Michael Bushe's Blog

Robtos: Trust me, I'll get you a beer!

2010-07-09T21:25:00.000-07:00

Robots are becoming useful now that engineers are realizing it's all about the human interaction.

Summary of the Boston Globe article from the ACM News:

Robot May Furnish Lesson in Human Trust
Boston Globe (07/05/10) Johnson, Carolyn Y.

Boston-area scientists are using a new robot to study the signals that people use to decide whether to trust one another within minutes of meeting. "There should be some signal for trustworthiness that's subtle and hard to find, but [it is] there," says Northeastern University's David DeSteno. The robot, called Nexi, has advantages over human participants because people use subtle gestures, or engage in unintentional mimicry, that can be hard to measure or control. Nexi has many human expressions, but researchers can control every aspect of its behavior, which enables them to test what nonverbal cues might seem more or less trustworthy. The research also could help roboticists find ways to design machines that will be trusted partners for humans. The experiment is a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern, and Cornell University. At the end of the experiment, researchers measured how trustworthy the participants found Nexi to be using an economic task in which they decided how many tokens to exchange with Nexi and predicted how many tokens Nexi would give them.

If that creeps you out too much, maybe just try having your computer to get you a beer.

The Real "Avatar" (The Last Airbender)

2010-07-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

I saw The Last Airbender this weekend with my 13 year old and his friends. If you don't know, the movie is based on the cartoon called Avatar : The Last Airbender. I call it the "real" Avatar because Avatar the blockbuster movie hardly reflects the meaning of the word. The word "Avatar" comes from the Sanskrit word for "descent," meaning a spirit (or "God"), descending to the material world as a human. You may think such a notion is preposterous, or you may have deep faith that some Avatar is your personal savior (like Jesus Christ or Krishna), but in either case, an Avatar, fictional or factual, is more closely related to the Last Airbender than the Marine in the virtual blue suit.

As you might expect, I enjoyed The Last Airbender more than Avatar. Avatar was three hours of over-the-top drama. The Last Airbender was far more subtle. Instead of yelling and screaming and in-your-face interaction, Aang, the main character's strongest imperative was telling an animal "Be nice."

Noah Ringer, who played Aang, was phenomenal. I was expecting to be disappointed, as most were by Hayden Christenson playing the adult Anakin Skywalker. Monks with power are very difficult to play, but Ringer did what great actors Ewan MacGregor and Liam Neeson could not pull off - maintain a constant state of grace and even temper while exercising power in difficult circumstances (Alec Guinness, the original Obi-Wan Kenobi, maintained grace, but his style was better suited for stage than film).

The theatergoers, including my triad of 13 year olds, did not like the movie. They picked on the things missing from the cartoon, like the villian's missing ponytail or the fact that Aang was pronounced more properly like a mantra than like it was in the cartoon (rhymed with "hang"). After comparing Aang to the Jedi, I was met with disbelief by the 13 year olds. "Aang is not a monk - he's a warrior!" That led to a 15 minute diatribe about the Bhagavad Gita's ("What? What do you mean we've never heard of the most widely read book ever?!") Arjuna the Archer, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Star Wars. I think I got enough into their minds that it will spark their interest when they come across it again sometime.

China's Government Advocates for Workers

2010-07-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

According to this IBD story, "Chinese workers are usually represented by government-sponsored unions. "

Now I suspect this may not be all it's cracked up to be since "Many recent labor disturbances were organized outside these communist-backed groups." But still can you just imagine a government advocating on behalf of workers? I suppose if you remember America in the 1930's or 1940's, you might remember, but in my lifetime, government has been 98% a tool of business interests - the capitalists - not labor. I know there was once or twice a raise in the minimum wage (fat chance of that happening again now that Ted Kennedy is dead). And I am well aware that those who rely on FOX News for their worldview think labor and teachers have an undue influence on government, but just that fact that the notion that the government advocates for labor is a foreign idea to most Americans (and anathema to many) shows how tilted the power in this democracy has become. Some say America is now Fascist, who by definition "seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives, values, and systems such as the political system and the economy."

Sure there's corruption in China, as there is in the U.S., but at the end of the day, the Communists truly do look out for the workers. This may be idealogical, but is likely just as much a matter of self-preservation - the Chinese government is well aware that without economic growth, the people would revolt and who knows what will happen then. In any case, it will be fascinating to see how the U.S. corporate-oriented government will compete with the Chinese worker-oriented government over the next 50 years.

Pre-Internet Publications

2010-07-05T07:16:00.000-07:00

As I was writing a blog post on switching to the Mac, I started discussing my first programming on the Mac. Since it was pre-Internet (or at least pre-browser), I didn't think I'd find any about the articles that come out of my first professional post-B.S. work, but I did come up with the references via David A. Rosenbaum's C.V.:

Rosenbaum, D. A., Engelbrecht, S. E., Bushe, M. M., & Loukopoulos, L. D. (1993). A model for reaching control. Acta Psychologica, 82, 237-250.

Rosenbaum, D. A., Engelbrecht, S. E., Bushe, M. M., & Loukopoulos, L. D. (1993). Knowledge model for selecting and producing reaching movements. Journal of Motor Behavior, 25, 217-227.

Bushe, M. M., Vaughan, J., & Rosenbaum, D. A. (1994). Pascal external functions for Strawberry Tree's "Analog Connection Workbench." Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computer, 26, 461-466.

