Nothing But Words

Kai and I returned last night from a 3 day trip to Newport. With a family as big as mine, it was just enough time to have at least a short visit with everyone. Kai had the most fun yesterday, as he got to spend the day playing with his cousins, Robbie and Taylor (if you’re wondering why there’s no family resemblance whatsoever, it’s because they’re my step-sister’s kids).

Kai has discovered analogies, but so far he’s only used them to express love: “I love you as big as the sky.” “Mommy, I love you like I love missiles.” And my favorite, “Daddy, I love you like a Saturn 5 rocket.”

He’s turning into a real boy: play these days is mostly about jets, spaceships, rockets, and explosions, with the occasional swordfight thrown in. He used to be Mr. Caution – always very hesitant to put himself in a situation that had even the remotest chance of being dangerous (he used to not even like getting on a swing). But now he throws caution to the wind. Maria’s sister Yoko has a big bulldog, and Kai used to be afraid of him. Now when Kai visits Yoko, he’s the one chasing the dog. The scariest thing is watching him run and deliberately skid along the leftover patches of snow-melting sand he occasionally finds, exclaiming “I’m a superhero!”

I’ve previously commented to friends that being a toddler must be like being high all the time. I saw Tracy Ullman on the Daily Show a couple weeks ago, and she referred to toddlers as “drunk midgets.” They live in a world of imagination that usually intersects with reality in unexpected – and often very funny – ways, and they never run out of energy. A day at work can be mentally challening, but a day with Kai is physically challenging – at any given moment I’m probably carrying him, chasing him, having a pretend swordfight, or being jumped on. Life with two boys is going to be interesting.

Kai and I are leaving Friday afternoon for Newport to visit my family, and we’ll be back on Monday night. So I’ll return to the blog next week.

My “Solving the Unicode Puzzle” article was just published in the May 2005 issue of php|architect. Although the magazine is subscription only, they chose my article as this month’s free sample. Aside from introducing a few typos, it looks like they didn’t do any editing, so the published version is almost exactly the same as my original.

Last year most of my blogging was about politics. This year, I’ve only made a few posts about politics. One reason for the change is that my specialty in grad school was voting behavior, so if I have any unique insight on something, it’s probably going to be during election time. The other reason is that there are several other good political blogs out there, and quite often, when I think of something to write, I discover that someone else has already written it. Links to my favorite political blogs are in the column on your right.

So until next year’s election cycle, most of my blog’s political content probably will consist of links to articles I found particularly interesting, along with some additional commentary of my own. Here are a few to get things started:

• Ed Kilgore’s False Prophets post – if you only read one of these linked articles, read this one. Having read Kilgore’s posts for several months now, it’s become clear to me that he has a particularly deep understanding of religion and its interplay with politics. He’s at his best in this post.
• Greg Sargent’s Brand Hillary article in The Nation. This is the first article I’ve seen so far on Hillary Clinton’s possible 2008 Presidential bid that is actually written in a calm tone, and is insightful and informative. Other commentary I’ve seen so far has been completely irrational, consisting of either apoplectic disgust or hysterical support. And here’s my first prediction for the 2008 Presidential campaign: look for a Hillary Clinton – Wesley Clark ticket. She’s been burnishing her national security credentials as a Senator, and she can seal the deal on that front by putting Clark on the ticket. Clark was quietly backed by the Clinton’s in 2004, so we already know they get along. Clark was too green in 2004, and he had an awful speech writer. But he was always good in one-on-one interviews, so I think he can turn in a better performance in 2008 if he gets a better speech writer.
• The Christian Science Monitor’s Why has ‘Downing Street memo’ story been a ‘dud’ in US? – you may or may not have seen the very limited coverage that’s been given to the British “Downing Street memo” which states that in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, “…the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” This article explores why such a seemingly explosive revelation has gotten such little coverage in the US.
• Niall Ferguson’s Cowboys and Indians Op-Ed in the New York Times – this is a schizophrenic yet insightful piece on the situation in Iraq. Ferguson’s a conservative who’s not shy about taking potshots at liberals in this article, yet he paints a damning picture of US policy and the grim prospects for Iraq’s future (echoing points myself and others made a year ago). His clear-headed analysis of the situation is upended by his confounding belief that the US cause is just and that we shouldn’t leave. In an attempt to reconcile the two, he ends up offering bizarre and unworkable advice:

  “…it is time to acknowledge just how thinly stretched American forces in Iraq are and to address the problem: whether by finding new allies (send Condoleezza Rice to New Delhi?); radically expanding the accelerated citizenship program for immigrants who join the army; or lowering the (historically high) educational requirements demanded by military recruiters.”

