With forecasts of massive storms for the next week or two, it behooves me to concoct ways to stay cheerful in the face of gray skies and heavy rains. At least it's not snow, I say to myself.  Rain speaks to the limitations of life in the Bay Area, whereas sunny days inspire in me the prospects of unlimited opportunity. OK: slight exaggeration -- but I'm already looking forward to the first sunny day after the storms.
Because the Communications of the ACM has so much surprisingly good writing, it has become one of my favorite periodicals. (I say surprisingly because CACM is a technical journal.) Though the journal is aimed primarily at computer scientists, much of the content is accessible to a wider audience. Take, for example, “Mightier than the pen.†Communications of the ACM 52, no. 12 (12, 2009): 112. [closed access, alas], Joe Haldeman's essay on how the complex relationship he has as a writer with both the computer and pen and paper.  I got such a kick out of the essay that I was moved to submit the following comment to the piece:
I identify very much with Joe Haldeman's "collaboration between pen and computer". I had to think twice about whether I'd make the same hard decision of computer over pen if one had to choose one and concluded that yes, I'd do the same. I would have wanted to read more about what Mr. Haldeman thinks a world of computers without "a fountain pen [writing] into a bound blank book" would be like. It was only after a family member gave me my first Moleskine journal that I rediscovered what I had lost when I wrote almost exclusively on a computer.
I'm amazed by the abundance of leaf fall after on day! Pittsburgh is deeply in autumn; winter can't be that far away.
I never finished writing this blog piece on a book I was reading, but the pieces are coherent enough to push out....
Sautoy, Marcus Du. Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature. Harper, 2008.
Fun stuff so far. One big revelation has been the parallel between simple groups and prime numbers. I'm still a bit unclear on the concepts -- so I will struggle to explain them properly and clearly.
Classification of finite simple groups - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The classification of the finite simple groups, also called the enormous theorem, is believed to classify all finite simple groups. These groups can be seen as the basic building blocks of all finite groups, in much the same way as the prime numbers are the basic building blocks of the natural numbers. The Jordan-Hölder theorem is a more precise way of stating this fact about finite groups.
List of finite simple groups lists the 26 simple finite groups, including the famous Monster group.
Reading the book has made me look at the bathroom tiles, to notice that all the tiles are of one type -- and that you just need to rotate them. What symmetry group is embodied by the tiles? Is the vast majority of commerical household tiles of the same group?
When did people start making tiles?
What is quasi-periodicity?
How does symmetry show up in textiles? I'm working through understanding List of planar symmetry groups - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Last night's poetry reading at Hemingway's Cafe was an energizing prod to write more of my own poetry. Writing poetry might be the easiest way for me to have an outlet to focus on the here and now, in the context of the big and forever.
For almost every morning over the last couple of months, I've been writing about three pages in my journal first thing in the morning, in n an exercise known to many as morning pages. One of the side benefits of this exercise is how it helps me to remember dreams from the previous night. Last night I dreamt about being at a talk by two shaggy hair guys,  Who had invented a new type of spreadsheet tha for some reason had only two sheets but which could also handle millions of users and billions of variables because the spreadsheet somehow exploited the fact that all these numbers were not independent of each other. Great idea but I've no idea of how to implement such a spreadsheet, or how useful such a spreadsheet would actually be in real life. Nonetheless, dreams are a reminder of how wacky our brains really are.
I was intrigued by Jon Stewart's "trickle up" proposal in yesterday's interview with Lawrence Lindsey: instead of bailing out the banks, help individuals get free from their consumer and mortgage debts (by, for instance, enabling people to refinance mortgages at a lower rate, one that presumably will keep people in their homes.) Is this approach being seriously considered? It seems to make sense to a layperson like me -- so what's the problem with this approach?
As much as I'd like to see the bankers who pillaged our economy return every cent they stole from the system, it seems that there are few ways to actually recover their shameful bonuses. If that's true, then I'm at least with Alan Binder, who wrote the following Economic View - Six Errors on the Path to the Financial Crisis - NYTimes.com:
For this litany of errors, many people in authority owe millions of Americans an apology. Richard A. Clarke, former national security adviser, set a good example when he told the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks that he wanted victims’ families “to know why we failed and what I think we need to do to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again.†I’m waiting for similar words from our financial leaders, both public and private. [emphasis mine]
As someone not currently collecting a long-term salary from any employer, I resonate with Ben Stein's words in Everybody's Business - Deep in Debt, and Now Deep in Worry - NYTimes.com:
MY work as a freelance writer in Hollywood some time ago prepared me for extreme uncertainty. This is the most insecure existence imaginable. It mandates saving, ingenuity and nonstop work and creativity. Freelancers never have a day off. Never. They know that they can go months without a check. They absolutely have to save. They have to have five different levels of fall-back plans and financial escape hatches.
Having just watched HBO: We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, it's fun to see so quickly the flow of less formal images from the Obama Inaugural team on Flickr -- such as this one:
Forrest Whittaker, Jamie Foxx and will.i.am backstage at “We are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration At The Lincoln Memorial†presented exclusively by HBO on Sunday January 18th 2009. Kevin Mazur/Courtesy of HBO via image.net
