What I've Learned!

Now to share some cool things I've learned so far!

Did you know that an argument can be valid, but not sound and vice versa? Take for example the following argument: "If it is raining, the street is wet. It is raining, therefore the street is wet." This is perfectly valid. It is logically consistent. However, it is not sound since if I look out my window, it is not raining. Soundness requires the premises to be tested to be true and for the conclusion to be true. In the same token, "I am male, I am right-handed, therefore I can type" is invalid, but every statement is true. Fun.

Did you know that you shouldn't inhale the fumes from soldering? Even though the new modern solder has to be lead-free by the lovely new laws in place, there's a very high chance that giant roll of solder you're using still has lead in it. Granted it's pretty inert in the solder, and it has wonderful electrical and mechanical properties, but people freaked about lead in anything and so we've had to remove it. Stupid politicians. But yeah, it also smells really bad.

Did you know that the way we do secure communication on the internet is through encryption? One half of the encryption key is a public key that you broadcast. The second half is then created and sent specifically for your transaction. One the key is setup, you then have to encode and decode your messages, which can take quite a bit of processing power. So, people have figured out algorithms to help try and make this process faster.

Did you know that there is a non-zero chance for a tied electoral college this election year? What would happen is that the house would vote, 1 vote per state. Yay politics!

Did you know that East currently has no TV mounted on the wall? After the renovations, which got cut short because the contractors took too long, the mounting hooks were not replaced on the wall. Initial theory was that they were buried inside the wall, since to upgrade the dorm for the earthquake code the walls got thicker. However, searching for them with magnets has come up empty, so we're guessing they simply haven't bee put back in the wall.

Did you know that this year's Frosh are especially competent at showering people? Here's some pictures from our first dorm meeting to illustrate!






So, here we have people getting showered, and the requisite hug afterward. And finally, DONUTS! After each dorm meeting, we get donuts. Showerers and showerees get first dibs.

Anyways, that's it for this week. Clinic goes and eats more souls now.

What's Important in Life

At least according to Prof. Jacobsen.



In other news, my Clinic will be to make a shiny chip to help speed up cryptography algorithms. Return to the team Michael Braly, adding in an exchange student Julien, and other friend but not on this blog yet Lolly Simoni.

Oh, and Crack starts up today.

Yay for busy school week!

Politicks

The video is a little dated, but still so true.



Let me be up front. I happen to classify myself as a Conservative. I tend towards conservative social policies and some economic ones as well. But, I hope to stay fairly balanced in this particular post. Apologies in advance.

Let's think back a bit. Back to before I left school for the summer. Back when the primaries were still going strong, and Obama and McCain just started to pull ahead. I was eating at the Hoch and we were discussing the candidates, and most of us agreed that a contest between Obama and McCain would be fairly solid. On one side you've got the fresh face of change, on the other a conservative who isn't off his rocker.

Fast forward to the summer. Obama has the majority, McCain is off campaigning, and we start seeing the weak points in each candidate.

Now, we're in convention mode.

I am a firm believer that the most important class you can take and must understand is a good Economics and Civics course. Why? It's so you can understand the basic workings of economy and government and don't get cheated by fast talking dealers or 30 second soundbites from the news. My economic policy would be to raise taxes and pull down spending. Essentially, let's get rid of that stupid federal debt, or at least stop increasing it. As it stands, simply paying off the interest (i.e. minimum payments) on the debt takes up the largest chunk of our federal budget. Not only is this stifling other programs, but this is just paying off minimum payments. Any smart economist knows that paying minimum payments means you're going to be paying a whole lot more from the interest than the original principle amount. There's the whole compound interest problem, and the fact that it takes forever to pay off the debt. This is why credit card debt is such a huge problem in the US. Interesting fact, we've actually managed to, on average, be in personal debt as a nation, even with crediting our retirement funds. That's negative personal savings. Aren't we such a gluttonous people. Plus, our debt is being bought through bonds by foreign organizations. Not good.

But enough about generalities, let's rip these candidates a new one.

