The Mapping Reduction

2004-06-16T00:33:00.000-04:00

Tales of the City

I've been known to say that the only way to tell the truth about NYC is to lie through your teeth. But I have a kind of fun true story about the city.

Lately I have been working mostly at night. The other night I wanted to make an adjustment to a website I am responsible for. It should have been a small thing, but I wound up getting a lot of strange error messages. The problem eventually had me questioning my own sanity, as well as the integrity of the disk on our server (which is a bit scary). After a few hours of wrestling with it, I figured out what was wrong, and successfully made my updates. It was around 4 AM by this point. I decided that a suitable reward would be a beer. Since I had no beer in the house this meant that I had to walk several blocks down 5th Ave to find an open store.

The store that is open in the middle of the night in my neighborhood is run by an elderly Korean fellow. He has a kind of authority, a gravitas, if you will, that you do not often find among caucasian gentlemen, these days. He is not a frail old oriental man- he is large, and robust- I'd not want to tangle with him, despite the fact that he is at least 30 years older than I am.

I have mistrusted wallets since I lost one that contained most of my savings, when I was 16. I carry my money in my pockets, and while my twenties tend to stay fairly crisp, my dollar bills wind up crumpled into little balls underneath my keys, my ATM card, and my twenties. This is not a problem for most shopkeepers- they are happy to have my money, no matter how crumpled it is. This fellow did not like the state of my bills.

As I fished the crumpled dollars out of my pocket, one by one, his face grew sterner. He had a scale on his counter, and it was there that I placed these bills, after smoothing them, as much as was possible. He took them, but with a contemptuous look. "You hate money", he said- his accent was very strong.

"What?"

"You hate money", he said, "You always be poor".

I had heard him this time, but I must have looked as if I hadn't. "You hate money, you always be poor" he repeated.

Out of the mouths of babes and old korean grocers...

2004-06-14T10:26:00.000-04:00

Oh, I've been commenting on other people's blogs this whole time Here's a sample- from Radley Balko's blog:

"I've long been a supporter of drug legalization- not because I am some dewy-eyed idiot who lacks an understanding of how devastating certain drugs, legal and illegal, can be, but because I have seen the carnage that prohibition produces.

Recently I have become a big fan of prohibition on opiates, specifically heroin. I have high hopes for Afghanistan, and believe that they may be able to put together a real entrepreneurial culture there. As well, I am very respectful of their traditions- I'd like to see the traditional family farmer in Afghanistan succeed. It's clear that right now is not the time for drug legalization, much as I believe in its rightness.
I think, in fact, that we should run some new commercials- "This poor Afghan child depends on you- have you had your fix today? Heroin- it's not just for breakfast anymore." After two decades of carnage, we owe them our patronage.

In fact, I am thinking of setting up a "fair trade" heroin company. If you'd like to be a stockholder, get in touch- I suspect it might be profitable. No Junkie could resist the plastisised handouts showing how this "fair trade" was allowing some beautiful young afghan girl to attend school, or buy a tractor, or something."

Damn I'm a useless bastard. I hope that someday there will be a world I'm not worthy of.

2004-06-14T10:20:00.000-04:00

Damn- the new blogger is pretty- I've been bitching about it as long as I've been using it. They have finally fixed lots of it- lets see about the rest. Of course this is all sour grapes- I tried to get money to start a blog company about years ago, failed, and.... well let's just say that most of my recent interactions with Google have involved lawyers- although t is amazing how weird and clueless their lawyers are.

2004-02-27T09:55:00.000-05:00

By the way- I should point out _why_ i feel the way i do about marriage, and about the state. The most cogent thing i can think of to say about the gummint is this- whatever it does, it does at gunpoint. I don't believe that that can be entirely avoided (which is why I am neither a radical libertarian nor a radical anarchist)- some things need to be done at gunpoint, and it is more comfortable to use the state as a proxy for those things (more comfortable than what?- the alternative). But I'd prefer to limit it.

So whatever you want the state to do... you should be willing to see forced upon the recalcitrant, at gunpoint.

This is all pretty obvious stuff... but it seems that very few people really get this. More to come on the subject of anarchy.

2004-02-27T09:27:00.000-05:00

Gay Marriage?

I guess I should point out, at the outset, that in the end, I'm not really a libertarian, if you require that term to refer to someone who holds a position that requires the abolition of the state, etc.- I am a libertarian only in the sense that personal liberty is the value that informs most of my politics. In fact I would be the first to recognize (well, maybe not the first, but you know what I mean) that radical libertarianism tends to wrap around into radical anarchism, which is a thinly disguised form of totalitarianism.

What does this have to do with gay marriage? Just this- I have noticed that being a libertarian (or having some tendencies in that direction, if you prefer), makes it hard to reason about that question, as such. To me, it seems obvious that the state shouldn't have a damned thing to do with marriage- but that individuals should be able to form contractual relationships which have standing in a court of law, and which mimic the legal "incidents" of marriage.

