The start of the "talk" was delayed half an hour, I think due to arranging the huge number of cameras and lights. But, while that was somewhat irritating, Smith more than made up for it. He came out and said that the evening was going to be entirely question-and-answer format, and that he would stay until everyone had asked their questions. Amazingly, he absolutely meant it. He started talking at 8:30, and it wasn't until 1:40 that the organizers pulled him off stage so that the building could be closed. The camera people had packed it in hours earlier and dismanted their equipment around him as he spoke. Earlier in the evening he had faked walking off stage so they could film the "end" of the event, but he came back and kept talking. Even after five hours, he was still answering questions with good grace, humor, and rambling 10 minute stories. And at 1:40, when they made him stop, he still went out front and signed autographs and had pictures taken until 3AM. He clearly puts a lot of energy into these events and is well worth seeing.
With regards to the content, he's a very good speaker. [check out an alternate account of the evening here] He walked a good line between making fun of questions and still answering the stupid ones (and boy were there some stupid questions.....). His prepared stories were very funny, but he responded well to the situations at hand too. He called Jason Mewes on his cell phone and had him "talk" to the audience to the degree possible over a cell phone held up to a microphone. He talked about his upcoming projects and shared the name of his new movie (which is undoubtedly out around the internet by now, so go look for it if you're interested). He didn't give inspiring answers about being a director - he just said to go do it, to find the money yourself, to find actors among your friends, and to make it happen rather than waiting for someone to come along and help you. As good a life lesson as one deserves to get as a side dish to a $7.00 evening of humor.
It's always hard to find new books to read, and the internet is teeming with sites proporting to help with this problem. Book Forager allows you to indicate four characteristics of a book's nature (for example, how funny, romantic, violent, weird, or demanding you want your book to be) and will offer up suggestions to meet those criteria. It's not how I think of choosing books, but it's interesting to play with. [via Rebecca's Pocket]
If you're looking for books, though, Ithaca is probably the best place to be this weekend. Tomorrow is the start of the Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library book sale, one of the three largest book sales in the country. The sale is just amazing; it's a warehouse full of used books at really great prices. If you're a book fan and anywhere in the area, I highly recommend coming to town and checking it out.
The RAND Institute (a non-profit research and analysis group) puts freely available electronic copies of their reports online. Of particular current interest may be their suction of reports on Global Security Environment.
I had no illusions that Alias, one of ABC's new action dramas, would be a good show. There was sufficient evidence from the ads - the hair-color-changing, tightly-clad heroine who can beat up trained men twice her size despite any evidence of musculature in her legs and arms might tip you off to the intended audience. But, the premise was that said heroine was a grad student by day, CIA agent by night covert operations expert. So I settled in with my quilting, my snacks, and another grad student to see what network television would do with this character.
I am pleased to report that there were two entire scenes shot inside classrooms. Of course, neither lasted more than 10 seconds. Neither were distinguishable from the standard undergrad-lecture scenes, or really from a well behaved high school class. The heroine appears to be in the English department - it doesn't seem to matter. It would also appear that she's been in grad school for a while, but is still taking classes requiring in-class essays and mid-terms. I have no clue why they decided she should be a grad student. I have no intention of watching any more of the show to find out.
All students at Cornell got a warning in their inbox last week about violating the DMCA, basically saying not to run Napster-like software or you might face action both from companies and from the university. Nor did it sound like an idle threat - they report that already this semester a student was caught after Sony's scans of the internet detected the student downloading a song they held the copyright on. Sony approached Cornell as the source of the copyright violation, and Cornell tracked down the student. The message likened the random scans catching some but not all violators in a community where many people break this law to traffic stops catching some but not all speeders. Whether you like the DMCA or not, it would seem wise to step lightly around it.
If you're considering becoming a faculty member but aren't sure you understand enough about how academics really works, you might want to sign up for the Tomorrow's Professor listserv. It's run by the Stanford Learning Lab and distributes articles on a wide range of topics. Looking at just the past dozen posts, there have been articles on Committee Service: Opportunity and Danger, Commments on the Teaching-Research Relationship, How to Diversify the Faculty, Roles and Responsibilities of Department Chairs, and Planning the Successful Federal Proposal. I've found the articles to vary between obvious and insightful and range from philosophical topics to answering concrete questions. You can check out all past articles on their website too.
