Mithras The Prophet

Don Quixote of Paris, or Inverted Adaptations

2005-05-24T18:04:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to think of adaptations (page to screen, page to stage, or any other) in which the adaptations does not merely alter some fundamental aspect of the original story, but indeed entirely inverts it.

Where this started: So Sunday Mrs. Prophet and I went to see the opera Don Quixote down here in Buenos Aires. We had a wonderful time marveling at the opera house and those within it, and by the fourth act really enjoyed the production as well.

But for the first twenty minutes, we both were simply shocked and dismayed. Because, as you probably remember, much of the action and humor of the book revolves around the fact that Quixote proclaims as his `beautiful beloved' a plain, coarse, peasant girl. Everyone else knows perfectly well that this woman is ugly, loose, ill-mannered and entirely undeserving of his title Dulcinea of Toboso. Yet Quixote composes endless love poems exalting her beauty, her refinement, and chasteness, while promising Sancho that he will share some part in her vast riches when Quixote has won her heart.

So we both a little, uh, surprised when the opera begins with Dulcinea, who is, in fact: rich, beautiful, chaste, and refined (though a bit mischievous). Apparently Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet, the silly Frenchmen who wrote the opera, had a favorite mezzo-soprano in mind for the part of Dulcinea, and it wouldn't do well to launch her career playing an ugly wench, would it? So he tidied up the part by inverting it.

Now there are plenty of lousy adaptations out there. But what others can you think of pull this kind of inversion?

A Widget-Toot

2005-05-24T17:12:00.000-04:00

So thanks to that widget-post below (or actually the alternate here), yours truly found himself mentioned at length in this Boston Globe article condemning Apple for its security slipup. Both the true discoverer of the flaw, Stephan.com, and this elaborator upon its implications are quoted, though despite my protestations, my nom de birth rather than this nom de guerre is used.

Because the universe is propelled by an elaborate irony-generating engine, Apple released a 10.4.1 update addressing the flaw within hours of the publication of the article. (Hmmm, is that really ironic? Perhaps the engine also produces)

It is still my aim to see Mithras himself appear in a major publication, i.e. one that has actual deadlines. I shall not resort to acts of violence or property destruction, fear not.

In Which Mithras Does a Poor Imitation of Far Outliers

2005-05-24T17:11:00.000-04:00

Greetings to all from the Southern of our hemispheres!

Today we have a pair of readings, illustrating the alternately generous and brutal, ultimately xenocidic mindset of 16th century Argentina.

This first excerpt is from the account Voyage to Río de Plata and Paraguay by Ulderico Schmidt, a German soldier and adventurer, published in 1554. Do be patient and read all the way to the end, as it gets rather interesting.

There we built a new town and called it Bonas Aeieres, that is, in German, Guter Wind.

We also brought from Hispania on board the fourteen ships seventy-two horses and mares.

Here, also, we found a place inhabited by Indian folk, named Querandíes, numbering about three thousand people, including wives and children, and they were clothed in the same way as the Charrúas, from the navel to the knees. They brought us fish and meat to eat. Those Querandíes have no houses, but wander about, as do the Gipsies with us at home, and in summer they oftentimes travel upwards of thirty miles on dry land without finding a single drop of water to drink.

And when they meet with deer and other wild beasts, when they have killed them they drink their blood. Also if they find a root, called Cardos, they eat it to slack their thirst. This — namely, that they drink blood — only happens because they cannot have any water, and that they might peradventure die of thirst.

These Querandíes brought us daily their provisions of fish and meat to our camp, and did so for a fortnight, and they did only fail once to come to us. So our captain, Pedro de Mendoza, sent to them, the Querandíes, a judge, named Johan Pabon, with two foot-soldiers, for they were at a distance of four miles from our camp. When our emissaries came near to the Indians, they were all three beaten black and blue, and were then sent back again to our camp. Pedro de Mendoza, hearing of this from the judge's report (who for this cause raised a tumult about it in our camp), sent Diego Mendoza, his own brother, against them with three hundred foot-soldiers and thirty well-armed mounted men, of whom I also was one, straightaway charging us to kill or take prisoners all these Indian Querandíes and to take possession of their settlement. But when we came near them there were now some four thousand men,for they had assembled all their friends. And when we were about to attack them, they defended themselves in such a way that we had that very day our hands full. They also killed our commander, Diego Mendoza, and six noblemen. Of our foot-soldiers and mounted men over twenty were slain, and on their side about one thousand. Thus did they defend themselves valiantly against us, so that indeed we felt it...

In due course God Almighty graciously gave us the victory, and allowed us to take possession of their place; but we did not take prisoner any of the Indians, and their wives and children also fled away from the place before we could seize them.

...

And when we returned again to our camp, our folk were divided into those who were to be soldiers, and the others workers, so as to have all of them employed. And a town was built there... The town wall was three foot broad, but that which was built today fell to pieces the day after, so that they suffered great poverty, and it became so bad that the horses could not go. Yea, finally, there was such want and misery for hunger's sake, that there were neither rats, nor mice, nor snakes to still the great dreadful hunger, and unspeakable poverty, and shoes and leather were resorted to for eating and everything else.

It happened that three Spaniards stole a horse, and ate it secretly, but when it was known, they were imprisoned and interrogated under the torture. Whereupon, as soon as they admitted their guilt, they were sentenced to death by the gallows, and all three were hanged.

Immediately afterwards, at night, three other Spaniards came to the gallows to the three hanging men, and hacked off their thighs and pieces of their flesh, and took them home to still their hunger.

...

After all this we remained still another month together in great poverty in the town of Bonas Aeieres, until ships could be prepared.

At this time the Indians came in great power and force, as many as twenty-three thousand men, against us and our town of Bonas Aeieres. There were four nations of them, namely, Querandíes, Charrúas, and Timbúes. They all meant to go about to destroy us all. But God Almighty preserved the greater part of us, therefore praise and thanks be to Him always and everlasting, for on our side not more than about thirty men, including commanders and ensign were slain.

— from The Argentina Reader, pp 22-25.

machine_info.pl: Get your bearings in a new machine

2005-05-10T11:24:00.000-04:00

Continuing the spate of brain-dumps of scripts I use often, this is a favorite: machine_info.pl

I'm often hunting around for machines to run jobs on, and so log into a bunch of different machines to find one well-suited to my task. So when I log into a machine, I often want to get a quick sense of its capabilities. I got tired of trying to remember that Solaris uses /usr/sbin/psrinfo, while Linux uses /proc/cpuinfo, and which lines to grep for in each. So I wrote this script.

I also find this script handy for my duties as part-time administrator; it helps me keep tabs on which machines we've upgraded to how much RAM, etc.

Example output — at home:

[11:14 AM mithras@powerbook: ~] machine_info.pl cpu_count=1 cpu_speed_mhz=667 cpu_type=Power_Macintosh host_ip=xxx.xx.245.99 host_mac=00:03:93:a3:95:c2 host_name=powerbook.school.edu os=Darwin os_notes=Mac OS X 10.4 (build 8A428) os_version=8.0.0 ram_mbytes=768

And on a work server:

08:17 PM mithras@server6: src] machine_info.pl cpu_count=4 cpu_speed_mhz=3056 cpu_type=i686 host_ip=xxx.xx.22.98 host_mac=00:0E:0C:31:59:CF host_name=server6.school.edu os=Linux os_notes=Red Hat Linux release 9 (Shrike) os_version=2.4.20-31.9.progeny.6smp ram_mbytes=2016

[ Click to show the entire script ]

