Here is a fatuous letter to the editor, published in the Princeton Alumni Weekly.
The author claims "Life is like a great stage. Besides myriad performers, there are two principal ones. The crucial choice in life is how to specify them as to their order and manner of spelling. One choice is “Me, god.” The other is “God, me.” My theory is that this choice determines one’s choice of ethics."
But what if your choice is "Family, students, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and me" and "god" doesn't even figure at all?
If you're god-soaked, you think everyone else spends all their time thinking about your god. But you're wrong.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Voynich Manuscript
The Voynich manuscript is a strange book, written in a strange script, with strange illustrations.
Yesterday I attended a talk on the Voynich Manuscript (VM), at MIT, by Kevin Knight of USC's Information Sciences Institute. Here's a brief summary of his talk:
The manuscript consists of 235 pages on vellum, with color drawings of plants, nymphs, stars, etc. It contains about 30,000
words written in an unknown script, and is owned by Yale University.
It has a character set that has not been observed in any other document. It is broken up into sections called "herbal",
"astrological", "biological", "cosmological", "pharmacological", and a pure text section at the end. These names reflect the pictures in each section. For example, the "herbal" section contains pictures of unknown plants being grafted onto other plants. The "biological" section depicts small nudes in baths with interconnecting tubes of liquids. The "pharmacological" section shows something that has been interpreted as a medicine jar.
A cover letter of Joannes Marcus Marci of Cronland was found tucked in the manuscript. The letter claims that the book once belonged to Emperor Rudolf II and that Rudolf beliefed that Roger Bacon was the author.
There have been many attempts to decipher the book. One was made by William Newbold at the University of Pennsylvania, He claimed that each letter consisted of many other Greek letters, which were anagrams holding the real meaning of the manuscript, and "deciphered" it on this basis. His decipherment is now regarded as completely bogus.
Athanasius Kircher once owned the book, from 1665-1680.
The Voynich script consists of between 23 and 40 distinct characters. (It is hard to say for sure, since some characters appear to be compounds of others.) There are no signs of corrections, which suggests that the manuscript was copied from some other source. There is an unusual distribution of word lengths - most "words" are of lengths 3, 4, and 5 letters. Many words are doubled, and some are tripled.
The cryptographer William Friedman worked on the manuscript during World War II. There are many claimed decipherments. A 2004 Scientific American article by Gordon Rugg, however, suggests that the manuscript is just gibberish. Perhaps Voynich faked it himself.
Kevin Knight discussed some of his own attacks on the manuscript using clustering techniques. For example, if you try breaking up the English alphabet into two types, say a and b, and use expectation maximization to generate two clusters, you get AEIOUy as one cluster, and the consonants in another. Doing the same for the Voynich manuscript, however, doesn't generate anything particularly meaningful.
You could also try this kind of clustering with the words of the manuscript instead of the letters. When you do so, you get two clusters: the words in the "herbal", "astrological", and "pharmacological" sections predominantly fall into one cluster, and the words in the "biological" and "cosmological" sections predominantly fall into another. [To me, this suggests that the manuscript probably had at least two authors.]
Voynich "B" is the "biological" + "astrological" sections. You can then try to divide the words in this section into more classes. If you do this for English, you get a cluster with words like "my, a, an, the,..."; another with "and, but, next,...", another with "had, asked, could, have, are, is, would,...", another with "for, at, in, no, that, be, but,..." etc. If you do this for Voynich you also get clusters but the meaning is less clear.
My guess is that the manuscript is some form of hoax, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.
Yesterday I attended a talk on the Voynich Manuscript (VM), at MIT, by Kevin Knight of USC's Information Sciences Institute. Here's a brief summary of his talk:
The manuscript consists of 235 pages on vellum, with color drawings of plants, nymphs, stars, etc. It contains about 30,000
words written in an unknown script, and is owned by Yale University.
It has a character set that has not been observed in any other document. It is broken up into sections called "herbal",
"astrological", "biological", "cosmological", "pharmacological", and a pure text section at the end. These names reflect the pictures in each section. For example, the "herbal" section contains pictures of unknown plants being grafted onto other plants. The "biological" section depicts small nudes in baths with interconnecting tubes of liquids. The "pharmacological" section shows something that has been interpreted as a medicine jar.
A cover letter of Joannes Marcus Marci of Cronland was found tucked in the manuscript. The letter claims that the book once belonged to Emperor Rudolf II and that Rudolf beliefed that Roger Bacon was the author.
There have been many attempts to decipher the book. One was made by William Newbold at the University of Pennsylvania, He claimed that each letter consisted of many other Greek letters, which were anagrams holding the real meaning of the manuscript, and "deciphered" it on this basis. His decipherment is now regarded as completely bogus.
Athanasius Kircher once owned the book, from 1665-1680.
The Voynich script consists of between 23 and 40 distinct characters. (It is hard to say for sure, since some characters appear to be compounds of others.) There are no signs of corrections, which suggests that the manuscript was copied from some other source. There is an unusual distribution of word lengths - most "words" are of lengths 3, 4, and 5 letters. Many words are doubled, and some are tripled.
The cryptographer William Friedman worked on the manuscript during World War II. There are many claimed decipherments. A 2004 Scientific American article by Gordon Rugg, however, suggests that the manuscript is just gibberish. Perhaps Voynich faked it himself.
Kevin Knight discussed some of his own attacks on the manuscript using clustering techniques. For example, if you try breaking up the English alphabet into two types, say a and b, and use expectation maximization to generate two clusters, you get AEIOUy as one cluster, and the consonants in another. Doing the same for the Voynich manuscript, however, doesn't generate anything particularly meaningful.
