Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion. Edmund Burke Speech to the Electors of Bristol, November 3, 1774. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Obituaries We Wish We'd Written Dept.: Sebastian Snow, an eccentric English explorer who helped confirm the source of the Amazon River as he bumbled about vast portions of South America singing the "Eton Boating Song" with somewhat perplexing frequency, died on April 20.... The New York Times, Sunday 13 May 2001. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Entry from the 1999 Bulwer-Lytton contest: It wasn't the best of times; it wasn't the worst of times; it was the times you'd get if you arranged all possible times (including even fictional times in which the nights were usually dark and stormy) in order from worst to best on the real number line from 0.0 inclusive to 1.0 exclusive and then used a really good uniform random number generator to pick a value in that range thus choosing the corresponding times -- that's the times it was. Dale Dellutri ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Two from Jan Tschichold, translated by Hajo Hadeler: Lack of pleasure in the usual, the commonplace, deludes one into the dark notion that different could be better. One finds something bad, is unable to pin down why this is so, and simply wants to do something different. Trendy ideas about shape and form, inferiority complexes and new technical possibilities all play a role, but they are weaker forces than the protest of the young against the ways of the older generation. Granted, such protest against established shape and form almost always has a good reason behind it, and the truly perfect is rare indeed! But any protest must remain open to question as long as the apprenticeship is incomplete and the typographical grammar has not been studied thoroughly. This schooling alone gives us the tools for constructive criticism, for understanding. "The Importance of Tradition" The sanserif only seems to be the simpler script. It is a form that was violently reduced for little children. For adults it is more difficult to read than serifed roman type, whose serifs were never meant to be ornamental. "On Typography" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From comp.risks: Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 18:12:42 -0500 From: ian@ai.mit.edu (Ian Horswill) Subject: Existential risks of computer systems The hotel I was in last weekend had a nifty video-based message system. They had the standard spectra-vision pay-per-view interactive video hardware in the rooms so they set it up so you could review your bill, check out, and collect your messages using your TV and remote control as a terminal. Pretty nifty. So one night, I get back to my room and press the "check messages" button. After a longish pause, my TV greets me with the message: "We're sorry, but the hotel records indicate that this room does not exist. Please contact the front desk if this is not the case." At first, this caused a sort of Sartrian crisis within me, but then I relaxed. According to the hotel phone directory, the front desk didn't exist either, so I was obviously in good company. P.S. It would seem that someone inadvertently checked me out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "A computer `user' isn't a real person of flesh and blood, with passions and brains. No, he is a mythical figure, and not a very pleasant one either. A kind of mongrel with money but without taste, an ugly caricature that is very uninspiring to work for. He is, as a matter of fact, such an uninspiring idiot that his stupidity alone is sufficient explanation for the ugliness of most computer systems. And oh! Is he uneducated! That is perhaps his most depressing characteristic. He is equally education-resistant as another equally mythical bore, the `average programmer', whose solid stupidity is the greatest barrier to progress in programming. It is a sad thought that large sections of computing science are effectively paralyzed by the narrow-mindedness and other grotesque limitations with which a poor literature has endowed these influential mythical figures. (Computing science is not unique in inventing such paralyzing caricatures: universities all over the world are threatened by the invention of the `the average student')...." From E. W. Dijkstra, ``On Webster, Users, Bugs, and Aristotle'' (EWD618). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Zen master was delivering a sermon to some Zen monks outside his hut. Suddenly, he went inside, locked the door, set the hut on fire, and called out, "Unless someone says the right thing, I'm not coming out." Everybody then desperately tried to say the right thing and, of course, failed. Along came a latecomer who wanted to know what all the fuss was about. One of the monks excitedly exclaimed, "The master has locked himself inside and set fire to the hut and unless somebody says the right thing, he won't come out!" Upon hearing this, the latecomer said, "Well, perhaps at last we shall be rid of that dangerous old scoundrel." "But alas!" he exclaimed as the door of the hut opened, "it appears I have said the right thing." From _This Book Needs No Readers_ (with apologies to Raymond Smullyan) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [One of Allen Downey's plan files]: Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant -- society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it -- its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compels all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism. John Stuart Mill On Liberty ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Whence