Crains Chicago Special Report
Man, my overpriced condo seems like a smarter idea every year. (Not minding four and a half dollar gas...)
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Horrible Moments in the History of Philosophy
"411 and 404 B.C.E.- Students of Socrates set about demonstrating their teacher's key claim that the study of philosophy makes one more ethical. First, they destroy religious statues and help the Spartans defeat their own city state of Athens, and then they institute murderous reigns of blood upon the struggling democracy. This is all topped off by establishing violently class-based dictatorships. Sadly, both dictatorships were short-lived in Athens, and it would be over two millenniums before the philosopher king (and student of Plato and Rousseau) Pol Pot was able to finally achieve a lasting society based on Socratic principles."
And so much more...
"411 and 404 B.C.E.- Students of Socrates set about demonstrating their teacher's key claim that the study of philosophy makes one more ethical. First, they destroy religious statues and help the Spartans defeat their own city state of Athens, and then they institute murderous reigns of blood upon the struggling democracy. This is all topped off by establishing violently class-based dictatorships. Sadly, both dictatorships were short-lived in Athens, and it would be over two millenniums before the philosopher king (and student of Plato and Rousseau) Pol Pot was able to finally achieve a lasting society based on Socratic principles."
And so much more...
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Stupid Government
It turns out that Firefox 4 for linux is not a supported browser, and that I cannot continue to even attempt a FAFSA application without either windows or mac os and an approved browser (Firefox 4 on either of those works fine).
Good old User Agent Switcher to the rescue. Don't tell uncle sam that I don't really have IE7 on Windows, and I won't break the internet.
Good old User Agent Switcher to the rescue. Don't tell uncle sam that I don't really have IE7 on Windows, and I won't break the internet.
Ubuntu
Every six months when a new ubuntu release comes out, I timidly install it first on one machine, then another, and am amazed at the changes. Sometimes, it's good. Sometimes it's bad. For example, I recently discovered that support for my CanoScan 200 has been incorporated into xsane (this wasn't the case a year ago). That's a good change.
The unity desktop is easily enough discarded by logging out and choosing classic. The sticking downsides would be that the console fonts or screen resolution changed without my doing anything, and are now painfully small and wrongly aligned. It also seems like my maximum X resolution given the same card, driver, and monitor have been inconsistent from release to release.
But I scanned an image, it works, and I'm happy:
The unity desktop is easily enough discarded by logging out and choosing classic. The sticking downsides would be that the console fonts or screen resolution changed without my doing anything, and are now painfully small and wrongly aligned. It also seems like my maximum X resolution given the same card, driver, and monitor have been inconsistent from release to release.
But I scanned an image, it works, and I'm happy:
Friday, May 20, 2011
The future
So, I am at an impasse... a year ago I had very set plans to sit for two years of college, complete a degree, and find work in the insurance or consulting industries as an actuary. The longer I have to think about it, the less likely I think this will be the best fit for me.
Firstly, I fail to find statistics fascinating... I imagine many people aren't as excited about it as the newspapers might make you believe. Some of it is very straightforward (probability), some of it is more technical than many people can intuitively grasp (statistics, estimators, convergence, significance tests, obscure distribution functions). Secondly, I don't think a desk job with low stress and clean fingernails is really in my nature. I prefer to stand an walk and talk too much.
I started wondering about atmospheric modelling as an application for numerical computing (lots of data, lots of pde's, a little physics and chemistry, and a wealth of feedback from the real world). I have always been intrigued by high-frequency trading software and options pricing/arbitrage.
I worry about graduate school, largely because it seems like a large commitment, and I am overall a fairly unambitious and laissez-passe type. Alternately, I'm concerned that the short two years I have at UIC will be insufficient groundwork for access to better programs (UChicago and Northwestern are shining stars in nerdland). I anticipate taking the GRE this August, and applying to applied math programs at Northwestern, UChicago, and UIC. I expect I can at least be accepted to UIC, and will have met the required courses in the applied mathematics track (ODE/PDE/Complex Analysis) and may be able to talk my way out of retaking them. It's one of the first times in my life when I have looked about me for opportunities and been unable to relocate freely to pursue them. Thankfully, being beached in Chicago is a wonderful curse.
At times I worry that I lack sufficient focus to gain admission into a great program. My current pursuit of math, statistics, and computer science nearly evenly reflects what I hope to learn, and what I hope to find a place to apply in life. Information is everywhere. Statistics is a great way to extract and abstract it, and to test the importance of hypotheses with real data. Computer Programming is an obvious requirement for applying these statistical methods to real data, and a decent amount of exposure to theory will prevent sloppy mistakes. Mathematics underpins it all. But in following this balanced path, I may be missing on the niceties of deeper pure math. I don't intend to take Topology this year, and will sit through a single abstract algebra course, missing out on mathematical logic, and perhaps it will be possible to take graph theory in spring. At the end of two years, I may be merely a very clever calculator. Wouldn't that be disappointing?
Firstly, I fail to find statistics fascinating... I imagine many people aren't as excited about it as the newspapers might make you believe. Some of it is very straightforward (probability), some of it is more technical than many people can intuitively grasp (statistics, estimators, convergence, significance tests, obscure distribution functions). Secondly, I don't think a desk job with low stress and clean fingernails is really in my nature. I prefer to stand an walk and talk too much.
