New videogame released recently, Battlefield: Vietnam . A glorification of landmines and napalm, punji sticks and attack helicopters. The even more disturbing part: It's a lot of fun.
I'm really unnerved by my fondness for this game, and similar predecessors like Delta Force: Black Hawk Down and Battlefield: 1942. I just don't know how to respond. Is it OK to get enjoyment from shooting people and blowing them up? Well, no, not in real life. But is it really "just a game"? I have great respect for our military forces and the sacrifices and commitment they have out of sense of duty to their country and fellow citizens. But that's still somewhat short of enjoying seeing people blown up. And there does seem to be a distinction in my mind, as I don't get off on seeing people blow up on TV, in fact it makes me a little sick. But in the context of the game, it's incredibly effective and engaging.
And the games have become so much more enveloping, its incredible. It's entirely possible to enter a computer game as a "specialist" in helicopter piloting, or artillery, or reconnaissance. Your ability to provide effective intel and supporting your team are essential to winning. The fact that all this occurs online with other human players makes it even more immersive. It really is a lot of fun.
But it still makes me uncomfortable. It's not helped by the fact that EA (the publishers) have included mostly Vietnam-era protest songs on the soundtrack (HUH! What is it good for?), which sound disturbingly good while you strafe the enemy villages. That's when you're not listening to Ride of the Valkyries, a la Apocalypse Now, and yes, the people on the ground can hear the music get louder as your Huey comes into firing distance. Of course, as in Battlefield: 1942, you get to play both sides, thereby heightening the moral ambiguity of the whole thing.
I suppose I still come down on the "just a game" side of the argument, and to be honest I've played Grand Theft Auto and Black Hawk Down pretty regularly, and have still not killed anyone.
But I can't help but feel creepy about it. Not that it will stop me from playing.
Went to a party with some friends from work tonight. What a weird scene that is.
It was just a little gathering of some people from work who all get along well and have formed friendships. But, of course, they're work friendships, which aren't really the same thing. It was at one of my co-worker's houses, and it was cool. He has a lot of pinball machines and some older arcade games and we hung out and played darts and pool and pinball and drank a few beers. It was a nice break. But even still, there's always a sort of weird barrier there, because its a party, but you're still required to wear the mask you wear at work, that puts you forward as a confident, responsible, sober yet funloving average American.
And I'm fairly certain none of us at the party were that, exactly. I've managed to make a few friendships through work that have progressed somewhat beyond that bizaare realm of social courtesy, but most continue to fit the pattern. And personally, I feel so out of place as an engineer rather than in a more creative role, that I don't want to be too much of myself even with them because I'm not sure they can relate. I don't even really know that I relate. But I think some of the challenges facing me in this respect are different from the ones facing them. Not that either one of us has it better or worse, just different.
Mostly I try to be inconspicuous. With the people I see often, I'm unable to avoid letting my inner opinionated self break out now and then. Just today I had a long conversation with my cubemate (what a cute name) about how incredibly stupid and dangerous the drug war is. Of course, the interesting part is, he agrees with me. That's one of interesting things I've noticed. The few times I have slipped and said some things I was nervous about, most people have had similar opinions to mine. There's an untapped political resource: Engineers against the War on Drugs. Or maybe I'm just obnoxious and they want to avoid upsetting me. But I suspect the workplace is far less mainstream than it appears.
It seems inevitable that I come away from these functions concluding that my cow-orkers are probably pretty cool people, and that we might actually be real friends, if either of us were brave enough to be real.
Didn't get home from work and gym tonight till after midnight, so I'm copping out a bit. I just want to make a recommendation to check out last week's "This American Life". I could probably make that recommendation safely every week, because its the most consistently excellent and astounding radio program I know, easily shifting gears from politics and culture to food and Holidays, using drama and comedy and every shade in between.