Mr Stelling concluded that Tom's brain being peculiarly impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements: it was his favorite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of any subsequent crop. I say nothing against Mr Stelling's theory: if we are to have one regimen for all minds his seems to me as good as any other. I only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Tom Tulliver as if he had been plied with cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him from digesting it. It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing the metaphor! Once call the brain an intellectual stomach, and one's ingenious conception of the classics and geometry as ploughs and harrows seems to settle nothing. But then, it is open to some one else to follow great authorities and call the mind a sheet of white paper or a mirror, in which case one's knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenious idea to call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. O Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being `the freshest modern' instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor,---that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else?" from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "I loved the night. I think secretly all scientists exult in working alone, surrounded by the urgent private quiet of the dark. I remember the exhilaration of working through the night in the lab, drinking thick pasty coffee that had been on the burner for hours, walking out into the sunrise, grabbing breakfast at a diner and watching the city come to life. To be doing something no one had ever done, to generate rows amd columns of numbers that hinted at a solution to a problem no one had ever solved ... to be alone and out on the edge like that, there was no feeling like it in the world." Steven A. Rosenberg (from "Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer" by S. A. Rosenberg and J. M. Barry, as quoted in the NY Times Book Review of 18 October 1992.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment by a professor observing two students unconscious at their keyboards: "That's the trouble with graduate students. Every couple of days, they fall asleep." [Courtesy Allen Akin] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Ten years ago, I heard a classics professor say the single most important thing---in my opinion---that anyone has said about professors: `We must remember,' he declared, `that professors are the ones nobody wanted to dance with in high school.'" - o - "But then came the second problem: how to keep the buzzards sitting on the tree branch until it was time for their cue to fly. That seemed easy. Wire their feet to the branch, and then, after Paul Newman fires his shot, pull the wire, releasing their feet, thus allowing them to take off. But ... the film makers had not reckoned with `the mentality of buzzards.' With their feet wired, the buzzards did not have enough mobility to fly. But they did have enough mobility to pitch forward. So that's what they did: ... they tried to fly, pitched forward and hung upside down from the dead branch, with their wings flapping. ... [The] buzzard circulatory system does not work upside down, and so, after a moment or two of flapping, the buzzards passed out.... And then we get to the second stage of buzzard psychology. After six or seven episodes of pitching forward, passing out, being revived, being replaced on the branch and pitching forward again, the buzzards gave up. Now, when you pulled the wire and released their feet, they sat there, saying in clear, nonverbal terms, `We *tried* that before. It did not work. We are not going to try it again.'.... How does the parable apply? In any and all disciplines, you go to graduate school to have your feet wired to the branch...." Patricia Nelson Limerick In "Dancing with Professors: The Trouble with Academic Prose" The NY Times Book Review, 31 October 1993. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously." Bertrand Russell ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Lately I've been dining out on my ability to define and give examples for covariance and contravariance. A particularly distinguished member of the ANSI C++ committee told me `I am never sure which one is which.'" Thomas Holaday ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Milton Babbitt on modern music: Once, a long time ago, in a famous article that ever since has served as a bible of academic arrogance, Milton Babbitt tried to laugh the audience's claims on 20th-century music right out of court. ``Imagine a layman chancing upon a lecture on `Pointwise Periodic Homeomorphisms,' '' he wrote. ``At the conclusion, he announces, `I didn't like it.' '' ... But now imagine that one engaged Claire Bloom to read `Pointwise Periodic Homeomorphisms' with all the expressive resources of voice and gesture she would bring to the role of Ophelia or Desdemona. Her performance would add nothing to the paper so far as the math professors were concerned. The ``layman'' would find something to admire in the beauty of her rendition. ... And yet the lack of connection between the content of the utterance and the manner of its delivery would be a constant irritant both for the professors and the layman. (Richard Taruskin in the Classical View column of the NY Times of 10 March 1996) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Esther Dyson on Edward Teller: Edward Teller ... came to the house often. I have these memories of him pouring excessive amounts of chocolate sauce over his ice cream while declaring, "My doctor says I shouldn't do this, but I never pretended to be an honorable man." As quoted by Claudia Dreidus in the _New York Times Magazine_, 7 July 1996. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- One pupil recalled handing a draft of his thesis to J.L. Austin, a leader of the [Oxford] school, whereupon Austin opened the file at the page of contents and "proceeded to spend the next three hours discussing the differences between `contents', `list', `index', `table', etc." The pupil experienced "a Zen-like illumination". But it faded in minutes. The Economist 7-13 December 1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- How much easier it is for Congress, instead of accepting the political damage attendant to the commencement of impeachment proceedings against the President on trivial grounds...simply to trigger a debilitating criminal investigation of the Chief executive under this law. Antonin Scalia Dissent in the Supreme Court's 1988 decision on the Independent Counsel law. (Source: The New Yorker) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ... Captain Aubrey was not only an officer professionally concerned with celestial navigation but also a disinterested astronomer and, although one would never have suspected it from his honest, open face, a mathematician.... Patrick O'Brian _The Commodore_ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [Antoine Jacobsohn] went up to the grower and said, in French, ``Why is that no one any longer grows green asparagus---when was it that people went over to white asparagus?'' The man gave him an incredulous look, and then said, in the beautiful clear French of the Ile-de-France, ``You know, I would say that what you've just stated is the exact contrary of the truth.'' It was a perfect Parisian tone of voice---not disputatious, just suggesting a love of the shared pursuit of the truth, which unfortunately, happens not to be in your possession right now. Antoine made the right response. He raised his eyebrows in polite wonder while smiling only on the left side his face, an expression that means, How greatly I respect the vigor of your opinions, however much they may call to mind the ravings of a lunatic.... Adam Gopnik "The Millenial Restaurant" The New Yorker, 26 October 1998 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The realization that von Neumann's proof is of limited relevance has been gaining ground since the 1952 work of Bohm. However, it is far from universal. Moreover, the writer has not found in the literature any adequate analysis of what went wrong. Like all authors of noncommissioned reviews, he thinks that he can restate the position with such clarity and simplicity that all previous discussions will be eclipsed. J. S. Bell "On the problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Deng Xiaoping on New-Age philosophy: When Deng Xiaoping visited the United States in 1979, the actress Shirley MacLaine told him how impressed she had been on a visit to China during the Cultural Revolution, when Mr. Deng and countless others had been forced to toil in remote areas and ``learn from the peasants.'' The actress said she had been particularly moved by a scholar working in a field, who had described how much more fulfilling it was to grow tomatoes than to work in a university. Mr. Deng looked at her and said: ``He lied.'' The New York Times 23 February 1997 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bertrand Russell on Language Design: Many short-lived attempts from 1900 to the late fifties were made to improve Esperanto... The most successful of these reform efforts was Ido---in Esperanto it means ``offspring''---invented in 1907 by the French philosopher Louis Couterat. A monthly titled Progreso was written in Ido. Couterat regarded all Esperantists as depraved. In the first volume of his autobiography Bertrand Russell recalls Couterat complaining that Ido had no word similar to ``Esperantist.'' ``I suggested `Idiot,' '' Russell adds, ``but he was not quite pleased.'' Martin Gardner, _Skeptical Inquirer_, July/August 1995 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- John Updike on Lutheranism: In Luther's combative, constipated sense of the human condition, there was not much for it but to pray for faith and have another beer. (From the NY Times Magazine of 8 October 1995) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The following excerpts are from an English translation of Umberto Eco's back-page column, "La bustina di Minerva," in the Italian news weekly "Espresso," September 30, 1994. "....Insufficient consideration has been given to the new underground religious war which is modifying the modern world. It's an old idea of mine, but I find that whenever I tell people about it they immediately agree with me. "The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the 'ratio studiorum' of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach--if not the Kingdom of Heaven--the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. "DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revellers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment. "You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions; when it comes down to it, you can decide to allow women and gays to be ministers if you want to. .... "And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is talmudic and cabalistic..." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Found in Tom Rodeheffer's plan file, who found it on the SCORE bulletin board posted by Greiner at Diablo, who found it on the bboard at ISIB posted by Gabriel Robins at ISI-VAXA, who found it on the ai-news bboard at UCLA posted by Margot Flowers at Yale, who found it on the door of Drew McDermott as the listing of a message sent by Rich Welty at Rpi: AI Koans: (by Danny) A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly- "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked. - - - - - One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers to each cons." Moon patiently told the student the following story- "One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage collector... - - - - - In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play" Minsky shut his eyes, "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be empty." At that momment, Sussman was enlightened. - - - - - A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it true", asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as Lisp". Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick. - - - - - A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider,"because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster- "I wish the toaster to be happy too". - - - - - (by whom?) A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master, Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student. "Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new disciples." Hearing this, the man was Enlightened. - - - - - (And, from Gabriel:) A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnesty, the Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened. - - - - - (Adapted from Touretzky:) A CMU graduate student was attending a seminar at which Fahlman was speaking. The student asked, ``What is the essence of AI?'' Fahlman replied, ``Elephants are gray. Clyde is an elephant. Clyde is white.'' Immediately, the student was Enlightened. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A man, a plan, a caret, a ban, a myriad, a sum, a lac, a liar, a hoop, a pint, a catalpa, a gas, an oil, a bird, a yell, a vat, a caw, a pax, a wag, a tax, a nay, a ram, a cap, a yam, a gay, a tsar, a wall, a car, a luger, a ward, a bin, a woman, a vassal, a wolf, a tuna, a nit, a pall, a fret, a watt, a bay, a daub, a tan, a cab, a datum, a gall, a hat, a fag, a zap, a say, a jaw, a lay, a wet, a gallop, a tug, a trot, a trap, a tram, a torr, a caper, a top, a tonk, a toll, a ball, a fair, a sax, a minim, a tenor, a bass, a passer, a capital, a rut, an amen, a ted, a cabal, a tang, a sun, an ass, a maw, a sag, a jam, a dam, a sub, a salt, an axon, a sail, an ad, a wadi, a radian, a room, a rood, a rip, a tad, a pariah, a revel, a reel, a reed, a pool, a plug, a pin, a peek, a parabola, a dog, a pat, a cud, a nu, a fan, a pal, a rum, a nod, an eta, a lag, an eel, a batik, a mug, a mot, a nap, a maxim, a mood, a leek, a grub, a gob, a gel, a drab, a citadel, a total, a cedar, a tap, a gag, a rat, a manor, a bar, a gal, a cola, a pap, a yaw, a tab, a raj, a gab, a nag, a pagan, a bag, a jar, a bat, a way, a papa, a local, a gar, a baron, a mat, a rag, a gap, a tar, a decal, a tot, a led, a tic, a bard, a leg, a bog, a burg, a keel, a doom, a mix, a map, an atom, a gum, a kit, a baleen, a gala, a ten, a don, a mural, a pan, a faun, a ducat, a pagoda, a lob, a rap, a keep, a nip, a gulp, a loop, a deer, a leer, a lever, a hair, a pad, a tapir, a door, a moor, an aid, a raid, a wad, an alias, an ox, an atlas, a bus, a madam, a jag, a saw, a mass, an anus, a gnat, a lab, a cadet, an em, a natural, a tip, a caress, a pass, a baronet, a minimax, a sari, a fall, a ballot, a knot, a pot, a rep, a carrot, a mart, a part, a tort, a gut, a poll, a gateway, a law, a jay, a sap, a zag, a fat, a hall, a gamut, a dab, a can, a tabu, a day, a batt, a waterfall, a patina, a nut, a flow, a lass, a van, a mow, a nib, a draw, a regular, a call, a war, a stay, a gam, a yap, a cam, a ray, an ax, a tag, a wax, a paw, a cat, a valley, a drib, a lion, a saga, a plat, a catnip, a pooh, a rail, a calamus, a dairyman, a bater, a canal--Panama. -- D. Hoey: Just an old problem I dredged up. This solution is unlikely to be optimal even for the small vocabulary at my disposal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sir Humphrey Appleby on lying (from Yes, Prime Minister): ... inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated is such as to cause epistemological problems of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Quotations from submissions to the Michigan Mathematics Prize Competition. "Hello Mr./Mrs. Judge—Be kind—I could use some $" "It is difficult to prove a statement I don’t understand" Regarding #3: "Question 2 is the offspring of Question 34 who is the sister of Question 15 being the third cousin (twice removed) of Question 66 …" One student offered a ‘proof by injunction’ on #4. "Hey! Look! A nose plug (Ω)" "What do you call Santa's elves? Subordinate clauses." "I don’t need to prove it … I believe you." On #2: "Well, you look at the number, then you do some math." On #3: "This is tricky, I haven’t taken precalculus in months." "This is hard. Why am I doing this? I hate math." "I hope this isn't the test to get to utopia because if it is … I'm screwed." Answer to several problems: "42" [c.f. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Doug Adams] "I haven’t taken trigonometry, I have no clue what I am doing here. I guess I am just trading convenience with points—I give one less paper to grade and you give me some points." [On a blank #4.] "I’m only in the 8th grade. Please don’t try to hurt me." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Christopher Hitchens on the philosophy of Ayn Rand: "I have always found it quaint and rather touching that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough."