neomage's Xanga

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 09:01:10 GMT

I finally got around to putting up a real website at http://arantaday.com/blog/. I just gave in and used wordpress. I'll try to update once a week or so ...

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 19:35:30 GMT

In the US there are 2,270 children who were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us1005/

In the US 7.5 Million adults are on probation, parole, or are currently incarcerated. That's about 1 in every 30 adults. Over 4 Million of those are for victimless crime.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/corr2tab.htm
The Sentencing Project

The US has less than 5% of the world's population, and over 25% of its prison population. We have the higher incarceration rates than China, USSR, Nazi Germany, or any other nation in the world has ever had.
Ziedenberg and Schiraldi, May 2000.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?area=all&category=wb_poprate

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 06:44:00 GMT

Richard Feynman, for you non-engineers, was arguably one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. Einstein, Pauli, Von Neuman and many others traveled across the country (or further - Pauli came from Switzerbland) to attend Feynman's first lecture. And this was when Feynman was 23!

Feynman had mastered differential equations by 15, helped create the first atomic bomb in his 20s, and won a Nobel prize for the work he did in Quantum Electrodynamics in his 30s.

But what truly set him apart was the breadth of his expertise: on a whim he spent a year working as a biologist and a year as a computer scientist and helped revolutionize both fields. He was a also a well respected musician and painter. His paintings, published under a pseudonym, were honored in an exhibition dedicated to his work. His drum playing was even on several popular recordings at the time.

Feynman was a true polymath - a modern renaissance man.

I tell you all this just so you understand what I mean when I say that all his other works pale in comparison to his greatest discovery. They were nothing.

The most impressive thing Feynman ever did was to discover a surefire
method to get girls to sleep with him.

I present you with (an abridged version) of the secret from his best
selling autobiography, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman":
(note that 'Dick' is Richard Feynman)

**********************************EXCERPT***********************************

"The whole principle is this: The guy wants to be a gentleman. He doesn't want to be thought of as impolite, crude, or especially a cheapskate. As long as the girl knows the guy's motives so well, it's easy to steer him in the direction she wants him to go.

"Therefore," he continued, "under no circumstances be a gentleman! You must disrespect the girls. Furthermore, the very first rule is, don't buy a girl anything--not even a package of cigarettes--until you've asked her if she'll sleep with you, and you're convinced that she will, and that she's not lying."

Well, someone only has to give me the principle, and I get the idea. All during the next day I built up my psychology differently: I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren't worth anything, and all they're in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they're not going to give you a goddamn thing; I'm not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic.

[Skip to that night at the bar]

After the first act my friend says, "Hey, Dick! I want you to meet Ann. Ann, this is a good friend of mine, Dick Feynman." I say "Hi" and keep looking at the show.

A few moments later Ann says to me, "Why don't you come and sit at the table here with us?" I think to myself, "Typical bitch: he's buying her drinks, and she's inviting somebody else to the table." I say, "I can see fine from here."

A little while later a lieutenant from the military base nearby comes in, dressed in a nice uniform. It isn't long before we notice that Ann is sitting over on the other side of the bar with the lieutenant!

Later that evening I'm sitting at the bar, Ann is dancing with the lieutenant, and when the lieutenant's back is toward me and she's facing me, she smiles very pleasantly to me. I think again, "Some bitch! Now she's doing this trick on the lieutenant even!"

Then I get a good idea: I don't look at her until the lieutenant can also see me, and then I smile back at her, so the lieutenant will know what's going on. So her trick didn't work for long.

A few minutes later she's not with the lieutenant any more, but asking the bartender for her coat and handbag, saying in a loud, obvious voice, "I'd like to go for a walk. Does anybody want to go for a walk with me?"

I think to myself, "You can keep saying no and pushing them off, but you can't do it permanently, or you won't get anywhere. There comes a time when you have to go along." So I say coolly, "I'll walk with you." So we go out. We walk down the street a few blocks and see a café, and she says, "I've got an idea--let's get some coffee and sandwiches, and go over to my place and eat them."