First, Obama. The easiest target is that he's young. He hasn't experienced a whole lot, and probably hasn't solidified what he believes in. Then again, this might be a virtue since he's not stuck in his ways yet and can change his mind based on new data and ideas. My personal concern is his voting record and his speech abilities. He has voted on several issues, and his record shows him to be the most liberal voter ever. He was the singular person voting against the Born Alive Protection Act in Illinois. It wasn't named the same thing, but it was essentially the same bill. Furthermore, there are several instances where he voted as merely present, or even better, he voted present then changed his vote after everyone had voted. Sounds a little sketchy to me.

As far as his speeches, he is perhaps the best orator the nation has seen in modern times when on a teleprompter. He has a great delivery, huge ideals, and the ability to whip his followers up and make them believe that the waters of the ocean will begin to recede at his command. When he's off the teleprompter, he keeps pausing and stuttering and throwing in lots of "um"s and sometimes plain out lies. Recently was the panel with Rick Warren, and let's be honest, Rick Warren is probably gunning for McCain but as far as moderators go he was solid, let the candidates speak, and gave simple concise questions. Yet the big Obama mess ups were his "above my pay grade" comment on deciding when a child gets full human rights, and his claim that he worked with McCain on the finance and ethics reform bills. He may have worked briefly on the ethics reform bill, but the finance reform bill was done and in law before Obama even was elected to the federal Senate. Now, all of my friends can attest to me flubbing up my wording quite often, but Obama really needs to get a handle on this chronic problem. I don't want the messiah, I just want a good President who can candidly tell me what he thinks. None this of trying to have both sides of the issue.

Last thing is the company he keeps. Reverend Wright, his grandmother, Bill Ayers (now convicted), and others that have basically not made Obama look good. As an added bonus, Obama then commences to disown them, or as the conservative radio talk people like to call, "throw them under the bus." I will concede that we can't know everything about all the company we keep, and I'm sure it's a little extra publicity since he's on our newspapers every day searching out all his brief encounters. However, some of them had to have shown signs. Reverend Wright is a very good example. Led a church for many, many years, and I'm sure that's not the first time he made interesting remarks. If anything, I'd hope he turned them down knowing Obama was part of his congregation.

On to McCain. He's old. Very old. Plus, he's not necessarily in the peak of health with the skin cancer and the swollen left cheek. On the other hand, you hope this means he has more experience and knows his way around the government and foreign affairs better, but it also probably means he's more set in his ways. Beyond that, he's a bit of an odd cookie. The reason we liked him a year ago was he was a moderate conservative, but had a pleasant liberal streak sometimes, especially on environmental policy. The problem is recently he's tried shifting right. Really, really right. There was a period where he was agreeing with Bush almost word for word, even while major advisers were saying otherwise. For example, they made statements about not even talking with hostile leaders, while their advisers wanted to at least give diplomacy a shot.

McCain is also a bit hawkish. He's a big military buff, and in a way that's good. A strong military is a powerful show of ability as well as a defender of the populace, plus it's usually what applies all our academic research into something more practical. However, when he made the comment about staying in Iraq for another 100 years, plenty of people were up in arms and with good reason. McCain is big on the military. He fights to win. Unfortunately, as it stand right now, most people don't want our military spread around the world. Getting tangled in too many conflicts is generally a bad idea. Just look at all the major wars in the past. Two front wars end badly. Heck, you could learn that from a simple strategy game.

McCain is also subject to being called the second Bush. We've been giving Bush a bad record for a variety of things, some warranted and some not, but the fact is most of us just don't like our President all that much. Big selling point is Iraq and the perceived trumped up charges on WMD production. Looking back, it is true the evidence was a little shaky, but on the other hand many people in the field still suspected Hussein since he broke his promises before. We also did find a little evidence that the program were ready to start up again, but not enough to really validate the claims. Then there's the slumping economy, which I personally blame on the stupid banks and lenders but oh well. But let's face it, Iraq is widening our debt, he's not the best on economic nor environmental policy, and his "either with or against us" attitude right after 9/11 was probably a bad idea concerning foreign relations. While I don't think McCain is quite as bad, you will have to suffer some classic conservative ideas such as businesses lift up everyone in the economy and growing economy is a good thing, sometimes no matter what cost. Which unfortunately recently has merely squashed the middle class, and prompted a nice recession. Then again, us middle class people always get slighted. Not rich enough to pay for stuff outright, but never poor enough to get much government support. Guess I gotta make it big to get out of here, or go broke trying.