Last week's episode was about pets, and was especially notable for the first and last acts. First was an essay from David Sedaris (an incredibly brilliant and fucked up and painfully funny writer) on the pets of his childhood that will move you, disturb you, make you laugh a lot, and make you embarrassed about how much you are laughing. That's really what Sedaris does best. But its the last story that really makes it. A bizaare (fictional) story of our responsibility to our pets and their responsibility to us, of autism and finding a normal life, and armadillos. If you're at all like me it will absolutely knock you out.
Also, Ira Glass has a cool voice, so you should try to check out the show every week. I've never been dissapointed, even when I thought before it started that I didn't care at all about their topic. And with that I leave you.
Note:
More ThisLife episodes in case you've got an extra 5 hours this week
First Day (Squirrel Cop)
Fiasco
Telephone
Cruelty of Children
Does getting to work at 8 and putting everything in the right pile really make the world go 'round, or is there still room for big ideas?
I've been reading quite a bit about the 9-11 commission and in particular about Mr. Richard Clarke, former Terrorism Advisor. One of the most interesting articles I've read recently is (no surprise) on Slate, and deals with President Bush II's baby with the bathwater approach to all of President Clinton's policies. In the article, Will Saletan talks about Bush's automatic assumption that what Clinton was doing was wrong as causing a disconnect in national terrorism policy. But it also hints at another issue, which I find more interesting, namely, does a step by step bureacratic approach accomplish more in the long run than sweeping policy changes?
As Saletan points out, most of the commentary from the Bush staff shows a disdain for what they call "swatting flies", "law enforcement", and a culture of regular meetings, in favor of bold new plans to eliminate terrorism rather than slow it down. While that may be a noble goal (debatable in my view, even assuming it's possible), someone still has to enforce the laws and swat the flies. And, as Clarke succinctly points out in his book (taken by me from an excerpt in Saletan's piece, as I have not read the book yet), regular meetings with all members of the counter-terrorism community (White House, FBI, CIA, NSA, Defense) in the summer of 2001 could very well have "connected the dots".
I'm no fan of bureacracy or of meetings. In fact, you can hear me regularly bemoan the tendency at my Fortune 3 employer to schedule meetings to determine when the next meeting should be. But its hard not to admit that they are a necessary evil. If everything worked perfectly, then everyone would know what they needed to do, do it, and tell anyone else who needed to know what they did. But as the real world points out, painfully time and again, we do not live in the above perfect world. Are constant meetings the best way to encourage cooperation and information-sharing between agencies? Certainly not, there are many better ways. But unless you have one of those better ways in place and can make it work, you better just keep the wasteful meetings going in the meantime.
National Security Advisor Rice said that "The key here was not to have a meeting. The key was to have a strategy." This seems incredibly naive to me. While big ideas and getting things done smarter are great goals, you'd best be sure you're paying the bills in the meantime.
I'm not sure I'm ready to declare the "Big Idea" dead, but I do think it's important to recognize that while "Man cannot live by bread alone" to quote President Bush's favorite philosopher, bread is pretty important. It seems inevitably that the small stuff is what derails the most lofty ideals.
Notes:
Another Slate Article by Fred Kaplan on Clarke's claims
Bureaucracy, a game by Douglas Adams
Speaking of whom, Have you heard about the Hitchhiker's Guide movie coming in '05?
(Featuring Marvin the Paranoid Android, played by Wicket!)
The only problem: You have to prove (or disprove) a decades-old mathematical conjecture that has stumped professional mathemeticians.
The Clay Mathematics Institute has recently created the "Millenium Prizes", a collection of the 7 most important and unsolved problems in the field of mathematics. Most of them come from the last century and a half, and cover all areas of mathematics, from game theory to geometry to algebra to number theory.