This was some of the most memorable and fun work I've done. The model for reaching control was a computer model that acted like a baby at the start. This baby would randomly reach in different directions using different combinations of angles of various limbs. Each angle would be given a cost so that moving your torso was more costly than your wrist, and bending at angles that were difficult (like scratching your back) was also costly. After a few thousand trails, the model learned to reach for objects at novel locations using fluid lifelike movements. Lots of hours with Mac programming manuals always handy.

The "Pascal" paper was a different experiment. We were seeing how well someone could mimic tapping out a beep-beep rhythm with varying delaying between the beeps (.1-1.0 seconds or so) when heard aurally or seen visually on a screen. Aural won. The article was about writing Mac software to hook up with a hardware/software package called "Strawberry Tree." It involved some low level z80 processor instructions to pick up analog signals from a external board hooked up to a Mac. Can't say it was all that fun, but doing the dirty work made it publishable.

Ultimately, though I'm always dissatisfied by cognitive psychology experiments. They are too contrived. "Life is a bowl of concurrent schedules," as my behaviorist professor Dr. John Donahoe, liked to say. Looking back, I can honestly say that he was the most influential professor I had. I think I had the best work-study gig on campus as I wrote a neural network simulation for Dr. Donahoe. A harbinger was the nights that I was up until 2AM writing the visuals. Dr. Donahoe didn't think the visuals were that important, he really just wanted the numbers, but I wanted to see the network learning. I still remember how his face lit up when the dark lines lit up yellow as connections were made. An early positive reinforcement that has been reinforced many times since in my UI and visualization work.

Williams Syndrome

2010-04-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

Williams Syndrome, is a genetic condition that causes a lack of social fear - people with Williams Syndrome are really friendly even with people they don't know. Fascinatingly, they also have no or nearly no racial bias, from a recent Discover Magazine article:

Typically, children start overtly gravitating towards their own ethnic groups from the tender age of three. Groups of people from all over the globe and all sorts of cultures show these biases. Even autistic children, who can have severe difficulties with social relationships, show signs of racial stereotypes. But Santos says that the Williams syndrome kids are the first group of humans devoid of such racial bias...

It's very interesting to think about the fact that we are born with a predilection to racial bias. It makes more sense when I think about what I read in Guns, Germs and Steel that said when two tribal people who don't know each other meet each other in Papua New Guinea, they will first start naming off people who are related to each other to see if the other person knows them. If they find a match, they are OK, if they don't find a match, they fight. I guess those conversations could last a very long time.

Serendipitously, I've never heard of Williams Syndrome until this morning. Then Dylan and I visited UMass for an Open House. I talked to Dylan about the story on the drive to UMass (hmmm, is this the kind of conversation that inspired Dylan to want to teach science?). Then not one, but two different speakers mentioned Williams Syndrome in passing during their speeches. Weird. One was talking about the opportunities at UMass and mentioned how he worked with local kids with Williams Syndrome. I forget the context the other speaker mentioned it in. Our tour guide came close to the concept as she was doing her thesis on social contact.

Why Alex Trabek is So Smart

2010-01-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

Alex Trabek, the longtime host of Jeopardy! seems like a very smart guy. He knows the answers to so many questions, "Oh, I'm sorry, it was Victor Hugo." (He does get a bit swarmy when the answer is about something French).

Category: Education Level
The answer is : 6
The question: How many DAYS did Alex Trabek spend in college?

Now, of course, not going to college doesn't make you not smart, but could it be that we think Alex Trabek is smarter than he is?

I don't have the reference, but one thing I remember from my psychology (neuroscience) degree was that there were some studies done in the 80's that were in a game show format. Participants either asked trivia questions or gave answers, and they switch roles for different audiences. Audiences were asked to rate how smart they thought the participants were - both the questions givers and the answer givers. The audience thought the people asking the questions were smarter than the ones answering the questions, no matter who was asking. The numbers were quite extraordinary.

We have a strong tendency to think the person asking the questions is smart - which is why the crooks at Enron could convince other that they were the "Smartest Person in Room."

This came up when a friend and collegue, who is wicked smaht - he went to a Ivy League school, he's a genius,and he's very technically proficient - was asked some questions about algorithms in a techie interview and didn't quite have the answers (neither would I, I only minored in math/computers). Most experienced folks know that you can't figure out someone's ability by a few technical questions in an interview. That strategy only assesses the intersection of knowledge of the interviewer and the interviewee, both of which can be vast and non-intersecting. This tactic makes the questioner feel real good about themselves since they knew something the other person doesn't. It deflates the person being interviewed, who is already nervous.

I approach it differently. I look for what I know about what the person claims they know. I then drill down into what they did to see if they had a thought process to intelligently make the decisions they made given the constraints they were under. This gives the person confidence since they are talking about something they know, not something you pulled out of the air. It allows you to have a humane interaction, and assess the person under a situation that would be more normal. Hopefully, you also talk enough tech to realize how knowledgeable the person and if what their resume says holds water.

Newspapers may be dying, and that's sometimes a good thing.

2009-12-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

I had my first paper route when I was about 10 years old. Third grade, if I remember right. It was a Sunday-only delivery in Leicester, MA. I think I started out with around 50 houses, and grew to around 100 when someone gave up an adjacent route. The papers were so thick, I'd could only stuff about 10 in my bag at once. Yes, this is when American kids actually WALKED - I've since seen parents drive their kids on their routes.

The hills where I grew up are ubiquitous and steep. I've heard the average grade was steeper than the hills in San Francisco, though I think that's not quite true (but close). I'm pretty sure Apricot Street (where this is all happening here, as Arlo Guthrie would say) in Leicester and Worcester is as steep as the famous Lombard Street in San Francisco (a 27% grade), and at least four times longer. I had to stuff my bag, deliver to the first ten houses, walk back down for more, then walk back up to deliver another 10, etc. Later I took up a daily route in Worcester, starting out at 40 houses and growing to over 100 again, which was not so great for my customers, since it was an evening publication and many nice folks received their papers well after dinner.

