July 2006 Archives

You know, now that I put that title into type, I think that, in a more perverse context, it would make a great name for a smash hit on Broadway... but alas, I am talking about LaTeX. Yes, why on earth would I be learning LaTeX? It's summer! The story went something like this: I wanted to take some notes on something mathematical when I got home from work. I decided it would look pretty if typeset. When I opened OpenOffice.org's equation editor, I shuddered and closed it immediately. When I came back to my computer, I saw a book published by Springer sitting on the floor. All of their books are typeset the same, and they're done very beautifully using none other than LaTeX. So I spent the last four hours haggling with my computer and the internet trying to figure out the markup, build things, set up usable editors, etc.

It was a painful process, but it works, and math is now very, very pretty and formatted neatly. Although the output looks so very elegant, the markup language is fairly miserable, involving convoluted combinations of backslashes, underscores, and lots of curly brackets. My wrist is starting to hurt a little from having to reach all of these awkward keystrokes repeated. So the moral is that while you may develop repetitive strain injury in the process, at least you'll have something very neat and readable in the end. Needless to say, unless it's absolutely unacceptable, pen and paper works for me!

Ahhh... I just checked out the soundtrack to "Calle 54" from the library. My understanding is that a bunch of amazing latin jazz artists came together a couple of years ago in New York and made a movie of just latin jazz. So, it turns out that the music on it is indescribably incredible. It may be my favorite jazz album of all time, if not my absolute favorite album. For those unconvinced that this may be some of the greatest music ever made, just listen to or watch (even better) "From Within" (Disk 1, track 5). If you can watch it, notice how the piano player's hands (Michel Camilo) become a complete blur as the piece moves into its climax. Unbelievable.

While you might find my title to be obnoxious, hopefully it will end up being justifiable. In considering Bush's impending veto on the federal funding of stem-cell research, one must first look at the issue from a utilitarian perspective. The embryos that would be used for the research would otherwise be thrown away, destroyed, their potential for life eliminated... Thus, the anti-abortion camp's view that society should value the embryo's "potential" for life, holds no water from this perspective. There is a simple trade-off: should the government let thousands of embryos be thrown into a dumpster or should it financially support research using them to probably save many lives. In terms of utilitarianism, obviously, the latter is preferable. If we seek to maximize life and happiness, then the latter does so more than the former. This is a fact. It is indisputable. Yes, the government will have to pay money for this service, but the sum is trivial compared with the total budget of the federal government, and it may well come out of the general pool already used to support medical research. This is it. The utilitarian back-of-the-envelope analysis of known costs and benefits says that Bush is wrong.

Clearly there's more to the issue however. We may justifiably questioned the intelligence of Bush, as we should of every politician, but he's probably not that idiotic. After exhausting the domain of costs and benefits, morality is the next place to look for justifications. Actually, knowing Bush, we probably should have confronted morality before pragmatism. Anyway, Bush clearly values embryonic "potential" life a great deal. He strongly opposes abortion. While I may disagree with him here, like most moral hogwash, his reasoning is still legitimately defensible. At the very least, it comes down to a judgement call of what constitutes "life." In this case, however, he clearly values potential life more than preexisting life. He would rather see people die of cancer and disease, than see embryos used for research to try to save them. But wait? What happens to these embryos if they're not used for medical research? Well, they're thrown in the dumpster, as I have already said. By extension, this means that embryos are so valuable to Bush, that given that they face certain destruction by one of two means--a useful one for scientific research, or a useless one in a landfill--Bush would rather destroy them in the most unproductive fashion possible: decomposing and turning into dirt and methane... which, by the way, is a powerful greenhouse gas. It is just me, or does this make absolutely no sense? He values them so much that when he has to destroy them, he chooses the less productive option...?

Now, I have presented a rather simple analysis here, and if my reader is my opponent, they are probably going through the roof right now. I have reduced their moral dignity to an offensive contradiction. Truthfully though, I have been simple, and I have been simple because this is a simple issue. But if you're still reading this, you're probably my opponent, and so it would only be polite for me to convince you that this really is simple, by clearing up the major alleged "complications."

Firstly, I haven't really addressed why Bush is being so idiotic. The real reason that Bush opposes stem cell research, in my opinion, is because of God-based opposition to in vitro fertilization. Unfortunately for him, this too is an inane way to justify his position. Since these disputed embryos are the product of in vitro fertilization, and embryos have substantial moral value to Bush, anything that takes advantage of in vitro fertilization, condones it and is immoral, in the ideology of the president. But there is a serious flaw in this line of reasoning. Mainly, there is no line of causality between using the product of IVF and actually supporting it. One can argue equally well (as I have done) that the government's use of these embryos is just a second-best alternative to throwing them away. Just because we use them, doesn't mean we support IVF. It doesn't say anything really.

But more importantly, there is no way in the firey depths of the lowest circles of hell that the government will succeed in banning IVF, therefore trying to have the government oppose it on very shakey moral grounds is absurdity. The government won't ban IVF because it is a socially and medically accepted practice, and it has no real need to go to the trouble. Although, like abortion, embryos are destroyed in a morally disputable manner by IVF, the practice doesn't have the alleged social ramifications that abortion does, which causes that issue to strike a chord with moral conservatives and the religious right. After all, by trying to have children, users of IVF are actually adhering to the Christian social ideal in America, of every couple with two children, a patch of their very own private suburbia, and a two-car garage to boot. Regardless of whether the government should even value embryos as life, entertaining even the principles of such a ban would be pointless because it would not be supported and its justification is still questionable. Does the government have the right to create a menu of criminal laws regulating reproductive health? It isn't clear, no matter what you value.

Secondly, there is this lovely slippery slope argument that people use about how federal funding for stem-cell research would lead to fetus-harvesting for the sake of research. Now, I personally would have little problem with this sort of thing if carried out right, but that is largely based on my highly utilitarian value-scheme. The truth is, no matter what you value, this slippery slope argument fails like virtually every other one in this genre of the debater's bag of tricks. Whether you like it or not, scientists are doing stem-cell research right here and right now. They will continue to do it in this country until the Congress bans it, and it never will. Since this will continue into the foreseeable future, regardless of what our inept politicians do, pressure to engage in fetus-harvesting may happen in either scenario with equal probability. If such pressure do emerge, I admit that federal funding of the research may make them emerge sooner; still, in either case it is not a matter of if, but when. But the same type of scientific progress might not occur if politicians don't fund the research. Furthermore, this worry has never been an issue so far, and in no way do the bills currently in Congress enact such a program. This indicates that the current decision should be made in isolation of concerns with fetus-harvesting. That problem should be dealth with when it becomes a problem. In other words, if fetus-harvesting is going to become an issue, politicians can't stop it from becoming an issue by halting this bill. Therefore, this cannot be a reason to oppose the bills in Congress. If politicians were logical, they would not use this as an argument either for or against federal funding for stem-cell research. Even if you only partially buy this line of reasoning, you still have to weigh this with the potential benefits of stem cell research.

On a final note, some people use this issue to call into question just what type of scientific research the federal government should fund. I can't answer that question. But I can say that if the federal government can justify spending $243.5 million on Fermilab in 1967 for high energy particle research, then surely, SURELY it can justifiably spend a lot less on stem-cell research and still make an enormous impact. Bear in mind that this comes from someone who finds physics to be one of the most joyful things in the world.

I just read on Google news that Bush vetoed the crap out of the Congressional bill.

Sorry to rant for so long, but I became very sad today when I looked at the newspaper and listened to the radio. In Congress, party lines disintegrated, and the various parties argued passionately for both sides. In the end, the bills that won out had fairly strong support from people, not necessarily based on what party or special interest they hailed from, but because of an actual true belief in a proper course of action. I think it may have actually been a truly democratic moment, when people came together, had a debate, and came to a reasonable concensus with a healthy amount of dissent. And what happened? George W. Bush decides to break his long tradition of no vetos on this one issue. Of all the mounds of pork-barrel excreta that are ejected from the bowels of Congress routinely, George W. Bush decided to veto this one bill for reasons that are highly questionable. With this one move, the Republican party has completed its metamorphosis from a party that once-appealled to classical liberals and people of other intellectually defensible beliefs, into the non-denominational political wing of a few fundamentalist Christian groups. And people wonder why the rest of the world thinks that we're insane. It's because our government actually is.

