Mindless Philosopher

Courtesy of our Republican government, the deficit is back up in 2006. The federal budget is akin the classic MIT dilemma of of grades, sleep, and social life: choose two.
State-side, score a victory for the good guys as pro-Health Care legislation passes the Maryland legislature, overriding the Governor’s veto (no thanks to the Washington Post). The legislation mandates that companies with over 10,000 employees in Maryland spend at least eight percent of their payroll budget on health care. Four companies are affected: Johns Hopkins University, Northrop Grumman Corp., Giant Food Inc., and Walmart: guess which one doesn’t yet pay that eight percent!
Personally, I’ve been banging out code for the last week and only yesterday came up for air Thankfully, both projects are at a state where the professor is fine with the amount of work I’ve done. Now, I just have to actually write the papers!

After the largest private discrimination suit was filed against Walmart last year, and the “Two our of two ain’t bad” story, now we find out that Walmart has been linking movies such as “Planet of the Apes” to African-American themed movies. With the help of the blogosphere and Wake-up Walmart, the story made it into the traditional media and Walmart quickly issued a formal apology.
These stories reminded me that J-Bird gave me a copy of the documentary Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices in December. So, I just popped it into the DVD player. The movie is just a collection of interviews, without much of an overarching storyline. This format helps shield the filmmakers from accusations of “altering” reality, though of course the movie is one-sided. Unfortunately, this collection of facts and statements isn’t very captivating. But if you’re curious why people like me and Enjanerd boycott Walmart, the film (or it’s website) is a great place to start. (Addendum: the union-busting segment is actually quite moving and persuasive.)
Best line: Wal-Mart is “like a Chinese Company with an American Board of Directors.”

Christmas Eve, my father and I participated in the only “Christian” tradition our family chose to assimilate into: luminaries. I think my parents made this decision years ago to avoid seeing the following in the January Camelot Newsletter: “The streets of our neighborhood were brightly and beautifully illuminated Christmas Eve, except for the stretch of street on Guinevere Dr where our token Jewish family lives. Next year we may start an ‘Adopt a Jewish street section’ program to ensure the entire neighborhood is alight.” Ah, conformity via ostracization: lovely.
My Aunt was in town from Chicago on vacation. We hung out by seeing the Capital Steps last Friday and the movie Munich on Christmas Day. The Capital Steps were hilarious (as always) and we even got a “Year in Review” treat, along with two Lirty Dies skits. I’m disappointed that I never got to hear a Lirty Dies about Chick Deney telling Lat Peahy to “Fo guck yourself” — perhaps the Steps are aiming for a more child-friendly atmosphere. I only wish VPOTUS would show the same respect (on the Flenate Soor no less!).
Munich was good, but Transamerica (which I saw yesterday — so much for this post going in chronological order), was incredible. I met up with my old friend Tiffany and her new boy, and after eating lunch at Peanut Butter and Co. — which allowed me to eat a club sandwich for the first time in 10 years — we headed over to the IFC Center. It was clear that Transamerica was doing well at the box office, as IFC had it running on two of their three theaters. I concur with the critics: this film is provocative, funny, insightful, and informative. (I.E., it’d be a +5 slashdot post … oy, please ignore the fact that I just made that joke.) For those not in the know: transamerica is about a transsexual, pre-operation male and her journey across America with her newfound charge. Felicity Huffman (you know, the wife that actually works on Wisteria Ln) plays the protagonist exceptionally. We thought whether to cast of man or woman in that role must have been a difficult decision. I certainly can’t argue with the result, but I’m curious if others who have seen the films have different opinions.
In other non-grad school related news, I went to the New York Historical Society’s museum and saw their exhibit on slavery in New York City. New York State was the last state north of the Mason-Dixon to abolish slavery (Vermont was the first, paralleling our current civil rights struggle), mainly because a large portion of rich New Yorkers owned slaves as servants. To NY’s credit, gradual abolition started in 1799, but the process was not completed until 28 years later!
For those wondering, and apparently I can count Patrick in that crowd (of one?), I’ve made some progress on my projects. Project #1: I’ve become pretty well-versed in the code I inherited from a former Princeton grad student (she’s now a Harvard post doc). I’ve emailed her with my questions and advice and am collecting county-level data while I wait for a reply. And Patrick: the code is in C and R. Project #2: brute force solution works (for small- and medium-sized games)!!! (Being a brute force solution, it blows up on anything too complicated.) So I’ll write my paper on these solutions and hope to see a pattern in the results that will enable me to write a more general solution.
Oh, and New Years, of course: HAPPY 2006! I was on Seth’s rooftop apartment for the second year running. Good times had by all (except for the ones that threw up).
May you all have a healthy and fortuitous year.