It was work, but I had no idea how valuable it was, beyond the $20 a week. It certainly kept me in shape, I met a lot of nice people, and my eyes were open to many different types of folks. I can remember the single mother who couldn't afford to pay me and was months behind. She had to ask a 13 year old to spot her the paper so she could look for jobs in it. There was a religious person who needed to tip me with moral stories. There was the 93 year old who kept her home very cold, not out of choice. She loved when I came collecting (yes, cash, credit cards were invented, but not widely used), since I gave her some company, and I enjoyed hers. She knit me a hat and mittens one winter. The letters my wife wrote me the summer when we were 14 are still wrapped in the ribbon that went 'round that gift. Then there was the 50ish man who tricked me into his bedroom and started showing me playboys before I excused myself, suddenly thinking my shorts were a bit to small for my growing body.

But the greatest gift of the newspaper routes were the newspapers themselves - and the writers who made them alive and interesting everyday. Of course I read the sports section first, parsed each baseball boxscore while in season, and waited on the rare "hot stove" article in the winter. (Unfortunately, this was the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, so I didn't discover Peter Gammons until college). These were long routes however, so I wound up reading everything - the front page and every page those articles lead to. I was a teenager and I knew about what was going on in the world more than most adults (and didn't realize it, which may have been better for my ego). Occasionally the business section caught my eye with something interesting, and though I never really was interested in anything a particular business was doing, eventually I realized I loved macroeconomics and watched everything the Federal Reserve did, followed how the markets and interest rates moved and watched the waves of the economy before and during a recession (which paid major returns to me in 2008, when I timed things as well as I could and did not panic). I've continued having wide interests. I also read so much that good writing was drilled into my mind. I'm sure it's weakened, but it's still there.

Don't expect me to say that those were the good ol' days and kids now just don't know how to write or read garbage. Things change. I didn't know how to network with my friends constantly. You can surf for an hour and come across more interesting topics than any paper has in a month. My parents didn't know how to word process.

[Total tangent, but Susan and I were talking about it recently. Language is amazingly dynamic and comes to suit the time as it changes. Think about the word "fair" - how long did it take to get to four letters? According to this:

Origin:
bef. 900; ME; OE fæger; c. OS, OHG fagar, ON fagr, Goth fagrs

If it's a good word in common use, it will get simpler and simpler. Read The Mother Tongue if it interests you . Yes, I know it's controversial among experts, but it's Bill Bryson!]

Newspapers themselves though, and journalism in general, do have ethics to uphold, and they aren't. Newspapers have always been, and always should be, there to balance democracy, to shed light on corruption and injustice, to lend a thoughtful eye and hand to the considerations of the day and time. They have failed, and it's unclear if there is any protection left for the people from the backroom deals that now seem to have their hand at the throat of our democracy. Why? Journalism, such a noble pursuit, is no longer an art, a calling, a public trust, at least outside of some brave poor souls who work for websites and publications that are always on the brink of going under. Newspapers now are about the buck, or a buck for a thousand clicks. It's about working the channel while it lasts. Which is why the Boston Globe's price has gone up almost an order of magnitude, they blame production costs, and then deliver the ads (and only the ads) before Thanksgiving, for free.

The death knell? The Boston Herald, which deserved a quick death 20 years ago, has a new slogan in their ads: "Someone's got to say it." "Someone has to say it" just wasn't colloquial enough?

Techie Blog...

2009-10-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

I now have a separate blog for tech stuff at michaelbushe.wordpress.com, so hopefully I'll write more techie and non-techie stuff. I already was able to get a couple of old posts out of the closet.

Humanity's Purpose: A Warning For the Next "Intelligent" Life Form

2009-08-05T21:04:00.001-07:00

Truly, it's inevitable, isn't it? The best we can hope for is to leave enough trash around so that, in another 5 million years, some future Bonobo relative realizes that they were not the first forms of life intelligent life, and they could mess it up too.

"No one is useless, anyone can at least be used as a bad example."

New Favorite Movies

2009-05-30T17:20:00.000-07:00

I have a new movie to add to my list of favorites: 8 1/2 Now if I could only learn Italian enough to understand it. :-) It's brilliant anyway. In order to understand it, you have to understand Jung, because it's nearly a Jungian drama dealing with a man's relationships to the females in his life as the main character deals with the confusions he creates by following useless and narcissistic tendencies. The climax is as poignant as movies get. A true masterpiece.

So what are my other favorite movies?
American Beauty
Dr. Strangelove
Field of Dreams
Hanna and Her Sisters
Life is Beautiful
Schindler's List
Star Wars, Episode IV and Episode I

Though they certainly span the decades (nothing in this century yet though), there are some common threads - both obvious and more deep. Obviously there are two Italian films, two about concentration camps, five use black and white, and they are generally serious, witty, and often dark. More deeply, they are studies in contrast - always for me the most attractive form of art. The generally share themes of self-actualization in the face of adversity, determination, and penance.

The most common thread is most clearly spelled out in Star Wars - the struggle of good and evil, the battle for the human soul, in short Joseph Campbell's (and Jung's) Hero's Journey, on which Star Wars is based. I'm always surprised by how few people appreciate this most popular movie as a rendering of mythical themes. Distracted by the special effects, I guess.