  He’s crazy if he thinks we can persuade India (or any other country at this point) to send substantial numbers of troops to Iraq. He opens himself to accusations of the worst kind of racism if he seriously thinks we should accelerate our immigration programs to provide cannon fodder for the army. And when he suggests lowering the “historically high” education standards for joining the Army, I guess he thinks the current requirement of a GED is too onerous. It seems to me you wouldn’t want anything less when it comes to 21st century warfare. If the best a prominent conservative intellectual can come up with is that we should win the war by getting foreign troops to fight in our place, to start a massive recruitment campaign among new immigrants, and to seduce the under-educated into joining the army, then we really are in an awful predicament.

• Middle East expert Juan Cole’s Sometimes You are Just Screwed post explains just how untenable our position in Iraq now is. It’s a more comprehensive analysis than Ferguson’s.

Watching Revenge of the Sith was a frustrating way to spend two and half hours. Since the kitchen’s the only part of the house I could be in last night, it was a good opportunity to go out and catch a movie. I may give away a plot point or two, so you may not want to read this just yet if you haven’t seen the movie.

I should start by saying I like the original trilogy, and I was totally crazy about it when I was a kid (my mom brought me to Star Wars on its opening night in 1977). They’re hardly cinematic perfection, but they’re enjoyable films. Episodes I and II, however, were completely forgettable – my proof being that I completely forgot what they were about within a month after seeing them. But I saw all the very positive early reviews of Episode III, so I got my hopes up. With Revenge of the Sith, I think Lucas has benefited from the low expectations game, like George Bush did in 2000. Just as Bush “won” the 2000 Presidential debates simply by not making a fool of himself, Lucas is getting kudos simply for making a movie that’s not quite as awful as his last two.

The first act of the film is dreadful, but fortunately it gets better as it goes, achieving mediocrity by the end. The opening is a prolonged battle sequence. We’re thrown right into the action with Obi Wan and Anakin, which would be ok if Lucas had succeeded in giving us an emotional investment in these characters in the first two movies, but since he didn’t, I didn’t feel pulled into the action. The effects are top notch, but since there’s no way to tell the good guy ships from the bad guy ships, and the space battle consists of a series of seemingly random explosions, I was more confused and indifferent than engaged. Most of the light-saber sequences in this act are also tiresome, as we watch the Jedi duo slice up bad guy robots like so much firewood. Also, I’m generally not one to nitpick physical impossibilities in sci-fi films – I’m perfectly happy to hear explosions in space – but watching the long sequence of everyone falling sideways as the ship lists in space crossed the threshold into annoying-land: there is no “sideways” in space!

The second act mostly consists of a lot of exposition. This was more interesting to me, but I was continuously distracted by Lucas’ incredibly wooden and flat writing. I particularly felt sympathy for Samuel L. Jackson – here’s a really terrific actor, and you can see him straining to bring some kind of feeling to the completely antiseptic lines he must deliver. The one exception to all this is Palpatine – it really felt like his character was transplated from a different, better movie – his lines are good, and his presence is the one bright spot in movie. The biggest letdown in Episodes I-III is Anakin. Lucas had a fantastic opportunity to craft a complex and interesting anti-hero, but instead we’re presented with a spoiled, whiny kid whose descent into evil mostly consists of a series of petulant bad moods, interspersed with the occasional slaughter of innocents.

The third act is pretty much non-stop fighting. There’s Obi Wan battling the completely forgettable General Grievous. Sure, Grievous looked cool, but there was no character there at all – he’s no Jabba the Hut. There was the showdown between Palpatine and Yoda, which was my favorite part of the movie, because : 1. it was well done, and 2. I had some emotional investment in the characters (Yoda was well developed in the original trilogy, and Palpatine was the only interesting character in this film). The final battle between Obi Wan and Anakin was also well done, but its end was quite gruesome. I half-expected Anakin to threaten Obi Wan with a good nibbling, like the limbless black knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “The black knight always triumphs!”

