Bounded in a Nutshell

So a disclaimer: I have not seen The Passion of the Christ. I have no intention of seeing The Passion of the Christ. I seem to have enough trouble actually going out and seeing the movies that I do want to see, so it's very very likely that I will never see The Passion of the Christ. And it's paragraphs like this one that make me wish that there was some sort of easy Lemper-Zivity built in to HTML.

Anyhow. From what I've read, this is a movie about suffering. It's a basic tenet of Christian doctrine that Christ suffered and died for sinners (i.e. everyone else) so that they wouldn't have to. Well, sort of; it's a little more complicated than that, but that's the essence. So Gibson's movie is constructed, as I understand it, to drive home the point that Jesus suffered. A lot. More, perhaps, than anyone else in history. That last bit is probably not stated directly, but it's clearly the implication.

It's an interesting charge. I think probably the best argument against it is the short story / essay Three versions of Judas by Jorge Luis Borges, which can be found in the collection Labyrinths. It's about a theologian who has come to the realisation that , in terms of making an Ultimate Sacrifice, Jesus is outshone by Judas. Jesus gave up his life, and returned; Judas gave up his soul, and shall suffer for all eternity. It's a nice little story in that half-infuriating Borgesian way: you're convinced that there's a problem with the reasoning somewhere, but it's just elusive enough to convince.

This quiz is sort of interesting; it purports to measure how southern one's speech patterns are. Of course there's a great many faults that one can find with it -- the basic assumption that measuring and index of dixie-ness is inherently meaningful, for example, or the fact that it's assuming that one speaks American English at all. I like how it gives a comment after each of your answers, though; I think that taking the comments together is actually a more interesting measure of regional speech than the invisibly-computed southern-ness score.

In case you're curious, I scored 74% Dixie. Some of that is probably attributable to the years I spent at a Certain SEC School, and some of it's probably because I think some of the questions are meant to catch extreme examples of "Yankee" speech, as one might find in New York or New England, and my basic urban Ontario accent is neutral enough that it measures as southern by comparison.

Temperatures have actually be above freezing during the daytime for the past couple here in my little corner of the Upper Midwest. I'm a fan, personally; winter was great, I loved all the snowstorms that I didn't have to drive through, but it's about time for it to be over IMO. On the other hand, I was chatting with some folks the other night who were hoping that spring would hold off for another n weeks so that they could get their skiing / skating / gloating about going somewhere warm in. So by that token, I should probably be hoping for at least a mild case of winter to continue until mid-March.

Still excited about planning my Mathematics of Electoral Politics course for the summer. I'm still trying to narrow down the discussion topics to a manageable list. Here's what I'm considering so far:

• Descriptive statistics (this includes some basic probability)
• Voting systems (types, properties, a discussion of Arrow and maybe Gibbard-Satterthwaite)
• Power indices in weighted voting systems
• Fair division methods (where "fair" can mean "equal" -- cake-cutting problems and such -- or "proportional" -- like the apportionment of representatives in a congress)
• Maybe some basic game theory?
• Critical thinking, logical fallacies
• The principles of cryptography, with application to electronic voting

It's the last three topics on that list that I'm a bit dubious about. Game theory's interesting, but I'm not entirely sure how to tie it into the main theme of the course. Critical thinking would be damned useful, and mesh well with the statistics and the crypto, but I'd probably need to find another textbook for it. And I'm afraid that the crypto might just be a little too esoteric for a non-technical audience.

The other thing is that I've got twenty-four two-hour session to work with here, which probably includes the final exam. Ambition is well and good, but there's a finite amount of material that I'll be capable of cramming in to such a timeframe.

I'm reading the transcript from some CNN show last night, where the host (Dobbs) had a spirited debate with one of his guests (Glassman) about the offshoring of jobs by big American companies. Glassman, who sees this as a good sign, capitalism in action, frequently repeats that "trade benefits both sides". Therefore, America must (axiomatically!) be benefitting from the outsourcing.

My economics background isn't great, so I can't argue with his axiom; nor, really do I want to. I agree. Trade does benefit both sides. What I have a problem with here is how he defines the sides. According to him, big American companies profitting is good for America. The sides in this particular trade are American firms on one side, and foreign labour on the other. Explain to me how this benefits the American workers who get laid off?

"The economy" is an abstraction. It's a collection of statistics concerning the flow of wealth, productivity, and such things. Saying that "the economy is healthy" says something about statistics; it doesn't necessarily say anything about people.