Speaking of Campbell, I retold again this week my favorite Campbell quote (I'm pretty sure I first heard it in The Power of Myth):

If you follow you bliss, doors will open for you that would not have open otherwise, and that would not have opened for anyone else.

The Yoga I practice I learned from Ananda Marga, which literally means "The Path of Bliss," and this is just the bliss that Campbell is talking about, as he was a Yogi at heart. People can, of course, learn their true nature from many paths. Isn't it funny that when they do, and they act on it, they start knocking down doors that they hadn't even seen before? I can guarantee that if you do honestly practice quietude and meditation you will uncover that steady hum that lies within us all.

No tarnish on '04 and '07 World Series Championships

2009-05-09T15:06:00.000-07:00

Now I know I can be naive, maybe exceptionally naive, particularly about the integrity of baseball players, however, I don't believe Manny Ramirez used performance enhancing drugs until 2008.

Why? Here are Manny's numbers in Cleveland, Boston and LA:

(Please excuse the big space here if you see one)

	Cleveland	Boston	Los Angeles
Batting Average	.313	.312	.380
At Bats Per Home Run	14.7	14.4	12.1
Slugging Percentage	.592	.588	.710

Courtesy The Boston Globe

The stats in Cleveland and Boston show what has always been said about Manny - he's a very consistent hitter, and a great one.

Suddenly, in Los Angeles, his numbers are remarkably similar to Barry Bonds' and Mark McGwire's juiced numbers. This should not be surprising, since Manny's was in his contract year, likely his last contract year at age 37.

That's what I hate about autopilot

2009-03-22T20:32:00.000-07:00

I never blog or even talk much about fantasy baseball because no matter how passionate as you about it, it's a fantasy, and no one really cares to hear about anyone else's fantasies of any sort unless there's some sort of personal involvement in it that wouldn't seem gross.

If you are not a team owner in "The BLS", the Bushe League Superstars, appropriately, BS.baseball.cbssports.com), I'll try to make this post not really about my fantasy, but about a frustration with algorithmns with some league history. But this post is really for my league mates - it was too long for the chatroom. :-)

The BLS has been a league since 1995 - a few months before the release of Internet Explorer 1.0, and traces further back to when people did fantasy by the U.S. Postal service. You'd wait a week for the report to come in the mail, it would cost about $50 per team per year. You wished it was only 2 days behind and not three, you kept up with boxscores each day in the NEWSPAPER- how quaint! Like many, I did it by hand in a Quattro Pro spreadsheet starting in 1991. I think there were about 500,000 players at the time. Enough to subsidize space on magazine shelves. My first league consisted of some workmates, close friends, two brothers, a wife that ran her own team (As one BLS owner says, "the only wife that knows what WHIP is!"), and some other guys that I found on internet message boards from all over the country and even the world (Australia, Japan, Denmark all hail BLS owners). Susan and I now co-own the The Crackerjacks, and the only other original left just last year.

The league is far more competitive now, but the bridge to the olden days is the way the BLS draft is conducted. It's done very slowly, enjoyed like a fine basket of fruit rather than an ice cream at the beach. The BLS draft is an extended draft of 336 or so picks (14 teams and 24 rounds), which occurs after each team "keepers" from the previous year. I say "or so" because an owner may decide to name anywhere between 3-8 "keepers" from the 30 person roster from the previous year, plus 0-2 form their minor league roster, none of which can qualify for the Rokie of the Year Award.

Most Yahoo or ESPN leagues do a draft 336 in an hour and a half. We do it over 6 weeks (Feb 15th to April 1st or so), 51 picks a week, 7 picks a day -a half a round a day. It can be excrutiating slow at time. There is no time limit at all until about March 1st, and owners will often take a day to think it over. Those are the most important picks, so we give more time for thought.

After March 1st, owers have 12 hours to make a pick, if they go over the time limit, their pick is skipped, but only until they get back to a computer and annouce who they want. Sometimes there are a lot of eyes on the page and picks go in mintues, though usually in hours, and then often hang for for the full 12 hours because we are all busy professionals.

In order to make the draft move faster, you can put the system on "autopilot" so that it pulls the next best player from your queue that is created by hand by dragging and dropping players in order.

(And now the story...)

When I woke up on Saturday, March 21st in round 13 of 22, the person three picks before mine exceeding the 12-hour rule and I skipped his pick (after a long hiatus, I'm commissioner again) .

It was near the "bench" phase of the draft but I still needed:
A relief pitcher
A starting pitcher
A middle infielder
Nice to have - a backup for some of my risky hitters (Travis Hafner)

I enjoy trying to figure out who will be the closer for teams that don't have a proven closer. It usually comes down to talent, temperment and strikeouts. My league requires exactly 3 relief pitchers. If you are going to win, you will need three closers for the season. Since there are 14 fantasy teams, that's 42 slots for "the closer" of each of the 30 MLB teams. Though you can take the risk, it's tough to win without the three closers, because you won't get enough points in the Saves category "rotissierre" baseball. If you finish low in one category (or "punt") you basically have to finish 1 and 2 in every other (and more 1's), to win. The good news is that half the league is playing with 2 closers.

I had two somewhat risky closers already, and almost all of the MLB team's closers were gone. I'm pretty sure in Oakland, that since Joey Devine's arms hurting, Brad Ziegler will get at least enough saves until I can find another one during the season. In Seatle, I love Chad Cordero, and nearly all my picks have been former keepers, as Cordero has been. I like the fit, and I like his talent. Chad has a weird delivery, he's about the only pitcher to nearly square the left side of his foot toward the batter, the toe pointing almost to the first base dugout, not right at the plate as they teach you in Little League. For him, I think it generates some special torque and his ball moves and hitters miss it even though he doesn't throw 95. The problem is that he had labrum surgery in July (injury that may be caused by the foots bad mechanics) and he won't be ready for Opening day, but I figure he'll eventually take the role.

I put Zeigler on top of the queue, then decided who my second pick should be. I was thinking of putting in Cordero, but it was possible that by the time I came back from Newport my other pick could come up. I wanted to make sure not to draft two closers in a row (I can't play a 4th closer), so I quickly put the hitter Troy Glaus second in queue. Determined not to let the draft interfere with my best attempt to be in unison with the cosmic vibration (i.e. - I don't like to do anything that requires such thought before mediation), I figured - "there won't be three picks in the hour it takes me to mediate anyway, I'll come back." I did get involved in a chatting with another where owner and as I went upstairs I thought "did I take it off autopilot?" "Yes. I think so." ,

Susan had to get ready after we finished meditation so I checked the draft web page. Zeigler was drafted (nice pick Peter!) during our meditation. The system picks Glaus for us and we wind up with NO THIRD CLOSER. Though we were able to pick up Cordero later, the way the queue works is sub optimal, unless there's only one in the queue. For most owners there may be 100 to 500 players. I regularly queue 60. An option for a "autodraftable size" queue would be nice.

Italics and Double Spaces

2008-11-17T17:21:00.000-08:00

Liam was writing this:
"The story Cinderella [sic] was a great story."
We talked about the right punctuation for Cinderella. Callum and Dylan both quickly said that it deserved double quotation marks.

Callum said that if it's a short story, it's in quotes, but if it's a book or novel, it's italicized or underlined. Dylan concurred.

My first inclination was that it was italicized, probably because of the influence of Strunk & White's Manual of Style, which says:

American printed matter uses italics (the type fonts whose letters slant to the right) for the titles of literary and other artistic works (War and Peace, Verdi’s Requiem); for the names of journals and newspapers (The New York Times, Newsweek); for words, letters, and numbers cited as words, letters, and numbers (as here with the word italics); for foreign words and phrases (ars longa, vita brevis est), although when these loan words and phrases have been fully assimilated into English, we usually cease to italicize them, as with à la mode; for the names of ships (Queen Elizabeth II, or Q.E. II); and for a number of other technical purposes such as are usually specified in a publisher’s stylebook. In handwriting or typescript, underline what you wish to italicize. Italics are also used for emphasis and to indicate a heavier-than-normal stress on a word, particularly in Semiformal and Informal writing, although most editors discourage the practice. To achieve the effect of italics in the midst of a full sentence already in italics, put the word to be stressed in roman: We thought she’d never leave!

Now, in our other recent punctuation discussion, I was proved to be an old fuddy-duddy, as I nearly always put two spaces after each sentence. Yes two. One looks just too cramped for my taste. Extra whitespace is a good thing, especially when you aren't killing trees to show it. I'm pretty sure that this is most common in U.S. business English and the emails and documents I read everyday. The single space was proved to be OK and seemingly preferred nowadays. I still think it's only because HTML will turn two spaces into one and you need to add an '& nbsp ;' - called a Non-Breakable Space, but take out the spaces in this post since I put them in order for it to show up - to get the extra space to show up on a web page.

The Bank, the monster

2008-11-09T17:08:00.000-08:00

My last post made me think I should post some sample of the apt prose in The Grapes of Wrath. I started reading The Grapes of Wrath during our California tour, not realizing that it was going to be such parallels to 2008. My other favorite is the whole of Chapter 5, some excepts:

"Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago fond that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank — or the Company — needs — wants — insists — must have — as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time.

"Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You've scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.

"The squatting tenant men nodded and wondered and drew figures in the dust, and yes, they knew, God knows. If the dust only wouldn't fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it might not be so bad.

"The owner men went on leading to their point: You know the land's getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land: robs it, sucks all the blood out of it.

"The squatters nodded - they knew, God knew. If they could only rotate the crop they might pump blood back into the land.

"Well, it's not too late. And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that.

"Yes, he can do that until his crop fails one day and he has to borrow money from the bank.

"But - you see, a bank or a company can't do that, because those creatures don't breathe air, don't eat side-meat [term often used used in the book for pig meat]. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don't get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so.

"The squatting men raised their eyes to understand. Can't we just hang on ? Maybe the next year will be a good year. God knows how much cotton next year. And with all the wars - God knows what price cotton will bring. Don't they make explosives out of cotton? And uniforms?
Get enough wars and cotton'll hit the ceiling. Next year, maybe. They looked up questioningly.

"We can't depend on it. The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size...

"We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't like a man.

"Yes, but the bank is only made of men.

"No, you're wrong there--quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it...

"No, the bank, the monster owns it. You'll have to go."

The Last Clear Definite Function of Man

2008-11-09T16:38:00.000-08:00

"The last clear definite function of man - muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need -- this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam; to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form the conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man -- when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back."

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14

Acceptence Speech

2008-11-04T20:58:00.000-08:00

it was just an awesome speech, perfect.

But what was up with Obama after the speech? He didn't smile until a big one popped out about 5 minutes after he finished. He seemed either one of two things:
1. Really afraid something bad might happen. I think it's healthiest to never talk about this again. Can't believe I said that. Sounds like my mother. I must be maturing.
2. Just damn stoic about it really. I mean like Tao Te Ching "like water" perfect. Humble. Not too up. Non-attached. My goodness, if his ego can't get the best of him at that moment, then we're in the for a new kind of leadership.