The push for gay marriage, as opposed to civil union, seems to be mostly about using the power of the state to determine something that is in the end a matter of conscience. This has nothing to do with rights- civil unions are capable of resolving all questions of rights.

This controversy has nothing to do with that- it is entirely a question of what the state endorses as "real" marriage. My question is this- why should it endorse anything as "real" marriage? It is disingenuous in the extreme for advocates of gay marriage not to also advocate polygamous marriage- although it is very understandable given the realities of making it (gay marriage that is) legal. It would be nice if those advocates stopped calling people who point out the obvious inconsistency in their position "bigots".

So what should be done? As I said, believing the things I do makes it hard to reason about this, simply because my preferred solution will never come to pass- or at least it won't come to pass in the near future. A lot of people have already pointed out that if (legal) marriage became a matter of contract, as opposed to a matter of conscience, the problem would go away.

So why isn't that what gay marriage advocates are arguing for? Simply because they want a system as exclusionary as that which exists today in regard to heterosexual marriage, but which includes them. This is completely indefensible as a matter of principle- but I am not quick to condemn it... given the political realities of the day it probably wouldn't help to note that gay marriage would (will, in fact, as it is inevitable) put the final nail in the coffin of traditional straight marriage- as a matter of conscience enforced by the state. Of course anyone who blames gays for the first 23 nails has been asleep since 1966. If you really wanted to avoid polygamy you should never have stopped enforcing the Mann act, OK?

Of _course_ that slope is slippery- thing is by the time you get to gay people the seat of your pants has already been worn through, your ass is full of red clay, and it is way too late to hold up your hands as a signal- you need to put them down on that slippery ground just to keep yourself from spinning off into some gully you never imagined when you began your trip down the hill. Should have drawn the line at adultery, or maybe even onanism.

I can't approve of gay "marriage"- the government shouldn't be in the business of telling people what kinds of marriages they should take seriously. The (unfortunate if you happen to be of a particular disposition) result of this is that I cannot approve of straight "marriage" either. I don't find that unfortunate, myself. I'm also perfectly willing to dissaprove of polygamous "marriage" :) (although I have to admit that it sounds kind of good to me, assuming that I could arrange for a suitable coterie of adoring females to become my "wives")- I'm an equal opportunity disapprover (I should note that I more than disapprove of the reality of many polygamous marriages, which often involve very young girls who are traded like livestock- that is just wrong- why? see the harm principle).

Marriage, as it currently exists is exclusionary. It grants certain privileges (and certain defects, I suppose) to a set of people whose inclusion in that set is purely a matter of conscience. Allowing gay marriage does not increase the fairness of the system- it simply expands the set of persons who may use the power of the state to validate their relationship, and, not incidentally, justify their drawing on the treasury.

Marriage is dead. Long live marriage.

2004-02-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

In the aftermath of 9/11 a lot of us suddenly became aware of firemen. It was _the_ meme for a while. It has faded now.

I think that it is worth keeping this awareness- firemen do something that is hard to understand in terms of the normal human calculus. There may be some pluses to the job of being a fireman (getting to hang out in the firehouse all day playing cards and cooking chili is one of them), but they hardly outweigh the reality of what firemen do in the line of duty. So why are people firemen?

I know a little bit about fire- I have been in a few. In fact, fire, flame and spark were among my first words. This might have something to do with the fact that the apartment building that I lived in when I was an infant was burned down for the insurance money- my family was the only one to survive from the floor I lived on. In the end, when my parents were sure that they would die, I was literally thrown from the burning building to a fireman below, who luckily (depending, I suppose, on what you think of me) caught me. (both of my parents survived- my father did have to put up with a certain amount of indignity: he had long hair at the time, and was wearing only a T-shirt- the headline in the paper the next day, beneath his picture, was "half-naked mother throws child from burning building"). I believe that he still has the clipping, and the T-shirt.

Why the personal exegesis? I'm willing to sit around all day and tell stories about myself, my immediate family, my cousins, and my ancestors. Some of them are pretty boring, but every once in a while one will illuminate something important.

I owe the firemnan who caught me a debt that can't really be repaid (well maybe I might catch him as he falls out of a burning building, but that seems unlikely). As far as I know he was a fireman- a guy who caught a little bundle, one that hurtled toward the ground, to be broken, like a melon, tossed from a rooftop, on the David Letterman show.

To the degree that I beieve that I am not a melon, I must thank that firefighter. Because I know that pavement makes no distinctions between infants and fruit, I am grateful that men do.