By the end I had lost track of how many limbs and heads had been severed. That’s not a criticism in and of itself, but when they take place in a film with comic relief that’s geared towards 7 year olds, it leaves me baffled as to who the intended audience is. We let Kai watch the original trilogy, but there’s no way he’s watching this. I’m surprised I haven’t seen this point mentioned in any of the reviews I’ve read. Spielberg got a lot of criticism from parents who brought their kids to Temple of Doom, which wasn’t nearly as kid friendly as the first Indiana Jones movie. Seated next to me watching Revenge of the Sith was a mother and her 6 year old son. I bet this movie is going to give him nightmares for a month.

I left feeling like Lucas had wasted a monumental amount of time and money making three lousy films. It’s a real shame, as it’s rare to have Hollywood backing for a decidedly non-Hollywood storyline: the descent of a good person into evil. Even if Lucas had done a better job with the secondary characters, the central failure of this trilogy is Anakin. In the final act of Return of the Jedi, you can really feel for Luke as his intellect and his emotions struggle with each other as the Emporer slowly works at him, tempting him to the dark side. Luke’s final refusal represents the climax of the development of his character. In Revenge of the Sith, Anakin’s turn to the dark side should be the defining moment of the trilogy. Instead, it feels rushed and has no emotional impact. After unthinkingly killing Windu and exclaiming “What have I done!” in horrified shock at his own actions, his very next words to Palpatine are “I’ll do anything you ask.” It didn’t make much sense, and it was hardly a memorable moment in cinema.

Our house in unreasonably large, yet our kitchen is about the size of what you’d expect to see in a Manhattan apartment. Tonight, the kitchen is my home.

With the drywall work done, the next step was to get the floors fixed up. So today and yesterday “Vincent” and his boys worked on my floors. What a night-and-day difference compared to the drywall experience. Vincent showed up when he said he would, sealed off the work areas with plastic and tape, and after he left, there was no indication that he was ever there (except, of course, the floors looked better!).

In addition to working on various spots on the 2nd and 3rd floor, they put a new coat of varnish on the first floor this morning, so I can’t walk on the floors tonight. In anticipation of this, I put a mattress on the kitchen’s tile floor. I’m sitting on it right now, with my laptop (the kitchen was the first room we fixed up, and I put a cat5 network connection in it – this is the first time I’ve used it!). I also have the sink in the kitchen, and I can get to the toilet in the basement, so I’m living large. The only thing I didn’t plan for is the fumes from the varnish. So I’ve taped up some plastic between the kitchen and the dining room. So far it’s proving good enough to prevent a headache, but there’s still a strong odor, even with the windows open.

The floors will be ready for foot traffic just in time for Kai and Maria’s return tomorrow afternoon. With the floors and walls done (except for painting) we can finally go back to living normally in our house. Like the story It Could Always Be Worse (scroll to the bottom of the linked page for a synopsis), just getting things back to where they were 6 weeks ago – before the drywall rubble bomb went off – will seem like a huge improvement.

Last Saturday Kai and Maria left for Denver, and they’ll be back on Friday. While they’re away, I’m painting and cleaning up the monumental mess in our house. The drywall guys finished on Saturday…actually, I should say, “stopped working.” Here’s the whole story:

We were hoping to get the drywall guys started in the 3rd week of March. Greg, our general contractor, hired a crew headed by a fellow known as “Nacho” to do the drywall work. We kept hearing they would start “soon,” and as one day lead to another, “soon” eventually revealed itself to be April 19. The plan was to deliver the drywall through a 2nd floor window, to save the effort of lugging it all up from the ground floor. But somehow the supplier’s driver didn’t get the message to have the equipment with him for a 2nd floor delivery, so he canceled for that day, and would come back “soon.”

“Soon” this time happened to be one week later, April 26. During the hour or so this huge truck with its small crane was in front of my house, the township inspector happens to drive down my street – what are the odds? I wasn’t there, but Greg told me that, oddly, he just drove right by. But Greg was worried, as he was fairly certain Nacho wasn’t licensed.