"How this happened"

2008-11-04T20:56:00.000-08:00

From: Barack Obama
To: Michael Bushe (hey, did anyone else get a copy?)
Subject: How this happened

Michael --

I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

We just made history.

And I don't want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign -- every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it's time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing...

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack
----------------------------------------------
"I'll be in touch soon about what comes next. "

How classy. Watch this guy. He's ready to lead. He's got this all planned out.

Beautiful

2008-11-04T20:23:00.001-08:00

McCain's acceptance speech was beautiful. How gracious. How thoughtful. How sincere. He started to get that voice back towards the end, and seemed to go back to 2000 with his voice while doing something else he hasn't been able to do - reaching his thoughts to the future and what's most appropriate for it. He was perfect.

Prediction

2008-11-02T10:09:00.000-08:00

"You don't need a weatherman [like Bill Ayers] to know which way the wind blows." -Bob Dylan

I didn't write it here, but the day that Sarah Palin was announced, I said to all my buddies at work: "It's over, we are looking at a Reagan-like landslide." I didn't even know how ridiculously stupid Sarah Palin was, I just knew that taking someone who I never heard of meant that it was unlikely that they would last under the national media scrutiny.

It was brilliant to announce a woman-as-V.P. the day after the Democratic Convention, stealing Obama's thunder. Otherwise we would have been talking about Obama's speech as "historic" (words of David Gergen) for days. We'll still talk about as historic, but we'll forget that we forgot all about it for 10+ weeks.

Anyway, back to my predictions:
As far as Electoral votes go, it will be hard for anyone to ever beat Reagan's 525-13 win over Mondale (Mondale only took his home state of Minnesota). In the popular vote Reagan took 58.8%, Mondale 40.6). If we talked about "mandates" back then, Reagan would have been dictator. That was also his re-election campaign, in the 1980 contest he took only 50.2%, a 10% point lead over Jimmy Carter with 6.6% going to John Anderson.

Obama certainly won't get 49 states in his corner, but it's not going to be nearly as close as most pundits think. The pollsters who say it's within 3 points or that Obama won't break 50% are going to have to justify their services next year. Like the bundled mortgages, there are just too much REALITY for computer models to take into account. Maybe it's my experience writing computer models that lead me to so suspect of anyone who takes polling data and extrapolates the answers into very different results based on hunches (why don't they publish the raw data too?).

Obama will draw north of 55%, I'm predicting 56.5%. McCain will be around 41.5%, with 2% going to Nadar+Barr+everyone else. Yeah, that's right, a 15% lead. Imagine what the reelection will look like. I'm calculating 407 electoral votes for Obama, 127 for McCain. Why so much higher than everyone else? I think the Black vote, the young vote and the newly registered will turn out, moving Indiana, Montana, and Georgia in Obama's column.

I've been watching the Senate races more closely. Without a filibuster-proof majority, Obama will be dealing with gridlock, no matter how far he reaches across the isle. On the Senate races I'm expecting that Obama's new voters and the excitement he's generated will translate into a lot of voters just pulling the (D) right on down the line. And since the pollsters are underestimating the effect, I think the Democrats will get it, or fall one short.

Surely switching to the Democrats will be these 7 states:
Alaska - gotta chuckle whenever a corrupt politician loses.
Colorado - Would you want someone as abrasive as Bob Schaffer leading your state?
New Hampshire - not that I'm much of a fan of either. I thought this would be closer since Sheehan is not very likeable.
New Mexico - basicallly has been conceeded to the cousin of of the Colorado democratic candidate.
North Carolina - love to see that fake Liddy Dole (Archer Daniel Midland champion) go down in her own meanspirited flames.
Oregon - easy win
Virginia - the Democrat is rich enough to pay for it himself?

The close ones are :
Kentucky: I don't see Senate Minority leader losing.
Mississippi: I was hopeful here, but Wicker seems to be pulling away too far from Musgrove for the Obama effect to, well, have an effect.
Georgia: This is going to be the surprise of the night. The Obama effect will put this one in the Democratic corner, though it would have to be big enough to avoid a runoff, which is unlikely.
Minnesota: I think in the end, Minnesota will elect Franken, but he may be just not Senatorial enough to win. I listened to his radio show for a long time, and he knows what's going on, but he's far too partisan for my tastes. He's so "ah-uh-um-ah" all the time that I think he probably smokes pot every day or every other day - he's just not serious enough to make a good Senate and I bet wouldn't last long even if he won.

So I think the Dems will pick up 8 seats, perhaps 9, falling short enough that when nothing gets done, it will be blamed on the Dems, and their run will lose all its steam.

As a comparison, here are the predictions from the "This Week" roundtable:

Mark Halperin, Time Magazine:
Electoral Vote -- 349 Obama
Senate -- 58 Democratic seats
House -- Democrats net 28 House seats

Matthew Dowd, former Republican strategist:
Electoral Vote -- 338 plus Obama
Senate -- 8 plus pick up for Democrats
House -- 17 plus pickup for Democrats

George Will, ABC News contributor:
Electoral Vote -- 378 Obama
Senate -- 8 pickups for the Democrats
House -- 21 pickups for the Democrats

Donna Brazile, former Democratic strategist:
Electoral Vote -- Obama 343
Senate - Democrats 59 plus runoff
House - Democrats pickup 29

Here are my predictions ...

George Stephanopoulos:
Electoral Vote -- 353 Obama
Senate -- 58, or 59 if there's a run-off in Georgia.
House -- 264 House Democrats (+28)

Obama most liberal? NOT!