McCain is also the "maverick." On some cases, this is a good thing. He reformed public financing, has been butchering earmarks, and generally is not afraid to go against the party. On the other hand, this makes him a little unpredictable, so you can't take what he says now as the truth. As I mentioned before, he swung way way right for a while. Thankfully he's a bit more sane now, and even had the guts to pull out quite the Vice President choice. He has been solid on a couple of main issues, for example abortion, so you can definitely line up or rail against some of his core ideals.

A minor note. Everyone keeps complaining about this recession. Economists will tell you it's part of the natural economic cycle and a requirement to help trim down the business sectors and make things more efficient again. We skipped our last two, one being around the dot com bubble bursting which was offset by a booming housing market. Not surprisingly, that formed a housing bubble which is currently deflating. So, recession is an OK thing, just as long as it's not a nose dive. Don't I sound like a horrible person, promoting rising unemployment and failing businesses?

Now here's something they're both weak on. Energy policy. On one hand, giving a bit of relief on energy costs would be nice. There's the Alaskan oil, offshore, shale, etc. Why not knock off the speculators a little with some drilling. Just the perceived promises of future supply can kick the prices around quite a bit. On the other hand, just because it's there doesn't mean we should use it. I'm impressed the American people finally got out of their cars for once instead of being the gas gluttons we usually are, and as a result the price of fuel dropped. Basic economics at work.

The truth is, we should move to less polluting and more renewable areas, like solar, wind, and so forth. Problem is solar only works where there's sun, and we only capture around 12% of the energy right now. Wind is OK, but they can be an eyesore and you need strong winds to make it worth it. Something that only happens in select regions. Nuclear is nice, but unfortunately the capital costs are huge, and there's the small matter of what to do with the bloody nuclear waste. Water generation is actually the best in efficiency, but setting up dams and getting the giant turbines are huge, not to mention the destruction of the riverbeds by the giant lake you form. The thing is that these potentially pollute less than continually burning gas and oil for power, not to mention we're taking advantage of the more natural forms of power available in nature.

I will be the first to admit that none of these sources of energy are perfect. None are the perfect panacea to our problem. Some are actually a little impractical, especially since energy harvesting systems and batteries aren't quite there yet. But that just means research needs to get on top of this issue. Many other nations are starting to catch up or even overtake the US in terms of research and academic abilities, and we need to step it up. For example, we're losing the biogenetic research to Asia. They house their scientists in the latest labs with huge amounts of funds and almost no restrictions. We lock them into academia with bureaucracy and them scrambling for fellowships and grant money. Nothing wrong with competition, but the spigot could be loosened a little.

So now we come to my problem. Who the heck do I vote for? Also, in case you didn't notice, I contradicted myself by saying the government should spend less, but then I advocate more research funding. In the end, there is no perfect answer. All the economically sound ones are unpopular with the general populace. How many like hearing that unemployment is a good thing? However, all the popular ones (like health care for all) are economic suicide, not to mention most major government projects to "help" the underprivileged have a bad habit of backfiring in some weird way. So, you do need to cut the candidates some slack because neither of the poles are going to work perfectly.

I personally happen to agree with McCain on more issues than Obama, and I simply don't think Obama is ready. He feels a little too tricky and changes his mind too readily. Maybe next time when he's solidified a little and shaved off his more radical ideas. Then again, I'm not enthralled with McCain and how some of his policies are flat out wrong. Not gonna be a great next four years either way.

Here's my wimpy advice. Stay away from the soundbites, from the sensational news, and take a look at the facts. Try to not listen to the current claims, they're propaganda to get your vote. Take a look at their past voting history, their decisions, and what they've done. As much as they swing around now, they'll return to their old ways. For better or for worse.