What I'd like to do is ask a few firemen: what could possibly make them think that it was worthwhile to risk their own lives to save others. This isn't a question of bravery, as it is normally defined, per se- I have run into an inferno to find my own cats (I have been in more than one fire). What I want to know is what is it that makes you run into a fire, if you don't even know one individual that might be in there. It takes no bravery to save what you love. It takes a lot of bravery to save what you don't personally care about, if that salvation comes at risk of your life.

I'd like to say more about the imnplications of that idea- but in the end I am really afraid of them. Maybe some other time.

2003-12-22T07:18:00.000-05:00

And speaking of Morford: Tim Blair takes him on, again. It's amazing that Tim has the energy to read him all the way through on a regular basis. Hell, it's amazing that his editors do. Maybe they don't.

2003-08-29T21:47:00.000-04:00

Speaking of lists- via Radley Balko, Rolling Stone's list of the hundred greatest guitarists of all time. Again, I must ask, WTF?

It'd be a bit better if RS qualified this "greatest guitarists of all time" bit- say restricted it to rock guitarists, as the list mostly is (although Robert Johnson appears at number 5). Maybe that's implied. Otherwise- how does Joe Pass miss this list, while some of the people on it make it? Lenny Breau? Pena? Segovia (who, if you aren't qualifying the list, should be number one without controversy- not that I'm unhappy with Jimi, if it is, in fact restricted to rock guitarists)? I have relatives who are much better guitarists than a lot of people on this list (not a joke, I might add- a few of my relatives are pretty fucking good guitarists [world class is the the appropriate phrase]- 'course they tend to be classical guitarists, or jazz guitarists, and thus unlikely to wind up in Rolling Stone). Glad to see Danny Gatton on there though.

I'd still quibble even if it were rock guitarists of course.

Update: Radley asks why Yngwie Malmsteen didn't make the list. Back in the day, when I was first mashing some strings, I used to read Guitar Player. I remember an interview with Malmsteen (in which, to be fair, he cited Hendrix as an important influence- not that I could ever hear it), in which he noted that Hendrix had "primitive technique". Somewhere, out there, Jimi is laughing.

2003-08-26T22:32:00.000-04:00

If I gave posts headings, I guess I'd have to call this one cats and dogs not living together. I noticed something interesting today. As you probably know already, Right-Wing News kicked off a very interesting shitstorm (I said that to prove the point of my second-to-last post, really) by querying bloggers about the best and worst figures of the twentieth century. Looking at the lists people have come up with has cured me of any desire to ever make up a list like this myself. It hasn't cured me of a morbid desire to see other people's lists (so give me a break- I grew up in a time when The Book of Lists was second only to the Rubik's cube in inexplicable popularity). In particular I find comparing them interesting. But I never thought I would find a gem like this:

Take a look at this post on Crooked Timber. Now look at this post at Tacitus (and I'd just like to point out how close I just came to hitting Ctrl-W pasting in that link :) - scroll down). Nothing too odd there, the lists actually seem to have quite a bit of overlap... until you realize that one is a list of the greatest figures of the twentieth century, and one is a list of the worst.

Now, I like to think [I hate thinking that actually :)- but it is good policy] that everybody I argue with is both well-informed, and well-intentioned (although some people have certainly proven otherwise). And it's hard to make the case that either party in this story fails on either of those criteria. Make of it what you will.

I'm tempted not to comment any further, just because both of these lists are a bit weird. I'm more ideologically sympathetic to Tacitus, but Wilson? Russell? WTF? Russell in particular, on a list of the worst 20th century figures rubs me the wrong way. (I certainly wouldn't put him on a best of either... just seems to me that there are a lot of more obvious candidates).

And as far as the crooked timber list goes- I think I'll just ask: Lenin? If I said what I think about this choice- well, blogs have a tendency to devolve into a sort of know-nothing Kabuki, where the roles have been laid out from time immemorial, and the participants have spent their entire adult lifetimes practicing their part. I think I'll skip that bit of theatre. I'll keep thinking that those guys are both well-intentioned and well-informed (they're obviously better educated than me), but I think I'll always assume that they have a very large moral blind spot when it comes to Lenin, and members of his extended family. [yup- I shouldn't lump the whole blog into it- it is a group blog].

At any rate, I think I'm _really_ cured of any desire to make up one of these lists now. God knows who might wind up on it.

Update:I should apologize to Tacitus for putting his post on an equal footing with Crooked Timber's on this one. Here's a link to the comment section: http://www.henryfarrell.net/movabletype/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=387Crooked Timber Note that chris is the original poster. From his comments I get the idea that he put Lenin on his list mostly to provoke controversy- he doesn't seem too eager to defend the choice (not surprisingly- it's a hard case to make). I'm awfully sceptical of the half-hearted defense he does make- and I extend that scepticism to Trotsky. I'm not a fan of Communism, even in its "ideal" form (full disclosure- long ago I was a lot more positive toward it)- but I think it can be interesting debating that issue. I find attempts to rationalize the actual history of Soviet Communism forced, at best.