2008-09-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

This evening I had dinner with my conservative Yankee-fan friend. We both love a good argument and have lots to argue about. Kinda like how Scalia and Ginsberg are the best of friends.

He brought up the talking point about Obama being the most liberal Senator. "More liberal than Bernie Sanders?" I asked my buddy. Unlike most right wingers, he's smart enough to know Sanders is a socialist and smart enough to evade the question.

I thought the Republicans have been pulling this "fact" out of their research library (aka their behinds), but it's actually based on something like a truth - The National Journal rankings.

Others agree with me:

Carpet baggers:

“But before anyone takes the National Journal rankings at face value, it’s worth noting how very flawed the methodology is. Indeed, it was misleading in 2004, and it’s equally misleading now.
Taking a closer look at this year’s results, Obama and Joe Biden were both considered more liberal than Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders. This, alone, should make one wonder about the reliability of the rankings.”

Mother Jones:

“In years past, when Obama voted as many times as a normal senator, he was the 10th and 16th most liberal senator. That is likely a truer representation of his politics. Does anyone really think Obama and Joe Biden are more liberal than Russ Feingold or Bernie Sanders (a socialist)?”

Instead of relying on a little magazine, how about relying on how liberal groups rate the Senators?

Electoral Vote combined the rating of 8 liberal groups (ACLU, NAACP, League of Conservation Voters, Children's Defense Fund, etc.), to see what the liberals themselves had to say about it.

Obama comes out FOURTY SECOND out the 100 Senators!!! There are only 8 democratic senators who are more conservative than Obama (all the Republicans are, though some are almost as "liberal" as Obama). Obama has almost the same liberal score (80) as independent (and nearly Republican VP) Joe Lieberman. Joe Biden’s score is even less liberal than Obama's – 74.

What? Not emotional?

2008-08-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

Juan Williams was not impressed and didn't think it was an emotional speech. Complete sell-out to Fox.

Is Fox sold out? The morning after Hillary Clinton's great speech I turned on XM CNN from 8:00-8:01, lots of clips and follow up commentary from the previous night about how there's no question there's unity. I flip over to Fox at 8:01 to see what they had to say.

From 8:01-8:17 (I missed about 30 seconds when I took too long to return during a commercial break), they mention "Clinton" exactly once, around 8:12, I think, in one sentence with one clip, the worst one. The one about the "Sisterhood of the Travelling Pantsuits ... thank you to my supporters", which is pretty much the exact opposite of her overall message - support of Obama. It took KARL ROVE (who came on with Giuliani) to say that she gave a great speech.

Class lacking at CNN

2008-08-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

The Anderson 360 guy, who's only on because this is his time slot on weeknights on CNN (my DVR tells me), asked Paul Begala about the speech and he spewed out how great it was - it was inspiration, epic, etc., etc., and finally said it was one of the greatest speeches.

Anderson Cooper says, "Well, it looks like you drank the Kool Aid."

I'm like "What an idot"!!!

Until he says, "David Gergen, what did you think?"

David Gergan has been the White House chief of staff for Reagan, and was in Nixon's White House, I think Carter's and Clintons. I'm like, "Oh, he's gonna get it now."

"Well I guess Paul andI are drinking from the same cool aid bottle. ... As a political speech, it was a Masterpiece."

Taxi drivers in Time's Square were hanging out their windows looking at the Jumbotron.

The Greatest Speech Ever

2008-08-28T20:15:00.000-07:00

One of my kids came upstairs just after ended with his girlfriend. I said, "Did you see the Greatest Speech Ever?"
"The Greatest Speech ever?"
"Well, The Greatest American Speech Ever, er, maybe second?"
"OK, second, but what about George Washington's farewell speech?"
"Oh, yes, and then there's the Gettysburg Address"
"And didn't Roosevelt have one?"
"Yes, the uh, there's nothing to fear but fear itself."

Can you think of any others?

My Technology Prediction for 2008

2008-01-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

That's right, it's singular. I only have one prediction for 2008. I didn't publish it at the end of last year or the beginning of this year, because I just thought of it among the recent mergers:

Sun will buy SpringSource.

Maybe it will take until 2009, since Spring is still growing quickly and the more traction, the more $$$, but this makes too much sense not to happen.

Why would Sun buy SpringSource? The Spring team has been working hard for a long time, they could use a cash out at this point (I guess), so someone will pick them up. I thought BEA might buy SpringSource since it would allow them to change to a product+OS+services strategy from a purely closed-product one (with some OS contributions like XMLBeans). SpringSource is all about openness - anyone can plug their components into the container. Sun is showing the world that they are all about openness. What did Jonathan Schwartz say after the MySQL announcement?
--------------------------------------

What happens to your commitment to PostgreSQL?

It grows. The day before we announced the acquisition, and within an hour of signing the deal, I put a call into Josh Berkus, who leads our work with Postgres inside of Sun. I wanted to be as clear as I could: this transaction increases our investment in open source, and in open source databases. And increases our commitment to Postgres - and the database industry broadly. The same goes for our work with Apache Derby, and our JavaDB.

Josh says it exactly right on his blog - Sun wants to be the leading provider of datacenters. Not just MySQL datacenters. Exactly.

-------------------------------------------

They are churning into a services organization built around open source. I was consulting with a CTO some time ago and we discussed a feature of a product we were designing and I said, "Why don't we leave it out and you can make more money providing services?" His reply was, "I can make much more money on that same head if they are writing software." So maybe the margins aren't as high in services than product. Perhaps Open Source changed the parameters to that equation. Even if it hasn't, this is Sun's model, and it's better than dying by eating only off your own farm.

