I do not expect to be posting here anymore. I make no promises about the continued existence of the present content.
Please consider the blog defunct
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 @ 2:20pmAmerican Theism and the Treaty of Tripoli
Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 @ 4:15pmIn modern American political discourse, a great many individuals have been making the claim that America was founded by Christians as a nation built upon Christian morality. Somehow, mind-bogglingly, these claims are made in spite of the existence of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
I was recently pointed to a new argument against the Christian Nation idea in the form of the Treaty of Tripoli, which contains, as Article 11, the text:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion, — as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen, — and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Not that the wingnuts that would make such absurd claims would listen to reason but the Treaty of Tripoli was unanimously ratified by the US Senate and signed into law by John Adams in 1797. That the Treaty of Tripoli dates to 21 years after US independence and 9 years after the US Constitution makes it a pretty clear indicator of both national sentiment and the intent of the founding fathers, what with them still being around and all.
Maybe I should start taking a more militantly atheistic stance to my personal philosophy.
The word with no vowels
Friday, May 6th, 2011 @ 1:08pmThere is, to my knowledge, one, and only one, word in Modern English that contains no vowels.
For the sake of clarity, vowels are the letters ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘o’, ‘u’, and, when representing vowel sounds, ‘y’, and ‘w’.
As a brief aside, if you don’t believe that ‘w’ can serve as a vowel, compare the pronunciations of “plow” and “snow”; ‘w’ serves as a vowel in the latter case. Noting that ‘w’ can be a vowel eliminates “cwm” and “crwth”.
There is, however, one word that does not use any vowels or other letters to represent vowel sounds; its vowel is implied. The word is “nth”.
Fortune Cookie: 2011-04-27
Thursday, April 28th, 2011 @ 1:06amTo teach is to learn twice.
LEARN CHINESE — East
東(dōng)
Lucky Numbers 14, 30, 28, 25, 24, 1
Commentary: To forget is to learn twice.
Tales of epic sailing failure… on the West Coast
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 @ 1:54amThis tale has an index; a preface, which presents two points; and a main body. This paragraph serves as the tale’s index, the next will be the preface and then all remaining content will be the tale itself.
To preface my tale, I need to put forth two points. Firstly, I would like to make clear that my favorite branch of the United States Armed Forces is the United States Coast Guard. Secondly, I have no sailed Synchronicity in both the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
So, now, let’s get to the meat of the story. I am giving away my Hobie 16, Synchronicity, before I move back to Boston (have I mentioned that I’m moving back to Boston?). As is my way, I would far prefer to gift Synchronicity to friends or friends of friends than to try to sell her for some hundreds or a thousand dollars to someone random through Craigslist. As such, Synchronicity remains in my social circles and goes to Denise H. and Ted S.
If you’re going to give away a catamaran to folks who haven’t rigged or sailed a catamaran before, clearly you should go out sailing with them; this is, of course, more clear if you haven’t managed to sail your own catamaran since bringing it out to the West Coast. So, Denise, Ted, and I grabbed Synchronicity, grabbed her rigging, and headed over to the Treasure Island Sailing Center, which is a wonderful small boating facility with a convenient ramp if your boat is light enough to carry by hand. For a nominal fee, we were able to park car and trailer, as well as launch boat.
With about six (6) knots of wind and reasonably calm waters, we were able to pick up a fair bit of speed, even though we were intentionally spilling quite a bit of wind (it’s been a while, no reason for us to go overboard (literally or so to speak)). All in all, quite a wonderful sail.
At some point, when we were half a mile or so out from Treasure Island (a few tacks in), there was a funny sound; the sound was as one piece of metal clanking against another. I’d say that we were moving at a decent 8 – 12 knots (the rudders were singing), and I thought it was just one of our water bottles banging against the trampoline frame. A few moments later, there was another clank and I asked if anyone else heard it. Others had heard it but, without any particular idea of what it was, we didn’t have much reason to pay attention. A few moments later there was a loud snapping noise, the port shroud snapped, and the mast crashed into the Bay; the event took no more than a fraction of a second, all told.