Update 2: I edited the update above a bit- on rereading it I thought that it could be read as meaning something different than I had meant.

2003-08-26T21:43:00.000-04:00

You know I've never liked the phrase the phrase "blogfather"- I just think there's something a bit weird about it. I don't have one- by the time I started writing some blog posts, I'd been reading a lot of blogs for a long time. If I did, I suppose it would be Jim Henley, as he was the first (and only, as far as I know) blogger to give me a link. But I'd hate to implicate him in this enterprise, as I am a loose cannon, if there ever was one. Anyway, as I said, I never did like the phrase much. Still, if it's not presumptuous of me (as if I get any traffic to speak of), I'll recommend his blog.

I also think I should point out my favorite blogger: Colby Cosh. Now, I suppose I might be a bit prejudiced: I'm sort of a Canadian, so I understand some of his posts a bit more than the average American (i.e, I know who Brian Mulroney is- I even know some jokes with the punchline 7%- I guess that dates me). On the other hand I have no interest in any Canadian sport. I also have no interest in baseball, American, or otherwise.The fact that Mr. Cosh can get me to read the occasional post about hockey, or baseball, says something about his skill as a writer. As far as I'm concerned Colby Cosh is the best blogger I've read, period. And I have read a few of them.

2003-08-26T21:27:00.000-04:00

Oh, and by the way- I wanted to point one thing out. I do occasionally use profanity [occasionally?]. Don't email me about it. If any particular word, divorced from context, offends you, I highly suggest that you don't read anything I have to say. For one thing, I know that if you're that hypersensitive about some permutation of letters, you're not likely to like much that I have to say anyway. I'm not interested in hearing about it. If you email me about it, not only will I delete your email, but I will also hunt you down like a dog and... well, you know.

2003-08-26T21:09:00.000-04:00

I've gotten pretty fond of mozilla in the last couple of years. I have both windows and Linux machines, but my real loyalty is to Unix in general (although I am quite aware of its deficiencies- this is something worth posting about at some point, since there seems to be a lot of interest in the subject these days- in fact this post was insired by a comments post on the subject at Brad DeLong's weblog that got eaten). As a result I was always a Netscape user- actually I started off with Mosaic on Ultrix. Netscape 3 was a big jump for browsers- it did lots of stuff, and mostly did it well. Netscape 4 (or Communicator, as the suite was known) was a big disappointment- I still wound up using it for years, as there weren't a lot of good alternatives on Linux for a while, other than Lynx, which I still use a lot. As I said, I have both Linux and Windows machines (don't ask me how many- I'm a bit embarrased about how many computers I have running at one time), so I started doing my websurfing using IE under Win32. This led to some security problems- IE 5 contained what was probably the worst security hole in the history of computing (well, some of the Outlook holes are pretty bad as well- please note that I am not a reflexive MS basher, or a Linux zealot). I was unhappy again.

Eventually Mozilla matured. I was happy again. I use Mozilla for most of my browsing, even under Windows. One of the things I like about it is its connection to the old-school hacker culture. I'm not talking about c programmers hacking unix. I'm talking about something that goes back a bit further. I'm talking about the really old-school hackers who hacked in Lisp. How is Mozilla connected to them? Through Jamie Zawinski. In fact some of the most prominent artifacts of that lost continent of Lisp hackers are to be found in Netscape. Some of them are in Javascript (don't confuse it with Java- they are very dissimilar languages). Javascript is actually more like Self and Icon than Lisp, but it is also a lot more like Lisp than most mainstream languages. One sad truth is that very few Javascript programmers understand the language very well- most of them are completely clueless about closures, and about Javascript's prototype based inheritance. Which is too bad. Javascript is actually a pretty interesting language, but you'd never know it looking at the code that even the acknowledged Javascript gurus write. I don't know that JWZ was involved in formulating Javascript (or ECMAscript these days, if you want to be a pedant), but it's clear that whoever designed the language had a fetish for cool obscure languages- the kind that work better than the more mainstream industrial ones.

Anyway, that's not the point of my post (I really should have called this blog the home of the parenthetical). My point has to do with Netscape/Mozilla's built-in text editor. You know the one. What you use to write multi-line text into a form. It originally featured key-sequences based on emacs. Problem is that emacs predates both the mac and the PC, and thus has very different "shortcuts". My fingers are trained to emacs far more than they are to mac and PC equivalents, but I've learned to avoid emacs key-sequences in most Windows apps. In Mozilla, my fingers are uncertain, and that can lead to problems. Like the whole point of this post: if you use any emacs key-sequences at all, _don't make Ctrl-w close the goddamned window_!

2003-08-26T20:34:00.000-04:00

I'm back. I'm going to post more often. Promise. Maybe. Come back often to find out if I've made good on that.