One of the problems is the P=NP? problem. This problem is very important not just to mathemeticians, but also to computer scientists, as it describes attempting to create polynomial time (read-- easily solvable) solutions for problems that have not presented such solutions so far. The term P refers to a class of problems that can be solved within a direct polynomial relationship to their number of inputs. To clean that up a bit, they are easy to solve, even as they get very large, because they grow in a regular fashion. An example of this type P problem would be finding a text string ("britney") from a large text database ("The Internet"). All you have to do is go to Google or use the search and replace function in your word processor to see that even in an enormous volume of text, it isn't that much harder to find a word.
The type NP refers to problems that have solutions which are easy to check, but difficult to arrive at. It is known that P-problems are also NP-problems, but it can't be said that NP-problems are necessarily P-problems. It's possible that these type NP problems are also type P, but that has not yet been proven. There are many problems that fit this type NP in such a way that if any one of them is of type P, then they all must be. These are referred to as NP-complete. If it were true that the NP-complete problems were in fact of type P, it would truly revolutionize computer science, especially in the field of Artificial Intelligence, as an ability to solve NP problems would be highly useful. Most mathematicians believe the opposite than P is not equal to NP, but no one has been able to prove it.
Which brings us to Minesweeper. "WinMine" is a great example of an NP-complete problem. If a solution (solving algorithm) could be discovered that functioned in polynomial time, it would prove the P=NP problem. In fact, the author of a number of recent papers has used Minesweeper to represent not only the NP complete problem, but also to replicate logical circuits. Reducing the problem to logical circuits is one of the currently proposed methods for proving that P is not = NP, so this may provide an inroads.
Of course, it's not an easy task. And being able to beat the expert level in under 2 minutes will not win you the prize. But it is an interesting way to see how mathematics can manifest itself in the most interesting (and banal) of places.
Notes:
The Clay Mathematics Institute
An article on the P=NP? connection to Minesweeper (with diagrams of minesweeper configurations that act as logic gates (well worth looking at for EE/computer nerds (i.e. me)))
Italian campaign to fight landmines by asking people to delete winmine from their computers (No I didn't make this up)
Finally, the games mathematicians play
The music for March is Things in Herds.
I first ran into Things in Herds, mostly by accident on MP3.com. This was back when MP3.com was cool, so it must be at least 3 years now. I was cruising for music from friends of mine and also picking up other stuff I saw, and I thought I'd try this one track out. The track happened to be "Like Me", and I was hooked ever since.
They're a strange little group from England. Pete Lush provides most (if not all) of the music, and his partner Miss Ping draws strange pictures of horses. Its part of the ambience I suppose. In any case, its quiet, folky, melodic and melancholy, absolutely beautiful and sometimes has just the right mood.
The Things will be coming to the states for a tour this summer and the album is just coming out now. You can get MP3's on PureVolume (although sadly "Like Me" my favorite is not there). It is available however at the Things In Herds official website which is worth a look just for the bizaare commentary and horse pictures.
I'll put up more details when I hear about the tour. If you get the chance, try to make a show, they're worth the trip.
NASA announced today, that we will NOT be hit with an asteroid
at 5PM. Given NASA and other astronomers' previous record with asteroid prediction(here, and here, and here), I'm sufficiently nervous. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if they said it would hit us, anyway.
A quick one, just to say, Happy St. Patrick's Day to you, and enjoy a Guinness or three on my behalf, but keep it under 39, as even Dylan Thomas eschews that kind of extravagance.
Slainte!
Caught Randy Newman on The Connection tonight. I hope I can manage to kick that much ass in my life, but I've got a lot of catching up to do.
I inheirited my love for Randy Newman from my father many years ago when I heard him playing "Good Ole Boys" as a child. (To be scientifically correct, it may not have been genetic, but I'm not convinced). If I remember correctly I was probably less than 10, without quite a fully developed sense of irony, but I remember being entranced. I loved the lazy shuffle piano and the lazy shuffle singing. I also got a pretty thoughtful explanation of just what it was Randy was up to with "Rednecks" and "Kingfish". I don't know that I got it entirely at that time, but it definitely has affected my sensibility since. If for some reason you haven't experienced Mr. Newman, you really owe it to yourself to check him out. I suppose Little Criminals is a good place to start, as his most popularly sucessful. But definitely don't think that his Pixar work is a good approximation of who he is (although they are great songs).
