October 2004 Archives

I went clothes shopping today. What more is there to say? Nothing. Debate season is approaching, so it seemed a reasonable proposition to buy a new shirt for it. My current debate clothes are nice, but not exactly well fitting or tailored at all, so although they work, there are much nicer things that I could have. My mom demanded that I get properly fitting pair of pants, so I acquiesed and let her buy me both pants and a shirt. So we stopped by Nordstrom before I made my biweekly visit to the central library, and I got a really nice pair of pants. You never realize how nice pants can get until you shop at that store specifically for them. They have more types of pants that are so virtually indistinguishable from one another than I would have imagined could possibly support such company. Apparently there are many subtilties to mens pants. Anyway, this pair was excellent--I think--and they modify them for free, so it was somewhat of a bargain. After that, I began the long saga of acquiring a shirt. I soon came to the conclusion that there are no shirts on this planet which properly fit me. After all, if there aren't any fitting shirts in the acre of Nordstrom that is devoted to such, then it's inconceivable that there should be any anywhere. There was one shirt in the store that had my proper neck size, but it was far too broad. I finally had to settle on a shirt with a workable neck size, but it was still to broad in the torso and armpit: rather humorous indeed, considering the time that was spent looking for the proper size. One plus: I already have a tie that will work with this new shirt, so I don't have to sell my organs on the black market to get the money for buying one of those infernal strips of silk. The tie market is in serious need of a recorrection with reality... I'll just have to have Erin buy some of the cheap ones for me in Boston.

After spending a half hour deleting enough comment spam to make Ralph Nader worship the merits of totalitarianism, I'm convinced there needs to be some kind of judicial form of mob justice to deal with social ill. Certain states have laws that allow individuals to sue spammers in small claims court. I think that more states should adopt these laws, and also permit individuals to sue the companies/individuals that host domains used by spammers. So: company X owns such and such an IP address, so person Y spammed by person Z from this IP address can sue company X in small claims court. This would need to be publicized significantly, but I think that entrepreneurs could make a decent living off suing everyone for all of the spams that go around on the internet. Companies would then be more motivated to eliminate spammers. I simply hate this stuff.

We are entering dark days. Not only is it possible that George W. Bush will be elected for a second term--but comment spam is wreaking havoc on this blog. In the last 24 hours, I have received more than 60 comment spams. The volume of spam is so large that my original blacklisting solution is becoming unfeasible because it is too high maintenance. For the past several months I have been blocking certain IP addresses which have been spamming me. With the volume of spam at 10-20 comments/day, this plan may require too much vigilance.

A thought occurred to me today, which, being quite ironic, was that I didn't feel that I'd properly "thought" in months now. Luckily, that seemed to have been the proper shower to make the drought wane. So, a few paragraphs should suffice to summarize a few items of interest.

In continuing my assault on morality, it occurred to me that it would be a worthy proposition to determine a definition for morality. So often it seems that things are debated in common speech without a rigorous definition. Morality is the collection of morals to which a person subscribes. Morals are a person's individual beliefs of what is universally acceptable, inacceptable, or proper. This seems like a reasonable definition, but I haven't decided if it should be modified. It would be fallacious for me to deride the existance of all morality, which I don't, but I do believe that morality should be replaced a desire to make actions that are most beneficially primarily for the mass of other people, and secondarily for the individual. This is quite subtle. Take for example the case of individuality. This argument is in no way critical of individuality. Rather, it supports it because individuality is often better for the mass of people. There are many other intricacies of this view which I don't have time to articulate now. This is all very vague at this point, but compelling.