My favorite recipe site, SOAR: Searchable Online Archive of Recipes, has become RecipeSource. It's still got the same huge collection of recipes, though. A must-visit for any cook. And check out the "Miscellaneous" section at the bottom for "recipes" for homemade crafts such as playdough, potpourri, candles, or sidewalk chalk. There's even an actual, edible recipe for Tufeen Hushani. You do know that Tufeen Hushani is Vulcan wedding cake, don't you?
I don't remember getting my Color Census 2000 ballot from Crayola.... Scrolling through the results, blues and purples seem to be the most popular colors, with reds and greens showing up fairly high on the list, and the yellows and browns being the least popular. My favorite as a child, Sea Green, only ranked 63rd. Most popular? Plain old "Blue" blue. [via Strange Brew]
Somehow, even though I explicitly said we should continue to watch and to criticize, my comments yesterday were construed by some to be saying we should trust unthinkingly in our government. As I said, I am still concerned about restrictions on civil liberties. As I noted, civil liberties are also getting a lot more press these days than they have in the past few years. I'm mildly hopeful that will have a positive effect. And I'm as tired of people claiming Bush is secretly rejoycing at this tragedy because it may help him pass liberty-constraining legislation as I am of people suggesting we start dusting off the nuclear weapons.
It may behoove me to remind readers that a lack of statement on my part does not imply indifference. I'm quite aware of concerns such as the proposed Anti-Terrorism Act. By my reading, it also seems that many of the negative implications for computer usage are already in place in Section 1030 of the United States Code, particularly A1, A4, A5a, and A7 which define what activities would be considered terrorist, and the definition of "protected computer". This is not a new threat -- not a sign of this single event dooming our liberties. By all means, continue to inform yourself, and take action if you are so inclined. Be aware that a fear of terrorists is causing some to want to take unwarranted action. But much of the country is scared and angry, and a commitment to rational, contentful debate rather than name calling or grammar-picking would probably do us all good.
And I believe that's exactly what I said yesterday.
Lots of people are concerned about their civil liberties. I've been concerned about my civil liberties for years, and current circumstances don't make me less concerned. However, I think I'm a bit more complaiscent that some. For one thing, pursuing national defense is one of the few things the federal government is supposed to be doing. It may turn out that having the president spend most of his energy on this will keep him from pursuing all sorts of domestic policies that, constitutionally speaking, aren't clearly within federal jurisdiction. Certainly, we shouldn't have Pataki running off after terrorists (that's the job of the Pennsylvania governor, of course). The current rhetoric is at least talking about balance, and keeping us safe while maintaining our freedoms. Compare this to talk about outlawing guns and monitoring parents being justifiable "if it saves a single child" and you can guess where, barring further information, I think the biggest risks are still coming from.
I've heard some criticism of Bush's recent address in front of Congress, and I've heard people denounce that criticism as unpatriotic. I think Karen over at Thought Experiment wrote well on this topic. You should go read the whole thing, but her closing sums it all up well:
If a concrete issue arises that I think deserves criticism, I'll make that criticism. If I disagree with a specific action, I'll say so. Otherwise I'm going to watch closely and be as helpful as I can in my small way. Until he gives me a good reason not to, I'm going to stand behind the president, let the guy do his job, and be glad as hell that I'm not the one who has to do it.It's not patriotism to blindly follow someone without question, and nobody should be silenced. But the flip side is to remember that knee-jerk reactions under the assumption that it is always good to question authority isn't productive either. It's time to criticize policies and actions and let the critiques of style and pronunciation go.Cue swelling patriotic music. Yeah, yeah. There are just times when you can't kid yourself that your bitching about the president is a Voice of Freedom and Dissent; it's just being a weenie, you know?
I didn't think Bush's speech was bad. It was vague, and that was frustrating, but not surprising. Plans are still being made. Some of our plans can't be publicized openly at this point, obviously. Determining who is "with us" is going to have to be relative. If you listen carefully to people like Powell, it seems clear our expectations for positive action are going to be different for countries with deep roots of terrorism.
There is something I felt was missing from the speech, and from everything we've heard thus far, though. It's been said, in a variety of ways, that the "war on terrorism" will be military, financial, and diplomatic. I haven't heard discussion of the necessity of societal improvement in the countries producing terrorists. In all of the cases I'm aware of, suicide bombers aren't the rich, the powerful, or the particularly clever. They are the desperate. The people who've lost jobs, homes, or family due to political factors outside their control. They are pulled in and used by the people who do have power and money. Look at the people who get involved in gangs in our country - it's another instance where violence and crime offer the (seemingly) only chance to exercise control over one's circumstances. The supply of desperate people will not end until the average person feels assured of their ability to keep themselves and their family alive and secure. I suspect this has escaped comment in part to avoid the appearance of rewarding terrorists, but it is a necessary piece.
It might be worthwhile to note that I set up a Screenshot Forum months ago. I haven't been using it, but I should restate that anyone feeling agitated that I'm saying all this stuff and not giving people a place to reply should go ahead and use it (just click "Ask a Question" to start a new topic). I promise I'd point it out in my next entry, even if it were critical.
Okay, with that said, here are a few links on entirely different topics that I hope you enjoy.
It was worthwhile skimming this article about the lack of correlation between the reviews a movie gets, and the popularity of a movie with viewers. It concludes that movie critics both seem out of touch with movie viewers, and have relatively little impact on people's viewing habits. However, it is dealing with a fairly small sample, and this summer's crop of movies was so bad, that I think people were going to anything they could stomach. [via RRE]
This biographical sketch of Alice and Bob is a classic within computer science, but it's still very funny. An excerpt:
Against all odds, over a noisy telephone line, tapped by the tax authorities and the secret police, Alice will happily attempt, with someone she doesn't trust, whom she cannot hear clearly, and who is probably someone else, to fiddle her tax returns and to organize a cout d'etat, while at the same time minimizing the cost of the phone call.
A coding theorist is someone who doesn't think Alice is crazy.
Go take a look if you aren't familiar with it. The end's a little weird, though. [via RRE]Do you need a fold-out DeLorean for your desk? These paper folding models aren't origami; they are printed designs that you cut out and fold in some simple ways, mostly of famous buildings or vehicles. [via RRE]
There's a common debate over whether morals are real or if they're mental justifications of intuitive reactions. Recent studies of brain scans of subjects asked to judge the morality of given scenarios indicated that moral judgements are based on emotion. Parts of the brain involving emotions are used longer in making moral judgements, and the subjects who made emotionally difficult choices, such as smothering a crying baby to save a group of people from detection, took significantly longer to make their choice. This does disregard the question of whether the process of answering moral questions reflects how people actually make moral decisions in real life. However, since I suspect people are more, rather than less, likely to be coldly logical in a psychological study, I suspect the result does generalize. [via Sigma Xi: Science in the News]
Live baby live
Now that the day is over
I got a new sensation
In perfect moments
Impossible to refuse
Sleep baby sleep
Now that the night is over
And the sun comes like a god
Into our room
All perfect light and promises
Gotta hold on you
A new sensation, a new sensation
Right now gonna take you over
A new sensation, a new sensation
Dream baby dream
Of all that's come and going
And you will find out
In the end
There really is
There really is no difference
Cry baby cry
When you've got to get it out
I'll be your shoulder
You can tell me all
Don't keep it in ya
Well that's the reason why I'm here
Are you ready for a new sensation
A new sensation
Right now gonna take you on
A new sensation, a new sensation
Hate baby hate
When there's nothing left for you
You're only human
What can you do
It'll soon be over
Don't let your pain take over you
Love baby love
It's written all over your face
There's nothing better we could do
Than live forever
Well that's all we've got to do
Hey now I'm gonna take a new sensation
A new sensation
-- New Sensation, INXS
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