#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; # # FILE: machine_info.pl # AUTHOR: Mithras THe Prophet (mithras.the.prophet, which is a gmail account) # DATE: June 2004 # # This script runs on Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X machines # to give you a quick rundown of the setup of the machine: # The processor type and speed, memory, disks, etc. # # I find this useful when I've just logged into an unfamiliar machine # and want to get my bearings. # # # #---- settings #----- # # # #----- globals my %info; #-- # # # Step 0: Determine platform # my $PLATFORM; { my $uname_s = `uname -s`; chomp $uname_s; my $uname_m = `uname -m`; chomp $uname_m; $uname_m =~ s/ /_/g; $PLATFORM=$uname_s . "-" . $uname_m; # print STDERR "## machineinfo\n"; # print STDERR "##\n"; # print STDERR "## running on $PLATFORM\n"; # print STDERR "##\n"; } # # os # { my $uname_s = `uname -s`; chomp $uname_s; $info{'os'} = $uname_s; } # # cpu_count # { my $cpu_num="1"; if ( $info{'os'} eq "Darwin" ) { my $command = '/usr/sbin/sysctl hw.ncpu | awk \'{print $2}\' '; $cpu_num = `$command`; chomp $cpu_num; } elsif ( $info{'os'} eq "Linux" ) { my $command = 'awk \'/processor/ { max_num=$3 } END { print max_num " +1"} \' /proc/cpuinfo | bc '; $cpu_num = `$command`; chomp $cpu_num; } elsif ( $info{'os'} eq "SunOS" ) { my $command = '/usr/sbin/psrinfo -v | perl -ne \' BEGIN { $count = 0 } if (/processor (\d+)/) { $count++ } END { print ($count) }\' '; $cpu_num = `$command`; chomp $cpu_num; } $info{'cpu_count'} = $cpu_num; } # # cpu_speed_mhz # { my $cpu_speed="unknown"; if ( $info{'os'} eq "Darwin" ) { my $command = '/usr/sbin/sysctl hw.cpufrequency | awk \'{print $2 "/ 1000000"}\' | bc'; $cpu_speed=`$command`; chomp $cpu_speed; # $cpu_speed .= " MHz"; } elsif ( $info{'os'} eq "Linux" ) { my $command = 'cat /proc/cpuinfo | perl -ne \'if (/cpu MHz\s+: (\d+)/) { print "$1\n" unless ($done); $done=1 } \' '; $cpu_speed=`$command`; chomp $cpu_speed; # $cpu_speed .= " MHz"; } elsif ( $info{'os'} eq "SunOS" ) { my $command = '/usr/sbin/psrinfo -v | perl -ne \'if (/(\d+) MHz/) { print "$1\n" unless ($done); $done=1 }\' '; $cpu_speed=`$command`; chomp $cpu_speed; # $cpu_speed .= " MHz"; } $info{'cpu_speed_mhz'} = $cpu_speed; } # # config_cpu_type # { my $uname_m = `uname -m`; chomp $uname_m; $uname_m =~ s/ /_/g; $info{'cpu_type'} = $uname_m; } # # hostname # { my $hostname=`hostname`; chomp $hostname; $info{'host_name'} = $hostname; } # # host_ip # { my $dig_command="dig " . $info{'host_name'} . " | awk 'BEGIN { ans=0 } /;;/ { if (ans==1) { ans=0 } } /ANSWER SECTION/ { ans=1 } /" . $info{'host_name'} . "/ { if (ans==1) { print \$5 } } '"; my $ip = `$dig_command`; chomp $ip; $info{'host_ip'} = $ip; } # # host_mac # { my $mac = "unknown"; if ( $info{'os'} eq "Darwin" ) { my $command = '/sbin/ifconfig | perl -ne ' . "'" . 'if (/en0/) { $next = 1; } ; if (/ether\s+(.*)/) { if ($next==1) { print $1; $next=0; } }' . "'"; $mac=`$command` } elsif ( $info{'os'} eq "Linux" ) { my $command = '/sbin/ifconfig | awk ' . "'" . '/eth0/ {print $5}' . "'"; $mac=`$command`; } elsif ( $info{'os'} eq "SunOS" ) { my $command = 'arp `hostname` | awk ' . "'" . '{print $4}' . "'"; $mac=`$command`; } chomp $mac; $info{'host_mac'} = $mac; } # # OS-version # { my $uname_r = `uname -r`; chomp $uname_r; $info{'os_version'} = $uname_r; } # # OS-notes # { my $os_flavor=""; if ($info{'os'} eq "Darwin") { if (-e '/usr/bin/sw_vers') { my $productName = `/usr/bin/sw_vers -productName`; chomp $productName; my $productVersion = `/usr/bin/sw_vers -productVersion`; chomp $productVersion; my $buildVersion = `/usr/bin/sw_vers -buildVersion`; chomp $buildVersion; $os_flavor = "$productName $productVersion (build $buildVersion)"; } } elsif ($info{'os'} eq "Linux") { if (-f '/etc/redhat-release') { $os_flavor=`cat '/etc/redhat-release'`; chomp $os_flavor; } else { $os_flavor="unknown Linux distro"; } } elsif ($info{'os'} eq "SunOS") { if (-f '/etc/release') { $os_flavor=`head -n 1 '/etc/release'`; chomp $os_flavor; $os_flavor =~ s/^\s+//; } } $info{'os_notes'} = $os_flavor; } # # ram # { my $mem="unknown"; if ($info{'os'} eq "Darwin") { my $command = 'sysctl hw.memsize | awk \'{print $2 " / (1024*1024)"}\' | bc'; $mem = `$command`; chomp $mem; # $mem .= " MB"; } elsif ( $info{'os'} eq "Linux" ) { my $command = 'cat /proc/meminfo | perl -ne \'if (/Mem:\s+(\d+)/) { print int( $1 / (1024 * 1024) ) }\' '; $mem = `$command`; chomp $mem; # $mem .= " MB"; } elsif ( $info{'os'} eq "SunOS" ) { my $command = '/usr/local/bin/sysinfo -msglevel terse -show "memory"'; $mem = `$command`; chomp $mem; if ($mem =~ m/(\d+) MB/) # chop out the ' MB' part { $mem = $1; } } $info{'ram_mbytes'} = $mem; } ######### # print out info foreach my $key (sort keys %info) { if ($key ne "") { my $value = $info{$key}; print "$key=$value\n"; } }

GNU screen hack-fu: running one command in multiple windows

2005-05-09T15:30:00.000-04:00

I've long used the wonderful GNU screen text-windowing system, which allows you to do lots of neat things like detach a terminal session and reattach later, and switch between multiple terminal `windows' within a single session.

When you have lots of gnu screen windows open, sometimes it'd be nice to run the same command on several of them -- for example, cd several windows to the same directory, or ssh to the same server. I've always done this by copy-and-pasting, though there are some funky commands in screen for copying and pasting text between windows.

Now, thanks to the screen -X command and a short shell script, I can do this very easily.

I name the script screenex, and use it as follows:

[03:36 PM mithras@powerbook: ~] screenex 1 6 ls In windows 1 - 6, doing: ls

I simply pass the range of window numbers to run the command in, followed by the command itself. I can also omit the second number, to execute the command on just one other window:

[03:39 PM mithras@powerbook: ~] screenex 2 pine In windows 2 - 2, doing: pine

Neat! This becomes much more powerful, though, when you add substitution of the window number. When you include the token --INDEX-- in the command, the window number is substituted for --INDEX--. I use this to launch ssh connections to six machines at once, which is handy when I'm running a bunch of jobs in parallel. At work we have a bunch of servers, named server1.school.edu, server2.school.edu, etc. So to connect to a different machine in each window, I just run

[03:41 PM mithras@powerbook: ~] screenex 1 6 ssh server--INDEX--.school.edu In windows 1 - 6, doing: ssh server--INDEX--.school.edu

And I'm connected, ready to run my parallel jobs! You can also do cool stuff if you have environment variables that are indexed by number, for example WORKING_DIR_1, WORKING_DIR_2, etc. Anyway, I'll save more for later.

The script:

(Note that the ^M character is a literal newline character, which you can enter in vi by typing ctrl-V, then enter.)

[ Click to show the entire script ]

#!/bin/sh # # command to run the given command on multiple `GNU screen' windows # usage: screenex [begin-window] [end-window] command # # by Mithras The Prophet (mithras.the.prophet, which is a gmail account.) # # # returns 1 if arg is numeric, 0 otherwise # is_numeric() { var="$1" if [ -z "$var" ]; then echo "0" else [ "$var" -eq 0 ] 2> /dev/null if [ $? -eq 0 -o $? -eq 1 ]; then echo "1" else echo "0" fi fi } # # if argument 1, or arguments 1 and 2 are numeric, then # we apply the command to just that range of windows; # otherwise, to all windows # mycommand="" window_begin="1" # beginning of range of windows to send command to window_end="6" # and end arg1="$1" shift; if [ -z "$arg1" ]; then exit; fi if [ $(is_numeric "$arg1") -eq 1 ]; then # this is beginning of range window_begin="$arg1" # try to grab a second numeric arg? arg2="$1" shift; if [ $(is_numeric "$arg2") -eq 1 ]; then # we have a second number! window_end="$arg2" else # ahve second arg, but not a number # so it must be start of command window_end="$window_begin" # just do the one window mycommand="\"$arg2\"" fi else # arg1 -not- numeric, # so it must be start of command mycommand="$arg1" fi while [ ! -z "$1" ] do mycommand="$mycommand \"$1\"" # rest of line shift done echo "In windows $window_begin - $window_end, doing: $mycommand" # # now execute! # let "window_end = $window_end + 1" # so we can do strict -lt test index="$window_begin" while [ $index -lt $window_end ] do thiscommand=${mycommand/--INDEX--/$index} screen -X at ${index}# stuff "${thiscommand}^M" let "index = $index + 1" done

Safari / Dashboard vulnerability in OS X 10.4

2005-05-09T15:23:00.000-04:00

This and the next few posts are full `geek_mode=on' posts. Sorry.

Safari / Dashboard vulnerability in OS X 10.4

This page discusses a security flaw resulting from a series of bad design choices in Safari and Dashboard in OS X 10.4, and links to a demonstration exploit.

You can make your machine safe by unchecking the ``automatically open `safe' files" option in Safari:

Update: Mac OS X 10.4.1 fixes this vulnerability, by changing Safari to present a dialog when downloading all widgets. Kudos to Apple for their speedy response to the issue.
Updated May 10 with a new, simpler, more deadly exploit.

1. Widget Auto-Install

Safari 2.0 in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger has a dangerous new ``feature". By default, when asked to download a .zipped Dashboard widget, Safari not only unzips the widget, but also copies the widget into ~/Library/Widgets, and adds it to your Dashboard Bar. As first pointed out by Stephan.com, Safari does this not only for widgets you explicitly click on, but also for widgets that are silently, automatically downloaded by a web page's META refresh tag. So a malicious website can auto-install potentially malicious widgets without you even realizing the installation happened.

This is the rough equivalent of automatically installing auto-downloaded applications into the /Applications/ folder, and putting them on the Dock.

2. The Evil Twin

Apple's second major mistake in Dashboard is in how widgets are loaded.

First, it is important to emphasize that the auto-installed widgets do not execute automatically. It remains a `social engineering' task for a malicious attacker to get you to launch with widget by dragging it from your Dashboard Bar.

However, this is aided by Apple's second incredibly bad design decision. Widgets are identified by a `bundle identifier', such as com.apple.widget.stickies. When Dashboard encounters two or more widgets with the same bundle identifier, it only displays the last one loaded. And -- you guessed it -- widgets in ~/Library/Widgets are loaded after the system-supplied widgets in /Library/Widgets.

This means that our malicious widget can completely replace an Apple-supplied widget. Your ordinary Stickies widget simply will not appear in the Dashboard Bar -- but in its place, silently installed by Safari, is a malicious widget.

For example, here is the Dashboard Bar before visiting a malicious web page:

And here it is afterwards:

Can you tell the difference? If you can't, and try to create a new Sticky note...

...you have just launched a malicious program.

Note: It appears that an additional, unrelated bug in Dashboard may actually be a saving grace here. After ~/Library/Widgets has been updated, Dashboard sometimes garbles the contents of the Dashboard Bar, so when you try to drag a widget from the Bar, you get no widget, or an entirely different widget. Scrolling between pages of the bar resolves the issue. Nonetheless, your original safe Stickies is now gone, with a malicious one in its place.

3. The Sandbox That Isn't

And now we come to Apple's third major mistake. Apple went to great lengths to develop a security model for Dashboard widgets. By default, Widgets do not have access to local files, your network connection, or the ability to run native code, other than opening applicications and web pages.

Widgets can request additional privileges, including the ability to run arbitrary shell commands with the widget.system() call. The first time you double-click to run a widget that requests extra privileges, in most cases Dashboard presents an `are you sure?' prompt before allowing it to run.

Ought to appear, but does not.

However -- incredibly, amazingly, stupidly -- Dashboard does not present a prompt before running a privileged widget that is one of the Library/Widgets folders, including our auto-installed widgets. So now your auto-installed replacement look-alike widget has complete access to your system, and could do nasty things like delete your home folder.