Ah, vacation time. The classes part of my first term at Princeton finished last week: I’ve got one final to study for and two term papers to write by the week of January 23rd. I’ve been seriously procrastinating on my two projects, but that procrastination has included seeing lots of fun people, so I feel that it’s been productive. (For the curious, project #1 is an extension of ecological inference to identify swing voters more effectively and project #2 is an algorithm to solve a specific type of Baron-Ferejohn bargaining games).
Last Friday, roommie and I threw an end-of-term game night party. I made potato latkes (with help from Chicklet who stopped by earlier that day) and roommate baked absolutely delicious 7-layer candy bars. So unhealthy, yet so good. Turnout that night was excellent, and after reminiscing about the term-that-was, we played cranium and taboo. Taboo was guys vs girls, and we think the girls won (despite being down a person), but we’re not sure because Dave decided to surreptitiously add tallies to the boys’ score throughout the match.
Saturday I drove down to NoVA, with a stop in Maryland for the Camp Wigwam DC-Baltimore reunion at Dave and Busters. I destroyed my (college-aged) cousin in several D&B “sports,” including basketball, knock hockey, horse racing, and a WWII gunner game. I failed to shut him out though, as I did lose by 10 points in skee-ball.
Saturday night was a Holiday party, West Wing crew (the original cast) style. The hosts really showed roommie and me up with their 300+ cookie collection–about double what we made (see prev post). The White Elephant swap worked well for me (for the second year running), as I walked away with a DVD version of “The Goonies.” I borught a “Nuns Having Fun” calendar, which induced much laughter from the crowd. (Who doesn’t like Nuns on roller skates?) That night I stayed up late to watch the Goonies for the first time and discovered the namesake of my nickname on the Dean campaign.
Sunday was another double-event day, with me attending my first Pidyon Haben, as Abi and Josef had a baby boy one month ago. He was a very cute kid, but had some stiff competition for cutest kid in the room as Isaac and Eva’s also brought their baby. Saw other MIT folk in addition to those two couples: I hope to have treo pics up by next posting.
After the Pidyon Haben, and a short stop at home, I crossed over to Maryland again for Kate and Jeff’s holiday party. Met lots of new people, including a couple from Haveford who knew my friend Karen. The discussion ranged from the usual (politics) to the erudite (John Irving), and from the pop culture (movie posters) to the nerdy (Jay and Silent Bob movie posters).
Monday, with a visit to the Mellman Group, began my three days of trips into the city. I arrived at TMG a the perfect time–they had just finished a holiday bake-off, which meant lots of yummy food for me. We had a “Tech Cabal” meeting, where I recommended that they use more Google products (can’t go wrong there!). Tuesday I visited J-Bird at his new hangout, Wake-up Walmart, which is having great success. I think I may have even found a new employee for him.
Tuesday evening, I was off to Enjanerd and ITP’s new place, where I delivered what was apparently a “classy” gift, and received a much more edible gift in return. You can read all about my visit on Enjanerd’s site; I don’t have much to add other than I think their place is in a great location, and is an excellent place to live except for the 1950’s-era dishwasher :)
Wednesday I conferred with Khicks about her new project and we took a short walk to Kramer books, where she perused books for her upcoming trip to Mexico. I cracked open “Yiddish with Dick and Jane” instead. I really need to brush up on my Yiddish, because I didn’t know two-thirds of the words in the story. That evening, the West Wing crew had a group dinner at Il Radicchio (highly recommended), which included surprise visits from Jon (traveling from C-ville) and Sean (traveling a bit farther–from London).
Which brings us to yesterday, when I finally started to work on Project 1. (I had been doing small stuff on Project 2 throughout the week). I’m a bit overwhelmed since Project 1 requires me to go through reams of someone else’s (mostly undocumented) code looking for bugs. Yay! (That’s sarcasm, btw.) But thankfully, that task was interrupted by the need to go to Ted’s party, which began at the Olive Garden. Saw Enjanerd and ITP again; ITP was none to pleased with the service–something about the waitress no knowing what “neat” meant and then just dumping out the ice. Since Ted treated (THANKS!), ITP didn’t get any say on the matter of the size of the tip, which was probably to the benefit of our server.
The party moved to Ted’s place where we played charades (what else), lightning charades and the surrealist game. The surrealist game is a very cool group game: one person has to describe one noun (e.g., a pocket) in terms of pretending to be another noun (e.g., a flagpole) and get the rest of the people to guess the first noun. The clues must be true of a single instance of the second noun. In our example, the good clues were:

• I’m a flagpole which allows you to keep things (like a flag).
• I’m a flagpole which allows you to keep small things.
• I’m a flagpole which is next to a clothing store.

And thus people guessed pocket. (Obvious, right? ;). Here’s an exercise for the reader. The second object is penguin.

• I’m a penguin that is discolored.
• I’m a penguin that feels a lot of pain.
• I’m a penguin that has unbroken bones.

So what’s the first noun?

A sad day: rest in peace, Leo.