I talked to Zaraza about deriving the moments of inertia for arbitrary bodies that can be represented by integrals. It's quite interesting, and I think I'm just starting to understand it. Take the simplest case for example: a thin rod of length L that can be approximated along 1-dimension, and that rotates about one end. The moment of inertia for a particle can be represented by:
I = mr²
If we are looking at a body of mass M, then we can say that the mass M is equal to the sum of all its infinitely small component masses dm. Thus, we shrink I and m to the differentials dI and dm:
dI = r² dm
Integrating gives:
∫dI = I = ∫r² dm
Now here's where I got confused, and what I'm starting to fully understand... suppose the rod has a linear density of:
ρ = M/L,
then we could also say that the linear density is equal to the ratio of differentials:
ρ = dm/dr
setting equal and solving for dm:
dm/dr = M/L
dm = (M/L)dr
substituting back into the integral and evaluating from 0 to L (since the end is the axis of rotation):
I = ∫r² (M/L)dr
I = (M/L) ∫r² dr
I = (M/L) (1/3)(L³)
I = ML²/3
And lo and behold! That's the expression for moment of inertia. More complicated bodies require more complicated processes (shell method, etc.), but the idea is the same.

In other news, I went a to college visit by the University of Chicago. Not only was this an excellent way to escape the redundancy and pointlessness of Culpepper, but it was somewhat interesting. It seems like a pretty interesting school. They don't do engineering or architecture, so I'd have to go the uber-purist route for math and physics (already happening...). Apparently they're trying to dispel the kind of reputation that they've gotten from having the highest suicide rate of any university in the US, and the notoriety of never having a student graduate with a 4.0 gpa, despite the kind of students who go there. Nevertheless, it definitely seems like a place to consider: 80% of classes have less than 25 people, and 60% have less than 15, the only classes not taught by professors are 100-level foreign language classes (taught by native-speaking graduate students) and low-level math courses, and more Nobel Laureates are affiliate with U of C than with any other US university (although they may not have the same student to Nobel Laureate ratio as Caltech, per se). All this is for a modest $43,000/year. Maybe I should give Ben Zimmerman a call next year...

Argh! I'm out of time; must go work!

"ESCHEW OBFUSCATION"

--Jonathan Beck's t-shirt

Avoid morality and immorality whenever possible: become imperfectly amoral.

Today was the inaugural meeting of the Philosophy Club, headed and founded by Ian and myself. In order to pique the interest of as many people as possible, we started out with a bang: the long awaited debate between the Republican Club, Students for Social Justice, and a few members (I think) of the Democrats Club. It was actually more of an open forum for discussion, but was billed as a debate. It went relatively well, although when Ari Stone started talking about how all marriage was derived from the Bible, all of the civility in world could not have stopped the collective chuckle, from Republicans and others alike, as well as from Ari himself. Although everyone was testy about making sure that things were unbiased, we succeeded very well on that front. The worst complain that we had was when someone pointed out that the question "... is the Iraq war still beneficial, considering the current situation?" implied that the Iraq war was once beneficial. We omitted the "still" and appeased both sides.

There was a short discussion on homosexual marriage, at which point Ted voiced an opinion with which I wholeheartedly agree. He stated that the government should stop regulating marriage all together because it is a form of tax discrimination, and because the alleged "sanctity" of marriage is religious in nature anyway. This elicited general applause from most people, even some Republicans. While unfortunately unfeasible, I am a strong proponent of at least making the government only issue "civil unions" which can be between anyone--incest not excluded (we let people with AIDS, and many other life threatening transmittable diseases reproduce when the probability of defects and inheretance to offspring are much higher than with incest. Furthermore, incest is rare and naturally selected against because of the unfavorable genetic repercussions.) While marriage certainly doesn't come from the Bible, it's historically a religious institution, and it's importance is religious. So the government merely issue contracts between two people that allow them certain tax benefits with no basis of discrimination, or not issue any sort of contracts whatsoever. I had an interesting conversation along those lines with Ari Feuer, who had some compelling thoughts on Measure 36, the proposed state constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

After a mere 18% of high school sophomores state-wide passed the state open-ended math assessment, the test has been official dropped for the next several years. Approximately 50% of students passed the multiple choice version, statewide. One the 2003 open-ended assessment, the pass rate was about 50% also. One the problem which I performed (and answered "correctly", according to their definition of "correct," I might add), there were actually an infinite number of possibilities for the correct answer: on the maximum speed of a car was given, not the speed that it actually traveled in the scenario. Other problems have asked for profit without actually specifying the cost of production or distribution. Jonathan Kadish received a score of 3 on his method of verification (4 is passing). To verify the problem, not only did he get the correct answer but he used calculus to do so (something like using integrals to derive some obvious area formula). It was overkill, but a certainly valid way of doing it. Other people who have used calculus to solve the problems have seen failing scores. Lucky for me, my last work sample score for this test may have been lost. I talked to Ms. Culpepper and she agreed to see if she could find a problem for the test that allowed me to use calculus as an experiment to see what my scores end up being. While I'm not fond of Culpepper's teaching "style," she a nice enough person. The class passes nicely when I ace the tests and do nothing in class but talk to Leeor, Jon, and her.

In other news, the recent polls suggest that Bush may be nearing the 20% mark in Multnomah county. The Oregonian reported today that in the county, Kerry leads Bush 65% to 21% with a 4% (if I remember correctly) margin of error. It is unlikely that Bush will be able to carry the state unless he gets at least 30% of the vote in Multnomah county. Bush's 21% is concentrated mostly in the area east of 82nd Av. on the eastside, including far east Portland and its neighboring suburbs.

"Sir Issac Newton is single-handedly probably resposible for more pain and suffering than any dictator in the history of mankind."

--Zaraza

Let's just say that my motivation wanes. This week was kind of lame. I seemed to be extremely busy, but I also seemed to get relatively little done. The senseless week of homecoming is finally finished, as a moderate success. I still don't know the final numbers on the profit, but I suspect that it netted a fair quantity of money. It didn't seem as profitable or successful as last year, though. Yesterday was God's day: it was the day of physics. I did some physics with Jon, took the PSATs, went out to lunch at Thai Corner with him and Matt, and worked at school for about 7 more hours. I worked for another 2 hours at school today, and have done some homework. The bike rack project is nearly done: our guy from the city needs to survey the locations and then we're on the list to get them. I need to revisit my Esperanto studies and do some more homework and add to my extemp tub and write a radio AND do an innumerable number of other things which carry out into the indefinite future.

Ahhh... let's just say that I think I like Thoreau, quite a bit in fact. It may be too early to tell, but his ideas are very compelling. Thus far, it's lacking a little bit of the didactic style that I'm fond of, but it's made up for by the wealth of mind.

There two types of prostitutes: those that sell their bodies to the public at any bid, and those who sell their souls to the public at the highest bid. They should both be outlawed.

It is unquestionable that media is biased nowadays. Conservatives say it's liberal, liberals say it's conservative. Both groups of people are either ignorant, morons, or both. It's bent both ways. Media corporations exist to create profit. Profit is gained through higher viewership ratings. In extremely polarized times, people will tend to listen to reporting with which they can agree. So biasing media is an effective marketing strategy. Some media groups veer to the left, some to the right, but no matter what they have more viewers if they bend. It's filthy, but reality. So read the Christian Science Monitor. I've added a link. In these times, it's about all that I find palatable.

I think I may have made a very tiny first step at bringing nerdiness to the masses. This week is homecoming week, a week that, despite my position of power in planning it, I have grown to dislike. Each day during this week there are various themes to which one can dress (formal, school spirit, decade, pajama, and clash), and a semi-competitive activity during lunch. In the past, such lunch-time activities have been mostly uneventful, with the exception of last year's introduction of a wall-ball tournament and "Trojan Idol," a take-off of the popular (still?? I don't watch TV) television series "American Idol." Given the success of those two activities, they are occurring this year, along with a new and somewhat unusual event: a speed chess competition, organized by myself and Dom.