Luckily, nobody was caught by the freed cable or the plummeting mast. Unluckily, our mast, sails, and rigging were no longer in our boat. After the “oh shit” moment had passed, it was time for save the boat and don’t drift into that barge mode. Did I mention that we were right in the midst of a number of large stationary barges that are moored in the Bay just south of Treasure Island? Well, we were.
Taking all the rigging down from on the boat proved hopeless, so I hopped in the water and started working from there (quick aside, wetsuits are amazing). With a fair bit of wrangling and removing all the battens from the mainsail (another aside, small knives are great when you can’t untie ropes and need them free in a hurry), we managed to haul everything back onto the boat.
Having brought paddles in case anything got hairy, we started paddling for Treasure Island. Paddling, with the currents and, more so, the wind, got us worse than nowhere. Despite our efforts, we were traveling parallel to Treasure Island and mostly in the direction of the Bay Bridge.
Eventually, we managed to get the attention of a passing tugboat (really and truly an absolutely massive tugboat). The tug offered to call the Coast Guard and drag us to a nearby buoy, which we graciously accepted. Tossing us a rope as thick as my forearm, we tied up to the tug and they slowly started towing us (the delicacy exercised by the captain was a work of art).
Eventually the Coast Guard showed up (they had another capsize to deal with first). After some discussions between us and the Coast Guard boat, as well as the Coast Guard boat and their base, they offered to tow us back to Treasure Island (quite generous in the face of the general Coast Guard policy of helping individuals in danger but avoiding any direct involvement in salvage operations). We graciously accepted the offer, thanked the tugboat and were slowly dragged back to Treasure Island.
Returning to shore, and hauling the boat out, we took stock of our situation. None of us were particularly injured (torn cuticles and a few fiberglass splinters from the battens don’t count for much), the boat wasn’t in terrible shape (snapped shroud, cut ropes to hold the battens), and we even sailed for a while. All in all, for a pretty epic sailing fail, everything turned out pretty well in the end.
Fortune Cookie: 2011-04-03
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 @ 1:39amKeep in mind your most
cherished dreams
of the future.
LEARN CHINESE — Mango
芒(máng) 果(guǒ)
Lucky Numbers 26, 36, 46, 17, 48, 6
Commentary: As one that is about to move from the West to the East Coast specifically to pursue some of his cherished dreams for the future, I am acutely aware of the need to keep the foremost amongst them squarely in my mind.
Fortune Cookie: 2011-03-29
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 @ 11:02amIf you want to win anything – a
race, your self, your life – you
have to go a little berserk.
LEARN CHINESE — Spoon
勺(sháo) 子(zǐ)
Lucky Numbers 41, 49, 46, 16, 51, 12
Commentary: Drink Powerthirst and you’ll win at everything, forever.
Fast, recursion depth safe, list flattening for Python
Monday, February 28th, 2011 @ 6:10pmI’ve been using Python at work a lot recently (yeah, I know, took me long enough) and finding it to be fantastically useful for all sorts of things.
Anyway, I found myself needing a mechanism for flattening nested container objects and a quick google search led me to a Right Foot In article on various flatten algorithms. Seeing as I needed something to work on containers that aren’t tuples or lists and I’m not very good at leaving well enough alone, I went about trying to come up with my own method.
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
def flatten_to_list(something): if not hasattr(something, '__iter__'): return [something] retlist = list(something) i = 0 while i < len(retlist): while hasattr(retlist[i], '__iter__'): if not retlist[i]: retlist.pop(i) i -= 1 else: retlist.insert(i, retlist[i].pop(0)) i += 1 return retlist
In at least one test case, my method appears to be faster than the best method in the Right Foot In article. I’m still wrestling with namespace issues relating to the use of timeit but I’ll try to get some actual speed numbers and test cases up later.