So, I learned the evils of market timing/technical analysis/speculation the hard way--although thankfully it wasn't very painful at all. After world stocks started to tank a few weeks ago, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to sell my ETF in emerging markets, and then buy it back when the price bottomed out. Unfortunately, instinct overrode reason and I sold at about $61. I watched in sadness as the ETF's price dropped a tiny bit more and then rose substantially. There is a very strange human instinct that convinces one that it should be possible to "see" a "trend" in a particular stock based on its recent price history. Such patterns don't exist to any useful degree. So, just when I thought I had lost out completely, the international markets tanked again, and the ETF dropped to $60.48, where I just put in an order to snatch it up again and forget about my horrible original idea of trend-trading. Although paying capital gains taxes now rather than later means that I probably lose on account of this ordeal--even though I sold a hair above where I now purchased it--the value of this little "lesson" is undoubtedly positive in terms of preventing future losses due to my utter stupidity. Now I just need to find a good closed-end mutual fund...

Over the years I have heard various gripes and praises of Ayn Rand, so finally, with all the spare time I have these days, I checked out and read Anthem yesterday. I have no idea how representative this is of Ms. Rand's other works or philosophy in general, so my commentary is based purely on that book as an independent entity. When I finished reading it, I had somewhat mixed but generally positive feelings. Today, while on my run, I had this realization that at least in Anthem, Ayn Rand's philosophy is as great of an intellectual catastrophe as the communism and collectivism she so despises and the libertarianism that worships her so.

To begin, Anthem is not a good novel or novella. I would say that it is not even either of those two things. It is a sort of philosophical allegory whose characters and world is so flat and stylized that it simply a more palatable surrogate for a philosophical tract. In this sense, it is in the same genre as classic dystopias like Brave New World or Animal Farm (although I would say that the last classic in this group, 1984, constitutes more of a legitimate literary work than the others). With that in mind, Rand makes the absurd decision to craft all of her protagonists as godlike figures. The feature that makes them the protagonists and sets them apart from the rabid collectivists that control the "City" is that they are able to embrace their individuality. Now this is an excellent point, but it is marred by the fact that such people represent nonexistent ideals. I would argue that humanity's greatness comes not from our perfection, but our imperfection and our ability to both overcome it and embrace it as something meaningful. After all, Rand's incessant banter about reason would be much more appropriate in such a context. Would it not be better (and more realistic) if the "Golden One" were hideous yet realized that her individuality gave her something to live for? Rand is useless, because she shows that perfect individuals succeed and achieve fulfillment by worshipping their individuality, but this proves nothing. Of course perfect people will gain for egotism, for they truly are the best. The truth is that there is no such thing as perfection, and pretending that it exists in one's self is tantamount to myopic self-delusion. Her implication that ideals exist is actually self-defeating in the work, since it suggests that there is a single archetype, which all people should strive to imitate. This contradicts the very essence of individuality, which is that differences are important.

But alas, these criticisms are really just structural and they don't cut through an philosophical flesh. She made crappy characters for the point she was trying to make--so what? Of principle importance is her obsession with individuality, which I have already mentioned. Generally speaking, I don't find it to be a terribly profound point that valuing individuality is essential for maximizing both social and personal happiness, fulfillment, etc. It was probably more meaningful in the 1930s, when it was written. It's a good point though. Just not terribly original. I agree with it wholeheartedly... I think. She walks a very fine line in her literal fixation on individuality, and it is unclear as to how far she really means to take it. I personally believe that selfishness on the scale of an economic system, tends to work tolerably well (i.e. better than anything else we've found). But individuals in a selfish economic system are not necessarily selfish in a detrimental way. Indeed, America's capitalist economy gives more charity than most (pretty sure, although statistics were a little sparse on that one) others. Is this sort of ego-worship good to adopt on a personal level? I would say no. It is wholly unnatural and personally destructive if people are selfish at the expense of others. Does Anthem suggest that this should occur? It's very ambigious. Probably not, for the protagonist tries to give his electric invention to the Council of Scholars, but it is a big question.

Finally we come to my main criticism, which is Rand's worship of reason. From what I gather (partially from outside sources), the basis of Rand's objectivism is that reason should be man's only absolute. This is genuinely flawed, like the rests of Rand's thinking, because it relies on terrible, terrible ideals that aren't actually true. First of all, reason will tell you that reason is not absolute. Second of all, where does "reason" come from anyway? Why do humans have the capacity for rational thought? Because of evolution of course, and because of instinct. While humans are usually rational, this reason is ultimately derived from instinct, which gives us our emotions, creativity, and other parts of our identity. To try to make reason the sole tool at man's disposal in life would breed disaster since it rests on a false assumption.

