Saturday 24 August 2002

This Policy Review article reminds me of Mr. Bligh’s Bad Language, if I had ever read that. Rather than interpreting 9-11 as if it were a Clausewitzian [i.e., rational extension of policy—’lan.] act of war, Bush instinctively saw it for what it was: the acting out of demented fantasy. When confronted with the enigma of 9-11 he was able to avoid the temptation of trying to interpret it in terms of our own familiar categories and traditions. Instead of looking for an utterly mythical root cause for 9-11, or seeing it as a purposeful political act on the Clausewitzian model, he grasped its essential nature in one powerful metaphor, offering, in a sense, a kind of counter-fantasy to the American people, one that allowed them to grasp the horror of 9-11 without being misled by false analogies and misplaced metaphors. How much wiser Montezuma would have been if he had said, [base "]I do not know who these white-skinned strangers may be, or where they come from, or what they want. But that they are here to do evil I have no doubt. So let us act accordingly.[per thou] [Policy Review by way of Arts & Letters Daily] In the dorms I once met a fellow of Coptic descent who did not believe in prisons. I posed a number of increasingly violent situations, including the violent rape and murder of his sister, and the most he said was, the damage was done, why should the government have that sort of power over anyone? Now I lean towards the libertarian, but come on! I then tried a series of metaphors, starting with a raving dog on the street to be put down to a cancerous tumor than needed to be extirpated. No going. In all this he acted in a perfectly reasonable way, but never engaged himself—invested himself—in the argument, as if it were a matter of pure logic. Being a nice guy otherwise, I would rather think he was screwing with me or unwilling to concede the argument than that he was completely amoral and devoid of sense. Is it possible to believe this? There is one decisive advantage to the [base "]evildoer[per thou] metaphor, and it is this: Combat with evildoers is not Clausewitzian war. You do not make treaties with evildoers or try to adjust your conduct to make them like you. You do not try to see the world from the evildoers[base '] point of view. You do not try to appease them, or persuade them, or reason with them. You try, on the contrary, to outwit them, to vanquish them, to kill them. You behave with them in the same manner that you would deal with a fatal epidemic [~] you try to wipe it out. 10:41:50 PM    comment []

By the way, wimped out. 9:22:03 PM    comment []

I used Yahoo! Maps driving directions to get to the Apple Store, which took me through the back roads. Pretty, especially in the extended twilight caused by the clouds and mist. 9:16:28 PM    comment []

categories: Computationally Minded

Went to the Apple Store at Short Hills Mall to pick up a Jaguar family pack license, but it’s not available until next week apparently. How stupid is that? So I am going to buy the single license version now and install it on as many blasted computers as I wish. When it comes out next week I’ll ask for an upgrade. If they don’t have something like a $70 upgrade, then I will uninstall 10.2 from all my machines but one. Yeah. Sure. 8:57:44 PM    comment []

categories: Hostage to Crap

I am outraged. I just saw a commercial for What’s New Scooby Doo? I noted how the animation seemed to be fairly on model. but. then. I saw it. Fred’s ascot was gone! He was wearing a rugby shirt or whatever they call them. Polo shirt? Outraged, I tell you. 8:40:53 PM    comment []

categories: Hostage to Crap

Edward just told me that “Losing My Religion” was REM’s beginning-of-the-end song. I think so as well. More than a decade ago I picked up Indigo Girls on the strength of a housemate’s assertion that they were a female REM. This is not true today, nor would that it be an inducement to pick it up. After the success of “Losing” the soaring vocal harmonies that characterized this band sort of gave way to a sort of cult of personality; afterwards Stipe seemed to always be the only singer, and I never picked up an album of theirs after Out of Time. A story without much point: Stipe is a strict vegan, and apparently cannot abide the smell of people who have eaten meat, so he needs his own bus or tour van so he won’t be surrounded by the rancid stink. I have this from a former tour-mate of theirs, but I think he was drunk or high or both at the time. 3:21:37 PM    comment []

categories: Computationally Minded

Okay, someone stopped by here during the week by googling for a "sparse matrix" in Squeak or Smalltalk, I forget. Not that I incessantly click on my referer log minute after minute looking for hits, but, gee whillikers, I felt bad that I could not accommodate whoever it was. The lame implementation is really simple: take a Dictionary (either subclass from it or make it a Component of a Composite pattern), then use Points to index into it. Have any index misses yield a zero. Simple! If you want to be safe, make any index misses that are not Points or out of your bounds throw an exception if your system implements them, or return just call a halt. It’s probably not up to doing high-speed production matrix work, but you’ll never know until testing it, eh? 2:58:36 PM    comment []