UPDATE: I am an idiot. My code was faster because my test case exploited a degenerate case for the algorithm; the code below, which is much closer to the original at Right Foot In, is faster.
def flatten_to_list(something): if not hasattr(something, '__iter__'): return [something] retlist = list(something) i = 0 while i < len(retlist): while hasattr(retlist[i], '__iter__'): if not retlist[i]: retlist.pop(i) i -= 1 else: retlist[i:i + 1] = retlist[i] i += 1 return retlist
Someone missed my connection
Monday, February 7th, 2011 @ 10:27pmHere’s a first for me: someone posted a “missed connection” about me on craigslist. One of my roommates randomly found it.
Bloodhound — w4m — 23 (SOMA / south beach)
I met you Saturday night at Bloodhound. We pet the awesome Saint Bernard and talked about mobile media. You’re pretty cool, and I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk more. Thanks for making my Saturday night :)
Recollections on a Vegas Christmas
Monday, January 31st, 2011 @ 6:20pmIt’s been a bit over a month since my brother and I drove to Vegas to spend Christmas weekend (plus a few days) with the rest of our family (who flew out). I was being lazy but it seems that I’m getting called out so here are my major recollections.
The water : The water in Vegas tastes terrible and is no good for rinsing. I don’t think that I’ve dealt with worse tap water in the US before. I was quite happy to have refilled and brought my 5 gallon, road-trip, water jug before leaving San Francisco.
The drinking : In Vegas, there is booze everywhere and you can drink it anywhere on The Strip. Being able to wander from place to place while carrying drinks is quite convenient; I really enjoy partaking of public activities while carrying a drink or, to put it better, it’s nice to have drinks without having to be cooped up in a bar. Then, of course, on top of the ability to wander with booze is how very easy it is to get an awful lot of the stuff: free drinks while gambling, drink specials all over the place, cheap convenience stores just across the street.
The hangover : Vegas leads to an almost perpetual state of hangover. I wasn’t drinking enough to get a particularly bad hangover but between the drinking, the terrible water, and staying up late, I was definitely a below 100% most of the trip. P.S. Worth it.
The poker : I should never play poker with people that aren’t my friends and I should never play poker where anyone expects me to drop more than $20-$40. I lost about $100 in under an hour (maybe half that) the first night we arrived. Fuck everything about Vegas poker.
The craps : Let me tell you about Christmas Day (parts of it at least). Christmas stuff happened; Dave and I hung out with the rest of the family; and we all went out for dinner at Pampas Churrascaria, which was phenomenally good. After dinner, we all wandered The Strip for a bit, lost a little money on a few things and then Dave and I split off from the rest of our family to continue adventuring on our own.
I had been in contact with my friend Gautham, who happened to concurrently be in Vegas, and we made plans to meet up later to play craps. While Dave and I were waiting for Gautham to be ready to hang out, we had a few more drinks, checked out the Vegas architecture (Luxor is awesome; Aria is gorgeous; MGM is strangely green), and generally wandered around. At some point, we grabbed ourselves a couple of Four Lokos (so terrible but so awesome) from a convenience store and, shortly thereafter, managed to properly get a hold of Gautham.
We met up with Gautham at the Aria and promptly decided that $25 was too high a minimum for craps. Keep in mind that I had never played craps before in my life. So we wandered over to the Bellagio to avail ourselves of their $10 minimum tables. Understanding the basic principle of craps (roll some dice, sevens are good opening rolls but bad otherwise) I mostly took my guidance from Gautham at first and started availing myself of free scotch & sodas. As I became slightly more inebriated and started to get the hang of the game, things became increasingly more entertaining. We had a pretty good table with some pretty fun folks around but, most importantly, we had a really good winning streak. At peak, I was probably up about $300-$400 and when we eventually cashed out, I was up about $200 and a handful of drinks.
The net : Between my poker losses, slot machine losses (shiny things are hard to resist), drink purchases, food purchases, roulette winnings, roulette losses, and craps winnings, I ended up leaving Vegas slightly (<$50) richer than when I arrived.