While there were some bumps in the road in finding clocks for the matchs, we finally managed to secure two at the last minute, thanks to Jonathan and Ted. While we only had two, running two games at a time was ideal because it kept more audience attention focused on each game. 16 competitors vied in an elimination bracket. Games were kept to 2 minutes per person. Amazingly, the timing fit very nicely for our alotted lunch period. Even more amazingly, the competition attracted a surprisingly large, vocal, and engaged audience. After 12 games of octafinal and quarterfinal play, the semifinal round was determined. While the octafinals were predictable, there were some very interesting upsets in the quarterfinals, as sophomore prodigy Kyle Steinbach lost to sophomore Brian Norton, and senior Adam Sherman lost to senior Paul Stanton. The semifinals and finals will be played at an assembly on Friday. While I won't bore you with the current bracket results, I will say that junior Ted Sanders will play sophomore Brian Norton, and junior Jonathan Kadish will play senior Paul Stanton. I hate to speculate, but it's likely that Ted will beat Brian and win the final match, whether he plays Jon or Paul. The other semifinal match is a toss up; if I had to pick, I'd say Kadish, but that's meaningless. Times may be upped to 3 minutes for the assembly. We're definately doing this again next year; speed chess is a truly intense sport.

Tomorrow is the wall-ball tournament, the winner of whom shall play defending champion, junior Chuck Seaman, at the assembly. Last year, the competition got a little rough, when Noah Gottlieb crashed through a window trying to return a serve.

Need to take a little break from this mindnumbing English homework: the more I learn in math and science, the less I find english appealing. So, I've been contemplating doing a science fair/research project for some time now, and I haven't had much luck with ideas. The problem is that my area of interest is physics, and meaningful research in physics requires ungodly amounts of resources nowadays. I wanted to do proton-electron collisions with a small cyclotron, but it requires a higher energy level (total energies around 900 keV for weird particles to start showing up) than I can reliably get with a small device, plus I can't measure any products. So then I thought that I should do something purely theoretical. Needless to say, that thought ended within about 30 seconds for obvious reasons. Then I thought that maybe I should work on some interesting math proof, but that might also be out of my reach (I'm still considering....). Now I've returned to my fix on particle accelerators. Apparently researchers have been able to use laser bursts to accelerate electrons in gases, but it seems simply too extravagant to be remotely possible for me. Physics is terrible these days. In 16th century it used to be the case that working with a spring, some weights, a quill, and some paper was considered cutting edge (think Hooke). Now you at least need a particle accelerator, some powerful lasers, or degrees in both math and physics. It's depressing.

"clean coal technologies..."

--The cornerstone of the Bush environmental agenda. This online publication is fair and unbiased... I said unbiased, right?

"I hear there's some rumors on the 'internets'..."

--G. W. Bush, talking about the possibility of a draft. While Al Gore invented the internet, it seems that Mr. Bush has invented a few more.

"I own a timber company?! That's news to me. Want some wood?"

--G. W. Bush, in reference to Kerry's remark that the president's statistics on small businesses were flawed because they counted wealthy individuals who owned shares of small businesses as separate small businesses themselves. Kerry pointed out that the president owned a share of a timber company and therefore was considered a small business with Bush's statistics. Bush, shocked, denied the claim, saying that he had know idea that he owned a timber company. According to Bloomberg.com: " Bush did report income from a timber company, according to copies of his tax returns on a Web site operated by Tax Analysts, an Arlington, Virginia, publisher of tax information. Bush earned $425,000 in income from partnerships in 2003, more than his presidential salary of $400,000."

"And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I'm sorry, you too."

--John Kerry, describing whom his tax increase on individuals earning more than $200,000 will affect.

"And Maxwell said, Let there be:

∫E ∙ dA = Q/ε
∫B ∙ dA = 0
∫E ∙ ds = -dФ/dt
∫B ∙ ds = μi + με(dФ/dt)

and there was light. And Maxwell saw the light, that it was good..."