And even if you hate both of them, what can you do? It's still a two party system, and you might as well throw away your vote because Ron Paul is not gonna win.

Welcome to the 50th Percentile

or below.

Perhaps one of the most surprising and yet most obvious things about Mudd is that there's smart students here. The obvious factor is, well, quite obvious. It's bragged about, stories are written about it, and the statistics support it. The surprising part is what students do when they get here.

They think it's gonna be like High School.

You know. The place where you're the best of the best. Maybe valedictorian, top 10, National Honors, smartest person around, impressive and gawked over by teachers by your natural insight and talent. Plus, you've probably got some other talent, such as being involved in Band like I was, or art, or a sport, or taking over the student government. You were on top of the class. Maybe a little socially ostracized, but you were excelling nonetheless.

The problem is that everyone at Mudd was the same as you. They all were near the top of their class, they took advanced courses, they have special talents, and they're also here to prove their mettle before stepping out into the real world and dazzling it with their brilliance and awesomeness.

This presents you with some interesting circumstances. Best case, you're still the brightest in the class and breeze through your homework. Lucky you. For the rest, you're not on top of the grades, you're dreaming of As while you shoot for that B and sometimes settle for the C or even the D. You're not admonished with proposals to do extra work or to be on the team for the big project. Next best case is you've still got that special talent. You wow people with your guitar skills at parties or your ability to frag anyone on the net. You dazzle the halls with art or show the competition who's boss on the court.

But then again, maybe you're not. For perhaps the first time in your life, you have to be the average person. Or, even worse, you're the baseline, the minimum passing grade, the straggler.

The question is what to do?

I've mentioned before that you don't want to become the attention seeking jerk who annoys everyone, so here's some alternatives. Be content that you're the 50th percentile of the top 10% of the nation, and perhaps even the world. Improve yourself so you still shine in the areas you want, even if you're not the best. Diversify and pick up new things that interest you. Reach out to others. Do something. Do not sulk about not being the best around.

Personally, I'm somewhere just below the 50th percentile. The thing is I've never quite been on top. I was in low end of the top 10 of my class, but couldn't move up no matter how hard I tried. I never made first chair Flute in Band. In some ways, I always knew I wasn't gonna be on the top. Coming to Mudd solidified that idea. Now I live with Cs on my report card, and I'm OK with them. I've chosen some areas and hobbies that I enjoy, and have diversified my resume. For those who know me, they know I'm quite interested in games. I enjoy games for their novelty, the competition, the balancing, the strategy, and even the critique of games. Even though I almost never top the scoreboard. Perhaps more surprising is that I didn't play many video games before arriving at Mudd. I've also worked on my musicianship. I am still a far cry from my musical peers who can tear up the room with amazing ingenuity and skill. I've decided that I won't give in to failure, and will enjoy myself and do my best while I'm at Mudd.

It all boils down to this: don't sweat it. Yes, coming to Mudd is difficult. It will most likely challenge you. People have been scared away by this. Most people will break down and cry eventually during the course of their education at Mudd. There have been stories of people who had to be forced to come back to Mudd.

However, you are also coming to one of the most accepting community imaginable. You don't have to go out of your way to prove yourself the best. Just do your best and make sure to have some fun along the way. I'm sure you can find yourself a niche if you really wanted. Even if it's just being the person who hangs around the lounge too much.

Oh, and on a brighter note, the two people that I know of who were forced back to Mudd eventually found their place and graduated from Mudd, content and glad they came back.

Don't Panic (?)

While the witty Douglas Adams placed this little gem of wisdom on his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we have to ask ourselves why not?

We live in a time where there’s plenty to panic about. There are global items, like global warming and theories of peak oil and that California is long overdue for a giant earthquake that will eventually split us off from the rest of North America. There’s local stuff, like the fact that both Obama and McCain don’t seem to be all we thought they were, or the state of the economy and the housing bubble bursting. Then there’s personal stuff. You’re moving up in life, getting a job, moving out of the house, heading out to college. Face it, there are plenty of good reasons for why we might go running around the neighborhood grabbing dried and canned food and buying plenty of weapons and ammo and a shortwave radio.