I changed the template for the blog to something that is readable for IE users- yes, they make up a tiny percentage of the population, but might as well make things accessible to them too. One bright spot is that blogger's interface seems to have improved.

It's been a while since I've posted. Thanks to Jim Henley for linking to me twice, even though I hadn't posted anything of much interest to anyone. He's a nice guy, and his blog is good. He also wrote a very funny ('cause it's true?- maybe- I would have been a bit harder on Kennedy myself, and a bit easier on Shrub) post that was sparked by a question of mine- nice to see people take a random thought and do it a lot more justice than I could have.

Anyway, enough contrition.

2003-05-14T05:29:00.000-04:00

Blogger seems to place ads based on the content of the blog. Not surprising, I guess. That it misses the actual intent of my post is also not surprising. The ad at the top of my blog at the moment leads to a page that features this as the most important paragraph:

This essay functions as performance text in Otalvaro-Hormillosa's video/performance piece entitled "Inverted Minstrel." Using hip hop within pop culture as a primary example, the piece raises questions about sexism and homophobia within "cultures of resistance" and Asian, mixed race, or Latino/a assimilation practices as a result of white supremacy and/or Afrocentrism.

The advertisement misses the point of my post- I was objecting to the lttle box that Plath has been forced into. So I got a link to artists who have decided, of their own volition, to live within an even smaller box.

And a question: What the hell does hip-hop have to do with homophobia, aside from promoting it? Sorry, but if you want to glorify "hip-hop within pop culture" then you are going to have to accept that hip-hop is aggressively heterosexual, and not too friendly to gays.

There's a lot more stupidity in that paragraph- I think I don't have the patience to address it all. If I decide to keep blogging, I wil move the blog soon.

2003-05-14T03:42:00.000-04:00

And as long as I'm blogging on the subject of poetry, here's one that's new to me, but I think bound to become a favorite:

   Leap Before You Look

   W. H. Auden

   The sense of danger must not disappear:
   The way is certainly both short and steep,
   However gradual it looks from here;
   Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

   Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
   And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
   It is not the convention but the fear
   That has a tendency to disappear.

   The worried efforts of the busy heap,
   The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
   Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
   Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

   The clothes that are considered right to wear
   Will not be either sensible or cheap,
   So long as we consent to live like sheep
   And never mention those who disappear.

   Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
   But to rejoice when no one else is there
   Is even harder than it is to weep;
   No one is watching, but you have to leap.

   A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
   Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear;
   Although I love you, you will have to leap;
   Our dream of safety has to disappear.

The first thing that I notice about it is how much it feels like a villanelle. Now, I'm a sucker for a good villanelle. But I'm even more of a sucker for something that isn't a villanelle, but can't be mistaken for anything else. To write a good villanelle is hard- to write a great villanelle that is not at all a villanelle is, as far as I know, unique to this particular poem- of course what do I know, it might be done all the time.

2003-05-14T03:11:00.000-04:00

Some poetry I've been reading very closely lately:

   And I
   Am the arrow,

   The dew that flies,
   Suicidal, at one with the drive
   Into the red

   Eye, the cauldron of morning.

That's the end of Ariel, by Sylvia Plath. As they say, read the whole thing. Still timely :). That final phrase, so apocalyptic, contrasting with the earlier line about blackberries (never named), is one of the best in English verse- although her work calls for a stronger term than verse. The enjambment is remarkable- in particular the gap before the last line, and the capitalization of Eye.

I wonder what Plath would think of the little box her work has been forced into by her feminist interpreters. I think she would find it no less confining than daddy's shoe (and a bit smellier, to boot). When will _those_ bastards be through?

Anyway, she is one of the finest poets of her time- maybe the finest (certainly miles ahead of her husband, Ted Hughes, who achieved more recognition, particularly in her lifetime, than she did). Her work has been suborned by one particular academic camp, and rejected by another (when I was first in school I took a seminar, called News of the Universe, after a collection by Robert Bly, in which she featured as the villain, for daring to drag her persona into her work- my interest in her dates from that).

But worst of all is the way that her work has been encumbered by her life. Her great art was to turn the personal into the universal- the art of her critics has been to reverse that process.

To paraphrase a wise old gentleman, that's what I never could stand about the academy- all the damned vampires!

As long as I'm talking about Plath, and the academy, I should link to my favorite of hers (except maybe Ariel)- Elm.

[EDIT: I may have seemed a bit dismissive of Hughes- I should note that he wrote what was one of my favorite books, when I was a child, The Iron Giant. I think it was originally published under the title The Iron Man]

2003-05-04T23:44:00.000-04:00

Of course I promised to comment further on the whole Santorum issue. I'm stll planning to do so. But I am 1. waiting for it to die down a bit and 2. waiting till I have the time to write something intelligent about it. I am collecting what I think is the definitive collection of links on the subject. In the meantime I think Radley Balko is interesting on the subject of Stanley Kurtz' NRO editorial.