You could also try this kind of clustering with the words of the manuscript instead of the letters. When you do so, you get two clusters: the words in the "herbal", "astrological", and "pharmacological" sections predominantly fall into one cluster, and the words in the "biological" and "cosmological" sections predominantly fall into another. [To me, this suggests that the manuscript probably had at least two authors.]
Voynich "B" is the "biological" + "astrological" sections. You can then try to divide the words in this section into more classes. If you do this for English, you get a cluster with words like "my, a, an, the,..."; another with "and, but, next,...", another with "had, asked, could, have, are, is, would,...", another with "for, at, in, no, that, be, but,..." etc. If you do this for Voynich you also get clusters but the meaning is less clear.
My guess is that the manuscript is some form of hoax, but I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Review of The Numerati
I reviewed Stephen Baker's book, The Numerati, for the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, and you can read it here.
Irving Kristol and Evolution
With all the hagiography going on for conservative "intellectual" Irving Kristol, who died on September 18, let's not forget one of his many idiotic statements: that Darwinism is on the way out because it "is really no longer accepted so easily by [many] biologists and scientists."
As Glenn Morton has exhaustively shown, the trope that "more and more scientists doubt evolution" is one of the oldest falsehoods in creationism. But then, Kristol believed that not all truths were suitable for all people, an echo of Martin Luther's view that lying for his god was acceptable.
Anti-evolution idiocy seemingly ran in the family. In 1959, Kristol's wife Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote a terrible book, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, demonstrating a lack of understanding of biology and a warped view of Darwin's influence. One perceptive reviewer penned that Himmelfarb had "an advanced case of Darwinitis, a complaint that afflicts those of a literary bent and strong attachments to pre-scientific culture, who find in the theory of evolution a disturbing and mysterious challenge to their values". Kristol wrote a favorable review of Himmelfarb's book for Encounter, without bothering to mention that he was Himmelfarb's husband. So much for Kristol's ethics.
Kristol wrote a piece for the September 30 1986 New York Times about evolution. Here are a few excerpts:
Practically all biologists, when they engage in scientific discourse, assume that the earth's species were not created by divine command. As scientists, they could not make any other assumption. But they agree on little else - a fact which our textbooks are careful to ignore, lest it give encouragement to the religious. There is no doubt that most of our textbooks are still written as participants in the ''warfare'' between science and religion that is our heritage from the 19th century. And there is also little doubt that it is this pseudo-scientific dogmatism that has provoked the current religious reaction...
Though this theory [the neo-Darwinian synthesis] is usually taught as an established scientific truth, it is nothing of the sort. It has too many lacunae. Theological evidence does not provide us with the spectrum of intermediate species we would expect. Moreover, laboratory experiments reveal how close to impossible it is for one species to evolve into another, even allowing for selective breeding and some genetic mutation. There is unquestionably evolution within species: every animal breeder is engaged in exemplifying this enterprise. But the gradual transformation of the population of one species into another is a biological hypothesis, not a biological fact.
Moreover, today a significant minority of distinguished biologists and geneticists find this hypothesis incredible and insist that evolution must have proceeded by ''quantum jumps,'' caused by radical genetic mutation. This copes with some of the problems generated by neo-Darwinist orthodoxy, but only to create others. We just don't know of any such ''quantum jumps'' that create new species, since most genetic mutations work against the survival of the individual. So this is another hypothesis - no less plausible than the orthodox view, but still speculative.
And there are other speculations about evolution, some by Nobel prize-winning geneticists, that border on the bizarre - for example, that life on earth was produced by spermatozoa from outer space. In addition, many younger biologists (the so-called ''cladists'') are persuaded that the differences among species - including those that seem to be closely related -are such as to make the very concept of evolution questionable.
So ''evolution'' is no simple established scientific orthodoxy, and to teach it as such is an exercise in dogmatism...
I imagine we'll be seeing some biographies of Kristol coming out. I can only hope that any honest biographer will make space to assess Kristol's ignorance of biology and his arrogance in thinking that he understood it better than professional biologists.
As Glenn Morton has exhaustively shown, the trope that "more and more scientists doubt evolution" is one of the oldest falsehoods in creationism. But then, Kristol believed that not all truths were suitable for all people, an echo of Martin Luther's view that lying for his god was acceptable.
Anti-evolution idiocy seemingly ran in the family. In 1959, Kristol's wife Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote a terrible book, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, demonstrating a lack of understanding of biology and a warped view of Darwin's influence. One perceptive reviewer penned that Himmelfarb had "an advanced case of Darwinitis, a complaint that afflicts those of a literary bent and strong attachments to pre-scientific culture, who find in the theory of evolution a disturbing and mysterious challenge to their values". Kristol wrote a favorable review of Himmelfarb's book for Encounter, without bothering to mention that he was Himmelfarb's husband. So much for Kristol's ethics.
Kristol wrote a piece for the September 30 1986 New York Times about evolution. Here are a few excerpts:
Practically all biologists, when they engage in scientific discourse, assume that the earth's species were not created by divine command. As scientists, they could not make any other assumption. But they agree on little else - a fact which our textbooks are careful to ignore, lest it give encouragement to the religious. There is no doubt that most of our textbooks are still written as participants in the ''warfare'' between science and religion that is our heritage from the 19th century. And there is also little doubt that it is this pseudo-scientific dogmatism that has provoked the current religious reaction...
Though this theory [the neo-Darwinian synthesis] is usually taught as an established scientific truth, it is nothing of the sort. It has too many lacunae. Theological evidence does not provide us with the spectrum of intermediate species we would expect. Moreover, laboratory experiments reveal how close to impossible it is for one species to evolve into another, even allowing for selective breeding and some genetic mutation. There is unquestionably evolution within species: every animal breeder is engaged in exemplifying this enterprise. But the gradual transformation of the population of one species into another is a biological hypothesis, not a biological fact.