Thematically related to last night's long 'un: The Poor Man has a brief essay on the standard model of political reporting.

If you weren't snickering by halfway through, then all I can say is that you haven't read enough physics.

One of the few things that I'm really excited about in my life right now is a course I'm going to be teaching this summer (May-June). I know, you're probably saying that if I have to look ahead to May for things that I'm excited about then my life is really sad. And maybe it is. So shut up.

Anyhow.

Officially, the course is in "finite mathematics"; it's purpose is to fulfill the requirement that all students must take a math course, while recognising that for some students algebra, calculus and all of those good things are unwelcome, impractical, and sometimes inimical. A consequence of this is that it's generally the only math course these students will take at my Urban Commuter Campus, and so there's no strict list of things that must be taught. There's a standard textbook, but the book in question sort of wanders all over the map and so doesn't really restrict the instructor's freedom -- my freedom -- in selecting topics.

So I'm turning it into a course about mathematics and politics. The timing's perfect, it being an election year and all. I can talk about statistics and how to read them; I can talk about voting systems, their various strengths and drawbacks; I can talk about fair division and apportionment and measures of political power. And all of it's accessible with only a small amount of mathematics background.

One topic I'm debating introducing is the debate surrounding electronic voting machines. I'm a bit leery not because it's a controversial area; from the technical standpoint, there's nothing controversial about it at all, and that's where I'd be coming from. It's more a case of not being sure that explaining the basics of cryptography and computer security to the class is a wise idea. But even if the mathematics is somewhat trickier, there's enough conceptual material there that I think it would make a good topic for a couple of days of lectures/discussions.

Which brings me to what I thought was going to be the point of this entry. NPR had some people on the other day talking about voting mechanisms... the usual sorts of things, really. Different voting machines, whether there should be a paper audit trail, voting on the internet, things like this. And one of the guests made some comment to the effect of, the only real alternatives to paper printouts of votes would require some heavy mathematics, and we don't want to put into place a system that you have to be a Ph.D to understand.

I have a couple of problems with this statement.

First of all, no, you don't need to be a Ph.D to understand how cryptography works. I learned about RSA in my first-term algebra course as an undergraduate. Thousands and thousands of working programmers understand the requirements of computer security and at least somewhat how the standard algorithms work to satisfy them. Math isn't impenetrable, folks; it takes thought and work, sure, but so do most things.

And secondly, why the hell should "not everyone can understand it" be a criterion for rejecting a perfectly valid proposal? The tax code in this country is sufficiently Byzantine that legions of professionals make their living interpreting it for everyday folks. I'm sure most people driving their cars don't really know how the internal combustion engine really works, or for that matter how the Reed-Solomon codes that render a CD playable even with minor damage to the surface work. People deal with technologies and systems that they don't really understand every day.

That being said, I think that if there is going to be a good solution for electronic voting then it's going to have to be open-source. The flip-side to the last paragraph is that, if you want to know how it works, then you should be able to find out. Security through obscurity isn't security at all, merely the appearance of security.

Specificity in search terms is always good.

For instance, if one was looking for an enlarger for a darkroom, you might think that just going to eBay and typing "enlarger" into the search box would be sufficient. After all, what other kinds of enlargers are there?

I'll give you a moment to think about that question. If you, like me, couldn't come up with anything then I invite you to try the search yourself.

If I ever manage to Break the Chains for good, I think Freecell is one of the only Windows programs that I would really miss. Of course, even if I went Windows-free, I'd still own a deck of cards, so I suppose it's not much of a barrier.

When playing Freecell, there are often situations where no obvious tactic will be immediately helpful. In such circumstances, Dr. Matt's Prescription (*) is, simply, to increase the amount of order in the Freecell universe. I don't know if it really helps things -- it seems to, sometimes, but that might just be the confirmation bias talking -- but it at least makes one feel useful.

I think it's possible that the lesson can be applied to real life as well: when there's nothing to do that will obviously advance your goals, then act in a way that furthers the general good. It might not actually mean much, but at least you're contributing.

(*): I know, I'm not really that kind of doctor. Your point?

Well, it's been over a month since I made the leap from OS X 10.2 to 10.3, and I finally decided to get rid of the "Previous System 1" folder.

I don't really need the diskspace, since my drive is still more than half-empty. I just noticed that when I was trying to open TextEdit, it gave me a choice which one I wanted to use. TextEdit is pretty innocuous, but it's not a mistake I'd want made with any of the other applications. And so.

Upon emptying the trash, I've discovered that there were over a hundred thousand files in that folder. Impressive.