The guns : On our last full day in Vegas, Dave, Joe, our dad, and I went out to shoot some guns. At first we went to The Gun Store, which is advertised all over the place, but the line was atrocious (well over an hour, possibly two) so I fired up Yelp and found out about Las Vegas Gun Range & Firearm Center. We bailed on The Gun Store and found that the line at Las Vegas Fun Range & Firearm Center was a few minutes long.
I fired off a few clips from a 9mm pistol (don’t recall the make or model) and a couple clips from an H&K MP5. Man oh man, let me tell you, the MP5 is a nice gun. Firing the MP5 fully automatic was kind of neat but being zombie survival minded, I rather preferred switching it to semi-automatic and going for accuracy.
The company : Vegas was awesome. Hanging out with Dave was awesome. Hanging out with Gautham was awesome. Having dinners with my family was nice. Going to the Valley of Fire with my family was neat. Hanging out with my family on the strip was not particularly awesome.
I’m pretty sure that, going forward, I am going to view Vegas as a place to go with friends but not family. I would say, if you’re going to Vegas with family, plan to do some stuff with them and plan to ditch them the rest of the time.
Return : I’m probably going back with a bunch of Fort Awesome folks in April and I’m really looking forward to the trip.
I did NOT coin the term wiki-hole
Monday, January 24th, 2011 @ 1:55amBefore making any claims to having coined a term, it is generally a good idea to check that no one else has used the term before. Having just spent three hours and change reading through articles on the Warhammer 40K Wiki (what can I say, I like super far future science fiction), I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been stuck in a black hole of trivial knowledge. This wiki-triggered and wiki-fed hole in time was not a unique experience for me; I have fallen into these before on other wikis in the past.
Having freed myself, the term “wiki hole” came to mind as a perfect term to describe. Not wanting to make any (easily refutable) ridiculous claims, I performed a couple quick google searches (1 2) only to find that the term already exists. I can’t say that I’m particularly surprised that someone else has already coined the term “wiki-hole” – it is phenomenally intuitive – but I am glad that my linguistic instincts were reasonable.
Will O’ The Wisp (cocktail recipe)
Sunday, January 16th, 2011 @ 8:04pmContinuing my earlier work in the realm of mixology, I would like to present my second cocktail invention. The invention of this cocktail is the result of playing around with gin, Chartreuse, St. Germain, and various other liqueurs in an attempt to make something tasty. This cocktail earns its name, Will O’ The Wisp, from its faint, ghostly, green color.
Ingredients:
- 3/4 oz Green Chartreuse
- 3/4 oz St. Germain
- 3/4 oz White Vermouth
- 1 dash Lavender Bitters
- 3 oz Dry Gin
- 1/4 oz Herbsaint or Absinth
Recipe:
- Pour the Chartreuse, St. Germain, Vermouth, Bitters, and Gin into a cocktail shaker
- Pour the Herbsaint/Absinth into a chilled cocktail glass
- Swirl the cocktail glass, coating the sides, and pouring off any excess Herbsaint/Absinth
- Add ice to the cocktail shaker and shake
- Pour shaken cocktail into the prepared glass
Notes:
The Herbsaint/Absinth can be skipped, though I don’t recommend it. The Lavender Bitters are also optional but very highly recommended. I would recommend stirring this cocktail (instead of shaking) as the resulting beverage has a very different appearance.
Fortune Cookie: 2010-12-27
Monday, December 27th, 2010 @ 4:08pmIt is better to have beans
and bacon in peace than
cakes and ale in fear.
Vegetable
蔬(shǔ)菜(cài)
Lucky Numbers 10, 13, 15, 20, 25, 28
Commentary: It is better to have beans and bacon in fear than cakes and ale in peace.
SanFran to Vegas on one tank: or exactly why I love my car
Sunday, December 26th, 2010 @ 12:01amMy brother and I drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas yesterday where we met up with the rest of our immediate family for the whole Christmas thing. I don’t really have an awful lot to say about the whole Christmas thing that I haven’t said a great many times before and, although I could probably find things to say about Las Vegas, there is very little to say that capture the sheer je ne sais quoi of this place.