Moreover, today a significant minority of distinguished biologists and geneticists find this hypothesis incredible and insist that evolution must have proceeded by ''quantum jumps,'' caused by radical genetic mutation. This copes with some of the problems generated by neo-Darwinist orthodoxy, but only to create others. We just don't know of any such ''quantum jumps'' that create new species, since most genetic mutations work against the survival of the individual. So this is another hypothesis - no less plausible than the orthodox view, but still speculative.
And there are other speculations about evolution, some by Nobel prize-winning geneticists, that border on the bizarre - for example, that life on earth was produced by spermatozoa from outer space. In addition, many younger biologists (the so-called ''cladists'') are persuaded that the differences among species - including those that seem to be closely related -are such as to make the very concept of evolution questionable.
So ''evolution'' is no simple established scientific orthodoxy, and to teach it as such is an exercise in dogmatism...
I imagine we'll be seeing some biographies of Kristol coming out. I can only hope that any honest biographer will make space to assess Kristol's ignorance of biology and his arrogance in thinking that he understood it better than professional biologists.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Giving a Bad Talk at a Scientific Conference
Here are some tips to give a really bad talk at a scientific meeting. The more tips you follow, the more likely you are to be memorably awful.
These are all based on talks I have witnessed.
1. Come with a retinue of students of the same ethnic background, assert a proof for a famous unsolved problem, give a proof for completely elementary simple cases and omit the proof of the main result, assert your results have been overlooked by those of a different ethnic background, insult established scientists who have recently made progress on similar problems, and have your students cheer wildly when you are done. Extra points if your talk is in "call and response" format.
2. Speak so softly that even with a microphone you are completely inaudible.
3. Speak rapidly with an extremely strong accent, and have your slides full of incomprehensible sentences that look like they were drawn randomly from a bag of scrabble tiles.
4. Sigh frequently during your talk, as if giving it is the most boring thing you can possibly imagine, and you can't wait for the damn thing to be over.
5. Give your talk by writing with a marker on overhead transparencies, and when you run out of transparencies, lick off one of the ones you already used. While it is still wet, put the slide, wet side down, on the projector so the ink mixes with your saliva and spreads all over the glass plate of the overhead.
6. Begin by insulting the organizers. State that you are so important, they should have found a larger room for you to speak in. Say that everyone else is stupid. Do not give any details, simply refer the audience to your web page.
7. Consistently point at the screen of your computer with your finger, as if you are convinced that by doing so the audience will magically see what you are pointing at on the screen of the projector.
8. Give results in your talk that are identical to those of the previous speaker. When you are questioned about it, deny that the results are the same.
I'm sure these helpful tips will create a memorable experience for you and your audience.
These are all based on talks I have witnessed.
1. Come with a retinue of students of the same ethnic background, assert a proof for a famous unsolved problem, give a proof for completely elementary simple cases and omit the proof of the main result, assert your results have been overlooked by those of a different ethnic background, insult established scientists who have recently made progress on similar problems, and have your students cheer wildly when you are done. Extra points if your talk is in "call and response" format.
2. Speak so softly that even with a microphone you are completely inaudible.
3. Speak rapidly with an extremely strong accent, and have your slides full of incomprehensible sentences that look like they were drawn randomly from a bag of scrabble tiles.
4. Sigh frequently during your talk, as if giving it is the most boring thing you can possibly imagine, and you can't wait for the damn thing to be over.
5. Give your talk by writing with a marker on overhead transparencies, and when you run out of transparencies, lick off one of the ones you already used. While it is still wet, put the slide, wet side down, on the projector so the ink mixes with your saliva and spreads all over the glass plate of the overhead.
6. Begin by insulting the organizers. State that you are so important, they should have found a larger room for you to speak in. Say that everyone else is stupid. Do not give any details, simply refer the audience to your web page.
7. Consistently point at the screen of your computer with your finger, as if you are convinced that by doing so the audience will magically see what you are pointing at on the screen of the projector.
8. Give results in your talk that are identical to those of the previous speaker. When you are questioned about it, deny that the results are the same.
I'm sure these helpful tips will create a memorable experience for you and your audience.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Louise Shallit (1919-2009)
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Poor Michael Behe
Poor Michael Behe.
The eminent professor Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, which was named the 92nd best book of the last century by the geniuses at National Review, is unhappy. I guess he has a lot to be unhappy about, what with his University department posting a disclaimer about his work on their web pages. But no, it's not that his colleagues think his work is junk that is bothering him this time.
This time, it's about something much more sinister. It seems that John McWhorter, a linguist with no biological training that I can detect, recently interviewed Behe on bloggingheads.tv. In the interview, McWhorter gushes that "I just read your book The Edge of Evolution from 2007 and I found it absolutely shattering. I mean, this is a very important book. And yet I sense that from the reputation, or the reception of your book from 10+ years ago, Darwin's Black Box, that it may be hard to get a lot of people to understand why the book is important." Later, he claims that The Edge of Evolution was one of the most important books he's ever read. It seems that McWhorter didn't bother to read or understand the criticism of Behe's claims by actual biologists, such as Dawkins, Coyne, and Miller. Instead, Behe was able to babble without being challenged.
What happened next? Predictably, people who actually know something about evolution and Behe's misrepresentations complained, McWhorter had second thoughts, and the video was removed from bloggingheads.tv. Although I wouldn't have published this gushing, ignorant interview to begin with, I wouldn't have removed it afterwards, either -- it's a useful record of McWhorter's fawning stupidity and Behe's unsupported claims. Luckily, it's been archived.