Continue reading →

I’ve resurfaced from the last week of classes here at Princeton to attend to my poor, neglected blog. I was so buried under work that I didn’t even notice a (now-corrected) typo on the title of the top entry. I did manage to have some fun during this work-intensive period though. Miranda brought several people, including the kids from across the hall, over to make batches and batches of holiday cookies. I estimate that we shaped and baked about 150 stars, snowmen, angels, and stockings. That same day we gave the kids their winter solstice present: the game Clue! Of course, immediately, they wanted to play with us. Miranda couldn’t, and I found myself trying to develop an “Anti-Clue” algorithm, by which I would guess persons, weapons, and rooms that would give the kids the most information. Alas, I was a complete failure at losing, as both kids accused incorrectly during the first game, thus leaving me the winner by default. Thankfully, in the second game, only one of them was DQ’d and I went home a happy loser.
In other happiness, all my problem sets and readings are done for the term! And I’ll be working on my incipient (potential) dissertation research over break. And, speaking of break, I’ll be in the DC area from 12/17-12/26, the NJ/NY area from 12/27-1/1. And the Boston area shortly thereafter. Let me know if our scheds coincide!
LOTD: Most neglected site on the web.

Truly fitting that, as WaPo reports, Mr Smoot himself actually works at the American National Standards Institute. Though I guess NIST would be slightly more apropos.
LOTD: ‘Nother neat article: New York project hits wall. Really old wall.

Not much to report on the last week. Sunday I went into the city for a swing workshop (Chicklet was kind enough to let me park at SLC and drive me in). The instructors were Yuval and Nathalie: as usual the male instructor was too sexist for my taste (is this a requirement for expert swingers?). So, my favorite teachers are still Paul and Jen (in case anyone else is learning swing in the PA/NJ/NY area).
Noticed an Anti-Dean article (hadn’t we gone so long without one?) written by my second most despised WaPo reporter, Jim VandeHei. I quickly noticed that VandeHei ignored the Washington Post policy on anonymous sources by not citing the reasons to let his two fourth-paragraph sources hide behind a veil of ignorance. Thus, I’ll have to assume that they wished to remain anonymous because they are Dean-hating, DLC-loving cowards who are still bitter that people-powered politics took the helm of the Democrat party and are so pissed that they’d rather help Republicans on the pages of the Post instead of sucking it up and showing a modicum of party loyalty.

Forgot one cool part of my Thanksgiving: I finally got to see my uncle’s Christmas tree farm. It has been tucked away in a mostly inaccessible part of the camp grounds for about five years now. We took a short walk to the farm when a camp-connected family, who I hadn’t seen since 2001, happened by to pick up a tree. My uncle has grown two species: prickly and non-prickly…I’m sure they have real species names (Blue Spruce maybe?), but I’m hardly an expert on these matters. However, one hardly needs to be well-versed in religious symbols, to know that they didn’t think this whole Christmas tree farm thing all the way through: my uncle has way too many trees and not enough buyers. The main problem appears to be the lack of an easy mechanism to transport the trees from the farm to the town’s general store, where Waterford residents can buy them in greater number.
On a completely different note: the great thing about having a small quant class with classmates who work together is that when you get something wrong, it usually means everyone got it wrong. On our last pset, the entire class missed what should have been a relatively simple concept…the prof and TA seemed somewhat appalled, but I personally blame the poor wording on the problem set. I mean, if everyone working together doesn’t come up with the right answer, clearly something deeper than stupidity is at play, right? … Right?
And on the IM front: Monday night we lost a tough soccer game in a penalty shootout (4-4 at the end of regulation, 2-1 on penalties). They were the better team and dominated, so a tie would have been nice. Tuesday night, our hockey team won 7-6: I again had one goal short of a hat trick. And Wednesday the soccer team got back on its feet with a 7-5 victory that got contentious at points. Why people need to get all emotional about an IM soccer game is a bit beyond my cognitive skills.
QOTD: “You seem to be under the impression that your family is Jewish.”
LOTD: [Warning, PG-13] Overheard in New York

I traveled to Maine for Thanksgiving (much of my father’s side has migrated up north since the Strausses bought Camp Wigwam in ’65). The roud-trip cost be less than $100, as I took NJT, the Chinatown bus (which did not catch on fire), and Greyhound up and back.
The best part of being in Maine: snow! Though the lake was still liquid (ice skating will have to wait til winter break), we had a great time playing the traditional Thanksgiving snow football. Also, mutiny brook looked gorgeous with flowing water and snow-covered banks. My cousins were as cute as ever, and the food was of course delicious. My brother even came home from Hong Kong to join us!
On the way home, I had a nice chat with a second cousin of John Kerry on the chinatown bus. Now there was someone with cause to be more disappointed than I was last November.
Back at school, work has hit me like a sledgehammer (after being a drizzle for most of the term). So I’m off to work on my presentation for tomorrow.
Honorary unsubscribe: Stan Berenstain of the Berenstain Bear books. I remember donning the Sister Bear costume for my Mom’s bookstore about a decade ago. Good times….we’ll miss you, Papa Bear.