A finely crafted analogy can convey one’s point with both elegance and force
The Rude Pundit crafts an analogy regarding the government’s attitude towards the second ongoing war. I am left wondering what’s happening at the other end. Afghanistan?
Archive for November, 2005
Refreshment time
The medium Lobster makes a point! at Fafblog!, as often he is wont to do:
After eight centuries of ossified due process and doddering dedication to the rule of law, it’s refreshing to see Western democracy make the bold leap forward to locking people up forever without charges or legal representation.
Drawn together by inexplicable forces
Barbara scanned and uploaded one of our many books the other day, and I just now got around to looking closely at the bibliographic entry in the project comments.
The book is: Obed Hussey, Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap by Follett L. Greeno, 1912. It is something of a weird rant, in the spirit of anti-Einstein books, but pointing out how Cyrus McCormick was a diabolical fiend and not the savior of agriculture we learn about in high-chool history, while Obed Hussey was the True Inventor of the reaper, but was somehow cheated and misunderstood.
That in itself is interesting enough. But why is it that I find somebody named Follett L. Greeno writing about Obed Hussey is significant?
Analogies for Limited Arbitrage and Agent Distrust
The Irrational Investor asks for more analogies, beyond jaywalking and refactoring legacy code:
Hedge funds have a real problem these days acting on arbitrage opportunities because their marketing department’s requirement that they be open ended (for competitive reasons, customers can withdraw their money whenever they want). This is referred to in the literature as limits to arbitrage. It’s basically a trust problem. Hedge funds may identify an arbitrage (mispricing of equivalent assets), but these have a tendency to become more mispriced after the hedge fund takes a position as more noise traders enter the market. The hedge fund customer gets a performance statement in the mail (you lost money this month) and decides that the fund manager is incompetent and withdraws their funds to place them with a manager that has postive returns during each and every month. The hedge fund manager has to unwind their arbitrage position at a loss in order to redeem the customer’s capital investment. This is basically the story of the 1998 meltdown in Long Term Capital Management.
They are the government. Do they want your meat?
Heidi Bond asks a puzzling question about tax law and online games in A Question About Tax:
Now it turns out that the Kingdom of Loathing has a well-developed economy. I could sell my Talisman of Baio to another player in the Mall of Loathing for close to a hundred million meat. It also turns out that the Kingdom of Loathing has an economy which is intimately connected with our real economy, so I could sell the Talisman on eBay for cash.
If I sold the Baio on eBay, I’d obviously have to pay taxes on the sale. And if I found a valuable diamond ring while walking through the woods, I’d have to pay taxes on my windfall. So is finding the Baio itself, in the game, a realization event? If I choose to keep the incredibly-useful Baio for myself, without selling it, do I have to pay taxes on the find? What about if I sell the Baio for meat in the Mall of Loathing? Is that a realization event?
The answer is not that we can’t value the Baio; there’s a pretty robust in-game player economy, and regular out-of-game meat sales on eBay. An in-game Baio is worth 98 million meat, and meat goes for about 700K per dollar, so Baios are probably worth about $140. This isn’t a difficult valuation problem (and even if it were, I don’t think that would matter).
First you determine exactly what you want to have happen. Then you do everything you can to make it so.
Ron Jeffries responds to an immanent Global Usage Shift in Sad Microsoft Posting:
The features might be good, but the process described is not TDD, nor a reasonable variation thereof. Test-Driven Development was clearly defined by Kent Beck, and has been described by others, such as Dave Astels, and even myself. It is a process where the tests are written one at a time (though one might make note of some possible tests for the future), and the tests are used to help define the design and develop the code. The Microsoft version of TDD is indistinguishable from a single-object waterfall model, to a first approximation.
This reminds me quite a bit of similar experiences I’ve had with: “complexity”, “chaos”, “programming”, “extreme programming”, “typography”, “editing”, “open source”, and very recently “optimization” and “networks” and even “teaching”.