Nacho’s guys showed up the next day and put in a full day’s work, putting up about 80% of all the drywall. Greg warned us that the house would look like a bomb went off in it, and in fact, that’s exactly what it looked like – an almost unbelievable mess. They were working in the bathroom, the 2nd floor hallway, the dining room, and all of the 3rd floor, so the mess was just about everywhere. But it was all supposed to be over in a few days, so we just had to bite the bullet and get through it.

I was worried about my floors, since we had them all refinished when we moved in. Before the work started, I was imagining these guys dropping nails and grinding them into the floor with their boots, dropping hammers, etc. So I had Greg buy some drywall boards, not for the walls, but to lay down on the floors to protect them. It turns out that the delivery from the truck didn’t have enough boards, so without asking anyone, the guys just used the boards that were on the floor. I still had a layer of plastic and tarps that I had put down under the boards, so hopefully they would be sufficient to protect the floors (with all the mess, it wasn’t possible to put down something new).

The next day the guys showed up, and the inspector was waiting for them. They weren’t able to show him a license, so he got Nacho’s number from them, and then ordered them off the premises. I learned from Greg that Nacho told the inspector he had insurance, so he just had to make a short trip to the township building to do the paperwork for a license. Well, a week and half went by…Nacho was having trouble with a fax, then he was waiting for a document to show up in the mail, etc. In the meantime, our house was still a huge mess. Maria and I spent many hours cleaning just to get the place at least to a “barely livable” state. One evening during that time, Nacho’s guys showed up at 5 to finish putting up the boards. I guess they figured they wouldn’t get caught by the inspector if they showed up after hours. I don’t know if it was the right decision, but I let them in. A few days later, they showed up during the day, and Greg sent them home, since Nacho still didn’t have his license. We were ready to write him off, when on Friday, May 6, he called and said he finally has his license. He said his guys would be there that weekend to finish. So we made plans to be out of the house so they could work.

All weekend, nobody showed up. They finally appeared on Monday and put on the 1st and 2nd coats of joint compound. All that remained after that was to put on a 3rd coat, and then sanding, so we’re hoping this finally will be over by Wednesday. I called Greg and told him he needed to make it crystal clear to Nacho that the job has to be completely done ASAP if he wanted to get paid.

Nobody showed up until Friday, when they put on the 3rd coat. Friday night I had the privilege of speaking with this mysterious Nacho character myself. He managed to mumble some sort of apology. I did my best to balance my rage against my interest in just getting this done, since we were finally so close to the end. A while back I just wanted to drop him, but Greg said it would take a while to get someone new on the job. If we had any idea it would take this long to get to the end, we would have gotten rid of him. Nacho promised his guys would be there first thing on Saturday morning.

So two guys show up at 2 in the afternoon. They sanded for about 30 minutes and then took off before I realized what was happening. They did maybe half the sanding, and left all their broken drywall, empty soda cans, etc. all over the place. I called Greg and told him that I didn’t want them to come back, and that I’d finish it myself. Greg sent one of his own guys to help clean up.

I spent the rest of the weekend sanding, and for the rest of the week I’m painting and cleaning. My first priority is the bathroom, since we’ve had no shower curtain rod (and hence no shower curtain) all this time. One lucky thing in all of this is that my floors survived unscathed- I guess the plastic sheeting and the tarps were enough to protect them.

To top it all off, Greg checked with the township and it turns out Nacho never got his license. Which means he almost certainly lied about having insurance too. I’ll let you know what happens if and when Nacho sends a bill. It’ll be interesting to see if he has the nerve to ask for anything more than payment for materials.

Yesterday morning I started the day by waking up from a dream. In the dream, I was late for my GRE test – the test I was going to take after I got up. I’ve been out of school for about 9 years, and it was only two years ago I finally stopped having test anxiety dreams. Having them again makes me wonder if I really want to go back to school.

