August 12th, 2010
The pop culture taught us the drama of a button press. Be it a doorbell that the stranger rings on a rainy night, or a nuclear weapon being launched by the Army commander, the culminating moment happens when the button is pressed.
Which is why it was somewhat shocking for me to realize that with buttons on a computer screen, what triggers an action is not the moment the button is pressed, but the moment it is released. Once you press the button, you can still change your mind — simply move the cursor away. This creates a very different kind of drama — in a way a slightly diminished one, as we have one more chance to rethink what we’re doing, but also a more suspenseful one, as the thing that now separates us from the action is a natural state — a release of a button, the removal of a hand from the mouse key.
Posted in comparisons, for reflection, reductions | No Comments »
August 10th, 2010
There are reports of middle school kids all over the U.S. getting high in a new, legal kind of way. Apparently some of more than fifty Coca Cola and Pepsi flavors, when mixed together and heated up, synthesize a powerful chemical similar in its structure to THC, the main ingredient in marijuana. Which precise soda flavors need to be mixed, in which proportions and the details of the heating process are unclear; the “recipe,” as the youths impudently call it, has managed to be kept secret among the fourteen-year-olds, just like the contents of their diaries, despite the likely popularity such a revelation would cause the potential whistle-blowers (or — experts argue — precisely because of the embarrassment such a revelation would cause the potential whistle-blowers).
Our reporters scoured the Web looking for further explanation; however, seeing as there are about thirty-five hundred Facebook groups, each of which claims to be named after the recipe, it is unclear whether the information will see the light of day.
The spokespersons at Coca Cola Co., and Pepsi Co. refused to comment on this speculation.
In Fairfield County, Connecticut, local government officials, prompted by pressure from the wives of several affluent residents, said that, pending the verification of the reports, they would begin drafting legislature aimed at limiting sales of certain combinations of flavors. More drastic measures include the introduction of regulations that prevent young people below the age of 21 from purchasing sodas, or a ban of certain flavors altogether.
Posted in fake news, fiction, funny, products | No Comments »
August 8th, 2010
I don’t really watch TV, but a few nights ago I spent a couple of hours watching some late-night programming. That TV has a unique power to draw the viewer in and not let go had been clear to me, but it was only then that I understood an important reason for that, at least for me.
When we watch TV, we can judge.
We judge everything, from kitchen shows to commercials. We make instant decisions about what we like and what we don’t like. We judge without being judged, and, even better (thanks to TV’s feedback-less nature), without ever figuring out (or needing to know) whether our judgments are right. For example, I saw all but the very ending of a show titled “24 Hour Restaurant Battle” (not a particularly imaginative name) where two teams compete to create a restaurant in 24 hours. The show makers gave me ample opportunity to make my judgments: this chef had a moment of panic here, that waiter tripped and fell, and so on. I ended up turning the TV off just before the verdict was given, and I realized that I couldn’t care less about the actual result. In fact, I remembered, the show just before it, “Iron Chef”, took nearly one hour to show me the competition and, subsequently, rushed through the conclusion in the last 7 seconds of the show. I barely had time to review the scores given to both contestants.
We want an opportunity to judge without the responsibility to judge well; and so as such, TV creates this little bubble, my own instance of the world where I’m right and nobody can tell me otherwise.
Posted in discovery, for reflection, human nature, reductions | No Comments »
August 6th, 2010
The Brits faced the impossible challenge. They couldn’t have kept their old political system in a new democratized world. But an empire so renowned for (and deriving so much of its strength from) its monarchy could not simply have abolished it. They’ve done a brilliant thing and invented a new kind of balance, one that combines the best of two worlds: the short-term stability of a democracy (giving people the impression that they are empowered to control their own destiny) and the long-term stability (having a uniting figure, a symbol to be proud of and worship–as the desire to worship is in my opinion one of the most fundamental traits of mankind).