The fact is that humans are instinctively altruistic to some degree, and this occurs for the reason that it has been beneficial to our species for such a trait to exist. So perhaps reason tells us that altruism is best? Isn't this a contradiction of Rand's assumption that reason tells us to be selfish? So my conclusion of this messy tirade is that at best Rand and her ideas are a completely null conclusion: they say to follow reason, and when I follow reason it tells me that I should follow reason to the extent that instinct tells me to, which I'm already doing because my use of reason was instinctual to begin with. At worst, it is a personally and socially simplistic road to unhappiness.

As a final note, Ayn Rand kind of reminds me of Friedrich Nietzsche in some ways. True, their names both look and sound hideously ugly, but their philosophies share a few characteristics. I have quite a few problems with Mr. Nietzsche, but I prefer his finer points to those of Ms. Rand.

Jonathan: Yeah, my mom cries every day now that I'm going to leave for college in about a month.

Adam: Really??

Jonathan: Okay, so it's actually more like every other day.

Adam: My mom is ecstatic that I'm leaving home, and my Dad is so happy, now that he doesn't have to pay my tuition, that he's considering buying a Corvette in celebration.

Ian: You're both so bourgeoisie.

"Recently, someone told about this great game that's very profitable when played correctly. It has a high winrate and low variance, which in turn gives it extremely low bankroll requirements. Even better, casinos don't throw you out, and it's a victimless scheme (unlike poker or backgammon). In English-speaking countries, it's known as a job."

--Ted Sanders, on my Facebook account, while discussing games and gambling.

On June 27th, the first day of my current work at PSU, I was standing in our cramped basement lab holding a beaker of deuterium oxide, titanium sulfate, and sulfuric acid, when all of the sudden, out of the corner of my eye I spied a skinny and vaguely familiar Jewish boy walking quickly down the corridor, snickering with a companion who looked equally out of place in our basement (nearly everyone is Chinese, and I think that half of those who aren't are Japanese). I had the compulsion to run out the door shouting, "Abraham!" but the toxic, black sludge in my hand restrained me. I half hoped that he was working with us, at the time, but such was not the case. I thought perhaps he was working with Dr. Jiao, a.k.a. "Dragon Lady" according to Seth Kadish, who had a slightly dysfunctional REU experience with her a couple years ago. But alas, I never saw him again in the basement... but this state won't do! So, Abraham, I work in the basement; my "office" is in room 39; send me an email: adam@appmagic.com; we should get together for lunch sometime; I know all the best food carts and lunch specials in the university district, west end, and well, all the greater downtown Portland area I suppose.

DAMN THEM TO THE DEEPEST CIRCLE OF DANTE'S INFERNO.

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."

--Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I thought that I was done with the College Board, but lo and behold, I was wrong, for in my mailbox today sat an odd-shaped envelope labelled with that scourge-like acronym "AP." It of course held my long-forgotten AP scores to the paltry two examinations I took this spring. I was of the utterly certain opinion that I had been raped absolutely atrociously by the Spanish language examination, but soundly defeated the Chemistry one. This translates into a predicted score of 2-3 on the Spanish and a 5 on the Chemistry. I rarely predict fives--in fact, my predictions have never been higher than my actual scores (they're usually about 1 point or so lower than the actual score). So I was shocked when I learned that this disgusting little envelope held a piece of paper declaring that I received a 5 on Spanish, but a 4 on the Chemistry. I'm supposed to be good at chemistry! And it was easy! I got all of the same answers as Colin Corbett on the free response too (we compared mental notes after the test--no cheating involved)! Balderdash! Hogwash! So it may seem a bit pretentious of me to complain so much about this--and it is--but the real reason is that it actually makes a difference at Chicago in terms of what credit I can get. It's a crushing blow to my ego too. That my greatest AP failures should come in my (perceived) areas of strength is...

I'm going to stop now.

BUT! In my defense, I received an interesting page of quotations from Forbes magazine the other day, which said something to the effect that modesty and humility are just subtle forms of egotism. So arrogance and pompousness really aren't that bad after, are they? Think about it!