Really, to be entirely honest, this post exists solely so that I can gloat about the fact that I managed to drive from San Francisco to Las Vegas on less than one tank of fuel; I really do love my Volkswagen TDi.
Fortune Cookie: 2010-12-15
Saturday, December 18th, 2010 @ 5:34pmGood news is on the way.
LEARN CHINESE — Daughter
女(nǚ)兒(ér)
Lucky Numbers 20, 18, 5, 9, 10, 54
Commentary: Good ways are not in the news.
The potato button is the apex of human technology
Monday, November 29th, 2010 @ 4:50pmThe potato button is the single greatest thing that mankind has ever achieved. Dwarfing sliced bread, slightly surpassing the Saturn V, and even edging out the Internet, the potato button expresses our unparalleled superiority over not just every other creature on this planet but over the primordial forces of nature themselves.
The potato button, for those that have not beheld its unmatched glory, is a button on our microwave that cooks potatoes. To experience the potato button’s awesome power, one merely inserts one (or more) potato(es) into the microwave and pushes the potato button, just the potato button; one need not set a timer, choose a power level, or even, for that matter, push the start button. Some number of minutes after pushing the potato button, any raw potatoes one has inserted will emerge as baked potatoes (or a fantastically good faximile thereof).
The glory of the potato button comes from the combined technological force that is microwaves, heat sensors, microcontrollers capable of handling feedback systems, and the modern cultivated potato. The potato button is a technological tour de force that turns a relatively straightforward food preparation task into a task that is so utterly trivial as to require nigh on no conscious thought whatsoever.
Now, it may be the case that I am being a little tongue-in-cheek by suggesting that the potato button is more significant than the moon landing but I do firmly believe that the potato button is an absolutely quintessential example of why technology exists. Technology exists to make the trivialize the tasks that we must otherwise perform so as to allow us to perform grander tasks. Technology, in general, is much like software, in specific, because it allows us to take tasks, abstract them, and build larger tasks from those abstracted components.
The sheer simplicity of cooking a potato with the push of a single button is a gigantic step toward removing time and thought from preparing food. I am not suggesting that we should abandon cooking altogether; cooking is fun and rewarding as a task and group experience. Imagine, however, a world where you never have to think about food preparation, except as a hobby. In Star Trek, most food is replicated as needed; imagine how much time and productivity is gained by the removal of the time needed to prepare food. Sure restaurants, cafeterias, or mess halls can serve much the same purpose of removing the need for food preparation but those do not let you eat at home; delivery services allow one to eat from home without taking time to prepare food but from an infrastructure standpoint do not scale well. The more that we can use technology to trivialize the tasks of our lives, the more time we have to push beyond our currently confines and step up the technological ladder toward the future.
Seriously though, potatoes are great and being able to completely cook a potato by pushing one button is amazing.
Ironhide (cocktail recipe)
Thursday, October 28th, 2010 @ 5:02pmSome number of weeks ago, having discovered Maraschino liqueur, I concocted a variation on my beloved Manhattan. I have been meaning to write up the recipe here for a while but had been stuck on coming up with a name; I needed a name befitting a strong whiskey cocktail with connections to myself and the color red. Having thought for quite a while and come up with a bunch of names that were already taken by other cocktails, I settled on naming the drink after the grizzled, old Autobot, Ironhide. So, without further ado:
Ironhide recipe:
- 3 oz Bourbon whiskey
- 3/4 oz Maraschino
- 1/4 oz grenadine
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
- 1 Maraschino cherry
Serve shaken or stirred with ice in a cocktail glass; garnish with the Maraschino cherry.
Notes:
I have mostly been drinking these on the rocks, which is an acceptable but inferior variation. Being a Manhattan-like cocktail, up-high is really the correct way to serve an Ironhide.
Corn syrup based grenadine or “maraschino” cherries will ruin the flavors imparted by the bitters and Maraschino; you will make a better cocktail by skipping the grenadine and cherry than using cheap, fake ones.
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