What interests me more is Behe's reaction to the whole affair. He describes those who complained as "cyber bullies" and "internet mobs". (A bully, in Behe's view, apparently being someone who does not buy his bogus claims, and an "internet mob" is a few people who complained.) He also compares himself to Nikolai Yezhov and his detractors to Joseph Stalin.
Poor Michael Behe. While bloggingheads.tv showed very poor judgment in getting a non-biologist to interview Behe, and even poorer judgment in deleting the interview after posting it, Behe's reaction to the affair is hyperbolic. Behe had an interview deleted; he wasn't murdered in a basement. And the irony is even greater, since Behe posted his complaints on a blog which does not allow any comments!
When you make stupid and unsupported claims, you're going to get criticized -- and sometimes harshly. That's science. Deal with it.
The eminent professor Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, which was named the 92nd best book of the last century by the geniuses at National Review, is unhappy. I guess he has a lot to be unhappy about, what with his University department posting a disclaimer about his work on their web pages. But no, it's not that his colleagues think his work is junk that is bothering him this time.
This time, it's about something much more sinister. It seems that John McWhorter, a linguist with no biological training that I can detect, recently interviewed Behe on bloggingheads.tv. In the interview, McWhorter gushes that "I just read your book The Edge of Evolution from 2007 and I found it absolutely shattering. I mean, this is a very important book. And yet I sense that from the reputation, or the reception of your book from 10+ years ago, Darwin's Black Box, that it may be hard to get a lot of people to understand why the book is important." Later, he claims that The Edge of Evolution was one of the most important books he's ever read. It seems that McWhorter didn't bother to read or understand the criticism of Behe's claims by actual biologists, such as Dawkins, Coyne, and Miller. Instead, Behe was able to babble without being challenged.
What happened next? Predictably, people who actually know something about evolution and Behe's misrepresentations complained, McWhorter had second thoughts, and the video was removed from bloggingheads.tv. Although I wouldn't have published this gushing, ignorant interview to begin with, I wouldn't have removed it afterwards, either -- it's a useful record of McWhorter's fawning stupidity and Behe's unsupported claims. Luckily, it's been archived.
What interests me more is Behe's reaction to the whole affair. He describes those who complained as "cyber bullies" and "internet mobs". (A bully, in Behe's view, apparently being someone who does not buy his bogus claims, and an "internet mob" is a few people who complained.) He also compares himself to Nikolai Yezhov and his detractors to Joseph Stalin.
Poor Michael Behe. While bloggingheads.tv showed very poor judgment in getting a non-biologist to interview Behe, and even poorer judgment in deleting the interview after posting it, Behe's reaction to the affair is hyperbolic. Behe had an interview deleted; he wasn't murdered in a basement. And the irony is even greater, since Behe posted his complaints on a blog which does not allow any comments!
When you make stupid and unsupported claims, you're going to get criticized -- and sometimes harshly. That's science. Deal with it.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Learning to Speak Bostonese
I had this conversation this morning in a Shaw's supermarket:
Me: Can I buy a Charlie Card here?
Clerk: A Jolly Cahd?
Me: No, a Chcharrrlie Card.
Clerk: Oh, a Chahlie Cahd!
Me: ???
OK, time to go watch the Kingston trio now:
Me: Can I buy a Charlie Card here?
Clerk: A Jolly Cahd?
Me: No, a Chcharrrlie Card.
Clerk: Oh, a Chahlie Cahd!
Me: ???
OK, time to go watch the Kingston trio now:
Thursday, August 20, 2009
One Difference Between Canada and the US
When I first moved to Canada in 1990, I was struck by how unfriendly it seemed compared to places in the US that I had lived. For example, if you meet someone in the hallway at an American university, and say, "Hi, how are you?", you will nearly always get a response along the lines of "Fine, how are you?" But not so in Canada. Instead, you will typically get the response "Fine." -- and then the person will walk on, without inquiring about your own health.
For many years I found this astonishingly rude; sometimes I even resorted to mumbling "And yes, I'm fine too, thank you very much for asking" under my breath. Then someone explained to me that in fact it was I who was being rude, since in Canada inquiring about someone's health is considered too intrusive. Instead of rudeness, what I was witnessing was the clash of expectations. Although I understand this on a rational level now, I still continue to find it rude viscerally.
Here's another example: go to any American city, stand on a street corner, open up a map, and look at it. Within 30 seconds, someone will ask you, "Can I help you find something?" or "Do you need any help?" Yet I've done the same experiment over and over again in Toronto, and after 10 minutes still no one volunteered any help. The one time someone did, it was an American tourist! As my wife explained, this is not an example of Canadian rudeness; Canadians simply have a different notion of personal space. They find it rude to approach a stranger and casually offer assistance when none may be needed. Americans find it simple friendliness.
I am struck by this difference now that I've temporarily relocated to the Boston area for my sabbatical. We were standing in Kendall Square looking at the map, and just as the stereotype dictates, within 15 seconds someone asked us if we needed help. Just now we came back from a brief bike ride in a Boston suburb; as my son and I looked at the street map, a woman asked "Can I help you find something?"
For the moment, I'm glad to be living in a place where my cultural expectations match those of my neighbors.
For many years I found this astonishingly rude; sometimes I even resorted to mumbling "And yes, I'm fine too, thank you very much for asking" under my breath. Then someone explained to me that in fact it was I who was being rude, since in Canada inquiring about someone's health is considered too intrusive. Instead of rudeness, what I was witnessing was the clash of expectations. Although I understand this on a rational level now, I still continue to find it rude viscerally.
Here's another example: go to any American city, stand on a street corner, open up a map, and look at it. Within 30 seconds, someone will ask you, "Can I help you find something?" or "Do you need any help?" Yet I've done the same experiment over and over again in Toronto, and after 10 minutes still no one volunteered any help. The one time someone did, it was an American tourist! As my wife explained, this is not an example of Canadian rudeness; Canadians simply have a different notion of personal space. They find it rude to approach a stranger and casually offer assistance when none may be needed. Americans find it simple friendliness.
I am struck by this difference now that I've temporarily relocated to the Boston area for my sabbatical. We were standing in Kendall Square looking at the map, and just as the stereotype dictates, within 15 seconds someone asked us if we needed help. Just now we came back from a brief bike ride in a Boston suburb; as my son and I looked at the street map, a woman asked "Can I help you find something?"
For the moment, I'm glad to be living in a place where my cultural expectations match those of my neighbors.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
US Consulate in Toronto Cuts Back Again
I've lived in Canada since 1990 (not counting our sabbaticals). As an American citizen living in Canada, I occasionally have to consult the American Consulate in Toronto - for example, to renew a passport - and over the past 19 years, the service has gotten steadily worse... and worse.
It used to be you could call and actually reach a human to ask a question - no longer. Now you're stuck with the information provided on the Internet (which is often out of date, incorrect, or loaded with broken links).
It used to be you could show up at the Consulate in person without any advance notice and get your business done. But not any longer. I just got e-mail from the Consulate saying "an appointment will be required for all services at the U.S. Consulate General in Toronto".
The last trip we made to the Consulate to get US passports for our kids took up the whole morning. First, we were forced to go all the way back to our car (parked blocks away) because they would not allow us to take our cell phones in. The final indignity was that they would not even pay to mail the passports to us; we had to go out of the consulate and across the street and provide the Consulate with self-addressed express mail envelopes (a requirement not mentioned anywhere in any of the application forms).
The Consulate General is supposed to represent the interests of US citizens living abroad. At least in Toronto, they're doing a really poor job of it.
It used to be you could call and actually reach a human to ask a question - no longer. Now you're stuck with the information provided on the Internet (which is often out of date, incorrect, or loaded with broken links).
It used to be you could show up at the Consulate in person without any advance notice and get your business done. But not any longer. I just got e-mail from the Consulate saying "an appointment will be required for all services at the U.S. Consulate General in Toronto".
The last trip we made to the Consulate to get US passports for our kids took up the whole morning. First, we were forced to go all the way back to our car (parked blocks away) because they would not allow us to take our cell phones in. The final indignity was that they would not even pay to mail the passports to us; we had to go out of the consulate and across the street and provide the Consulate with self-addressed express mail envelopes (a requirement not mentioned anywhere in any of the application forms).
The Consulate General is supposed to represent the interests of US citizens living abroad. At least in Toronto, they're doing a really poor job of it.
On Sabbatical
Well, most of the boxes are unpacked, and we're working on getting the kids registered for school. I have an office (sort of) and we've found a local place for bagels. My sabbatical has begun!
I'm looking forward to a year of working on papers and book projects, learning new things, and catching up on work that has been postponed for too long.
Where are we? Well, the picture is a hint. I'll give another hint tomorrow.
Monday, July 27, 2009
I Need a New Irony Meter
Serial liar Sarah Palin, in her farewell address as governor of Alaska, said,
"And first, some straight talk for some, just some in the media because another right protected for all of us is freedom of the press, and you all have such important jobs reporting facts and informing the electorate, and exerting power to influence. You represent what could and should be a respected honest profession that could and should be the cornerstone of our democracy. Democracy depends on you, and that is why, that's why our troops are willing to die for you. So, how 'bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin' things up?"
If I were in the media, I'd say "You first, Sarah."
As it is, my irony meter broke reading that.
"And first, some straight talk for some, just some in the media because another right protected for all of us is freedom of the press, and you all have such important jobs reporting facts and informing the electorate, and exerting power to influence. You represent what could and should be a respected honest profession that could and should be the cornerstone of our democracy. Democracy depends on you, and that is why, that's why our troops are willing to die for you. So, how 'bout in honor of the American soldier, ya quit makin' things up?"
If I were in the media, I'd say "You first, Sarah."
As it is, my irony meter broke reading that.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Website Weirds Wikipedia
Check out http://www.zaped.info/, a website that changes Wikipedia content into something bizarre and occasionally delightful.
From today's page:
"Harrison was built-in in North Bend, Ohio, and at age 21 confused to Indianapolis, Indiana, area he became a arresting accompaniment politician."
"During a accent in Montreal, French President Charles de Gaulle declared "Long reside chargeless Quebec!", a account that was interpreted as abutment for Quebec independence from Canada."
"Judy and Alfred were two 90-inch (2.3 m) alpine beef locomotives distinctively advised to fit beneath a arch at Par that was alone 96 inches (2.4 m) high?"
"Today's featured picture: A radar angel of the surface of Venus, centered at 180 degrees east longitude... This blended angel was created from mapping by the Magellan probe, supplemented by abstracts aggregate by the Pioneer orbiter, with apish hues based on blush images recorded by Venera 13 and 14."
It's like moving to a Bizarro world!
My guess is that the algorithm simply chooses words at random from a Wikipedia page, and then replaces them with a random synonym in a consistent way.
From today's page:
"Harrison was built-in in North Bend, Ohio, and at age 21 confused to Indianapolis, Indiana, area he became a arresting accompaniment politician."
"During a accent in Montreal, French President Charles de Gaulle declared "Long reside chargeless Quebec!", a account that was interpreted as abutment for Quebec independence from Canada."
"Judy and Alfred were two 90-inch (2.3 m) alpine beef locomotives distinctively advised to fit beneath a arch at Par that was alone 96 inches (2.4 m) high?"
"Today's featured picture: A radar angel of the surface of Venus, centered at 180 degrees east longitude... This blended angel was created from mapping by the Magellan probe, supplemented by abstracts aggregate by the Pioneer orbiter, with apish hues based on blush images recorded by Venera 13 and 14."
It's like moving to a Bizarro world!
My guess is that the algorithm simply chooses words at random from a Wikipedia page, and then replaces them with a random synonym in a consistent way.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Greedy Publishers Love Open Access
In the "open access" model of scholarly journal publishing, articles are freely available online for anyone to read. Sounds great, right?
There's a problem, though. Where does the money come from to provide editorial staff and web hosting? Typically, it comes from fees charged to authors. This is nothing new - some scholarly journals have had "page charges" for years. Authors are charged a fee on the size of the article, and this fee is usually paid for by your university or your research grant, if you are luck enough to have one.
Print journals have traditionally waived page charges for authors with no grant or authors from third world countries. Unfortunately, some greedy publishers have not chosen to issue the same kinds of waivers for their open access journals.
Scholarly Research Exchange is one such greedy publisher. They recently sent me a solicitation to submit articles to their journal SRX Mathematics. When I asked the "journal publishing editor", Michael Fayez, what their waiver policy is, he replied "SRX Mathematics totally depends on those mandatory charges to run the journal. So, I regret to inform you that we cannot grant waivers." Considering that their fee is $400 per article, which is more than most people in 3rd world countries make in a year, their policy ensures that only papers from rich countries will be included. That's a shame.
I won't be submitting to this journal.
There's a problem, though. Where does the money come from to provide editorial staff and web hosting? Typically, it comes from fees charged to authors. This is nothing new - some scholarly journals have had "page charges" for years. Authors are charged a fee on the size of the article, and this fee is usually paid for by your university or your research grant, if you are luck enough to have one.
Print journals have traditionally waived page charges for authors with no grant or authors from third world countries. Unfortunately, some greedy publishers have not chosen to issue the same kinds of waivers for their open access journals.
Scholarly Research Exchange is one such greedy publisher. They recently sent me a solicitation to submit articles to their journal SRX Mathematics. When I asked the "journal publishing editor", Michael Fayez, what their waiver policy is, he replied "SRX Mathematics totally depends on those mandatory charges to run the journal. So, I regret to inform you that we cannot grant waivers." Considering that their fee is $400 per article, which is more than most people in 3rd world countries make in a year, their policy ensures that only papers from rich countries will be included. That's a shame.
I won't be submitting to this journal.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Stephen Meyer's Honesty Problem
Like most intelligent design advocates, Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, has a little problem telling the truth.
I first encountered his dissembling at an intelligent design conference held at Calvin College in May 2001. Meyer had written in 2000 that "Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call "specified complexity'') have "information content''."
The only problem is, information theorists don't use the term "specified complexity" and they don't refer to "specificity" when discussing information. At the time, there was precisely one mathematician who was pushing the term "specified complexity", and that was William Dembski, who tried (but failed) to create a new, mathematically-rigorous definition at information which (were it coherent) would be at odds with how information is defined by other mathematicians and computer scientists.
I went up to Meyer at the conference and asked him, "You wrote that 'information theorists' (plural) talk about specified complexity. Who are they?" He then admitted that he knew no one but Dembski (and Dembski himself is not much of an information theorist, having published exactly 0 papers so far on the topic in the peer-reviewed scientific literature).
So the use of the plural, when Meyer knew perfectly well that information theorists do not use the term "specified complexity", was just a lie - and a lie intended to deceive the reader that his claims are supported by the scientific community, when they are not.
(Another anecdote: while I was waiting in line to ask Meyer this question, I was behind a woman who couldn't wait to meet Meyer. She gushed as she shook his hand, saying she was so honored to meet the man who was responsible for recruiting so many people for Christ through his work. He smiled and thanked her. And they claim ID is not religious!)
Meyer was also caught dissembling about the "No Child Left Behind" education bill, falsely claiming that it obligated Ohio to teach about alternative theories.
Now Meyer is back with a new book, and an op-ed in the Boston Globe to help flog his book. In the op-ed, Meyer claims, "Information - whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal - always arises from an intelligent source." But this is the same old bogus ID claim that is repeated endlessly and endlessly, and it's not true. At least it's not true if you understand "information" in the sense that it is understood by mathematicians and computer scientists. For example, in the Kolmogorov theory, any random source produces information.
But then again, Meyer, with his little honesty problem, doesn't seem too concerned with the truth. What's important is, as that woman ahead of me in line told him, saving souls for Jesus.
Martin Luther once said, "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." It seems that Stephen Meyer would agree.
I first encountered his dissembling at an intelligent design conference held at Calvin College in May 2001. Meyer had written in 2000 that "Systems that are characterized by both specificity and complexity (what information theorists call "specified complexity'') have "information content''."
The only problem is, information theorists don't use the term "specified complexity" and they don't refer to "specificity" when discussing information. At the time, there was precisely one mathematician who was pushing the term "specified complexity", and that was William Dembski, who tried (but failed) to create a new, mathematically-rigorous definition at information which (were it coherent) would be at odds with how information is defined by other mathematicians and computer scientists.
I went up to Meyer at the conference and asked him, "You wrote that 'information theorists' (plural) talk about specified complexity. Who are they?" He then admitted that he knew no one but Dembski (and Dembski himself is not much of an information theorist, having published exactly 0 papers so far on the topic in the peer-reviewed scientific literature).