Posted in art, clever, reductions | No Comments »
August 3rd, 2010
Being a son of a seafarer, I developed a kind of fascination with being on the sea, and with maps. It is because of the latter (and because I happened to live in Boston, and because I didn’t quite like how MBTA imitated Harry Beck, and because I always wanted to know how far it actually between the different subway stops) that in 2005 I decided to make an actual Boston subway map, that is, a geographically-accurate map of all subway stops.
It was several years ago — I believe MBTA may have added a few subway stops since then, and you can also see all these stops on Google Maps, but there’s something elegant in the simplicity of my diagram. It’s also a good case study of Google Maps, scripting and LaTeX.
The idea was to find all the subway stops on a map downloaded from Google Maps using the locations of the stops as reported by MBTA (as you can imagine, it was a humongous pain to click on every single station map to figure out where to actually plot each station), and put the coordinates of each station in a LaTeX file that would generate the pdf image of the subway map. I used pstricks, which is a great LaTeX package for drawing graphics.
The following tcsh script downloads the relevant quadrants from Google Maps and creates an HTML file that displays all the quadrants on one large page. The URL format for the quadrants has changed since 2005 but you get the idea:
get.tcsh
Then I opened the large map in Photoshop and figured out the coordinates of each subway station and turned them into a LaTeX file:
mbta.txt and mbta.tex
Finally, I ran LaTeX to generate the following pdf file (click on the file to download the pdf):
The actual Boston T Map
Posted in art, code, miniproject, technology | 1 Comment »
August 3rd, 2010
One of the most valuable abilities a person can boast, in my view, is the ability to classify. It’s very closely related to the ability to think in terms of layers of abstraction, since categories are just abstractions on top of the objects being classified.
Most people are really bad at any kind of categorization — they either simply don’t do it (just look at people’s desktops on their computers) or come up with very poor categorizations and as a result find it difficult to locate finds in a large set or synthesize properties of sets efficiently (which are the two operations that good classifications make trivial; and the two operations that are actually fairly commonly needed. There is also a lot of money to be made on good categorization systems, for example, in systems that allow customers to search for products to purchase).
A friend of mine W.D. pointed out that taxonomies are dangerous. I will agree with him: to create a classification system for the sake of it is not only wasteful, but also risks inaccurate generalizations being made. But a good classification, supported with the goals of that classification, is invaluable.
Some principles that should guide a good taxonomy are:
- Unique representation — everything should have a single, deterministic place in the hierarchy
- Meaningful dimensions — ideally you should be able to express each dimension (or category) in as few words as possible. Arbitrary divisions don’t make it easy to find things and make for a weak hierarchy, even if they allow you to bifurcate your set of objects right down the middle
- Reasonably sized dimensions — in a perfect classification, each added property halves the number of items in it. This will, of course, never be true but there are good ways to split the set into by-and-large equivalently-sized sets. This balances the categorization (it won’t take a large number of dimensions to describe an object – for a perfect classification, you only need 12 bits of information to classify four thousand objects, which with a good category system, may mean three dimensions that each take one of sixteen values
- Separable dimensions — ideally each dimension should be fully disjoint from all other — if shouldn’t matter if you apply a condition first or last. Unfortunately, most times, the further dimensions vary depending on the values of the prior dimensions. For a good example, visit Amazon.com and see how the filters change based on what category of items you select. If the dimensions are separable, you can more efficiently find things by picking the relevant dimension first
Posted in for reflection, human nature, principles, reductions, retrospective | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2010
Crediting some fairly natural (and intuitively understood) concepts with people’s names seems to be a distinctly American idea. I’ve never used the term Venn diagram (although I have drawn two overlapping circles to illustrate a point countless times) before I came to the U.S. Similarly, I was shocked to hear that the idea to illustrate the degree of fulfillment with partially-filled circles is actually being credited to a dude who first seemed to have popularized (pointed out the obvious?) this particular visualization method.