If a widget contains a native Mach-O executable, Safari will present a warning before downloading the widget. However, because widgets in ~/Library/Widgets can run shell commands with the widget.system() call, this protection is easily defeated. The demonstration exploit below includes a native Mach-O application with its bits reversed, so Safari does not realize it's an application. A call to a Perl script unreverses the bits and makes the file executable, allowing full native code to be run.

Or, in a self-propagating attack, the widget could start a user-level Apache (on a user-accessible port like 8080), and email everyone in your addressbook with the URL to visit. They need only click on the URL to install the widget on their own Macs running Tiger, etc. etc.

4. Privilege Escalation

Our malicious widget has all of the capabilities of an ordinary application launched by your user. This is bad enough, but it could also take advantage of privilege escalation vulnerabilities to run as root, where the damage could be more widespread. If the widget acquired root it could, for example, start Apache for you and proceed as described above in the self-propagation.

One such privilege escalation that is known to work on Tiger is this sudo-piggyback method, in which the widget waits silently in the background for an admin user to run sudo, then piggy-backs onto the sudo grace period and acquires root. I'm sure there are a few other buffer-overflow vulnerabilities lying around.

Demonstration Exploit

WARNING! This example exploit page will:
1. download a single .zip file
2. In Safari on OS X 10.4, auto-install a Stickies widget to your Dashboard Bar that replaces the Apple-supplied widget.
3. Upon dragging the `Evil Stickies' widget out of the Dashboard Bar, request (and receive) full system access, unpacks a binary executable, and runs a Perl script to speak some greetings.

I have received feedback that due to an unrelated Dashboard bug, you might have to scroll the Dashboard Bar once or twice before you can drag new widgets from it.

None of these widgets does anything actually malicious. (My school would kill me if I were distributing malware from their servers :-)

To get rid of the evil `Stickies' widget, simply go to ~/Library/Widgets, and delete the widget named `Stickies.wdgt'. It will be gone -- and the normal Apple widget back again -- the next time you invoke the Dashboard.

If and only if you understand those removal instructions, you may now try the example exploit:

exploit.html

I'd appreciate feedback on how these widgets behaved on your system. Did the Stickies widget require confirmation to run? Did the widget displace the Apple one from your Dashboard Bar?

Please write with comments to mithras.the.prophet@gmail.com. Thanks.

Brother Spikey Mace of Mild Reason

2005-04-14T12:36:00.000-04:00

A new religious terror group has emerged. In a field crowded by Islamic radicals, Christian Identity bombers, and of course the various cultists, who else must we fear? This the Unitarian Jihad. Their manifesto was recently published by Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary... We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with... We are Unitarian Jihad. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again!

It think the world needs more martyrs for moderation. I might even be willing to commit an act of reasonableness for this outfit; recruiters, feel free to contact me. Also, thanks to a loose coalition of affiliated cells, you can get your own Unitarian Jihad name. -Mithras, aka "Brother Spikey Mace of Mild Reason"

Church and State and all that

2005-04-06T08:07:00.000-04:00

Everyone is talking about Church and State these days. Is America a secular nation, imperiled by a new breed of religious radical? Or is our proud religious and Christian tradition under assault from an unprecedented liberal, anti-religious agenda? As the above straw men make clear, neither is true. This is a nation founded by and composed of mostly religious Christians, yet with a deeply secular governing tradition. Forces promoting and opposed to religion, and promoting and opposed to the mingling of church and state, have been battling for the past two centuries. These latest kerfuffles are pretty mild in the context of the controversies that have riven the nation before. An early debate in the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 was whether and how a religious oath should be required of national leaders. The Massachusetts Constitution extended the equal protection of the law, and right to hold office, to any Christian (though Catholics had to swear to renounce papal authority "in any matter, civil, ecclesiastical or spiritual.") The 1777 New York Constitution implicitly permitted Judaism, but required immigrating Catholics to renounce papal authority, and prohibited Catholics from holding office. The 1776 Maryland Constitution extended "protection in their religious liberty" to "all persons professing the Christian religion" but not Jews or deists. Only Virginia's constitution established complete freedom of religious opinions and belief, and explicitly separated civil duties from religion. So it was a matter of some controversy that the Constitutional Congress modeled the federal constitution after Virginia's, explicitly stating in Article VI that federal officials "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." In 1794, Thomas Paine, popularizer of the American Revolution, wrote The Age of Reason, a treatise on religion. While he disavowed atheism, he embraced a deist worldview and viciously attacked Christianity and clericalism of all stripes. This did not make him a popular man in America. The book was written in a French jail (where Paine sat because he rejected the overzealous heights of the French Revolution), and Paine stayed in France until 1802. He returned at the personal invitation of Thomas Jefferson, who had been elected president in 1800. Jefferson himself was not a Christian — he wrote, but declined to publish, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, a version of the New Testament with all miracles and theology removed. Paine's reputation as a radical and anti-Christian preceded him; Jefferson came under furious attack from Federalists for his invitation:

If, during the present season of national abasement, infatuation, folly, and vice, any portent could surprise, sober men would be utterly confounded by an article current in all our newspapers, that the loathesome Thomas Paine, a drunken atheist and the scavenger of faction, is invited to return in a national ship to America by the first magistrate of a free people. A measure so enormously preposterous we cannot yet believe has been adopted, and it would demand firmer nerves than those possessed by Mr. Jefferson to hazard such an insult to the moral sense of the nation. If that rebel rascal should come to preach from his Bible to our populace, it would be time for every honest and insulted man of dignity to flee to some Zoar as from another Sodom, to shake off the very dust of his feet and to abandon America.

Makes Tom Delay look positively civil. (source: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby)

head-decoration

2005-04-03T20:44:00.000-04:00

Since I'm not-so-slowly losing my hair, it's about time I came up with a different way of ornamenting my head. Yes, there's the baseball cap, but this strikes me as shrinking away from the condition, rather than embracing life as it is. While I'm not quite sure that I'm personally ready for such a step, I do find the work of Steve Haworth, body modification artist, quite inspiring:

A Better September 11

2005-03-28T18:15:00.000-05:00

September 11. For most of us, the phrase can only evoke September 11, 2001, and its attendant horrors. Perhaps for Chileans it still means September 11, 1973, and the violent end of Chilean democracy. There is another September 11, however, and I hope to plant its seed within you, lest we think the day was always and only a sad one. On that day in 1956, the field of cognitive science was born. The Institute of Radio Engineers, a gaggle of nerds of the finest caliber, held a "Symposium on Information Theory" at MIT. On our fateful day, the second day of the conference, three seminal papers were presented: First thing in the morning, Alan Newell and Herbert Simon (later a Nobel Laureate in Economics) presented "The Logic Theory Machine", an automated theory-proving computer program. A little later, Noam Chomsky, age 29, presented "Three Models for the Description of Language", which wrenched the study of language from mere sociology to a formal mathematical endeavor. And shortly after that, Princeton psychologist George Miller presented the instant classic, "The Magical Number Seven plus or minus Two", demonstrating from multiple lines of evidence that our working memory can only handle that many items (a measly 3 bits) at a time. These disparate papers had a common thread. As Miller wrote in a 2003 reminiscence:

I left the symposium with a conviction, more intuitive than rational, that experimental psychology, theoretical linguistics, and the computer simulation of cognitive processes were all pieces from a larger whole and that the future would see a progressive elaboration and coordination of their shared concerns.

In this new synthesis, psychology, linguistics, mathematics, and the still-infant computer science could be seen not simply as distinct fields sharing a few common elements, but rather as different approaches to a common goal: understanding the information processing in the human brain. Today cognitive science is recognized as an endeavor unto itself. For some wandering souls like mine, it is the ultimate goal of life, heeding Socrates' injunction that the unexamined life is not worth living; for what could be more worth examining than precisely this core of our humanity?

symbolic incoherence

2005-03-25T07:56:00.000-05:00

So by now we've probably all seen the photos of the Terri Schiavo protesters with tape over their mouths: I'm not going to get into the utter tragedy that is this case. I just want to register my confusion and disappointment at this protest imagery. What is this image supposed to mean?

I am censored by LIFE?
LIFE is the duct-tape of oppression?
Free Terri from LIFE?

Now, if these protesters wore a T-shirt that said LIFE, and then covered their mouths with duct tape on which was scrawled, JUDICIAL TYRANNY, or CULTURE OF DEATH, well, I might disagree but at least it would make sense. See, this peace protester is using the image correctly: I thought these pro-life types were pretty experienced and savvy protesters, but apparently they need an aesthetic advisor. Okay, enough snark for the day.

Network Motifs

2005-03-24T23:39:00.000-05:00

After a month-long hiatus, thought I'd return with an exposition of a very, very neat paper I read recently. This takes us into the still-inchoate world of computational biology, at the intersection of the platonic mathemtics of computer algorithms and the messy junkyard of cell biology. If you're not versed in the language, try to hang in there, because it's all rather interesting. The paper is Network motifs in the transcriptional regulation network of E. coli, by Shai Shen-Orr, Ron Milo, Shmoolik Mangan, and Uri Alon at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. It was published less than three years ago in Nature, and has already been cited by more than 150 other papers; clearly, the ideas it introduced have caught the imaginations of other researchers. Before jumping into the paper though, let's begin by framing what a network is. Networks A network (also called a graph) is a collection of two things:
1. nodes, which are some entity that you care about, like people, places, times, or genes.
2. edges, which express some relationship between nodes. Edges can express a symmetric relation such as "are friends" or "are neighbors", or a one-directional relationship such as "loves", "hates", or "is built from." We call a network with symmetric relations "undirected networks", and the other a "directed network" (or graph).
For example, using characters as our nodes, and love-relationships as our edges, we can draw a small directed network representing the love triangle in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night:
Or, more prosaically, researchers have built a network representing the core connectivity of the Internet: Random Networks When scientists wanted to study the behavior of networks, they traditionally assumed that a typical "random graph" had characteristics like a Erdös-Rényi graph, a theoretical construct invented by a pair of fine Hungarian mathematicians; essentially, you start with a bunch of nodes, then flip a (weighted) coin to decide whether to draw an edge connecting each pair of nodes. This process produces a network that looks something like this (figures from Barabási & Oltvai 2004): If you make a plot of the degree distribution, i.e. how many nodes have 1 edge connected, how many have 2 edges, etc., you get a histogram that looks like this for an Erdös-Rényi random graph: So the principle characteristic of these Erdös-Rényi random graphs is that most nodes have roughly the same number of edges, equal to the average number of edges per node. These networks are fairly uniform-looking; most nodes are about the same as most other nodes. As a real-life example of such a network, you might imagine people sending a chain letter in a small town; most people with send it to five others, but some might send it to more or fewer. Scale-free networks Now this is all very well, but when people looked more closely, they began to realize that many real-life networks do not have the characteristics of these Erdös-Rényi random graphs. Rather than having a whole bunch of nodes that are roughly equally likely to have connecting edges, many of these networks are highly non-uniform: they have a small number of highly connected nodes, and a very large number of nodes that just have one or two edges. A typical scale-free network might look like this: Can you see the "important nodes" in blue? Sometimes those are called "hubs", just like with "hub cities" for the networks of airlines. And this is the corresponding degree distribution: This peculiar degree distribution gives these networks the name scale-free, for there is no "typical" node, and the degree distributions follow a power law; there are exponentially more nodes with a small number of edges than those with a great many edges. The Web has been found to be a scale-free network; there are a few pages that have a great many links, and a vast number of pages with very few links. (The connectivity of Internet routers shares this property as well.) And perhaps thanks to the Hollywood star system, the network of actors co-starring in movies in the IMDB is also scale-free. It turns out that many biological networks are also scale-free; the neurons of C. elegans, the gene regulatory network of E. coli, protein-protein interaction networks in yeast, among many others, are all scale-free. Scale-free networks can be modeled, or randomly generated by several methods, all different than the procedure described above for producing an Erdös-Rényi random graph. One simple method is to add a new node, and preferentially connect that new node to the more highly connected nodes that already exist. For example, when you create a new web page, you might tend to create links to sites that already have many links to them, because you will have heard about these sites. Motifs So terrific: Scientists now have a better model for real-life networks. But is it sufficient to know that these real-life networks are scale-free? Can we do mathematical exploration of the characteristics of random scale-free graphs, and apply the lessons learned to the real-life networks? Or do the real-life networks have further unique characteristics that a simple model doesn't capture? This is the question that Shen-Orr et al. set out to ask in this interesting paper; the answer, as we shall see, is yes, real-life networks are not just random scale-free networks. Shen-Orr chose as their first example the gene regulation network of E. coli; it's a fairly small and well-understood network, so it was a good first target. In this network, each node represents a gene; an arrow is drawn from gene A to gene B if the protein that A encodes acts to alter the rate of expression of gene B (regardless of whether A upregulates or downregulates B).To answer the question of whether random scale-free networks are a good model of this network, they generated thousands of random networks, each of which had the same degree distribution as the original, real network. That is, each of these networks had 178 nodes with one edge, 54 nodes with two edges, etc., just as the original did, but which actual nodes were connected to which was randomized. Shen-Orr et al. then searched each of these networks for subgraphs, which are just networks within the network, of a certain size. For example, in a directed graph (in which the edges are arrows), there are thirteen possible subgraphs of size three: They then compared the frequency of occurrence of each of these types in the real network and in the many random networks. This is the fascinating result: Of all those 13 subgraphs of size three, one occurred much more frequently in the real network -- number 5 in the diagram. They dubbed this subgraph a "feed-forward loop", because if you arrange its nodes like this: you can imagine gene X exerting influence on gene Z by two pathways: one direct, and one indirect, by regulating gene Y which in turn regulates gene Z. This result means that there is probably some biologically useful property of this type of subgraph. It has been speculated by others that this type of subgraph is a more stable transmitter of information from gene X to gene Z than other possible arrangements, but the role of the feed-forward loop is not yet clear. Looking at four-node subgraphs, of which there are 199 possible, it was found that the real network had a much higher-than-random frequency of this subgraph, dubbed the "bi-fan": Again, work is just beginning on understanding the function of this subgraph, and why the cell apparently considers it so useful. These unusually common subgraphs are called "motifs", by analogy to the repeated patterns in art, architecture, or gene sequences. Once Shen-Orr et al. prompted people to look for them, people have discovered motifs in all kinds of networks, from a wide spectrum of biological networks, to human-made ones like electrical circuits. Why do biological networks have these motifs? Work is just barely beginning to work out plausible explanations. One interesting result has to do with a closer look at the "feed-forward loop" motif we saw above. In the context of gene regulation, each edge can either represent a positive or negative effect on the expression of the downstream gene. That means that a feed-forward loop can be one of two types: coherent, or incoherent. A coherent feed-forward loop is one in which the direct path from X to Z has the same net effect as the indirect path; i.e. either both have a positive effect, or both have a negative effect: In an incoherent feed-forward loop, the effect from one direction is contradicted by the effect from the other direction: Shen-Orr et al. found that 85% of the feed-forward loops in the E. coli regulatory network are coherent. Why should this be? It makes a certain amount of "sense" that you'd want to have the overall regulatory effect of turning on gene X be coherent, but there's still lots to learn. One recent paper out of India has found that theoretically, one particular type of coherent feed-forward loop is a more stable transmitter of information from X to Z; and indeed, that particular type is the most common. So evolution appears to be selecting for good information flow in her networks, perhaps not surprising, but very interesting. Conclusions Overall, these results (which have been extended to many other biological and non-biological networks) mean that investigating the mathematical properties of random scale-free networks won't model the behavior of the E. coli gene regulatory network, or many other biological networks, very well, because they is significantly different than random networks. Of course, a "random" network is simply one generated by some stochastic process; different processes will produce different types of "random" networks. So far no one has found a simple generative process that produces networks that preferentially contain feedforward-loops and bi-fans, but if someone does, that might yield insights into the function and evolution of biological networks.

hateful fearmongers?

2005-02-09T20:27:00.000-05:00

It's silly but it's funny — So Google has this new Google Maps service, right? The idea is that you can look for things like "pizza in Atlanta" or "hotels near LAX". Someone came up with this search (a must click!): hateful fearmongers in washington dc

Theoretical Blogoscience

2005-02-08T06:28:00.000-05:00

Evidence that the word "blog" and all its variations has passed into my brain way too many times in recent days: last night I had a dream in which I made a blog post (of course) entitled "Theoretical Blogoscience." (Keep reading, you can gain some insight into the sad wish-fulfilment dreams of a would-be academic) In this post, I explored the possibility of a new field, by analogy to theoretical neuroscience, in which we would "exploit recent advances in the fields of computatational learning theory, information theory, and (something else?) to address fundamental questions in the information content and social networking of blogs." (it doesn't even make sense) The post gained some notoriety, and I was asked to give a talk on the topic at a major conference. At said conference, we determined that armed with this new tool, we could finally put the social sciences and historical inquiry on a solid scientific footing. Then I rose to Heaven in a blaze of glory, or something; anyway the dream ended. Pretty pathetic, huh? And in the meantime I can't keep track of my ID for two consecutive days.

Merry Candlemas!

2005-02-02T07:45:00.000-05:00

Merry Candlemas everybody. As apparently only devoted churchgoers, beekeepers, and aging revolutionaries and their game show hosts still remember, it has been 40 days since Christmas (if you're not a Julianist), and hence time to celebrate the fact that Mary completed her 7 days of uncleanliness, plus her 33 days of continuing in the blood of her purifying, and so brought Jesus into the temple for the first time. Catholic tradition, established in the 11th century, is to hold a procession of beeswax candles, representing the entry of Light of the World into the Temple. In England, begining in 1709, personal (private?) candlemaking was forbidden, licenses issued separately to tallow and beeswax chandlers, and a tax applied to the chandlers. In 1834, the candlemaking regulations were lifted, which kicked off an era of innovation, beginning with Joseph Morgan's 1834 invention of a continuous candlemaking machine, using a piston to eject candles as they solidified. His invention could produce 1500 candles per hour, no doubt causing the unemployment of many a member of the Chandlers Guild. Alternate history: if Jesus had been a woman, then following the edicts of Leviticus 12:5, Mary would have been unclean for 14 days, and have continued in the blood of her purifying for 66 days, putting Candlemas on March 15. That most famous March 15 preceded Mary's by 44 years, of course. But had everyone been observing Candlemas at this time, perhaps Czechoslovakia would have been a nation for one day longer in 1939, or — ironically — Germany forced to wait one more day before achieving formal independence from the Four Powers in 1991. Small changes, small ripples. best to all

Book Report: Legacy of Dissent

2005-01-27T08:46:00.000-05:00

Legacy of Dissent ed. by Nicolaus Mills Dissent Magazine is my favorite contemporary political journal (admittedly, of like three that I ever read). It's avowedly left-wing, so it doesn't try to be all things to all people (like some). Yet unlike many left-wing magazines, it doesn't waste your time with choir-preaching conservative-bashing that serves merely to make you feel righteous, rather than advance a discussion (like a few magazines I can think of). Rather, it devotes its energy to liberal self-critique, challenging of orthodoxies, and honest insight into what in the liberal agenda is both moral and practicable. I was vaguely aware of Dissent's history as a noteworthy anti-Communist (but pro-democratic-socialism) voice in the post-WWII landscape, so I was excited to stumble onto this collection of essays spanning the history of the magazine. Well, my overwhelming impression is: Socialist thinking was by and large a bunch of dreck, man. For an anti-Communist magazine, they spent a lot of time quoting Marx, debating what Marx really would have wanted, and cooking up their vision of what a just society would look like. Peering from the far side of the millenium, this stuff reads like so much hooey. The cultural writing, on the other hand, retains immense social and historical interest, and there are some real gems here. Paul Goodman's "Growing Up Absurd", from 1960, charts the emergence of the Beats and a whole generation of "Independents", who are not outside of the economic system, yet do not properly belong to it:

...This is the vast herd of the old-fashioned, the eccentric, and criminal, the gifted, and serious, the men and women, the rentiers, the free-lances, the infants, and so forth. This motley collection has, of course, no style or culture, unlike the organization that has our familiar "functional" style and popular culture. Its fragmented members hover about the organizations in multifarious ways — running specialty-shops, trying to teach or give other professional services, robbing banks, landscape gardening, and so forth — but they find it hard to get along, for they do not know the approved techniques of promoting, getting foundation grants, protecting themselves by official unions, lefally embezzling, and not blurting out the truth or weeping or laugh out of turn.

Cute! Another wonderful piece is Richard Wright's 1957 "White Man — Listen!", derived from his book of the same name. He wrestles with the twin facts of his existence: Black, and thus "never allowed to blend with the culture and civilization of the West"; and yet, irreconcilably, Western in his beliefs and outlook:

I have not consciously elected to be a Westerner; I have been made into a Westerner... The content of my Westernness resides fundamentally, I feel, in my secular outlook upon life. I believe in a separation of Church and State. I believe that the state possesses a value in and for itself. I feel that man - just sheer brute man just as he is - has a meaning and value over and above all sanctions or mandates from mysetical pwoers, either on high or from below... When I look out upon those vast stretches of this earth inhabited by brown, black, and yellow men — sections of the earth in which religion dominates, to the exclusion of almost everything else, the emotional and mental landscape — my reactions and attitudes are those of the West.

Though Western, Wright is not of the West:

Yet, when I turn to face the environment that cradled and nurtured me, I experience a sense of dismaying shock, for that Western environment is soaked in and stained with the most blatant racism that the contemporary world knows... Rooted in my own disinheritdness, I know instinctively that this clinging to, and defense of, racism by Western whites are born of their psychological nakedness, of their having, through historical accident, partially thrown off the mystic cauls of Asia and Africa that once too blinded and dazed them...

And I'll just end with a long excerpt from Erazim V. Kohák's "Requiem for Utopia", written after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Kohák went into exile from Czechoslovakia in 1948, and continues to write and teach at Boston University and Charles University in Prague.

[Dubcek and his colleagues] were determined to be humane authoritarians, respecting the rights of their subjects. In their seven months in power they discovered that the idea of a humane authoritarianism, the standard illusion of welll-intentioned rhetorical revolutionists, is an illusion, a contradictio in adiecto. A humane authoritarianism would respect the freedom of its subjects, and so inevitably create the possibility of dissent and opposition. Faced with opposition, the human authoritarian faces the choice of ceasing to be authoritarian — or ceasing to be humane. Repression, whatever its overt aim, can be humane only in rhetoric — in practice it necessarily means breaking men. Czechs and Slovaks, including Dubcek, were too familiar with the logic of terror to opt for the latter alternative. After seven months, the program which started out as a program of humane communism became a program of social democracy. ... The ideals of human freedom and social justice remain valid. Democracy — democracy for blacks as well as whites, in economics as well as politics, at home as well as in remote reaches of Latin America or Eastern Europe — remains valid. Socialism, the ideal of social justice and social responsibility in industrial society, remains valid. Human and vicil rights, the right of every man to personal identity and oscial participation, all remain valid. But the utopian myths of self-proclaimed rhetorical radicals do not advance these ideals. The detour on which too many socialists embarked in 1917 is over, finished, discredited, revealed as an exhiliarating, aristocratic, and ultimately reactionary social sport, not the radical social progress it claimed to be. The task that remains is the work of social progress — not the aristocratic sport of revolution, but the solid work of redical, deep-rooted transformation of society. Men may still demand their daily dose of illusion, the exhilaration of revolution or "confrontation" rather than the down-to-earth facts and figures of a Freedom Budget; but those who cater to this demand can no longer do so in the name of social progress — or in the name of socialism. Utopia is dead. Czechoslovakia has been a graveyard of illusions.

Evolution Songs

2005-01-26T17:45:00.000-05:00

Some theories of origins have inspired generations of musicians. Darwin's theory of evolution has not. This may be because humans have a hard time emoting about an impersonal process that unfolds over millions of years. Or it could be because there is no enormous institution extracting tithes from the entire population and commissioning artistic works that perpetuate its worldview. In any case, I do know of two pretty neat songs that are about evolution, and thought I'd share them with you. You can listen to lo-fi previews of the songs, which hopefully won't get me in trouble.

	Gentle Arms of Eden Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer Drum Hat Buddha	[ listen to preview ] [ Buy from iTunes ] [ read the lyrics ]
	I Come From Water The Toadies Rubberneck	[ listen to preview ] [ Buy from iTunes ] [ read the lyrics ]

Puppy Love

2005-01-25T08:38:00.000-05:00

They have such an understated, charming way of expressing their affection for one another. Click for a too-long movie I learned yesterday evening that they don't get bored after 90 minutes of this. I tried suggesting playing with Legos or something more constructive, but they went right back to tug. What would be a better use of the audio track — remixed into a techno song, or sold as a home security device?

Zombie Watch

2005-01-24T08:09:00.000-05:00

David Chalmers has started a blog (via Matthew Yglesias al Alina Stefanescu al Forking Paths). If you're unfamiliar with him, Chalmers is one of two or three people responsible for wresting control of the discussion about consciousness from the epiphenomenalists. I've seen him talk a few times and he's quite engaging, so the blog will be worth following. Apparently these days he's working on something called "two-dimensional modal logic", which according to this book description that Chalmers links to, is part of a movement that

[wishes to] revive descriptivism in the philosophy of language, internalism in the philosophy of mind, and conceptualism in the foundations of modality. ... In the last twenty-five years, this attack on the anti-descriptivist revolution has coalesced around a technical development called two-dimensional modal logic that seeks to reinterpret the Kripkean categories of the necessary aposteriori and the contingent apriori in ways that drain them of their far-reaching philosophical significance.

Well. Glad that's clear. Perhaps when chapter two is finished our philosopher friend can explain?

English Practice

2005-01-22T13:28:00.000-05:00

Okay, I probably should have known many of these words. But that's why it's practice... ordure: excrement; or, something morally offensive. [Latin horridus]

"That kind of rig, a man'd die settin' in his own, uh, ordure long before they got around to stretching his neck." - p13, The Confessions of Nat Turner

chattel: An article of moveable personal property (as distinguished from real estate). [Latin capitalis]

"The point is that you are animate chattel and animate chattel is capable of craft and connivery and wily stealth... Because that's how come the law provides that animate chattel like you can be tried for a felony, and that's how come you're goin' to be tried next Sattidy." - pp21-22, The Confessions of Nat Turner

sedulous: persevering, assiduous.

Right now I had this other bitterness to contend with, the knowledge of which for ten weeks I had so sedulously shunned... - p23, The Confessions of Nat Turner

fagot: A bundle of sticks tied together. [Greek phakelos, bundle]

They moved with quick and sprightly motions... piling twigs and sticks and fagots high in their arms against their bodies. - p40, The Confessions of Nat Turner

bruit: a rumor or report; in medicine, an abnormal sounds heard in auscultation [Old French bruir, roar]

"For several years now there has come to my attention wondrous bruit of a remarkable slave, ..., who had so surpassed the paltry condition into which he had been cast by destiny that — mirabile dictu — he could swiftly read from a difficult and abstract work in natural philosophy... - p66, The Confessions of Nat Turner

folderol: Foolishness, nonsense

"I do think Boysie's sermon was most inspiring, don't you, little Miss Peg?" "Oh Mother, it's the same old folderol, every year! Just folderol for the darkies! - p104, The Confessions of Nat Turner

gallus: suspenders.

He blinks steadily, and with his other hand he adjusts one gallus on his shoulder... - p149, The Confessions of Nat Turner

Have a merry snowstorm, everybody.

Transductive Inference

2005-01-21T19:27:00.000-05:00

The brilliant, if eccentric and self-congratulatory Vladimir Vapnik has been trumpeting a major shift in the scientific method, and perhaps our epistemological stance, over the past few years. Whether or not Vapnik gets his revolution, at the very I least I'll wager you will see "transductive inference" gain increasing attention as his ideas trickle out from statistical learning theory to other intellectual fields. So what's it all about? The goal of science (it can be argued) is the accurate prediction of future or novel events. Since the days of Aristotle, and especially since Bacon, the essential means of scientific inference is induction. Bearing Hume's warnings in mind, we generally follow this familiar process:

Make a number of observations
Induce a general law (or mathematical function) that we think is generating the phenomenon.
Use the law to make predictions about future phenomena.

To simplify the discussion, let's restrict ourselves to a problem of classification. You are encountering a steady stream of objects -- say, liver cells. First you get a batch (the "training set") which are labelled in two groups, say "normal" vs "cancerous". Your goal (especially in applied science) is simply to devise a rule by which you can accurately classify future cells (the "test set") as normal or cancerous. To make your classification, you measure various characteristics of the liver cells; for example, size, color, mitotic activity, expression level of various proteins, etc. For simplicity, let's suppose you measure just two characteristics, size and the level of "protein A". You could draw a graph plotting all of the cells on these two characteristics, coloring the normal cells blue, and the cancerous red: Now, if you're doing normal scientific induction, you'll look at this training data and try to posit a simple rule that will explain the data, and help you understand nature's "hidden rule" that makes some cells cancerous and others not. In classical statistics, this means you come up with a function that will "paint" part of the surface red, and part blue. This paint forms your prediction about any cell that lands in each region: Vapnik helped found the field of computational learning theory, in which one takes a slightly different approach. Rather than trying to guess nature's "hidden rule", you worry solely about minimizing the error your function will have when you test it against more liver cells. The surface-painting you come up with might not be parsimonious or a sensible guess about what nature is doing, but if it is a successful predictor, that's fine. Now comes the upheaval that is transductive reasoning. Vapnik has established mathematically that you pay a certain price in the accuracy of your predictions by generalizing to pain the entire surface either red or blue. So his idea is this: rather than first doing induction to posit a general rule, then making predictions about new liver cells as you see them, you simply transduce to make a prediction about each new cell as you see it, based on everything you've seen before. You don't get a simple rule that you can explain or write down -- all you get is a prediction each time. Vapnik has demonstrated that transduction will always perform better than induction on a given problem. So this leaves us with this abbreviated scientific method, in which we:

Make a number of observations
Use transduction to make predictions about new phenomena as we encounter them.

At least in particular problems in applied science, this really could be an upheaval. Who cares about having tidy theories and approximations of nature's mysterious inner ways if we can always have the better predictor? As a general approach to natural science, however, it's problematic. We induce models that measure the importance of Protein A not just so that we can make great predictions of whether a cell is cancerous. We also want to know whether we should investigate Protein A more deeply, learn about its structure and function, or invent drugs to mimic or inhibit it. Transduction doesn't help us make these decisions, and so we will always need some inductive reasoning along with our transductive predicting.

Thus far, the potential impact of transduction has only begun to make an impression on the philosophical community. I haven't found any discussion of it in the philosophy of science, but that could be because I don't understand the current problems and arguments in that field. Gilbert Harman, a former professor of mine, is making an intriguing application of transduction to moral reasoning in a paper to be published later in 2005 (RTF, HTML). Essentially, Harman asks whether, if transduction can offer superior classification, we shouldn't attempt to use transduction to "classify" moral actions into "should do" and "shouldn't do." We would sacrifice the formation of inducing general moral principles which we could elaborate and trasmit, but we would (presumably) gain "better" moral decisions. Is it worth giving up comprehensible theories for better predictions? Will we see transductive inference gain a foothold in economics, finance, the social sciences? It's one to watch.

Graph Theory Tidbits

2005-01-19T09:45:00.000-05:00

You are at a cocktail party. People are introducing themselves and shaking hands. Since parties make you uncomfortable, you lean against the wall. Rather than having meaningful human interaction, you can do a little graph theory instead, which is much more fun. With a little thinking, you can derive two interesting conclusions:

At least two people shook the same number of hands.
An even number of people shook an odd number of hands.

The first result rests on the wonderfully named "pigeonhole principle." Consider what it would take for no two people to shake the same number of hands: each person would have his or her own unique "shake-count". We consider each shake-count a "pigeonhole", because it's like a slot that we fill with a person. So Aziz shook zero hands, Bob shook one hand, Carmen two hands, etc. With n people, we could assign "shake-counts" from 0 all the way up to Zaphod who shook n-1 hands (assuming we don't permit someone to shake hands with himself). This is n different shake-counts, so it seems we could indeed have n people, each with their own shake-count. But consider what it implies for Aziz to have a shake-count of zero: outcast that he is, he didn't shake anyone's hand at all. Zaphod, with a shake-count of n-1, shook the hand of everyone at the party. But Aziz and Zaphod can't be at the same party: if Zaphod succeeds in shaking everyone's hand, then Aziz can't have shook no hands, and vice-versa. Hence any single party has only n-1 pigeonholes for shake-counts. When you try to stick n people in n-1 pigeonholes, you'll end up with at least two people in the same pigeonhole. So at least two people shook the same number of hands. Hoorah!

The second result is even more kooky sounding, but it also follows from very simple principles. Consider the total of each partygoer's personal "shake-count". Each handshake involves two people, so the sum of everyone's shake-counts must equal twice the total number of handshakes. (Think about that one for a sec to make sure you get it). This means that the sum of shake-counts is an even number. Now, consider the people who shook an even number of hands: the sum of their shake-counts must be an even number too, since when you add together even numbers you get even numbers. This means that the remaining sum of shake-counts, the sum of the shake-counts of people who shook an odd number of hands, must also be an even number. Now, to get an even number by adding up odd shake-counts, there must be an even number of such people. (Simple example: 3 + 3 = 6 (two people, even sum), but 3 + 3 + 3 = 9 (three people, odd sum). So, there is always an even number of people that have shaken an odd number of hands! Happy Graph Theory Awareness Week!

Maltheism

2005-01-08T18:49:00.000-05:00

Since the tsunami has everyone in a theodicic frame of mind, and perhaps because I'm reading this book, I have maltheism on the mind today. It's a possibility one oughtn't discount out of hand: God exists, and is evil. For a brief introduction to the idea, wander over to the Maltheism blog, which I stumbled onto today. Start at the bottom and scroll up. There's a sad sweet story embedded there, and I offer my condolences to Craig. To frame the issue from the top, we begin with whether there is a divine presence. Supposing one decides that there is (whether from miracle, first cause, design, etc.), one next faces the questions of whether God is one or many, and the ethical alignment of those god(s). In a class on the problem of evil that I took from Mark Larrimore, I remember we discussed dualist beliefs such as Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism, i.e. that there are opposed good and evil supernatural influences in the world. Polytheist religions often have gods of a mixed character; one need only inspire the wrath of Juno once to understand that the divinities are fickle. And of course, some versions of Christianity place more emphasis on the existence of Satan, a divine but not omnipotent figure who works for evil. All of these systems capture a feeling of dynamic struggle that resonates with me, and apparently with many others throughout history. Against the "struggle" view are the twin possibilities of a single beneficent God, and a single malevolent God. The former seems to me to compel a Panglossian hypothesis that we live in the best of all possible worlds. To maintain that this the best of all possible worlds, one must undertake a series of contortions to explain how just this much suffering is required, lest we live in a still worse world. Such lines of argument strain my imagination to its limit, and don't particularly resolve the emotional problem of evil. Instead, they feel like a theological neat trick that seems more designed to defend God than to help the human. Or, we consider the (historically rare) maltheist position: there is a malevolent God. An omnipotent, malevolent God immediately poses a complementary "problem of good": how does any good exist in the world? As we discussed in Larrimore's class, most definitions of evil take the form of evil as a privation of good, i.e. a deficit of a good. So the existence of at least some good seems to be required. Now, is this really the worst of all possible worlds? Do we have a malevolent, omnipotent God coaxing things along to be just good enough to keep the wheels of life turning around, so as to permit the next generation's catastrophe? I admit this strains credulity. Surely there could be worse possible worlds, ones of unmitigated suffering (perhaps punctuated by 30 minute stretch breaks to remind us how bad we have it). But framing this problem against its converse suggests the outline of an antinomy to weigh with the others. This leaves me with the possibility of a malevolent God that is not omnipotent. Rather, there simply exists some dark being out there, throwing us curveballs and tidal waves. What I like about this proposition is that it that restores the focus on human action. Rather than wondering whether we're pleasing God, and how best to avoid his wrath, we simply assume he's out to get us, and so must strive in every way possible to ward Him off. We may just be ant underfoot, but we've got a bit of maneuvering room, and so must get busy to keep our fragile way of life together.

English Practice

2005-01-05T16:44:00.000-05:00

You know a word is a tough one when the first Google result containing the word is the dictionary entry. I wonder if one could assemble a complete list of such words, used primarily in sentences defining or discussing the meaning of the word itself... Some English practice for us all: irenic: Promoting peace; conciliatory.

Among the more irenic critics [of Burnet's flood geology] was Robert Hooke... - The Biblical Flood p69

palistrophe: synonym for chiasmus; A rhetorical inversion of the second of two parallel structures.

British evangelical scholar Gordon Wenham has made a case for the coherence and unity of the flood narrative on the basis of a perceived extended palistrophic or chiastic structure in which the first item matches the final item, the second item corresponds to the penultimate item, and so on, so that the second half of the story is a mirror image of the first half. - The Biblical Flood p238

raiment: Clothing; garments.

The national raiment, in [Vladimir Jabotinsky]'s formulation, had to be unsullied by foreign admixtures and universalistic notions such as socialism. - The Legacy of Dissent p138

tribune: A protector or champion of the people (from Latin tribuna, raised speaking platform)

...since even [Tom Wolfe's character from Bonfire of the Vanities] Kramer's father "had no interest in left-wing politics," a reader might suppose that father's socialism, too, was merely half-remembered and that, in the Kramer family, grandfather, the oppressed immigrant garment worker, was socialism's truest tribune. - The Legacy of Dissent p212

Aesthetic != Fun

2005-01-05T15:15:00.000-05:00

Just a quick reminder that great literature often makes lousy life. But Leonardo was so enchanting! Of course, it's the third-leading cause of death for teenagers (and increases with age). Perhaps one day we'll really be up to talking about it.

Book Report Thursday: Dance, Dance, Dance

2004-12-30T14:57:00.000-05:00

Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami This is the first Murakami novel I've read, having stalled out on Norwegian Wood a few years ago. It's a sheer delight, a deeply weird story of an aimless 34-year old freelance writer, his aquaintance from middle school (now a movie star), three call girls, an intensely beautiful teenage psychic, a one-armed American poet who spends his days fixing sandwiches, a failed writer named Hakari Makimuri, and the Sheep Man who inhabits a separate reality. The novel is what I understand to be a Murakami trope: disaffected thirtysomething, unsure what he's accomplishing in his life, alienated by his meaningless job "shoveling cultural snow", and unable to forge true connections to the people around him. He trudges through, distracting himself as best as possible, while wondering if and when things will change. There are a few hopeful sparks amidst a fundamentally disheartening series of events, and in the end it's only vivid personalities that we have to hold onto. With such an oddball cast, there's much not to relate to, but I identify with this brief passage, with the protagonist on a quasi-date with the teenage psychic:

I bought Yuki a chocolate from the snack bar as we waited for the movie to start. She broke off a piece for me. When I told her it'd been a year since I'd last eaten chocolate, she couldn't believe it. "Don't you like chocolate?" "It's not a matter of like or dislike," I said. "I guess I'm just not interested in it." "Interested? You are weird. Whoever heard of not liking chocolate? That's abnormal." "No, it's not. Some things are like that. Do you like the Dalai Lama?" "What's that?" "It's not a 'what,' it's a 'who.' He's the top priest of Tibet." "How would I know?" "Well, then do you like the Panama Canal?" "Yes, no, I don't care." "Okay, how about the International Date Line? Or pi? Or the Anti-Trust Act? Or the Jurassic Period? Or the Senegalese national anthem? Do you like or dislike November 8, 1987?"

I love lists of marginally related entities.

Book Report Thursday: The Biblical Flood

2004-12-30T14:51:00.000-05:00

The Biblical Flood by Davis A. Young Davis Young is a geology professor at Wheaton College, a small Christian college in Michigan. He uses Noah's flood as a lens to examine how Christian thinkers have considered extrabiblical evidence in their understanding of both scripture and the natural world. The essential points of contention in regards to the flood are:

Whether the flood was geographically universal, covering the entire globe, or local, limited to Mesopotamia.
Whether the flood was anthropologically universal, destroying the entire human population other than the 8 ark-riders, or local, meaning that there are living humans not descended from Noah.
Whether the flood required extensive miracles, such as the wholesale creation and later destruction of the flood waters ex nihilo, or whether its proximate causes were mostly or entirely natural.