So the use of the plural, when Meyer knew perfectly well that information theorists do not use the term "specified complexity", was just a lie - and a lie intended to deceive the reader that his claims are supported by the scientific community, when they are not.
(Another anecdote: while I was waiting in line to ask Meyer this question, I was behind a woman who couldn't wait to meet Meyer. She gushed as she shook his hand, saying she was so honored to meet the man who was responsible for recruiting so many people for Christ through his work. He smiled and thanked her. And they claim ID is not religious!)
Meyer was also caught dissembling about the "No Child Left Behind" education bill, falsely claiming that it obligated Ohio to teach about alternative theories.
Now Meyer is back with a new book, and an op-ed in the Boston Globe to help flog his book. In the op-ed, Meyer claims, "Information - whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book, or encoded in a radio signal - always arises from an intelligent source." But this is the same old bogus ID claim that is repeated endlessly and endlessly, and it's not true. At least it's not true if you understand "information" in the sense that it is understood by mathematicians and computer scientists. For example, in the Kolmogorov theory, any random source produces information.
But then again, Meyer, with his little honesty problem, doesn't seem too concerned with the truth. What's important is, as that woman ahead of me in line told him, saving souls for Jesus.
Martin Luther once said, "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." It seems that Stephen Meyer would agree.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Academic Publisher Elsevier Looking for More Revenue in Odd Places
Academic publisher Elsevier, not content with raking in the money from all the expensive academic journals they print, is now following in the footsteps of illustrious organizations such as the American Biographical Institute: when your article gets published, they are offering wooden plaques celebrating the glorious occasion.
I recently got the following e-mail from Elsevier:
New! To commemorate your publication, you can now order printed author copies of the journal issue featuring your article, a unique Certificate of Publication, and/or customized full-color posters featuring your article. Please visit https://authororders.elsevier.com/
to learn more.
And indeed, you can find there a wide variety of choices to "commemorate" your publication, including:
- copy of the journal issue in which your article appears;
- "A customized full-color poster commemorating the publication of your article, featuring the article first page and a personalized reference."
- a "Certificate of Publication" which is "delivered ready to display in a high-quality frame, dark brown wood with gold trim."
- "A full-color, 16.5" x 23.4" sized poster of the cover of the issue in which your article appears, displaying a personalized reference to your publication."
Way to be classy, Elsevier!
I recently got the following e-mail from Elsevier:
New! To commemorate your publication, you can now order printed author copies of the journal issue featuring your article, a unique Certificate of Publication, and/or customized full-color posters featuring your article. Please visit https://authororders.elsevier.com/
to learn more.
And indeed, you can find there a wide variety of choices to "commemorate" your publication, including:
- copy of the journal issue in which your article appears;
- "A customized full-color poster commemorating the publication of your article, featuring the article first page and a personalized reference."
- a "Certificate of Publication" which is "delivered ready to display in a high-quality frame, dark brown wood with gold trim."
- "A full-color, 16.5" x 23.4" sized poster of the cover of the issue in which your article appears, displaying a personalized reference to your publication."
Way to be classy, Elsevier!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Another Academic Scam
Every month or so I get a solicitation in the mail like the following one:
Dear Author
Hello?
As a general chair of GESTS, I am happy to invite you for the acceptance of yourpaper to be published in the GESTS International Transactions.
The GESTS is a nonprofit academic society organized by voluntary members aroundthe world since 2002. Every month, we publish the GESTS international transactionswhich are the regular paper journals on CSE and CSP, written by noble authors in more than 50 different countries.
This e-mail has been sent only to the authors who chose as a high quality paper that had been accepted as one of two parts of GESTS international transactions as follows:
-Part 1:
Paper Number : CSE775-727
Paper Journal: GESTS International Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering
Paper Field : Computer and Its Application
Volume Number: Vol.54 and No.3
ISSN Number : 1738-6438
Publication date: July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with a green color cover
Online Journals: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.
-Part 2:
Paper Number : CSP775-112
Journal Title: GESTS International Transactions on Communication and Signal Processing
Paper Fields : Information Communication Engineering, Signal Processing, Image and Video Processing, Acoustics, etc.
Volume Number: Vol.13 and No.7
ISSN Number : 1738-9682
Issue Date : July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with an orange color cover
On-line Issue: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.
Please, click the mouse on the "Major Conference Author's Paper Submission" at the home page, http://www.gests.org/. If the paper will be submitted through the web page, we will e-mail back with the details of how to proceed the submission of registration fees and copyright format.
Important dates for publication of the GESTS international transactions are :
- an improved paper and copyright format by July 27, 2009, ( http://www.gests.org/gests-full.rtf )
- the acceptance notification within ten days receiving your paper,
- the registration format with fees by July 30, 2009,
- the publication of GESTS International journal by July 30, 2009,
- and delivery start from GESTS to authors by August 10, 2009.
If you have a new paper or an improved version to be issued in GESTS international transactions, please, send us the final camera-ready version by July 27, 2009. At least one author of each paper must be accomplished with the registration.
We are looking forward to see your contributions at GESTS.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Bruce M. Bae, a general chair of GESTS,
http://www.gests.org/
I particularly like the "noble authors" part -- not to be confused with authors who have won the Nobel prize, of course.
The idea is, of course, that you submit your paper to this journal that nobody reads and then they charge you "registration fees". You'd have to be pretty dumb to fall for this one.
Dear Author
Hello?
As a general chair of GESTS, I am happy to invite you for the acceptance of yourpaper to be published in the GESTS International Transactions.
The GESTS is a nonprofit academic society organized by voluntary members aroundthe world since 2002. Every month, we publish the GESTS international transactionswhich are the regular paper journals on CSE and CSP, written by noble authors in more than 50 different countries.