Posted in The Daily Badness, comparisons, for reflection | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2010
I’m becoming increasingly more convinced that where one adds the most value in a workplace is not a set of skills one possesses, but the ability to make reasonable decisions faced with imperfect information, which is really just three things:
- An ability to see the possible outcomes (ability to visualize; one something you may call creativity)
- An ability to enumerate the value and the possible risks of each
- An ability to evaluate these trade-offs
In other words, everything there is to a responsibility is the ability to make decisions and each decision is simply an output of an evaluation function of all the pros and cons of all the possibilities.
Posted in reductions, retrospective, things everyone should do, whatis | No Comments »
July 29th, 2010
About a year ago I took one of those aptitude tests. The test was what all standardized tests are — inaccurate and easily manipulable. One thing I took away, however, was the hypothesis the interpreter of my results had about what I perceived as a strong organizational ability (yes, sometimes bordering with OCD). Perhaps — the person suggested — my ability to keep track of many things at once, never forget what needs to be done and when, and organize things into related categories are all a coping mechanism that I built for myself to compensate for being naturally disorganized. While it’s a long shot, there is some evidence for it — I need to write things down as my scratchpad memory is weak and I have spent a long time perfecting a mechanism for staying organized. But the idea of having a trait be a disguise for a natural lack thereof struck me as interesting.
An aside (while we’re at “faking” things) that I alluded to above: I think a test is either accurate, or can be streamlined, but never both. The latter requires some level of systemization and trivialization, and thus the possibility that smart people will be able to fake the results by reverse engineering the test. The MBTI is a perfect example of that: the algorithm for delivering the MBTI metric is very deterministic which makes the test easily administrable but because of that, it’s pretty obvious what choice will yield a particular MBTI type.
Posted in for reflection, human nature, reductions | No Comments »
July 29th, 2010
I remember disliking alcohol pretty much in any form until I was about 20 (and yes, I have been drinking prior to turning 21, since in some parts of the world such an act is legal). And recently my friend P.P. and I had a conversation about alcohol and he told me he still doesn’t like it (he’s about my age). This prompted me to think about what caused that transformation in me, and whether it is a good one (i.e. one that is beneficial to undergo — and under what circumstances).
I think that alcohol itself performs two roles: it’s a stimulant (which is why most people are drawn to it from a young age), and it’s a carrier of gustatory information. Wine wouldn’t taste as good if it had no alcohol in it, but alcohol itself is pretty disgusting.
I also think, at least for me, alcohol was an acquired taste — a taste which required me to forgo some utility in the short run in order to enjoy a lot more utility in the long run. That is, before I acquired a liking for alcohol, I was in a local maximum; I didn’t like alcohol but I stuck with it and over time, doing that has allowed me to experience a much greater wealth of experiences. I am proud to have a good friend T.C. convince me to keep trying Scotch as right now it’s pretty much the only liquor that I enjoy drinking (maybe except some in cocktails).
What solidified my understanding of acquired taste as something valuable and desirable were many other examples, especially in the past six months, of my tastes changing. I moved away from sweet, milk chocolate in favor of dark chocolate. I started enjoying spicy food (yes, even the chicken wings — mind you, I still dislike vomit sauce with all my might) and this opened up the wealth of the Indian cuisine to me. Finally, some distinct experiences where an ingredient I never liked (such as, for example, celery) found its way in a dish I had, and to my shock I liked how it tasted, made me realize that there are no bad ingredients, just bad ways of preparing them.
Another thing that an acquired taste allowed me to do is to be able to understand myself better. Acquired tastes, having a higher barrier of entry, are usually complex and our enjoyment of them is sensitive to many small changes in their olfactory and gustatory properties: there isn’t much you can say about, say, gummybears, but Scotch you can write manuals about. This forced me to understand what particular components of taste I like more than others.
I’m not sure P.P. will have alcohol any time soon. But there is a glimmer of hope — I did manage to find one drink he did not dislike.
Posted in changes/cyclical, for reflection, human nature, things everyone should do, whatis | No Comments »
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