laurenceholt

deuteronomy dead give-away

When I was 17, it came my turn to make a reading as morning assembly--the blatantly religious meeting my school started every day with. Being a raging atheist, I asked if I could do something other than read from the Bible. To my surprise, they said I could say anything I liked. So I wrote a stroppy piece aimed at the 11-year-olds in the front row and, as far as I can remember, revolving mainly around the argument that since rabbits don't pray and seem to get along fine, maybe there's nothing out there. Unoriginal, yes. But I became something of a minor celebrity for a while.

Years later, I have found what I should have read. I found it in Sam Harris's recent book, End of Faith. It is Deuteronomy 13, verses 7 to 11:

"If your brother, the son of your father or of your mother, or your son or daughter, or the spouse whom you embrace, or your most intimate friend, tries to secretly seduce you, saying, "Let us go and serve other gods," unknown to you or your ancestors before you, gods of the peoples surrounding you, whether near you or far away, anywhere throughout the world, you must not consent, you must not listen to him; you must show him no pity, you must not spare him or conceal his guilt. No, you must kill him, your hand must strike the first blow in putting him to death and the hands of the rest of the people following. You must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God." [emphasis added]

Next time you are unfortunate enough to have the bible quoted at you, remember this one. It's easy to recall: Deuteronomy 13 (what else?), verses 7-11, like the store.

andy rooney, confused about democracy

Andy Rooney's 60 Minutes piece last night had him making the cute point that he is glad that nearly 100 million people didn't vote in the last US election since they "don't care enough about the issues."

"I'd be willing to bet," he said, "that it's the dumbest among us who are least likely to vote." Well, I don't have a vote, not being a citizen, but if I did, I am pretty sure I wouldn't be using it. Therefore, according to Rooney, I am dumb.

Is it possible that some of those 100 million took a long look at Bush, a long look at Gore, and decided that they didn't want either one to lead the country?

I am left concluding that the message of the non-voters is: the process by which the two big parties select the candidates they put in front of the electorate is seriously flawed, if the last several examples are anything to go by. Give me one candidate who is even half the leader of a Blair or Thatcher (whatever you think of their politics). Still, it could be worse, it could be Berlusconi.

unbiased election commentary

I remember feeling cornered in a debate with a French friend about 15 years ago. He accused me of being naive (and 'English') in believing there was such a thing as a naked fact reported in a newspaper. Even the selection of the fact, he pointed out, is influenced by the selector's view.

Still, I'd like to believe there are plain, vanilla facts. The flipside is I have a tough time reading anything when I know the people behind it have an axe to grind (so that rules out the WSJ, New York Times, etc). The closest I know of is The Economist, and yes that's me being naive again. Still, it's wonderful to find an unbiased (as far as I can tell) source of analysis on Bush/Kerry messaging at FactCheck.org.

The conclusion, btw, is that neither side is telling the truth.

tuition fees raised to pay for athletics

A piece on CNN said Syracuse University had to raise tuition fees this year to help offset the increasing costs of its athletics department. (I couldn't find that story online, but USATODAY has the same story for Louisville and several others.

Now I was never the sporting chap at school or university, not being seven feet tall or wide, but...how crazy is this? We're asking students to run up enormous debt so that, in part, they can subsidize the pursuits of a few genetic outliers. "Education and athletics are linked in this country. That's the way our society is organized," says one professor/coach.

He goes on to explain why: sports success creates an image for the school. In other words, it's marketing. Apparently, people associate sports success with the quality of the school though -- since it's a zero-sum game for funding -- the opposite is just as likely to be true.

What to do? Maybe schools who don't pay their coaches $2m+ pa will be cheaper. Certainly, if I were choosing now, I'd consider this a good reason not to choose Syracuse, Louisville, et al.

he/she solution

Writers everywhere suffer from the he/she problem: do you say he, she, or both? I was excited to discover a new solution recently. Here, as a recap, are the most commonly employed solutions today:
- "If you ask your doctor, he or she will say" (clumsy)
- "If you ask your doctor, he will say" (not PC)
- "If you ask your doctor, she will say" (trying too hard, distracting)
- "If you ask your doctor, they will say" (grammaticaly incorrect, though usage may make it valid)
- "If you ask your doctor, s/he will say" (too '70s).

So here's my new favorite: "If you ask your doctor, he (or, of course, she) will say..." After you've used this once, you can happily use "he" from there on. I like this because it is honest but doesn't make a big deal: look, obviously I mean "he or she" so no need to bug me anymore, okay?

Only wish I could recall where I first saw it so I could give due credit...

alexander patterns and the boston T

New Yorkers have to cope with subway entrances that are closed seemingly at random but unmarked--so the hapless traveler finds himself staring at a gate where there used to be a way in. I recently had to try three exits before finding one that was open.

So I was interested to see the good people of Boston have a solution. Here is a sometime T entrance (the sign says "NOT AN ENTRANCE"):

Chris Alexander has an architecture pattern called MAIN ENTRANCE which exhorts architects to make building entrances obvious, something you would think was basic but in fact is frequently overlooked. I wonder whether the architect of this 'entrance' (a) was asked to design a 'not an entrance' but designed an entrance look anyway, (b) was asked to design something that could be an entrance or not-an-entrance, we'll decide later because we have a tough time planning that far ahead, or (c) was asked to design an entrance and is horrified to see what has happened to his (or, of course, her) good work.

moblogging in the USA

Direct from my treo 600. This is the security guard at the New York Business Library who didn't believe my phone was a camera.

design needs science bad

According to the New York Times (sub), an MIT Media Lab group running something called the Simplicty Design Workshop have concluded that the keys to simplicity are:
- Heed cultural patterns (ie, iPod)
- Be transparent (meaning?)
- Cut out nonessential features
- Prototype.

The article's example of complexity: the 40m lines of code in Windows XP. Complex for the engineers, certainly, but is that the complexity we're talking about?

The antidote to engineers over-engineering is not, surely, designers over-designing. It is science.

Let's say you decide 'simplicity' means 90% of the population can achieve the goal first time in less than 30 seconds. Let's say the goal is 'store the last caller's number on my phone'. Get the random samples in and have them try. Then come up with some designs and see which does best. Repeat until 90% succeed.

Alternatively, if the hypothesis is that product A is simpler (wrt a specific, measurable goal) than product B, run a randomized trial.

music arbitrage opportunity

Pretty soon someone like Rhapsody is going to offer a lifetime subscription to every song, now and in the future, that the rights are available for (which hopefully will be rather more than are available currently). At $9.95 a month or $120 a year and assuming an interest rate of 10%, the net present cost of a Rhapsody subscription forever is $1200. So let's assume they offer lifetime subscriptions for $800.

I have about 400 CDs and people are willing to pay about $3 per CD on ebay. So I could sell my collection for $1200, take the lifetime subscription, and still show a profit. Presumably when the folks buying CDs on ebay realize there are better alternatives to owning an overpriced disk, resale values will plummet. So we have a classic asymmetical information arbitrage opportunity. Come on Rhapsody, I'm ready...

NYC sunset: May 28 and July 12

Every May 28 and July 12 the sun sets precisely on the centerline of every Manhattan street. Now where would I file that information if it wasn't for blogs...

Astronomy Picture of the Day

New blog goal: "blogger wants a blog to reappear at the top of his blog according to a schedule."