2003-05-04T23:34:00.000-04:00

Read this piece by Radley Balko.

I've been making this argument for a while. When I made it to Holly Dressel (if you don't know her, she's David Suzuki's researcher and co-author- translation, she writes his books for him) she got so pissed off at me that I swear she would have hit me if it weren't for the fact that I'm twice her size. She thought about it :). But Holly's like that.

Yes, it sucks that people's lives are so bad that working in a sweatshop is an improvement. But given that that is the case, taking away that improvement is not a kindness. It is a cruelty.

2003-05-04T23:23:00.000-04:00

Wow. I've been corresponding with some relations I haven't spoken to for a couple of decades. My father and half-brother. I'll just note how weird it is to try to summarize your life to date. Very weird. But I'm quite happy to have made contact with them after all this time.

2003-05-03T23:02:00.000-04:00

I've been writing a fair bit of perl code recently, for the first time in a while. I've had to do a fair bit of data import, sometimes of quite messy data, and some custom log file analysis. I find that I've forgotten a fair bit of my perl, and am constantly having to look at reference material. While I find perl quite handy in a lot of ways, this is the annoyng thing about it- the DWIM nature of the language, paradoxically, means that there are odd special cases all over the place, and you really can't just guess at what things do, even if you have a good mental model of how the language works. This isn't a problem if you're constantly immersed in the language, but it always takes me a while to get back into the swim of perl after a long absence.

On the other hand, if I'd written these scripts in Java, they would have taken quite a bit longer to code, and would have been many more lines of code. Perl's very general hashes are incredibly useful for the kind of log file analysis I've been doing, but the syntax for dealng wth hashes of hashes (or hashes of hashes of hashes of hashes in my case) is, well, unfortunate. And it's just difficult enough to build decent abstractions for this sort of thing in perl that I tend to not bother with it when I'm in a hurry. This seems to be the case for a lot of perl programmers, even some of the acknowledged gurus of perl, judging from the code I've read.

On the other hand there is probably no language in which regular expressions are easier to use and more efficient. I'm impressed with how efficient a little perl script can be when you push most of the work off onto the bits written in C- those bits are clearly well written. In the case of my log file script, I'm pretty sure that IO is the bottleneck. The log files in question are about 2 million lines (yes, we need to rotate them more frequently), and my little script runs pretty damned quickly, on a server that is already under a fair bit of load (and yes, it would be better to process the files on a different machine, but for right now this is the way it has to be.)

Of course, the road to hell is paved, not with good intentions, as popular wisdom would have it, but with regular expressions. To paraphrase Jamie Zawinski:

"I have a problem", says the perl programmer, "I know- I'll solve it with a regular expression." Now he has two problems.

Still, when you're banging out a quick throwaway script regexes can be very convenient, particularly if you have a good library of them salted away, as I do. And the perl syntax for regexes is just effortless. I often prefer Python to perl for scripting (almost always for apps of more than a thousand lines or so- it's certainly possible to write readable perl code, but it requires a great deal of discipline, and somehow goes against the grain of the language), but for short scripts making heavy use of regexes perl is often easier. And I'm not even going to get into how cumbersome the syntax for the new regex facility in Java is, other than to point out that it showcases exactly what's wrong with Java.

I used to be a firm proponent of the widespread idea that "syntax doesn't really matter". I've come around 180 degrees on this subject in the last three or four years. I now consider syntax incredibly important, in practice, even if it is irrelevant in theory. This has a lot to do with my increasing appreciation for Lisp and it's macro facility. I did a fair bit of CL and Scheme programming in school, but we never really covered macrology- the emphasis was on higher order programming and building "run-time" abstractions. Very, very useful stuff of course- CS 287, Robin Popplestone's Paradigms of Programming course (which would have been more accurately called Introduction to Functional Programming in Scheme) was, by far, the best class I took at University (although Physics 172 and Honors Calc II were also very good- it's worth taking _good_ honors courses even if it means a lower grade- and since I never did homework in school, relying on good exam scores and the curve, it did for me- I think not that many undergraduates not majoring in Mathematics get to derive, or prove the correctness of, gaussian integration- being a CS student my proof was inductive, which my professor hadn't ever seen before- that comment from him is my favorite memory from a rather checkered undergraduate career, made sweeter by the fact that he co-authored my favorite Calculus textbook)

So, you might wonder where I'm going with this. Of course, I'm gettng ready to advocate using lisp :). I would very much like to move this sort of scripting to schsh. My only worry is that very few programmers can program in scheme these days- should I be hit by a bus, what would my employers do?>/p>

2003-05-03T16:46:00.000-04:00

Well, I haven't updated in a week. Work has been crazy, and will be so for the foreseeable future. I have to integrate some code into a website over the weekend, and finish testing it, so that will keep me too busy to post anything more substantial than links. I hope to be able to post more later today, or tomorrow.