Take-home message: Sucks to know things.
What I was reading last night
From The American Quarterly Review, No. 17 (volume 9). March, 1831.
[with a nod towards Green Gabbro]
…different latitude, for every successive day in the year, and during each varying hour of the day.
It has been attempted to explain this change that has unquestionably taken place in the temperature of climate, by conceiving a change in the situation of the earth’s axis. This hypothesis, however, is shown to be untenable by the calculations of physical astronomy: no other cause then remains but an actual change in the condition of the earth itself.
The most remarkable of all the phenomena which the earth presents, are the great changes of weight that have taken place in identical formations which must have arisen from the prevalence of water, and therefore nearly if not exactly upon the same level. The primitive or lowest stratified rocks, probably had not water for their cause; still, however, they must have been in the fluid state, and these are not only found beneath all other rocks, and in the lowest places to which the industry of man has penetrated, but they also rise and form the greatest part in bulk of many of the highest mountains; indeed, if we except volcanic mountains, of all the more elevated masses. The transition and secondary formations are subject to similar although less changes of level, rising, as has been seen, to the tops of the Pyrenees, and to even a greater height on the sides of the Andes. The tertiary or superior formations are found in Italy and Sicily, forming mountains several thousand feet in height, while the latest of all, the diluvial with its embedded mammalia, exists in the lofty table land of Quito. The inference is irresistible, that we do not now find these deposits at the levels where they were left by the ocean, as in the case of the primitive rocks by their own crystallization from a fluid state, but that they have been altered in their positions by actions of a character totally distinct from that by which they were originally formed.
This inference is still further confirmed by the great and sudden changes of level that are frequently to be seen in similar strata, faults, as they are styled by miners, in which the same bed has its level sometimes changed hundreds, nay even thousands of feet. These faults, if in greatest abundance in the more ancient rocks, are to be found even in the newest, and sometimes affect several formations incumbent on each other, of ages the most different. Thus, then, we have distinct and conclusive evidence, that as we inferred from theory, the solid crust of the globe has been shattered and fractured repeatedly, and at all the different epochs of its history. This fracturing and cracking we have shown, must, in conformity with strict mechanical laws, have been attended with the rise of the molten liquid from beneath, which ought in some cases to have formed veins and dykes, in the places where the fractures occurred. It is however possible, that the rise of the fluid from beneath, may not have taken place where the pressure occurred; but it would then have been compelled by hydrostatic pressure, to issue at some other point, breaking and tearing the weaker parts of the solid crust, in order to afford itself a vent.
The latter class of phenomena are still in action, and we have evident traces of their occurrence in all the different stages of the world’s existence; of the former it will also be seen there is conclusive evidence.
The visible effects of a subterranean heat, are most frequently met with at the present day in the form of volcanoes. Of these, there are not only a great number in activity, but there are still more that have been certainly active since the last great change that the surface of the earth has undergone.
That part of the great group of mountains which we have before described, which lies in the new continent, contains many active volcanoes, and others but recently extinct. Terra del Fuego, as its very name imports, is the seat of many; Chili has several; in Peru are to be noted Arequipa, Pichinca, and Cotapaxi; while Chimborazo is obviously one that has become extinct at a period not remote. Passing the Isthmus of Panama, we find the volcanoes of Guatimala and Nicaragua almost infinite in number. In Mexico, are Orezaba, Popocatepetl, and Jorullo; the last of which first rose from beneath the surface in 1759. California has five active volcanoes; and we know, from the observations of La Perouse and Cook, that they also exist along the north-western coast of America. Mount St. Elias, in particular, was seen in a state of eruption. These mountains connect those of Mexico with the volcanoes of the Aleutian islands and of the peninsula of Alaska, which continue the system towards Kamtschatka, in which peninsula there are three of great violence. We have seen some proofs, that there are active volcanoes to the north-west of China, but none now exist in Thibet; and the action that once took place there has sought new vents, in regions more near to the present bed of the ocean. Thus, Japan has eight volcanoes, Formosa several, and, in proceeding to the south, the land of volcanic action widens, and becomes of immense extent. It embraces the Philippine, Marian, and Molucca islands, Java, Sumatra, Queen Charlotte’s islands, and the New-Hebrides. The active volcanoes of Europe and western Asia are few in number; but those that are extinct form a great system, in which the active ones are included, and which seems to spread in the form of a belt, from the Caspian sea to the Atlantic. Volcanic action still occurs on the shores of the Caspian. In the chain of Elburg is a lofty mountain that still emits smoke, and around whose base are several distinct craters. Syria and Palestine abound in volcanic appearances, of which the great crater that has swallowed…
What do you do for a floundering professor?