The other advantage for Sun is that it will show that they are not letting their leading server technology - Java EE compete for favor against Spring, which is seems to be losing, if for no other reason than it's not latest and greatest anymore, and developers love latest and greatest. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong proponent of component containers and Spring (especially since now I don't have to have to use verbose, external XML). It's just that Spring wouldn't exist without Java EE. It would have taken a decade of dozens of teams to get it all working right - they are standing on top of the Java EE giants.

If Sun buys SpringSource, they will again be rulers of the server-side. Now if they could only get a container for the client side...

The Tightest Fantasy Baseball Finish Ever?

2007-10-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

This year, in the Bushe League Superstars fantasy baseball league, my Crackerjacks lost by a single At Bat. Entering the last full day of the season I had what looked like a safe 2 point lead.

Most fantasy baseball leagues pick 10 statistics to total the player's actual performance over a season. The team with the best statistical performance over the season wins. Most leagues use a rank-based system (usually called a "rotisserie" or "roto" system). Our league had 14 teams, since the Crackerjacks had the highest batting average, they were awarded 14 points. The last day of the season the Crackerjacks had a 123-121 point lead.

When I set my lineup on the last day, I didn't even look at the hitting stats. Assuming my pitchers didn't blow my ERA up, the Everson Vandals could gain a point by getting a couple of steals, but, finally, there was pretty much no way any other points were going to be lost or gained. With just one day's worth of games to go (and many normal starters sitting on the bench to let the kids play the last day), all the other statistical rankings were going to stay the same, or so it seemed.

Batting average was somewhat close, my team had a .291 batting average, the Intrepids .290. A point in batting average is a lot to gain in a single game at the end of the season, even player on player. My team had almost 7000 at bats (12 times more than any player). Besides, I had Matt Holliday, Albert Pujols, Hanley Ramirez, and Miguel Cabrera - that's four .330+ hitters. How high is .330? Albert Pujols ranks 31st ALL TIME with a career batting average of .331.

Ramirez and Cabrera sat and the rest of the Crackerjacks 4 for 28, while the Intrepids went 11 for 28.

The Intrepids finished
2002 H/6891 AB= .29137

The Crackerjacks finished
2023 H/6944 AB= .29133

The Intrepids passed the Crackerjacks BY FOUR HUNDRED THOUSANDTH OF A POINT IN BATTING AVERAGE!!!!! (.00004)

The Vandals tied El Guapo at 126 steals, gaining a point.

The Crackerjacks lost one point in ERA despite not allowing a run when El Guapo posted this pitching line:
21.2 Innings Pitched, 9 Hits Allowed, 5 walks, 20 K, 3 Earned Runs, 1.246 ERA, 1 Win, 0.646 WHIP (Walks+Hits/Innings Pitched)

Just to add to the irony, Felix Hernandez, who I traded for the Ben "can't pitch this month" Sheets, nearly pitched a shutout (8.2 IP, 1 ER).

Add it all up and the Vandals now lead the Crackerjacks 121.5-121.

I sent out a premature "Congratulations" email to the Vandals owner and the league. It didn't occur to me until the evening of the next day THAT IT WASN'T OVER!

The Padres had tied the Rockies and they were playing a 163 regular season game! This was only the 7th such game in MLB history. Holliday is a Rockie, an MVP candidate, and a Crackerjack. Pitching for the Padres was Jake Peavy, a Vandal. So it was his best pitcher against my best hitter. And that Red Moon the night the Red Sox won their 86 championship was just a coincidence too. :-)

The Intrepids did not have a Rockie, so it was all up to Holliday. If Holliday goes 2 for 5 (while watching the game I miscalculated (or misexcelled) and thought he only needed to go 1 for 3, but it works out about the same anyway.

Holliday got a hit in his first at bat. I was now in first place! Maybe they would take him out. :-) If he gets another hit I will win! Holliday also ensured he would win the batting title (you know in, er, real baseball), he was up by more than a point.

In his second at bat the game was close and there were two runners on, and he was overanxious. Peavy had him 0-2 quickly, and even the best hitters are under the Mendoza line in that situation. I think he struck out.

I think he struck out again in his third at bat. I dropped down to second. Peavy was pitching poorly (except to Holliday), so Holliday would get another at bat. If he goes 2 for 4, I win, if he goes 1 for 4, I lose. Holliday grounded out, but San Diego tied the game and it goes to extra innings!

If Holliday gets another hit in hit fifth at bat, I win. He didn't I lost - but then the cool thing happened. Holliday came up in the 13th inning, with his team down 8-6 and drives in a run and scores the go ahead run!

But this post is about fantasy baseball. With Holliday finishing 2 for 6, the final batting average standings had the Intrepids ahead:

Intrepids 0.29137
Crackerjacks 0.2913669

That's 3 MILLIONTHS of a point separating the winner from the best loser. One hit or one at bat in nearly 7000 over the course of 6 months.

No worries though - I can live at least half of what the Bhagavad Gita says - don't be attached to the fruits of your actions. I'm sure if I won, I'd be jumping up and down with "Yes! Yes!" (OK, maybe not that excited). But I'm not bummed in the least about losing, it was great to be in such a race for 6 months, best I've ever heard of.

And if you wonder where "rotisserie" baseball comes from, it's named after the now defunct New York restaurant "La Rôtisserie Française" where the game was created by Dan Okrent and his friends.

First Post

2007-10-04T21:56:00.000-07:00

The "e" is silent, but I'm sure glad it's there. :-)

Assuming I blog here, I'll blog about baseball, spirituality, science, and other weirdities.