Randy said something on the show that got me thinking. He said that he's always had trouble being sucessful because his is the kind of music you really got to listen to. And its really rare that people actually listen to music. They can concentrate intently maybe on a movie or a sermon, but most people seem to feel like music is "background" or "entertainment". This has become terribly obvious to me, because I've never felt this way about music, and it's always terribly confusing to me when I see it in others. Over the years, I've learned that it's me that's broken, but it's still something I don't understand. When a song, especially a really good song comes on, I'm just forced to listen to it. I've noticed that as I've been listening to the beginning of the Connection interview that I missed, I stop writing this whenever a song excerpt comes on. I can write during the talking part and even mostly understand what they're saying, but as soon as a song comes on, my fingers stop.
Certainly I can listen to music as background, but it is harder. It depends on the type of music. That's one of the things I like about electronic (techno/jungle/etc.) music, is that its real easy to just have it sit in the back of your brain and provide a sountrack for whatever you're doing. But the really great songs, my favorites, I can hardly look away. This is part of the reason I stopped listening to classical music in the car, as I'd find myself drifting and forgetting the driving part of driving very quickly. But other people don't seem to have this problem, or rarely anyway.
I'll say, "You should listen to this song, I think you'd like it". Then I'll start it playing and they'll listen for about 15 seconds and then ask me about dinner. And I want to say, "Shut the Fuck Up! It's still playing!" Usually, however, I don't, as I said, I've learned that they can't help it. So I just move on. I think I got this from my father as well, as I've gotten him to actually listen to several songs before. Well, except Eminem. His claim is that his ears are old enough that he just can't understand what anyone is saying in Hip Hop. (I suppose I can accept that, but then if you can understand Randy mumbling, you can understand anything. But nonetheless, I suppose I've been more tuned to listen to that over the years.)
I suppose despite the annoyances and driving dangers, that I'm glad I've got this problem. I've found some really great and really powerful music that might have drifted right past me otherwise. And I've found that no matter what the day has been like, the right song coming on the radio is all it takes to keep me moving.
Notes:
The Connection Interview with Randy Newman
Randy on Morning Edition with Bob Edwards
Randy Newman Home Page with lyrics and discography
A quick thought on the state of technology. In many areas, technical sophistication of machines and software is already better than the corresponding human systems. But the performance is considerably less, which leaves lots of room for improvement.
Try this experiment: Find an average computer (as of this writing lets say something like a Pentium III 1.4 MHz Windows-based machine as baseline) and install professionl audio software (e.g. Cubase) on it. You have just created as system that has thousands of times the processing power and resolution of the human ear. Now, get the computer to recognize what someone is saying in a German accent, while driving a car in the rain, with no constraints on vocabulary or syntax. I'll guarantee you that the ear wins everytime.
This begs the question: What are we doing wrong? For the tasks that they are designed for (mathematical calculation, sorting and searching of lists and storage and retrieval of information*, maybe even chess) they have surpassed human ability ten-fold, and doing these things by brainpower rather than processing power is no longer reasonable. But some of the simplest human tasks are still impossible for computers to perform.
*This advantage is only valuable for information that is not stored in the brain's memory (for example, finding a name in the phone book). Computer's excel at locating items contained in large volumes of information which they were previously unfamiliar with. However, for information stored within the brain (your uncle Bill's phone number, maybe) the brain is still far ahead, especially since it can retrieve it automatically by looking at a picture of uncle Bill, or thinking about the $5 you owe uncle Bill, or noticing uncle Bill's copy of "Stranger in a Strange Land" on the table and realizing you need to call him.