The idea sounds pretty good, so we go into the café and she orders three coffees and three sandwiches and I pay for them. As we're going out of the café, I think to myself, "Something's wrong: too many sandwiches!"

On the way to her motel she says, "You know, I won't have time to eat these sandwiches with you, because a lieutenant is coming over..

I think to myself, "See, I flunked. The master gave me a lesson on what to do, and I flunked. I bought her $1.10 worth of sandwiches, and hadn't asked her anything, and now I know I'm gonna get nothing! I have to recover, if only for the pride of my teacher."

I stop suddenly and I say to her, "You . . . are worse than a WHORE!"

"Whaddya mean?"

"You got me to buy these sandwiches, and what am I going to get for it? Nothing!"

"Well, you cheapskate!" she says. "If that's the way you feel, I'll pay you back for the sandwiches!"

I called her bluff: "Pay me back, then."

She was astonished. She reached into her pocketbook, took out the little bit of money that she had and gave it to me. I took my sandwich and coffee and went off.

After I was through eating, I went back to the bar to report to the master. I explained everything, and told him I was sorry that I flunked, but I tried to recover.

He said very calmly, "It's OK, Dick; it's all right. Since you ended up not buying her anything, she's gonna sleep with you tonight."

     "What? "

     "That's right," he said confidently; "she's gonna sleep with you. I know that."

     "But she isn't even here! She's at her place with the lieu--"

     "It's all right."

     Two o'clock comes around, the bar closes, and Ann hasn't appeared. I ask the master and his wife if I can come over to their place again. They say sure.

     Just as we're coming out of the bar, here comes Ann, running across Route 66 toward me. She puts her arm in mine, and says, "Come on, let's go over to my place.

     The master was right. So the lesson was terrific!

     When I was back at Cornell in the fall, I was dancing with the sister of a grad student, who was visiting from Virginia. She was very nice, and suddenly I got this idea: "Let's go to a bar and have a drink," I said.

     On the way to the bar I was working up nerve to try the master's lesson on an ordinary girl. After all, you don't feel so bad disrespecting a bar girl who's trying to get you to buy her drinks--but a nice, ordinary, Southern girl?

     We went into the bar, and before I sat down, I said, "Listen, before I buy you a drink, I want to know one thing: Will you sleep with me tonight?"

     "Yes."

**********************************END EXCERPT***********************************

And thus ends the most important lesson Feynman taught

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:34:32 GMT

I think I've discovered the next XKCD: Abtruse Goose

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:13:57 GMT

Damn it

Friday, July 18, 2008

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:52:31 GMT

sigh ...

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Tue, 27 May 2008 21:18:50 GMT

http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html

Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.

The surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer.

What I like about Boston (or rather Cambridge) is that the message there is: you should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you've been meaning to.

When you ask what message a city sends, you sometimes get surprising answers. As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should be more powerful.

That's not quite the same message New York sends. Power matters in New York too of course, but New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely inherited it. In Silicon Valley no one would care except a few real estate agents. What matters in Silicon Valley is how much effect you have on the world. The reason people there care about Larry and Sergey is not their wealth but the fact that they control Google, which affects practically everyone.

-Paul Graham, May 2008

Monday, May 19, 2008

Mon, 19 May 2008 01:38:39 GMT

Sorry, website coming soon.

I initially set-up a slightly modified wordpress blog - but I didn't love it. So, I'm writing my own blog engine (in Common Lisp, of course ) Just got a bit distracted by final projects/exams.

Fortunately, Wed. is the last day of school, so I should be able to return to my education after that.

In the meantime, here's a new site I found: Stuff White People Like.

Some of the funnier ones:
#99 Grammar
#81 Graduate School
#28 Not Having a TV
#11 Asian Girls
#10 Wes Anderson Movies

Hell, they're all good. I've pre-ordered the book too.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 11:39:03 GMT

I want to go to parties like that again ... it has been too long.
house party with all friends > dive bar > apartment party > club

I'm also putting together a real website. I should have the first article (and a link) up in a day or two (it will likely be a moderately technical math/programming blog ... so of little interest to most people).

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:30:27 GMT

"The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

-- H.L. Mencken