Does It Compute?

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

A couple of years ago, a book by Lynn Truss called “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” hit the best seller lists. It was, of all things, a book about punctuation and grammar.

The title is a caption for the following scene: a Panda enters a restaurant. He orders a meal, eats it, then gets up, pulls a gun from his bag, shoots it into the air and leaves.  He “eats, shoots and leaves.” Whereas everybody knows that a Panda eats green shoots and leaves (no comma).

In an age where lawyers are generally taught to write badly (in the name of legal accuracy), well-written proposals stand out. In fact, I once had a client hire me on the grounds that “you speak English to me.”

Take a look at the book. It is a lot of fun and may actually help improve your writing skills. Of course, in a former life I taught literature (Brandeis and Boston University), so I’m prejudiced on the subject.

Blogging at the Beach

So I was off to vacation at our family beach house on Long Island Sound. Complete with laptop and portable, battery-powered printer. The cottage has a DSL line (but no cable TV) so a complete little mini-office.  With a wireless router I could even work while sitting on the sand. Of course, sitting on the sand the glare is pretty intense and it is hard to see.

But the question is, who wants to?  When I was growing up we had a cartoon posted on the bulletin board: “After 5 days at the beach, Wilson’s buttocks were starting to unclench.” So the “take it with you on vacation” mantra has a fatal flaw: when in vacation mode you just don’t feel like working.

On the other hand, I can check emails and do minimal and emergency maintenance, logging in to clients remotely. I also get time to recharge the batteries and think about the future. So as a solo practitioner I can pretty much have my cake and eat it too. Not perfect, but a working solution. 

For the Mathematically Inclined

For those of you who have either fond or horrendous memories of calculus, aka The Calculus, check out the following video.

I.F. Stone: "All Governments Lie"

People who recall the ‘60s and ‘70s may remember I.F. Stone, who was a leading figure in exposing government lies and misrepresentation about the Vietnam war and other issues. There is a fascinating new biography of him by Myra MacPherson, entitled “All Governments Lie!”

The title comes from a quote that is equally apt today:

“All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”

Shakespeare on Lawyers

People love to quote that old saw from Shakespeare, “first, lets kill all the lawyers.”  It seems to give status to all the lawyer jokes in the world.

But let’s look a little closer.  The quote comes from Henry VI, Part 2. The conspirators, led by Jack Cade, have just killed the Duke of Suffolk and are plotting to put Jack Cade on the throne. When he is king, Cade says,

  “... there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree like brothers, and worship me their lord.

  Dick the Butcher: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers

  Jack: Nay, that I mean to do.”

To further demonstrate their backward ignorance, they then immediately proceed to execute a clerk for knowing how to write his name instead of having “a mark to thyself, like an honest, plain-dealing man.” When the clerk admits to being able to write his name, the conspirators say in chorus “He hath confessed; away with him! he’s a villain and a traitor.”

Cade: Away with him! I say: hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.”

So, for Shakespeare, killing all the lawyers is a mark of ignorant demagogues.

Information Is Not Knowledge

“For it is the greatest truth of our age: information is not knowledge”
    Caleb Carr, Killing Time

At a time when the world seems to be awash in information – and, often as not on the Internet, incomplete information, misinformation, wrong information, etc., this bears repeating. 

For information to become knowledge, it has to be processed and analyzed by intelligence. This is where all the data mining techniques, so-called “knowledge management,” etc. break down.  They are presenting assemblages of facts, but there is no context to analyze those facts.  For information to become knowledge, you first have to ascertain whether the so-called “information” is in fact true and relevant. Then you have to figure out what it means. At that point you know something.  As Mark Twain said in an earlier age, there are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics.

To take a current provocative example:

Barak Obama reportedly said that people “cling to guns and religion” due to bitterness and despair over their economic condition.

Karl Marx notoriously referred to religion as the “opium of the people.”

Does that make Obama a Marxist (as some conservative columnists would have us believe)?  Not hardly.

Aside from the fact that this sort of false syllogism seems to be the meat of politics, the question is, are either of both of these statements actually true?  That’s a question for another place and time.

Attractions of Patriotism

One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
        Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza XVIII

I have always been amazed at how "patriotism" or nationalism or community pride or whatever you want to call it trickles down to lower and lower social levels. For example, within any given country there is regional "patriotism" (very commonly a north-south divide even in areas where it would seem to be irrelevant like Sweden, where the northern Swedes look down at the southern Swedes as being lazy and sloppy (!)). Then you have state-level patriotism, and even small town patriotism or local patriotism within larger cities, where going a half-mile to the next town over is regarded as a major journey. And of course there is the insanity of sports patriotism. 

Why is it that attitudes that seem so patently absurd are so deeply ingrained?

Epigrams as an Art Form - aka One-Liners

I have always been fond of epigrams, more commonly known as “one-liners.” They frequently illuminate one particular aspect of the human condition (often one of the darker corners). This is particularly true of such English-language figures as Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and Gore Vidal as well as comedians such as Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor.

Recent visits to a couple of clients reminded me of some computer-related one-liners:

Hardware Guy – somebody who thinks that end-users are simply an inconvenience to the orderly running of the computer system.

Software Guy – somebody who knows just enough about the underlying hardware to get themselves into trouble.

And last but certainly not least:

Consultant – The person you hire to clean up the mess created by the last person who called themselves that.

Cats and Dogs

There are cat people and dog people. What is the difference between cats and dogs?

If you take in a dog and give it food, affection and shelter, it thinks you are a god.
If you take in a cat and give it food, affection and shelter, it thinks it is a god.

Also, if the size difference between humans and cats were reversed, humans wouldn’t last 30 seconds (a lot less than mice, because humans are so slow).

See the excellent books by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Hidden Life of Dogs and The Tribe of Tiger (on cats).

Mark Twain - Again

It’s been a while since I quoted Mark Twain.  Since rereading Mark Twain is definitely a salutary experience, here are a couple of quotes.

Especially in this day and age of the Internet and instant public opinion polls, the following is particularly apt:

“Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.”
        Mark Twain

And a linked statement:

“Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.”
        Mark Twain, Notebook, 1888