I was taking the test in downtown Philly so I took the train, and then after the test I was going to work (giving up half a day’s vacation time for this test was bad enough, so I wasn’t about to give up a whole day). I had promised to bring my nail gun to work so one of my co-worker’s could borrow it, so I put it in its case and lugged it down to the test center. I was the first person there, and the woman who opened the door for me asked if I was there to fix something. Doesn’t everyone bring a nail gun to the GRE?

The GRE is computer based now, and after being instructed to empty my pockets, I was ushered into a room of little cubicles. Each one of them had the monitor, keyboard, and mouse on the left side of the desk, and scratch paper and writing space on the right. Exactly the opposite of what a left-hander like me needs. I was stuck with the right-handed mouse, but I did what I could to re-arrange the desk. I should start a movement complaining that ETS discriminates against lefties .

The test started with the essay questions. How sick is it that I actually enjoyed this part of the test? I’ve always been good at writing, but it always used to be work – writing papers for school or technical documents for a job. But since I started blogging, I’ve found that writing can be fun. Blogging is actually great practice for this part of the GRE. You have 45 minutes for the first essay, and 30 minutes for the second one, and that’s about the same amount of time that goes into writing a typical blog entry.

Then came the part I was dreading – the quantitative section. Since walking out of my previous GRE attempt a month ago, I’ve been studying math every day. The Barron’s GRE Prep book is excellent – I highly recommend it if you plan to take the GRE and you’ve been out of school long enough that you need a thorough math refresher. In my studying I learned that my one major weakness was exponents – there are a lot of subtle rules about how to manipulate them. While I mastered the basics, I would usually mess up the finer points. But each of the practice tests I did only ever had a few exponent questions, so I didn’t worry about it too much. So of course the test starts with an exponent question. And the next question is an exponent question, and the next one, and the next one. The first eight questions all had something to do with exponents. Can’t you please ask me something about a triangle inscribed in a circle? Or something about those patriotic jars full of red, white, and blue marbles? Or something about how fast Mary is driving? Please? After all those exponent questions, things got back to normal. I didn’t feel bad enough about the situation to cancel out of the test again, but I didn’t feel great about it either.

The test finished with the verbal section. In my practice tests I never scored below 700 on the verbal, so I didn’t spend much time studying for this part of the test. After finishing it, I really felt like I aced it.

When it was all over, the computer asked me if I wanted to cancel. No. Are you really, really sure you don’t want to cancel? No, wait, I mean, yes – is that a double negative? Who writes this stuff? Since it’s computer-based, you get your math and verbal scores right away (they still use humans to read the essays, so you have to wait for that score). 660 on both. That’s the best score I’ve ever gotten on the quantitative section of a standardized test (including the SAT) and the worst verbal. I was pleasantly surprised at the math score, given the shake-up I had with all those exponent questions, and puzzled by the verbal. But both scores are good enough. Between the time I spent preparing for this test and for my attempt last month, my life has been hostage to this thing for over two months. So what really matters is that it’s over.

So much for not posting much before I take the GRE next week.

Not long after our trip to Japan last year, I learned about the Sakuragicho graffiti wall. It turns out that I was probably just a few hundred yards from it when we were in Yokohama, but I didn’t know it was there. I was hoping to see it on our next trip, but I just learned that it was painted over last Fall. Here’s a cool collection of pictures someone put together before it was wiped out.

While Googling for the Sakuragicho pictures, I came across the Frangipani gallery – a collection of beautiful pictures taken by an Australian currently living in Tokyo. It’s worth a look.

I mentioned our next trip – we’re going to Japan again next summer. This time to Fukuoka – a city located on Japan’s southern island Kyushu. Maria will be attending a conference there. My mother has kindly volunteered to take care of Baby X while we’re gone (we still haven’t decided on his name). I’m already looking forward to the trip!

Maria and I are trying to come up with a scheme where we could live in Japan for between 3 and 6 months at some point down the road. She could justify it for her work – the hard part would be my job. But I could conceivably work remotely…anyway, we’ll see what we can put together once a specific opportunity comes up.

For a while now I’ve been meaning to post a rant about Creationism (now masquerading under the 21st century marketing term “Intelligent Design”). But it turns out someone else just wrote a good one: The Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design. It stands apart from other commentaries I’ve seen in that it’s both comprehensive and concise, covering both the scientific and political sides of the issue in a relatively small number of words.