In the meantime, via Dave Barry, this caught my eye: a seven year old "pregnant" with his own twin brother.

Best quote: "It was remarkable."

2003-04-26T05:56:00.000-04:00

A little while ago Esquire published a very funny piece, a sex advice column ostensibly written by Donald Rumsfeld. If you read blogs much, I'm sure you've seen it already. It was funny because it really did capture Rumsfeld's voice. I don't know if the person responsible (Stephen Sherrill) for that piece was a Republican or a Democrat. But I'm pretty sure that on some level he had some affection for Rummy. You would have to to mimic him that accurately. Or maybe Sherrill is just a good writer.

There's a new sex advice column on the web, a parody of Rick Santorum, written by a man who is possibly the worst columnist in America- sort of a poor man's Robert Fisk ('cause hey, whatever else you might think about him, at least Fisk can write). I'm speaking, of course, of Mark Morford. You can find his column here.

In addition to being a blatant rip-off of the Esquire piece, this column is just really poorly done. That shouldn't be a surprise, given Morford's previous work. How does this guy get paid to write a column? What the hell are they thinking over at SFgate? I mean come on- Santorum is such an easy target at this point that it takes spectacular incompetence to steal Stephen Sherrill's idea, and not even wind up with something funny.

So here's a piece of advice for you Mark. When you write a sex column from the point of view of someone who is now best known for being against sodomy, and homosexuality, it would be funnier if you had a punchline in there that had some point other than the fact that this guy isn't really in favor of sodomy or homosexuality (yeah, I know- you also point out that this might mean that he's a closet case- OK, that's _funny_). It would also be funnier if your faux Rick Santorum sounded something like the real Rick Santorum, only saying funny things. Rather than sounding just like Mark Morford saying very unfunny things. Over and over and over. And over.

Please, someone, tell me: why does this guy have a column?

2003-04-26T04:02:00.000-04:00

Why do I think that there are very few circumstances under which Jim Henley wouldn't want to throw the bastards out? Oh well, my reasons may be different, but my sentiments are the same.

UPDATE: Actually, I don't think that there are any good grounds for impeaching Bush.

I don't find Henley's argument very compelling- Hussein signed a cease-fire with us, and had broken it on a daily basis ever since. The congress approved the war- even if they weaseled out of actually declaring one. The administration may have been sly about how they justified the war to the international community, but they had already gained authorization for war. Not much grounds for impeachment there.

But I do like the idea of throwing the bastards out, just on general principles. What they'd be replaced with I don't dare contemplate

2003-04-26T03:32:00.000-04:00

I haven't figured out how to set up a blogroll using blogger yet. Is there no way to set it up through the interface? I'm perfectly capable of writing html, but I'm a bit suspicious of editing html that is meant to be handled by an automated process. Anyway, if I had one, I would put a number of people on it, but lemonodor would be near the top of my list. If you like lisp, robots or punk rock (I'm two out of three) check him out.

2003-04-26T02:27:00.000-04:00

Virginia Postrel's blog was one of the first I started reading. Then she went away for a long time. Then she came back for a while. Then she stopped posting again. She has a new blog location. And she's posting a lot lately. I hope she keeps doing so. Her latest posts on the Rick Santorum controversy are pretty right on, I think, although I would take these thoughts farther than she does (I'm pretty conservative about some things- as is Virginia Postrel- but in terms of separation of sex and state I'm as liberal as they come, at least without being a member of NAMBLA or something).

Glenn Reynolds has already posted her best quote on the subject, and It would be silly for me to post a quote that has appeared on the front page of InstaPundit. But if you haven't already, read the rest rest of her posts on the subject. Particularly interesting is her takedown of Hugh Hewitt, his response, and her response to Hugh.

I think she is not being quite fair when she says this, though:

Actually, there are THREE debates going on. One is constitutional. One is moral. And the third, to which I addressed myself, is political: Assuming no constitutional limits, what ought the criminal law to be? You’re dodging that question, but Santorum isn’t. That’s the question that goes to the heart of the relation between religious teachings and the role of the state.

Why isn't this fair? Because there is at least one construction of Hugh's remarks that is a viable third way between believing that sodomy is constitutionally protected, and that it should always be prohibited. And that is to leave it up to the prevailing mores of the society involved. And Hugh seems to be saying that he believes that this should be the determining factor here- and that those mores should be determined at the state level. What I find a bit odd is that my reading of comments all over the place by people who are outraged by Santorum's remarks is that they agree, but that they'd rather see this determination made at the Federal level. That's not how they put it of course... I'll post more on this later, but that post is going to require some real thought on my part, and I'm knee deep in a project at the moment. So check back. But I'd say that they are arguing that homosexual sex should be legal, becuase they see nothing wrong with it. I see nothing wrong with homosexual sex, either, but that's not why I think it should be legal.