For weeks now, I’ve been reading a lively discussion consisting of many posts from academic bloggers who are instructors and teaching assistants, and who have been wrestling with their diligently unprepared, undermotivated, stupid, misguided, misinformed, strenuously inattentive, plagiaristic, not-quite-getting-the-point students. Been there, done that. I still have, in a box somewhere, the Most Egregious Biology Final Exam Ever Composed — Ever, No Really. Some day when I feel nostalgic and have cleaned a path to the box, I will trot out the infamous MEBFEECENR, and no doubt will discover that the student in question now bespews the Congressional Record with his abhorrent and mind-warping utterances.
As I said, I’ve been reading a lot of these lately. I am not the first to ask, in passing, whether this inherent stupidity of students, over the many centuries it’s been a subject of conversation among pedagogues, might be taken to imply something other than Teaching is a Thankless Job, Pearls Before Swine, and that one about the sow’s ear. That whole Pig Cycle. Something, I dunno, maybe about doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting the results to turn out different eventually? What do they call that again? I forget.
At any rate, there is also a substantial crowd of academic bloggers who are students, who in turn complain about their classes. I now count myself among those. On the whole we tend to complain about foolish lectures, our instructors’ disregard of the basic principles of pedagogy, the occasional fundamental violations of students’ (or more often advisees’) rights, stuff like that there. Though because as a group we’re young and foolish and inexperienced, this tends to come across a lot like, “can you believe it?! Well, I never!!”
I flatter myself that I am very much not young, nor more foolish than should be expected. And I find this semester that just as there are a heart-rending class of “floundering” students who really, truly deserve instructors’ help and pity, and who provoke their own genre of troubled head-shaking and sighs among the blogging community of instructors, there is an equivalent class of floundering instructors.
Nobody seems to be talking about them.
What do you do when a professor has such a poor model of his students’ mental state that he imagines they enjoy the material as presented, understand the material, have mastered the material? When he asks, “You know X, right?” and the students’ answer means they have heard of it, and he assumes they mean they know it. What do you do when an instructor has so diligently built his entire class’s structure upon a body of patently false, wrong-headed received wisdom, that he ends up teaching things that are not only useless, but unintentionally misleading to the students? What do you when the position of trusted authority held by that professor — and the inevitable degree of ignorance among his students — ensures not only the students’ acceptance of this material as being correct, but makes them suspect the real stuff, out in the world, must be wrong? Or worse, leaves them utterly ignorant of anything beyond the sad, misshapen glimpse they have been provided?
What do you do when the professor’s student evaluations will surely fail to capture these facts, since the students as a rule know no better than what they’ve been told, and because the class itself is in a state of multi-year flux and who knows, maybe next year it will be different and better? What do you do when the professor is not yet tenured, with the vision that the might be? When the class might be seen by himself, his administrative superiors, and even the students as a resounding success?
What do you do when you have sat down with the instructor and expressed your concerns, explicitly, and he responds that you are probably right, but that his hands are tied, and he hasn’t the institutional support or time to run a lab (which might help), and that it’s just an introductory class and so how much damage can he really be doing? And that thus there is nothing to be done. (But, as an aside, that he doesn’t see how the material you have pointed out is wrong could possibly be wrong.)