But I’m sure you’re not surprised that I have a few things to add:

• The article’s rebuttal of the “Fine-Tuned Universe” argument, while I agree with it, is presented in a mathematical form that I found more distracting than compelling. I would state more simply that the Fine-Tuned Universe argument is the result of a narrow vision: to say that the universe is fine-tuned for supporting life assumes that life can only happen in the way that we know it. Were the rules of the universe fine-tuned just for us, or did we evolve to suit the physical laws of this universe? Arguing the former is to continue in the long tradition of hubris brought on by “we were created in God’s image” thinking. That is, the kind of thinking that placed the Sun in orbit around the Earth, and the Earth at the center of the universe. The kind of thinking that assumes all of this is just for us. To even begin to persuade me to this way of thinking, you’d have to run hundreds of thousands of simulations, showing what the universe would be like under a variety of combinations of different physical laws, and demonstrate that none of them would be able to support any life of any kind. But even if you were to try this, the attempt would be confounded by the fact that our understanding of life is limited to one set of physical laws, operating on one planet, in one tiny little corner of the universe.
• To see a real, substantial debate on the merits of Intelligent Design, read Intelligent Design? A special report from Natural History magazine. The magazine invited three of the top proponents of ID to take their best shots, followed by three rebuttals. The end result is a huge embarrassment for the ID folks.
• The power of the ID movement is greater than you probably think. Its impact goes beyond just a couple school boards in Kansas and Pennsylvania. It’s created a chilling effect on the teaching of evolution in schools across the country. “Teaching guides and textbooks may meet the approval of biologists, but superintendents or principals discourage teachers from discussing it. Or teachers themselves avoid the topic, fearing protests from fundamentalists in their communities” (Evolution Takes a Back Seat in U.S. Classes). And in today’s Christian Science Monitor is a report of a survey indicating 31% of science teachers feel pressure to include “creationism, intelligent design, or other nonscientific alternatives to evolution in their science classroom.” Interestingly, they report this pressure comes from students as much as parents: “critics of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection are equipping families with books, DVDs…The Seattle-based Discovery Institute distributes a DVD, ‘Icons of Evolution,’ that encourages viewers to doubt Darwinian theory.” Teachers in the article describe being challenged at every turn by students who’ve watched the DVD at home. In and of itself, it’s a good thing to debate the merits of a scientific theory. But it’s not a good thing when the debate is simply the leading edge of a movement to replace a scientific theory with non-scientific beliefs. That is, the vast majority of ID arguments are about debunking evolution – in terms of scientific theory, ID offers little to take the place of evolution. The goal of ID is to create a vacuum into which Creationism can step as the only acceptable explanation for the existence of man. As the article concludes: “‘In some ways I think civilization is at stake because it’s about how we view our world,’ Nimz [a teacher] says. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, for example, were possible, she says, because evidence wasn’t necessary to guide a course of action. ‘When there’s no empirical evidence, some very serious things can happen,’ she says. ‘If we can’t look around at what is really there and try to put something logical and intelligent together from that without our fears getting in the way, then I think that we’re doomed’” (Now evolving in biology classes: a testier climate).
• On a personal note, what got me thinking about all this recently has been watching Maria suffer through her pregnancy. If the design is intelligent, why do so many women suffer so needlessly? Evolution provides a better explanation. A phrase commonly misapplied to evolution is “survival of the fittest.” But the phrase “survival of the fit” is more accurate – biological competition isn’t about being the best, all the time – it’s about being just good enough, most of the time. It’s the result of trial and error design – I’ll coin the term “dumb design” for it, although that’s not exactly a winning label. Human reproduction, with all its imperfections and pitfalls, fits that model a lot more closely than the notion of some perfect, elegant, intentional design.
• I’ll close with some humor: the very funny Scientific American April Fools’ Day editorial: Okay, We Give Up and the spoof Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair 2001. My favorite entry is “Women Were Designed For Homemaking.”

Update: The Washington Post just published a good overview of the hearings currently being held by the Kansas State Board of Education, on whether to introduce Intelligent Design into the state-approved science curriculum: Teachers, Scientists Vow to Fight Challenge to Evolution.