A brief synopsis:

Early Church fathers did not hesitate to cite extrabiblical knowledge in support of their interpretation of Scripture. For example, Augustine referred to the existence of marine fossils in the mountains, and the prevalence of flood traditions in many cultures as positive evidence for a universal deluge.
Young argues that an appeal to extrabiblical knowledge is absolutely appropriate, because God created both Scripture and the natural world, and hence prima facie there cannot be any contradiction between the two. Any apparent contradiction is due to either incorrect interpretation of Scripture, or erroneous science.
Many writers strove to explain how the flood and ark could work without resorting to miracles. Note that this is a rather different exercise than seeking evidence of the deluge itself; a miraculous deluge might still be expected to leave evidence that we could discover. For example, James Hutton explained the global deluge by positing an enormous subterranean abyss, which an earthquake unleashed. Edmund Halley (yes that one) suggested that a passing comet might have caused a great tidal wave to wash across first one side of the globe, then the other. An entire field of "arkeology" (my favorite word of the month!) grew around the calculation of the size of the ark, the arrangement of the animals within, and the logistics of transporting, feeding, and returning the animals. Johannes Buteo, a Catholic mathematician, calculated in 1554 that a year's supply of hay for the ruminants would occupy 146,000 cubic cubits, filling the second deck of the ark. The world's larger animals would occupy a space equivalent to 120 cows; the reptiles could wrap themselves around rafters and beams. In 1675, Athanasius Kircher estimated that 4,562.5 sheep would be required to feed the carnivores.
Over time, scientific evidence piled up that challenged the traditional interpretation of the flood. The discovery of the Americas & Australia, with animals unique to each, now required long and tortuous journeys for the critters to and from the ark. In the nineteenth century, the discovery of dinosaur fossils presented a challenge to the space requirements of the ark. And in the twentieth century, modern dating techniques establish a human presence in the Americas at least 15,000 years ago -- well before the posited historical flood -- calling into question the anthropological universality of the flood.
Young notes that many writers adjusted their interpretation of the scripture of the flood in response to this new evidence:
- The critical school of scriptural analysis accepts that there was a historical flood in Sumeria in around 2,500 B.C., an event incorporated into the epic of Gilgamesh, and later into the Hebrew Bible.
- Modern Evangelical commentators have for the most part pressed the case for a universal flood on both textual and scientific grounds. Scripturally, a geographically or anthropologically local flood poses problems for the promise of God to Noah never again to flood the Earth. A variety of Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist and other Christian scholars have appealed to scientific uncertainty about the distant past, or embraced fringe science (such as using frozen mammoths as evidence of a catastrophic deluge), to assert that extrabiblical evidence can support, or at least not contradict, the traditional interpretations.
- Young himself, with a vocal minority of Christian scientists, believes that the text describes a disrupting event in Mesopotamian civilization, in order to make vital theological points about human depravity, faith, and obedience.

I'm entirely wooed by Young's argument that if one believes God created both scripture and the natural world, there can be no threat in understanding both as thoroughly as possible. The appeal to fringe creation science by some evangelicals puts their faith on less firm ground, by making it seem that any alternate understanding of the worldly evidence would overthrow their religious understanding. As Augustine himself wrote:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars... about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics... Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.

I came away from the book intensely curious what Jewish scholars have written about the historical reality and nature of Noah's flood. In fact, I found it rather curious that Young didn't consider their writings at all, since they've presumably been pondering this for at least a thousand years longer than Christians. Will report back if I learn anything.

Book Report Sunday (Tuesday Edition): Cosmicomics

2004-12-29T02:27:00.000-05:00

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino Truly delightful. Fanciful, sparkling sketches inspired by the sublime and ridiculous stories that modern cosmology has to tell. Nothing more need be said, except that All At One Point (listen to it read!), a wistful reminiscence of Mrs. Mrs. Ph(i)Nk from back when everyone was in the same place before the Big Bang, sustained my longest smile in ages.

Book Report Sunday (Tuesday Edition): The Nazi Seizure of Power

2004-12-29T02:16:00.000-05:00

The Nazi Seizure of Power by William Sheridan Allen A very merry Christmastime to all. Nothing better than a cozy week of snowshoeing and fireplaces to get some reading done... In the small [Bavarian] town of Northeim, the National Socialist Party rose from winning 5% of the vote in 1930 to over 60% in 1933. Once they achieved democratic victory, the Nazis promptly dismantled the free press, absorbed civil societies, crushed opposition parties, and cancelled elections. Allen seeks to explain how and why the Nazis swept to power so suddenly and thoroughly. Northeim was a typical country town of about 10,000, with about one-third of the (male) population civil servants, one-third industrial workers or unskilled laborers, and the remainder a mixture of professionals, farmers, and merchants. Unemployment peaked at a moderate 10%, even at the height of the Depression. Around 130 residents (1%) were Jewish, mostly thoroughly assimilated shop owners. A relatively small number (~ 8%) were Catholic, with the rest Lutheran. The character of the place was solid "Red State", if you will -- industrious, tightly-knit, patriotic, militaristic. Prior to the Nazi rise, the electoral picture was roughly this: * a solid 25% of the electorate supported the Democratic Socialists, to whom [AUTH] is clearly sympathetic. They were the only party that was committed to democracy and the Weimar Republic to the bitter end, and their support scarcely wavered over the years. * A small but noisy fraction (~ 5%) supported the Communists, whose effects were primarily to frighten the middle class and prevent the Socialists from moving further to the center. A sizable chunk of the Communists would eventually support the Nazis, either out of spite of the Socialists, an attraction to radical revolution of any stripe, or the belief that it would hasten the true communist revolution. * The majority of the electorate was split between several conservative parties: the Nationalists, the Catholic Center, and the People's Party. It was from these rather staid parties that the Nazis would win the bulk of their support. Much of the middle of the book is simply a chronicle of rallies, speeches, and marches held by the various parties. This part is rather boring and seems to miss the point -- I rather doubt the Nazis won simply because they held four rallies with three brass bands each in April of 1932. Rather, the victory was primarily ideological and strategic: * First of all, the patriotic, militaristic character of the town was shrewdly exploited by the Nazis, who took every opportunity to wave the flag, point to the Imperial Army as the true soul of the nation, and identify the Nazi cause with a rejuvenated military. * Both from tradition and for fear of Communist encroachment, the Democratic Socialists espoused Marxist rhetoric (though they were centrist in practice). This alienated the sizable middle class of the town and made a centrist governing coalition impossible. The Nazis crafted their message to be primarily anti-Marxist, stirring up fears of violent revolution by anticlerical fanatics. * As unemployment rose, the right-wing parties stymied every effort of the Socialists to reduce unemployment with public works projects. Though unemployment was never very high, the unemployed were very visible, waiting for the dole and at the soup kitchen. Thus fear of a worsening economy tilted sentiment away from the ineffective Socialists and conservatives, toward the parties that were agitating for decisive action, i.e. the Nazis (and to a lesser extent Communists). * Violent clashes between militia groups on the left and right (the Socialist Reichsbanner and the SA Brownshirts) further polarized the situation. Once blood had been spilled, prospects for a centrist governing coalition evaporated, and conservative fears of Bolshevik violence escalated. Soon the thuggery of the Nazis seemed to be only "safe" course to prevent Communism. * Finally, the tradition and commitment to democratic principles was simply not well established. Hence neither the electorate nor the right-wing parties flinched when Nazi rhetoric made clear their desire to stamp out dissent and bring strong, "uniting" leadership to the country. It is at the end of the book that the simple failure of democratic society is made clear. As the Nazis consolidated power, they began shutting down both the left-wing and right-wing independent newspapers. One would like to think that in countries with well-rooted democratic traditions, this would bring such a hue and cry that the experiment would end there. Instead, the conservatives acquiesced utterly. Then the Socialist party was banned, and again the conservatives did not object; when the conservative parties themselves were banned, people were upset but the train was already off the tracks. Martin Niemoller indeed.

Book Report Sunday: Fighting Years

2004-12-19T23:26:00.000-05:00

The idea is that I record a few favorite passages and any take-home thoughts I have from books as I read them. These aren't summaries or book reviews, so their utility may be limited for the dear readers. This one is catch-up from a couple of weeks ago: Fighting Years: Black Resistance and the Struggle for a New South Africa by Steven Mufson Written in 1989, after the mid-80's revival of the liberation movement in South Africa, but before the freeing of Mandela and the end of apartheid. Two rather simple lessons stand out for me: 1. Counterinsurgencies actually can work, and liberations can fail. Watching The Battle of Algiers, it's easy to draw the conclusion that when you're fighting for liberation and self-determination, victory is a historical inevitability, and counterinsurgency only cuts heads from an indomitable hydra. In the modern context this may be true, viewed from a sufficient distance. But there were determined, popular, and well-organized black liberation movements that had the entire nation of South Africa ablaze in 1960, in 1979, and 1985. And each time, with ruthless persecution of the leaders, squelching of the free press, and concessions to the material and social well-being of the underclass, the government pretty well stamped each movement out. So damn, these things are hard, it turns out. I suppose a Palestinian or Tibetan could remind me of that. 2. The question of the use of violence in a liberation movement is not a simple one. I have always maintained, along with the rest of my 8th grade social studies class, that Gandhi and Martin Luther King were good men. No controversy there. The question is, is their path truly the only just one? There's a moment in the book in which a crowd seizes a suspected police informer. They begin to force a tire around his shoulders, in preparation for necklacing. Bishop Desmond Tutu jumped into the crowd, cradled the informer in his arms, and told the mob they would have to kill him first. A few days later, speaking to an extremely skeptical crowd, he tried to explain his actions. He raised his arms in a Christ-like pose, and said:

I understand when people are angry or hurt and want to take it out on those we think are collaborators. But I abhor all forms of violence. I want to condemn in the strongest terms what happened in Duduza [an internationally televised necklacing]. Many of our supporters around the world said then "Oh, oh. If they do those things maybe they are not ready for freedom." Let us demonstrate the discipline of people who know that they are ready for freedom. At the end of the day, we must be able to walk with our heads high!

It's a great speech, and the practical and moral lesson is clear, but the crowd was unimpressed. Years of nonviolent efforts had resulted in nothing but exile or death for the leaders. George Orwell once wrote a short essay (forget the name? Ah. Reflection on Gandhi) in which he alleged that a non-violent campaign like Gandhi's, intended to appeal to the conscience of the oppressor, would simply fail in a country where dissenters disappeared in the middle of the night. South Africa was such a country, and the conscience of the whites was simply not stirred. Not until whites faced civil unrest, difficulty traveling through the countryside, and rebellious youth throwing stones in downtowns of "white" cities did they take notice. So perhaps, just perhaps, there is room in my moral universe for violent acts, at least directed against property, and against uniformed enforcers of the oppression. Alright, hafta cut this short. cheers.