I started wondering about atmospheric modelling as an application for numerical computing (lots of data, lots of pde's, a little physics and chemistry, and a wealth of feedback from the real world). I have always been intrigued by high-frequency trading software and options pricing/arbitrage.
I worry about graduate school, largely because it seems like a large commitment, and I am overall a fairly unambitious and laissez-passe type. Alternately, I'm concerned that the short two years I have at UIC will be insufficient groundwork for access to better programs (UChicago and Northwestern are shining stars in nerdland). I anticipate taking the GRE this August, and applying to applied math programs at Northwestern, UChicago, and UIC. I expect I can at least be accepted to UIC, and will have met the required courses in the applied mathematics track (ODE/PDE/Complex Analysis) and may be able to talk my way out of retaking them. It's one of the first times in my life when I have looked about me for opportunities and been unable to relocate freely to pursue them. Thankfully, being beached in Chicago is a wonderful curse.
At times I worry that I lack sufficient focus to gain admission into a great program. My current pursuit of math, statistics, and computer science nearly evenly reflects what I hope to learn, and what I hope to find a place to apply in life. Information is everywhere. Statistics is a great way to extract and abstract it, and to test the importance of hypotheses with real data. Computer Programming is an obvious requirement for applying these statistical methods to real data, and a decent amount of exposure to theory will prevent sloppy mistakes. Mathematics underpins it all. But in following this balanced path, I may be missing on the niceties of deeper pure math. I don't intend to take Topology this year, and will sit through a single abstract algebra course, missing out on mathematical logic, and perhaps it will be possible to take graph theory in spring. At the end of two years, I may be merely a very clever calculator. Wouldn't that be disappointing?
vacation
Well, my short 4 week summer break is in full swing. All except the summer. I went to UW Madison last weekend to attend my brother-in-law's graduation (PhD). We had a barbecue at a state park. It was cold, windy, and wet most of the time. I have the unfortunate habit of dressing for whatever weather there was yesterday, and this is a terrible idea when packing for a few day outing.
I finished up finals the first week in May. I will be starting two classes in June/July to get some nuisances out of the way.
I am continuing to work on Knowledge Representation, investigating Cyc. It's a bear of a system, gobbles up RAM like there's a bonbon at the bottom of the heap, and tends to be a little persnickity. Anyone recall 3rd grade computer lessons where before letting you get your hands on a Logo system, they told stories about the stupidity of robots... something along the lines of:
"If you have a bucket on the table, and want it filled with water, you can tell a man to take the bucket to the well and fill it. If you want a machine to do this, you have to tell it to move forward 10 feet (to the table), reach for the item at 3-1/2 feet, grasp, lift, turn (whatever direction the well is) advance so many feet, stop, lower bucket into well (at this point the robot has probably fallen in with the bucket since we left off telling it about the rope and crank)..."
I am struggling to get this enormous warehouse of mundane facts to produce sensible answers. What's a thing like both a knife and a spoon? Of course a snowmobile also has a handle and is a man-made tool, that's just the right answer. This was a productive answer... Every time I try to whittle it down closer, I reach less and less satisfactory answers. Did you know that the greatest common denominator of dashboard and spoon is 1, and that they are thus relatively prime numbers? I didn't, and I sometimes worry about the leaps of ingenuity that allow this program to steam-roll through common sense.
I think Cyc is a great way to represent knowledge, and for some simple questions it is fitting, but for many of the things an eight year old would think you were stupid to have asked it flounders. It is, of course, just as likely that I don't have the nuanced feel for the thousands of available predicates to ask just the right question to lead it to the best answer (Fork would win a gold medal).
I finished up finals the first week in May. I will be starting two classes in June/July to get some nuisances out of the way.
I am continuing to work on Knowledge Representation, investigating Cyc. It's a bear of a system, gobbles up RAM like there's a bonbon at the bottom of the heap, and tends to be a little persnickity. Anyone recall 3rd grade computer lessons where before letting you get your hands on a Logo system, they told stories about the stupidity of robots... something along the lines of:
"If you have a bucket on the table, and want it filled with water, you can tell a man to take the bucket to the well and fill it. If you want a machine to do this, you have to tell it to move forward 10 feet (to the table), reach for the item at 3-1/2 feet, grasp, lift, turn (whatever direction the well is) advance so many feet, stop, lower bucket into well (at this point the robot has probably fallen in with the bucket since we left off telling it about the rope and crank)..."
I am struggling to get this enormous warehouse of mundane facts to produce sensible answers. What's a thing like both a knife and a spoon? Of course a snowmobile also has a handle and is a man-made tool, that's just the right answer. This was a productive answer... Every time I try to whittle it down closer, I reach less and less satisfactory answers. Did you know that the greatest common denominator of dashboard and spoon is 1, and that they are thus relatively prime numbers? I didn't, and I sometimes worry about the leaps of ingenuity that allow this program to steam-roll through common sense.
I think Cyc is a great way to represent knowledge, and for some simple questions it is fitting, but for many of the things an eight year old would think you were stupid to have asked it flounders. It is, of course, just as likely that I don't have the nuanced feel for the thousands of available predicates to ask just the right question to lead it to the best answer (Fork would win a gold medal).
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