And, worst, what do you do when the truth may be no floundering is going on at all? When the entire situation is no more than a reasonable reflection of the widely-held social norms and expected quality and depth of a modern, high-speed upper-tier university education?
Easy answer: You bitch about it in your blog.
Harder answer: You chalk it up to the status quo. You let him fall into the place that’s been so carefully prepared for him by generations of academic practitioners before. You watch him enter a position in which the only damage he can do is no worse than the damage his peers are doing already.
Scant solace lies down either path.
Procrastinate now
From The Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor, Volume 1, Number 3, March 1810.
Respecting the overture to the opera of Il don Giovanni lately published, and the manner in which it was composed, the following singular anecdote is related. The celebrated Mozart had completed the whole of the opera, with the exception of the overture, and as the performance was to take place in a few days, the managers began to be alarmed, lest in his usual habit of procrastination, he should leave his task incomplete, and thus disappoint the public.
For of old
Mozart’s virtue, we are told
Often with a bumper glow’d
And with social rapture flow’d.–Francis’s Horace.Messengers were sent to remind him of the shortness of the time, and urge him to finish the undertaking–but in vain; Mozart was nowhere to be found. At length he was discovered in a billiard-room, half intoxicated, earnestly engaged in a critical part of this very fascinating game. The person who came in search of him, aware of Mozart’s passionate fondness for this amusement, contrived to remove the queues out of the way, and refused to let the game proceed till the overture was written. Mozart, therefore, called for music-paper, &c. and in the state of mind we have described (the agitation of which must have been considerably increased by the vexation of being interrupted in his favourite game) actually completed the overture while leaning over the billiard-table. After this wonderful effort of genius (for such it must be called) he resumed his game as if nothing had happened.
The deeper truths I learn in school, you never knew before
It is important for young industrial engineers to have the Visual Basic for Applications manual read to them page by page, very quickly, because they will need it in their work.
No real Web Application developers ever read HTML, any more than a technical writer would consider looking at the binary sourcecode of a Microsoft Word file. Web Apps are designed with WYSIWYG design applications. And Visual Studio.
The greatest benefit lies in first hearing mention of every control structure, function and syntactic fillip of a programming language in a lecture, then subsequently (several days after) working alone on homework projects. Only after you have mastered the correct principles of syntax and the IDE should you be introduced to advanced stuff like design, analysis, testing, and stuff like the real professionals use. Unfortunately, because of resource limitations, that material will not be covered during the students’ academic tenures.
There is no critical implication to be found in the fact that the University’s network administrators refuse — under any circumstances whatsoever — to allow Microsoft’s IIS to be installed on any networked computer whatsoever, even ones used to teach ASP.NET development. Therefore students should install IIS on their own computers, where they can take responsibility for administrating it. Actually, administering it is not a concern; getting it linked up with VB.NET is more important.
A team makes the best progress on a project when it divides the problem into discrete chunks, takes them off, and works on each chunk independently until the last minute.
An Entity-Relationship diagram drawn in Microsoft Word with the drawing tools is better than an E-R diagram drawn with a pen and scanned. Because it is easier to make.
Excel development is not programming, even when VBA is involved. Learning to use the Visual Studio.NET IDE is identical to learning programming. Testing is something that happens when you compile code, and debugging something that happens when you can’t compile your code. Debugging is best undertaken by some combination of (a) staring at the code, and (b) making small changes and attempting to recompile.
And perhaps the best and most appropriate lesson: If you don’t like the way something’s being done, turn away. If you meddle, you will only get recruited for a hopeless task.
Dramatis Personae
Fifteen quatloos to the first to identify the work featuring:
-
[a redacted title character]
Matthew Merygreeke
Galwyn Goodluck
Tristram Trustie
Dobinet Doughtie
Tom Trupenie
Syn Suresby
Scrivener
Harpax
Christian Custance
Margerie Mumblecrust
Tibet Talkapace
Annot Alyface
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