Very young children learn very easily to identify their mother or father from a group of very similar looking people, even though their brains are not yet fully developed. Moreover, most children could pass my "rainy German" test above. But even with the best computers in the world, these problems present a challenge to the computer.
It's pretty well accepted in the study of the brain, that one of the brain's biggest strengths is pattern recognition (which describes both of the problems above). Work has been done with computers in the study of "neural networks" in an attempt to duplicate the behavior of the brain. But even with enormous networks of neurons, it is difficult to match the brain in these problems. Current estimates put the processing power of the brain on the order of 10^12 - 10^15 operations per second. The world's fastest supercomputer runs at around 40 Teraflops or 4 * 10^13. So, from a pure power standpoint, there is no reason computers should not be quickly outpacing the human brain, but these calculations don't seem to tell the whole story, and more importantly, floating point operations do not appear to be the foundation of the brain's thinking power, but rather relationships between things.
To me its pretty clear that brute force is not the path to understanding the power of the brain or harnessing it. Some current research in psychobiology suggests that the structure of the brain itself (protein structures called microtubules) play a part in brain operation and are the mechanism for consciousness. In any case, I see enormous potential for great advances in computer science, but it will require us to stop thinking of the brain like a computer, and starting making computers like the brain.
Notes:
I got some information from David J. C. MacKay's book, "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" which is available on-line for free. (Although if you think you'd use it, you should buy it and support the author).
It contains this really neat passage (which I think I can reprint out of a 640 page book by fair use):
Biological memory recall is error-tolerant and robust.
Errors in the cues for memory recall can be corrected. An example
asks you to recall `An American politician who was very intelligent
and whose politician father did not like broccoli'. Many people
think of president Bush (even though one of the cues contains an
error.)
Hardware faults can also be tolerated. Our brains are noisy lumps
of meat that are in a continual state of change, with cells being
damaged by natural processes, alcohol, and boxing. While the cells
in our brains and the proteins in our cells are continually changing,
many of our memories persist unaffected.
A paper on estimating human memory and another on the computation limits of the brain. (Both are quite old, but still hold up to our current understanding.)
Stuart Hameroff's webpage, a leading researcher into consciousness.
In the interest of keeping myself busy, I've created a new site, which is actually a continuation of something I did on my webpage at Tech so many years ago. Its called, "Reasons to Wake Up in the Morning". So maybe its a list, or a page of links, or just something to look at.
In which Ish obsesses in self-absorbed navel-comtemplation to the delight of all...
So I'm wondering what the hell the point of this is and what I want to do with it. I really would like the idea of doing semi-investigative semi-editorial journalistic type pieces, but I'm just never going to have the time to do that every day. I don't feel right about just throwing shit out there without doing at least some research to be sure I'm not spewing sludge, and providing resources so that people can learn more or prove me wrong if they care to. And that takes time. Lots of it.
But I really do want to avoid this journal becoming too personal based, just because I don't really feel like anyone cares what I had for breakfast. And if they do care, they should stop it. Seriously.
Not that there aren't personal observations or events that wouldn't resonate with other people. But its hard to develop that every day. Take today for example:
I started early, which meant sitting in traffic more than I like, because if I want to get to work 20 minutes earlier than normal I need to leave almost an hour earlier than normal. I worked, with very little that was eventful happening. I tried to find the least offensive thing at Wendy's for lunch because I only had 10 minutes in which to eat it, and settled on the grilled chicken, as I'm still not comforable with Fast Food salads. I left work and went to the gym, where there was a woman wearing the tightest pants humanly possible and no underwear. Not that there's anything wrong with that (and god bless Lycra). Then I swung by Starbucks to say hey to Xtian and get a triple grande no-fat mocha. I drove home.
So where's the big universal truth in that? More importantly, why are you still reading? Freak.