--Genesis, 1:4-5

"We have given you facts and information based in current reality. All they have given you is Jesus, the compactability of the Japanese people, and hopeful prayer."

--Ian Rocker, delivering a summary of our case that indefinite economic growth and environmental sustinability are mutually exclusive, during a debate in Ecology. We, of course, dismembered the proposition.

Although philosophical traditions of rationalism and the enlightenment have appropriately gone by the wayside, essential contributions still remain. Among these is the theory of the social contract, which argues for a government that exists solely because the people created it and ceded certain powers to it out of necessity. This contract, which forms the basis of our government, therefore seems to imply that the intrusion of this government into the lives of the people should be kept to a necessary minimum. Defining what constitutes a "necessary" minimum is the focus of many policy debates over a broad spectrum of issues. The recent attempt of the Congress to place a constitutional amendment on same-sex marriage is a clear and dangerous violation of the principles of limited government. As is (or shall hopefully become!) apparent, issues of pure morality such as same-sex marriage are wholly outside the legislating powers of Congress, and they are a breach of the social contract which we possess with our government.

The social contract gives the government the power to do what is necessary to protect the population it governs. It therefore logically follows that morality is a breach of this contract. The obvious counter to this averment is that the government must necessarily enforce morality because all belief is derived from it: if the government were to not enforce the beliefs of its constituancy then it would not exist. Cynics would immediately point out that murder is derived from the moral belief in everyone's right to live. Murder and the abuse of other humans is the fundamental reason why the social contract exists. However, all morality it not created equal. The morality that the government does have the power to enforce is that which is necessary for the preservation of life, liberty, and property [and happiness; many thanks to Mr. Franklin]. While banning murder is an example of a moral belief, the government has every right to enforce it since it is required for the population to exist peacefully and happily. Therefore, a consequence of the social contract theory is that the government must rationally link every action it makes, whether based in morality or not, to a tangible need of society. Petty whims of moral belief that are not grounded in a scientific reasoning, such as prayer, cannot be made manditory. However, since restricting prayer would be an infringement upon the liberty of the people, and since there is no tangible and rational basis for doing so, the social contract does not give the government the authority to ban it. In the US, the Constitution provides the basis for our laws, but at the core of the Constitution rests many principles important to this contract.

Unfortunately, there are elements within our own society [to the right and the left] that attempt to crush this objective operation of the government. The foremost example of this, is the idiotic move to create an constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage. A vote was recently held in the House, which failed the necessary 2/3 majority to propose the amendment, but it was still a surprising (to me) majority of 227-186. The support for this amendment is almost entirely based around the idea that same-sex relations are traditionally immoral. The only tangible argument, which would give the necessary perogative for the government to restrict this freedom, is the nebulous point that same-sex marriage would destroy the traditional family unit and lead to social degradation. Aside from being vague, this argument is inherently weak. Banning same-sex marriage would give legal backing behind the social taboo against homosexuality. Lack of the acceptance of certain practices, beliefs, and conditions is what causes social degradation. Consider the AIDS epidemic. Before the disease was part of common discourse in society, people with the disease were often shunned and lost their dignity. As for the homosexuality debate, it is personal dignity which allows people to lead successful lives and form cohesive bonds with other people. The inclusion, not the exclusion of member of society is what helps to develop this dignity. It is presumptuous to claim that families with slightly different structure but equally strong values and dignity could not function as well as traditional families. On one last personal note, wide acceptance of homosexuality may also be a means of slowing population growth since two people of the same sex cannot procreate. : )

The entire debate has nothing to do with whether one agrees with the idea of homosexuality or not. It has to do with the preservation of the purpose of government as a contract of the limited secession of individual power to the government. It seems to me, that the one of the ultimate dangers to this idea is unchecked, irrational, and traditional morality. There's a reason why moving beyond good and evil may not entirely be such a poor or radical idea.