I'll say this now- I think that the most quoted part of Santorum's remarks is essentially correct- there is a very real slippery slope here. And I think that Andrew Sullivan started off on the right track here, and then lost the thread. (understandably) The slippery slope begins well before you legalize gay sodomy- it begins with Griswold. It continues when you legalize sodomy between married couples, then extends to pre-marital sex, and sodomy in that context. By the time you get to gay sex, it seems to me that the point is already conceded. And Andrew realized this at first- this isn't per se about gays. It's about anyone who chooses to have any kind of sex that Rick Santorum doesn't consider conducive to traditional family values. (In fairness to Andrew, some of the other things that Santorum said were clearly directed toward gay males- but I think that his coment about man-on-dog was directed just as much toward "unnatural" sex acts between heterosexuals- and did not _necessarily_ imply moral equivalence).

That's my thesis, really, but it needs a lot of fleshing out, and a few qualifications. It shouldn't be read as an apology for Rick Santorum- but I believe that he is working from a much more coherent position than he has been given credit for- and that he is fighting a lst ditch battle that he has already lost. Tune in later for a fuller explanation of what I think on the subject. It may contain a stirring defense of man-on-dog sex. It will at least be sort of amused that the phrase was uttered by a conservative Republican Senator.

2003-04-25T23:31:00.000-04:00

Not for the faint of heart- or anyone who isn't interested in recursion in programming languages (this would be your opportunity to scroll down):

A very interesting thread on comp.lang.lisp about tail-calls, tail call optimization, and terminology. It starts off kind of slow, with a question that isn't of much interest to me, or most CLers (call/cc in Common Lisp- or rather the lack thereof), and then a few flames. But it gets very interesting later- look for the long interchange between Duane Rettig and William D. Clinger. c.l.l is one of the last great newsgroups. I love watching people this knowledgeable go at it. Even if you're not a lisper (and why aren't you?), if you're interested in language implementation techniques, c.l.l is very interesting.

2003-04-25T22:58:00.000-04:00

So, to kick things off, let me point at an interesting article by J. Bradford DeLong. The most interesting bit, to me:

Blockages to world trade jeopardize global economic development. Technology transfer is incredibly difficult. It may well turn out that $4 worth of aid are a poor substitute for even $1 worth of exports, because there are few better schools in which to internalize the organizational forms and technologies built since the start of the Industrial Revolution than the school of exporting.

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

This seems right to me, at least in principle- I really don't know if 1/4 is an accurate ratio. Direct foreign aid doesn't seem to have been very effective in helping the people of very poor nations become richer, and that shouldn't be surprising. Trade will eventually put capital into the hands of the people of these nations, and help them learn to use it. The most important factor in the wealth of a society, in the long run, is its ability to make use of capital.

2003-04-25T22:24:00.000-04:00

So I've set up a blog, using blogger, no less. Which is kind of funny, because I have more than adequate webspace, for which I pay a pretty penny, and which I don't use anymore (when I was doing freelance development I used it for staging client projects, but I'm now head of technology for a small web startup which has it's own server space- it should be noted that this blog has _nothing_ to do with the company I work for). If I decide that I really like blogging I will probably move my blog to my own server space, and write my own software for managing it.

I started the blog up, gave it a stupid name, and made a couple of stupid posts, testing it out. I've since deleted them. I'm not going to make a habit of deleting my posts, but I'd guess that no-one saw them, and they were mostly in the way of testing the site. I've since changed the name of the blog, to something that's pretty incomprehensible unless you have an interest in some of the same technical subjects that I used to study, and may again at some point.

I'm a bit torn on the subject of whether I want to blog- on the one hand I have a few things to say. On the other, I'm a pretty private person. I'm tempted to blog anonymously, but I just don't feel right about that. I have a tendency to take some pretty provocative positions sometimes, for the hell of it, and because I think it's interesting to see how people respond to them. That said, the most I ever do is exaggerate my position to some degree to make a point. That is to say that when I take these positions I think there is some truth to them, and my major sin is in not qualifying them. If you want to send me hatemail go ahead (like I could stop you). All I ask is that it be moderately coherent.

I have a number of interests. There's nothing that I am expert enough in to speak as a real authority, and I'm prone to address subjects in which I am at best a knowledgable layman. I'm not going to point that out every time I do it. If you're an expert, I welcome corrections. There are a couple of subjects in which I have passed the point of being a layman, without reaching the point of being a real authority.

I plan on addressing some general subjects and some technical subjects on this blog. If you like the technical stuff but are bored or offended by the general stuff, well, scroll past what you're not interested in, or don't read the blog at all. Likewise if you're interested in the general stuff but the technical stuff bores you to tears.

Welcome to my blog.

2003-04-24T01:50:00.000-04:00

2003-04-24T01:33:00.000-04:00

Testing.