Of course, we haven’t yet. Most of us believe that there’s no reason to go nuts. It’s either in the future so we’ll worry about it then, or we can handle it, or there’s nothing we can even do about it. After all, giant meteors crashing into Earth is a very real threat, but the probability of it happening is close to nil and there’s not much you can do if it does come along. Same with the Sun going supernova, although they expect we’ve still got a couple million years to go, and we should have intergalactic space travel by then.

But here’s a question. Should we panic more often? Or, conversely, should we never panic at all?

In the past, there was a famous theory that the population of humans would increase exponentially, and the food supply only linearly. Basic math indicates this would have caused a giant famine, and the only way we would survive would be by portions of the population dying by war, famine, or disease. Well, we’re still around. Why? It is because we’ve been able to increase the food supply to match the needs of our exponentially growing population and not because we’ve managed to kill each other off for that little bit of food. Ah the wonders of science.

Economists have often been called the scientists of doom. Inflation will not stop, and eventually things will spiral out of control as the inflation compounds upon more inflation. That is, at least according to classic economic thought. Mind you that’s a huge oversimplification, but we’re still alive. Sure the inflation rate is high, the dollar is getting weaker, and oil prices are higher than we’d like, but there hasn’t been a giant communist revolution nor have there been huge upheavals of the economic system. Well, unless you count those couple of stock market crashes.

One might argue that the only thing that fuels science, or any advancement in general, is fear, and to an extent a bit of panic. Or, to borrow another saying, necessity is the mother of invention. If there is a need, and someone cares enough, it can probably be fixed. Except if the need is faster than light travel (or some FTL drive) without the folding of the space time continuum. We’re pretty sure that’s impossible. Thus, it is sometimes a good idea, and even healthy to panic just a bit.

Let me give a more practical example. There’s a saying around Mudd that you should take your high school GPA, subtract 2 points, and then you have your new Harvey Mudd GPA. Probably you’re panicking about getting a 2.2 GPA average and how horrible that will look to the scholarships and graduate schools. So, what should you do? If you allow yourself to panic just a bit, perhaps you’ll work harder and exceed that prediction and maintain a 3.5 GPA instead.

On the flip side, there’s stuff you shouldn’t panic about. Meteors are a prime example. Even the Harvey Mudd GPA curse isn’t that big of a deal. After all, the average GPA is closer to about 3.2 at Mudd, and graduate schools are glad for Mudd not having grade inflation. It makes those grades have weight and they can understand much better your abilities just from a look at your GPA. They also understand that there have been less than 10 students who have graduated with a 4.0 in the history of Harvey Mudd College.

So, what am I getting at? Fundamentally, a little bit of panic and worry is healthy. It keeps you going and helps put stuff in perspective. There are things you should panic about, like the energy concerns or nuclear war or your checking balance. Then there’s stuff you can loosen up a little bit once you know all the facts. Trust me. Those headlines on the newspaper are just to sell pages. If you actually read the whole article, thing’s aren’t quite as bad as you may be led to believe. Especially with some of those more slanted papers. But I digress.

In closing, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

In moderation.

Thing I Wish Existed in Real Life

OK. I'm sorry. I claimed I would be giving updates regularly and epically failed yesterday. Will try to do better in the future.

To the topic of the day, stuff that is not in real life that I wish did exist. This is not a definitive list, and again probably has very little to do directly with Mudd.

Magic. In the most basic of definitions, this is pretty much anything that bends or breaks what we consider reality. For example, invisibility potions and being able to conjure up fireballs and all that kind of stuff. There's actually been some interesting pieces of work that consider what the world would be like if magic was the norm and you even went to college to learn about magic and elven history instead of thermodynamics and quantum physics. But yeah, that would be kinda cool. Of course, knowing me, I'll be the moron with little to no magical aptitude and have to make due buying wards and enchantments from the local shop.

A Soul/Spirit Analyzer. Maybe it's just me, but being able to analyze and detect qualities of the soul/spirit/spirit would be really cool. For example, you could do a scan and find out that your anger problem stems from a certain incident or preconceived notion, and then perhaps it would zap it or you could deal with it. Something similar to perhaps how in Psychonauts you go into people's brains and help sort out their issues. Maybe it's because I have too many issues myself or it's my self-improving nature.