So I'm trying to find the balance of how to make this thing work. While I like bringing up interesting issues I've found or thought about in politics, science, religion, technology, culture and so on, I need to find a way to stop each one from being a research project. And I need to find a way of engaging in personal journalism without being as mind-freezingly boring as the above. This stuff is hard.
Let me start with this: I'm no fan of President Bush II. Personally I find him about as fulfilling as any malformed Hollywood sequel, which is particularly disturbing to me as he's in charge of the largest economy and military in the world (and the history of the world). And I didn't like the first movie. But the prospect of President John Kerry is about as inspiring to me as cold Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and all the ketchup in the world won't fix it up.
Andy posted a number of articles (at the bottom of the link) that get to the facts of the matter much more succinctly than I could on my own. So I'll stick with generalities for now, which are the feelings that were given voice by the articles above.
There's nothing *there*. I have tremendous respect for Senator Kerry's service in Vietnam and his subsequent protest. I personally see nothing wrong with the fact that he considered the war immoral before he decided to go. To me that's a morally defensible stand, as his feeling that serving his country was a more valuable moral duty than not participating in the war makes sense to me, especially from the viewpoint of "Why is it only the poor kids that get to die for their country?" So I have respect for him in choosing to risk his life in Vietnam, while most of his wealthy peers chose college or serving in National Guard units reserved for the children of the wealthy and powerful that would never leave the country.
But very little that I have seen from his record since that time bears the mark of the same courage, conviction, and capability. His congressional record is that of a man warming a bench. In his years in the Senate he participated in drafting very little legislation (need I say, the primary purpose of the legislature). His stands on issues have fluctuated wildly. While his defenders point out this is the mark of a man who in "intellectual" and considers things carefully, it is also the mark of a man without personal conviction, who votes safely in line with poll numbers. One counter-example I could find was a vote against the "Defense of Marriage Act" (in an election year, even, 1996) but recent events have shown that this is not a particularly brave stand in Massachusetts. His presidential campaign has revealed that his presidential vision is, well, whatever seems to be working for anyone else. "Anyone else" was Howard Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire, and quickly shifted to John Edwards after, using the same themes and phrases they had to describe his "conviction".
The man who demonstrated such bravery in Vietnam, and immediately after returning has demonstrated only safe, poll-driven politics since. I'm not saying he's evil or crooked or worse than George W. Bush. But I haven't seen anything that suggests he's appreciably better. He can talk about policies, but I doubt his ability to enact them, and I doubt his political courage to bother.
The primary voters wanted someone safe. Well, they got it, and little good will it do them. By voting safely they've gotten a candidate with little hope of beating George Bush. And given President Bush II's record, that is a truly sad choice. Now that was a sequel I really wasn't looking forward to.
Notes:
Far too many articles available to list but I'll put down a few to get you started
Kerry's Campaign site
Excellent Boston Globe Series on Kerry's life so far (far more even-handed than me)
Michael Kinsley on "Electability"
I've made it back. There was much sunshine and drinks with umbrellas in them. I do expect some items on Mr. Kerry soon. I did NOT catch the garter, in fact I was luckily spared the whole enterprise, meaning I didn't have to hide.
One quick comment: Kaua'i is full of chickens. That was the single weirdest thing for me. It was the first thing I noticed taking the shuttle from the airport, and it was definitely the first thing I noticed every morning. (In case you were of the same city boy impression as I, roosters don't crow a couple times at dawn and then quit. The don't ever quit. )
I heard several different stories (bordering on legend) as to why this is. The simplest one is that Kaua'i is the only island without mongoose. They were brought into Hawaii to kill the rats, but as mongoose are diurnal and rats nocturnal it didn't work. The legend has it that when they were taking the mongoose to Kaua'i, one of them bit the captain of the ship and he threw them overboard. So chickens flourish on Kaua'i, and run wild everywhere on the island (but especially in places that have tourists with Cheerios).
More coming soon, however, at the moment I have been awake and on airplanes for far too long.