This e-mail has been sent only to the authors who chose as a high quality paper that had been accepted as one of two parts of GESTS international transactions as follows:
-Part 1:
Paper Number : CSE775-727
Paper Journal: GESTS International Transactions on Computer Science and Engineering
Paper Field : Computer and Its Application
Volume Number: Vol.54 and No.3
ISSN Number : 1738-6438
Publication date: July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with a green color cover
Online Journals: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.
-Part 2:
Paper Number : CSP775-112
Journal Title: GESTS International Transactions on Communication and Signal Processing
Paper Fields : Information Communication Engineering, Signal Processing, Image and Video Processing, Acoustics, etc.
Volume Number: Vol.13 and No.7
ISSN Number : 1738-9682
Issue Date : July 30, 2009.
Journal Type : hard copy with an orange color cover
On-line Issue: publication on the web in parallel to the printed journals.
Please, click the mouse on the "Major Conference Author's Paper Submission" at the home page, http://www.gests.org/. If the paper will be submitted through the web page, we will e-mail back with the details of how to proceed the submission of registration fees and copyright format.
Important dates for publication of the GESTS international transactions are :
- an improved paper and copyright format by July 27, 2009, ( http://www.gests.org/gests-full.rtf )
- the acceptance notification within ten days receiving your paper,
- the registration format with fees by July 30, 2009,
- the publication of GESTS International journal by July 30, 2009,
- and delivery start from GESTS to authors by August 10, 2009.
If you have a new paper or an improved version to be issued in GESTS international transactions, please, send us the final camera-ready version by July 27, 2009. At least one author of each paper must be accomplished with the registration.
We are looking forward to see your contributions at GESTS.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Bruce M. Bae, a general chair of GESTS,
http://www.gests.org/
I particularly like the "noble authors" part -- not to be confused with authors who have won the Nobel prize, of course.
The idea is, of course, that you submit your paper to this journal that nobody reads and then they charge you "registration fees". You'd have to be pretty dumb to fall for this one.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Does Reality Exist?
From Friday's Waterloo Region Record, in the Letters section, comes this gem, from Ray Zehr of Shakespeare, Ontario.
"...My answer is, true reality can only exist if God alone created intelligence because God is perfect then intelligence is true and reality is true.
"If you believe in evolution without God then you have to accept the fact that reality probably does not exist. This is probably the universal question that science has shied away from for centuries and left our youth hanging in the closet..."
It's not our youth, but somebody's brain, that was left hanging in the closet.
"...My answer is, true reality can only exist if God alone created intelligence because God is perfect then intelligence is true and reality is true.
"If you believe in evolution without God then you have to accept the fact that reality probably does not exist. This is probably the universal question that science has shied away from for centuries and left our youth hanging in the closet..."
It's not our youth, but somebody's brain, that was left hanging in the closet.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
The Strangest Book on the Theory of Computation
Based on the description of the book in the World Scientific Press catalogue, I asked my university library to order a book entitled Automata Theory by Matthew Simon. I did so because it seemed to cover many topics not available elsewhere. I now regret my decision, although looking at the book did provide some amusement value. It is weird.
The first thing that a reader notices is each chapter begins with lengthy quotations about the history of slavery. No, I am not kidding. Chapter 1, for example, begins as follows:
TABLE OF MIXTURES
TO BECOME WHITE
White and Negro produces mulatto
Half white, half black
White and mulatto produces quadroon
Three-quarters white and one-quarter Negro...
etc. This strange choice is explained by the author as follows: "While this book focuses upon language, a reminder of the relationship between language, social being, responsibility, and historical context will start each chapter."
The typesetting and notation are really awful. For example, the author uses the capital letter "X" to represent ×, the cross product symbol. Terms are used without being defined: for example, "semi-automata" is used on page 7 but has not been defined. Some material is simply repeated; for example, both pages 9 and 11 contain a definition of semigroups (which are sometimes written "semi-groups"). The author frequently uses notation and abbreviations that are unique to him, such as "NDFSA" for what everyone else calls "NFA", etc.
Most of the book consists of pages and pages and pages of examples, with little explanation of what the examples are intended to illustrate. When theorems are stated, they often miss the point. For example, the pumping lemma for regular languages is stated as follows: "If an FSA has n+1 states and accepts a string ω where ω = a0 a1 ... an+1, thus |ω| = n+2, then the FSA accepts an infinite number of strings." But this is not the pumping lemma, which is a statement about languages, not automata.
This is, without a doubt, the strangest book I have every read on the theory of computation. I honestly don't know how this book ever got published.
There is also an interesting positive review of the book on Amazon:
Automata Theory by Matthew Simon is an unusually welcome book. The many examples shown include subjects not often covered, such as: the Chomsky-Schutzenberger Theorem, Kuroda Normal Forms, Ginsberg-Griebach Theorem, Simple Pushdown Automata, Syntactic Pattern Recognition, and Shape Grammers. The use of a consistent and standard notation throughout the book is also welcome, as many different subjects are discussed. The focus of the first chapter is upon Semigroups and Automata Theory(including wreath products), from a more elementary, less abstract, less mathematical viewpoint than that found in the dozen or so books covering this subject. Thus examples from automata theory are emphasized. While departures from the notation of Clifford and Preston do take place, the notation is as close as one can come to being standard, as no standard notation currently exists. Each chapter starts with a commentary or quotes relating to subjects that arise in socially oriented linguistics and automata theory. Such commentary is often omitted in books covering automata theory but is of interest to people studying Anthropological Linguistics, General (historical)Linguistics, Philosophical Linguistics, and other academic areas dealing with linguistics, but often neglected by the engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics communities.
I leave it up to the reader to try to figure out who might have written this review.
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