Lightsabers. Seriously. Best weapon evar. Cuts anything except another lightsaber. Has this really cool hum. And it can deflect laser blasts. LAZERS! You just don't get any cooler than that.

Gundams. OK, I know they break physics since they're the biggest robot around and yet are the most agile, but the very concept of a giant battle machine with weapons and beam swords flying around and doing ninja-esque moves is pretty sweet. Space combat is also really fun since there's no natural "down" so in effect you have to watch in all 6 directions for enemies. Read Ender's Game for some interesting theories about Zero-G battles.

Zero-G generation. Zero-G chambers, directed zero point energy, lots and lots of magnets. It doesn't matter. Being able to float around and be weightless is pure awesome. Enough said.

Heads Up Display. Eventually the Cyber Warrior program will equip our soldiers with something like this. The idea is a HUD which provides useful information. Stuff like health status (heath bar?), quest log, overhead view of surrounding people, highlight useful objects, infrared overlays, and of course a reticle and ammo readout just in case those terrorist wanna bring us a traditional war in our home towns. Everyone suit up with your carbine rifles and shotguns, and the HUD will even help highlight enemies, allow team communication, and notify you friend from foe. Even just an automatic "quest log" to keep track of your to-do list would be sweet.

So, there you have it. Fun stuff that could be really cool to have around in real life.

Oh, and check out Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog. You won't regret it.

Being a Band Geek

Now for something not Mudd related.

I happen to be musical in ability. Granted, I couldn’t make a living out of it, but I can play instruments competently and sing not horribly. In High School, I played in the Band. I in fact played the flute. Yes, I am in fact a male flute player.

Being very involved in Band in my recent past, I still have quite the affinity for it. Having a younger brother who is also in Band doesn’t exactly hurt either. Recently we got to see a Drum Corps show at Mount Sac. For those of you non-band geeks, a Drum And Bugle Corps (we tend to just call them Drum Corps) is kind of a better marching band. However, as its name implies, there’s only drums and bugle instruments. Drums encompass all percussion, so there is a pit line. There is also a Color Guard team that performs with them, adding color and cool rifle tosses to the mix.

The key is that they are really really good. If you check out teams like Blue Devils or the Santa Clara Vanguard on Youtube, you’ll see just how awesome their formations are. Trust me, getting formations correct is really really hard. The thing you’re missing is the sound. As cool as they sound on screen, it’s nothing to a live performance. Think wall of sound. Surround Sound. Dolby 5.1 Bose speakers movie theatre sound. It’s insane how powerful these guys’ lungs are. Cool stuff. So last Saturday we got to see the Blue Devils and the Santa Clara Vanguard blow away the competition. Sure it’s the beginning of the season, so they’re not quite up to their usual stuff, but it was still really cool.

In more recent news, the Band marched in the local Fourth of July parade. Luckily (or unluckily) my brother is the historian for the Band. This means that near the end of the year he’s going to get very little sleep and free time as he edits the giant Band Slideshow for the end-of-the-year banquet. It also means that we need to start getting footage now, in the forms of me walking along the parade route with the Band taking video and my dad taking pictures. So, kinda hot and a good leg workout. Hopefully the camera wasn’t shaking too much. We throw away footage that will make the viewers motion sick.

I guess you could say I’m still a Band geek. I still play the flute on occasion. It was weird when I found I was marching in sync with the Band, left foot on the downbeat. I bet I could still out drill-down most people. And being old and graduated, I get to moan and groan about how my days were so much better than the current Band. It’s kind of a right to be able to say “in my day.” Partially it’s mocking the stereotypical elderly person in the movies, but we seriously marched uphill in the sun to conditions ourselves. Both ways along the field. With horns up.

For your viewing pleasure, some Drum Corps videos:
Blue Devils 2007 1st Place DCI Championship Show

Santa Clara Vanguard 2007 DCI Championshhips show

Yokahoma Inspires, one of Japan’s new Drum Corps