Book Report Sunday: Prequel

2004-12-19T23:14:00.000-05:00

After a very cozy dinner with friends and a few minutes of throwing snowballs for the dog, why can't I spare 20 minutes for the blog? So, in a moment, the start of a new tradition. But first, a treacly moment for the fuzzy ones in life, be they animate or dis: Sniff. Growing up is hard. (via Pharyngula)

The Paige Award

2004-12-14T13:30:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of Andrew Sullivan's funny little awards for outrageous discourse, I would like to propose the Paige Award. This goes to that person in public life with the most outlandish and offensive comparison of domestic political opponents to terrorists. I name the award in honor of former Education Secretary Rod Paige's February 2004 labeling of the National Education Assocation a "terrorist organization." An early contestant was President Bush's advisor Karen Hughes, when she commented that pro-choice = terrorist:

"I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. The fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life... Unfortunately our enemies in the terror network, as we're seeing repeatedly in the headlines these days, don't value any life, not even the innocent and not even their own."

And I have a new nominee, from this recent NYTimes article about Christian conservatives -- Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis:

"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go," she added. "I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back."

I'm sure there are a few to be found on the left somewhere, but these ones made an impression on me at the time.

Tipping

2004-12-09T20:58:00.000-05:00

(Apparently, ethical/religious minutiae are what I like to think about in my spare time. Also the ideal arrangement of my desktop icons, but nevermind about that.) Topic of the hour is tipping. Example: once or twice a month, usually those lonely Monday nights when Mrs. Prophet is in class until late, I get a falafel from the place down the street. They have a little tip cup in the front. Sometimes Mr. Owner is working the cashier, and sometimes this Friendly Guy who is about my age and lives in Astoria. I always want to put a dollar in, but somehow I find it mortifying to do so while on of them is looking. So I wait for them to look away, and then quick -- jam the dollar in. About half the time I don't get a chance, and they go untipped. Shame is the emotion that motivates me more than any other, so I tend to project it onto others as well. I'm pretty sure neither the owner nor Friendly Guy are embarrassed at all by my tipping, but my own embarrassment clearly comes from an intuition that there is something humiliating for either Mr. Owner or Friendly Guy to earn their living from my whimsy. If it were my world, I would abolish tipping. George Orwell, in Homage to Catalonia, describes the scene in Barcelona as he arrived in late December, 1936:

I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing... It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Señor' or 'Don' or even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' and 'Thou,' and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos días.' Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy.

This sounds great to me. Yes yes, totally impractical of course, oppression of communism, failure of socialist economies, etc., but I'll never get over the simple egalitarian instinct that this is how things ought to be. And so I hold on to the abolition of the tip as a small part of a better society. Potential Objections to abolition of the tip:

Perhaps we already have a culture of equality in America, and so tipping is more of a friendly guesture between peers than a condescension. Certainly Mr. Owner and Friendly Guy look me in the eye, and don't call me 'Don'. With 250 years of rough social equality (give or take racism), we simply don't need the radical European measures.
Perhaps abolishing tipping, or -- worse -- declining to tip when it is acceptable, ignores the simple fact that some service-oriented professions simply do better with tipping. Certainly non-tipping restaurants in Western Europe can have a, um, lackadaisical quality. And waitstaff are generally happy to take tips, socially demeaning or no.
Or, most likely: my anguish at tipping simply reflects my weak-bellied liberal discomfort at the simple social fact that I'm a well-educated, privileged white man. And at the fact that social inequities exist, and will exist under any economic system we can bear. Tip or no tip, these facts will not change, so I should just get over my angst and give the guy a buck, whether he's humiliated or not.

Objection 1 has some merit; objection 2 might be correct but I'm willing to sacrifice some "quality" for a social good, if it is worthwhile; and objection 3 is undeniable. Yet I still cling to the idea that we'd be better of with tipping, in any setting. Dear readers three, do you tip (in non-restaurant situations, i.e. when it's not necessarily expected of you)? Would you prefer an anonymous tip, or no tip at all?

Waiting for the light

2004-12-09T16:15:00.000-05:00

With winter solstice coming up on the 21st, one's thoughts naturally turn to the celebration of the birth of Mithra, lord of truth and light, enemy of error, guarantor of oaths, born of the virgin Anahita. Except, for most of us, they don't. Ever since Julius I's letter to Cyril of Jerusalem in 349, our thoughts turn instead to that other guy. No hard feelings. (Just to clear something up, despite the "s", this blog is named in honor of the Persian deity, not the Roman Johnny-come-lately, who was much less likeable in my opinion.) Anyway, here's to turning the corner on wintry darkness, whether you celebrate stars in the East, miraculous oil, burning yule logs, or installing batteries. Browsing holy texts over lunch is a good habit, by the way. I recommend it.

At Least They're Reading Our Poetry

2004-12-06T01:14:00.000-05:00

One more little note, of the encoding-lifestream variety: We dashed across the street to the fall concert of the Columbia orchestra earlier this evening, and it was a true delight. The program was a crowd-pleaser, with Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, and Copland's Appalachian Spring. And the performance was wonderful, making me realize that living or working at or near a university is always worthwhile. Anyway, the part I want to record for posterity is the concert notes, in particular a pair of passages about Copland. The topic of concern is whether it is dangerous, flattering, or both when the Government takes an interest in art. First, on the music:

... Reviewing the first Workers Song Book of 1934, Copland writes of mass song as "a powerful weapon in the class struggle," a "collective art activity" that "creates solidarity and inspires action." He is more pointed still: mass song, he maintains, is "a more effective weapon than any in the hands of the novelist, painter, or even playright..." ... This isn't just idealism, it's communism, and it colors the brazenly memorable simplicity of Appalachian Spring with more than just utopian longing. In its squaredances, country fiddlings, and revivalist sermons, a dream of another America, a coup, is couched.

And now on Copland and America:

1953. The Chairman: "Now, Mr. Copland, have you ever been a Communist? Mr. Copland: "No, I have not been a Communist in the past and I am not now a Communist." The Chairman: "Would you agree... that there is a political importance in music?" Mr. Copland: "I certainly would not... I spend my days writing symphonies, concertos, ballads and I am not a political thinker." Copland won a Pulitzer prize for Appalachian Spring in 1945, but it hardly kept Joseph McCarthy from issuing the composer a subpoena and interrogating him behind closed doors in 1953. Fifty years later, as part of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the transcripts were released, and the make at least two unpleasant points:
No amount of musical patriotism, either the implicit Appalachian Spring variety, or the explicit Lincoln Portrait kind, will get you off the hook when Fear is ruling the Ruling Powers, and
Copland perjured himself, twice. First, he was, if not entirely official party-member, definitely a fighter for the cause; he didn't just defend the premise of mass songs, but wrote them too, songs like "Into the Streets May First." Second: Copland denied music any political force, emasculating arguably the dearest aspect of his vocation.
He had to bluff, out of self-preservation, but it's still painful to read. When was the last time the American government really wanted to know what a composer thought about the political import of music? And cared about his answer? We will have to wait for the FOIA to get us the transcripts.

This reminds me of some garbled quote from a Soviet history class, in which one poet said to another, "Sure, they're sentencing us to death in a labor camp, but at least they're reading our poetry!"

eat the freely given

2004-12-05T23:45:00.000-05:00

So there are many wellsprings of thought or feeling out of which vegetarianism might grow. I am an extremely approximate vegetarian myself (holding a tummy of "ma Foy"-inspired lentils, spinach, bacon, and egg as I write). A rough survey of the field of Vegetarian Commandments might include:

Thou shalt not cause pain and suffering to sentient beings <-- my rationale
Thou shalt eat healthily
Thou shalt avoid meats and produce made with nasty synthetic hormones, pesticides, and fertilizer
Thou shalt protect thy Earth; i.e. prevent destruction of Western grazelands or Amazon rainforest for cattle <-- my rationale in high school
Thou shalt indirectly feed the hungry, by minimizing thy impact on world resources (i.e. eat vegetables because of the extraordinary inefficiency of meat production, as measured by raw materials per calorie afforded)
Thou shalt hold wacky deep-green beliefs

These different inspirations yield different guidelines about what one should or should not eat, of course. For example, the question of fish: could go either way from my "sentient being" perspective, depending upon one's beliefs about fish consciousness; desirable from the health perspective; probably not okay under a "deep green" philosophy; and either great or horrible, depending on the specific fish, from an environmental perspective. I was thinking tonight about another possible wellspring, and what choices it would coerce:

Thou shalt eat only the foods freely given by a living being, without taking its life

This diet would consists of milk & dairy products, honey, nuts, berries, fruits, and anything else that is "freely given" by the host with the intent that it be eaten. For all I know there's a sect of people in California that do eat this way. Fruitarians come kinda close, but I think more in the surface behavior than in the motivation. I'm uncertain whether one could subsist on this diet. I suppose the human body puts up with all kinds of horrific treatment. But life without greens or grains or legumes could be tough. I'm certainly not proposing it, for myself or anyone else. But it's an interesting concept, and it does have a pleasing simplicity and comprehensibility.

2004-12-05T23:13:00.000-05:00

A new leaf. Rather than refraining from posting until my musings have reached some unachievable (while nonetheless paltry) threshold of coherence and depth, I will now let a blog be a blog. Henceforth, this is a stream of consciousness, a record of things I'd prefer not to -- but might -- forget (e.g. my life). My senior year of high school (a remarkable 10 years ago), I kept a thoughts-journal. It was made out of duct tape, and had the word ΦιλοσοΦια inscribed on the cover. I loved it very much, though of course I shudder when I on occasion leaf through it. I look forward to doing similar shuddering in mere weeks here! To come: thoughts this eve.

box of bones

2004-11-21T14:10:00.000-05:00

IMG_0205

This is supposed to be a "meaningful thoughts" blog rather than a "I had toast for breakfast" blog, but:

After saying hello to the frogs at the Museum of Natural History, I stopped by the Maxilla and Mandible shop. And lo! what did I find but this Box of Bones, advertised as "ideal for medical students." I am vindicated.

End transmission.

2004-11-11T21:44:00.000-05:00

Incidentally, I didn't write any of the posts on this blog up to this point; they're just copy-paste jobs in a futile attempt to get a Gmail invite. Well, I eventually got a Gmail account from somebody else, so maybe now I'll actually write this thing, rather than plagiarize it. Or maybe not.

2004-04-22T21:23:00.000-04:00

Yawp!