2-g, 3-b, 4-c, 5-e, 6-j, 7-h, 8-a, 9-d, 10-i

D’OH!

Matthew

You’ve probably heard this by now, but just in case you haven’t: State-run Chinese newspaper mistakenly runs Onion article as actual news, refuses to admit error.

Yu Bin, the editor in charge of international news, acknowledged Thursday that he had no idea where the writer, Huang Ke, originally got the story. ... But he adamantly ruled out a correction and grew slightly obstreperous when pressed to comment on the article's total lack of truth. "How do you know whether or not we checked the source before we published the story?" Yu demanded in a phone interview. "How can you prove it's not correct? Is it incorrect just because you say it is?"

The article, by the way, was Congress Threatens To Leave D.C. Unless New Capitol Is Built.

The Essence of Wit

Matthew

Once, when I was in high school, my philosophy teacher was talking about the concept of essence. “A thing’s essence,” he said, “is that which, if it were to be removed, the thing would no longer be what it once was. Take the clock, for example. The clock is blue, but would it still be a clock if you took away the ‘blue’ and left it colorless? Certainly: you could still tell time by it. But what if you were to remove the hands from the clock? Then, I would argue, you have removed the very ‘essence’ of the clock — it’s ability to measure the passage of time.

“Here’s another example,” he continued, picking up a drinking glass. “What is the essence of this glass? It’s shape? I’d say not. But what if we were to remove the bottom of this glass? I submit to you that, if we were to remove the bottom, this glass would lose its essence.”

“I dunno,” I said. “I don’t think that hypothesis holds water.”

It was one of those moments that every class clown dreams of.

Traffic Flow Theory

Matthew

Newly discovered subject that strikes me as so facsinating that I will be completely obsessed with it for two or three weeks, after which I will forget all about it: Traffic! Flow! Theory!

  • William Beaty is a fellow Seattleite and science hobbiest. He has put together a fantastic page with his observations about traffic, and what ordinary citizens can do to alleiviate traffic jams. He also has an explanation for those “phantom accidents” we have all experienced — those instances where traffic is all backed up at a certain point, but when you reach the “bottleneck” you discover there is no discernable reason for the slow down. Mr. Beaty’s article is so well written and researched that it was even featured in both the San Franscico Chronicle and BBC News.
  • Want to study Traffic Flow Theory without paying for the gas? This page has a number of java applets which allow you to create your own traffic paterns, complete with different scenarios (on-ramps, uphill grades, traffic lights), adjustable “rate of flow” paramaters and even a “Truck to car ratio” setting.
  • Here’s an entire chapter from a book entitled “Principles of Driving Psychology.” An excerpt:

    A common fear of drivers is that they will break the unspoken rules of the road and thus cause others to hate them. When we inconvenience other drivers, we expect them to react with negative thoughts and emotions aimed at us. In traffic, as a rule, we cut each other no slack, and we attribute negative reactions to all other drivers. How close is this imagined response to reality? The drivers we talked to admitted that they don’t always think negatively about other drivers, though it’s routine to do so. So, much of what we imagine others are thinking of us as drivers is just fantasy. But these fantasies are standard attributions we make in traffic, and they are knitted into the fabric of our thoughts and feelings while driving.

  • Washington Post: how computers are being used to simulate and study Traffic Flow Theory.

Kitty Porn

Matthew

My wife and I recently moved from an apartment in the city to a house with a big back yard and large, glass patio doors. Now our cat doesn’t pay any attention to us any more. He just sits at the window all day long and watches birds and squirrels. He’s like a teenager who just discovered porn on the Internet. We may have to stage an intervention.