Interesting Stuff

Tonight was a Tuesday. With two days of grading due on Thursday (really, it was due this morning, but Reid and I aren’t going to turn it back in until Thursday) and a PerCog test tomorrow, keeping in mind that I’ve got class tomorrow morning at 9:00, I spent my night drinking mudslides and gin and juice, watching Pirates of the Caribbean, and eating Mix Bowl until 1:30. This is the semester I’m supposed to die of pain, but I still seem to be able to have fun. We’ll see about tomorrow, though…

This morning in the shower, I finally solved an Algorithms-related problem that has had Reid and me stumped for a week (no, this is for fun; far too hard to be asked on a homework set):

Find positive, C-infinity, monotonically increasing functions f(n) and g(n) such that
f(n) is not in O(g(n)) and
g(n) is not in O(f(n)),
or
Show that no such functions exist.

Note that C-infinity means that not only is the function continuous, but its derivative is continuous, and the derivative of that is continuous, ad infinitum.

Can anyone else find an answer (hopefully simpler than mine)? It’s cheating if you look at Reid’s door.

It’s only mid-September, and I’ve already pulled my first all-nighter of the semester. This really can’t be good…

The US is considering beginning pulling out of Afghanistan (how many participles can I string together?) as early as this Spring! This would be great. I think the country is finally starting to pick itself up, despite all the problems with a constitution. Here’s hoping!

In other news, I’m not yet sure how I feel about John Roberts. From what I’ve heard, he seems like he’d be a pretty great Supreme Court Justice. However, I’m a little worried that most of his writings will not be released, so no one will be able to see most of what he has done in the past, and I’m equally worried that he hasn’t really expressed any of his views on anything except court cases that have already been decided (and his views on those are that the cases are already decided, so we should just uphold the previous rulings). If he actually approaches new cases with such an open mind and lack of opinion, that would be absolutely fantastic. I think it’s equally likely, however, that he could have views that would surely keep him from getting confirmed, but the Republicans have locked away all evidence of these views and Roberts himself is smart enough not to bring them up. This could go either way, but if he can be trusted, he’d be pretty great. Here’s hoping!

It seems that the government is now considering making our official policy that we should be able to perform a pre-emptive strike with nuclear weapons. Granted, this has not yet been made an actual law/policy, but I find it really scary that they’ve even been considering this since at least March. Why is our nuclear policy so screwed up? We’re considering restarting development of nuclear weapons that can penetrate into underground bunkers, yet we can’t make a nuclear power plant (which would be both safer and more environmentally friendly than a coal-burning plant), because it would be far too dangerous. We’re afraid that Iran will somehow turn its civilian-grade uranium processing plant into a military-grade plutonium plant, but we see nothing immediately wrong with nuking an entire country because a couple non-governmental people living in it were simply thinking about doing something we don’t like. WTF?!

On a slightly more light-hearted note, here are 25 hilarious quotes about Hurricane Katrina and how the beaurocracies are screwing up relief efforts.

Also, there was an attempted ban on media coverage of the hurricane and the New Orleans area, over privacy concerns. Thankfully, CNN is suing and has won at least the temporary ability to go in and report, citing its tastefullness in covering Afghanistan, Iraq, and the tsunami in Asia. This sounds surprisingly like the government trying to hide its mistakes (note the parallels to my rantings on closed-source software and the GRE). Go CNN!

I’m not really this angry, I just get a bit worked up over all the stupid things happening in the world today.

It’s now all but official. The government can detain people indefinitely, without charging them, without giving them a trial, even if they are an American citizen arrested in America. Ironically enough, today China agreed to improve its human rights record.

(click on the picture to see where I got it from)

What the crap? I feel like someone missed something, but I double-checked the press release from the White House, and the map is correct (yes, in an attempt to avoid my Number Theory homework, I matched up all 39 parishes to locations on a map of Louisiana).

Does anyone remember why half the country thought this administration would be a competent government?

The California Senate and Assembly have both passed a bill legalizing gay and lesbian marriage. Our illustrious governator is expected to veto it, but it’s hard to say – passing the bill would alienate him from his conservative Republican base, but I’m not convinced he really wants a career in politics. Vetoing the bill would alienate many gay people who hold power in the movie-making business, which I kinda think is “more” his base. Either way, he’s between a rock and a hard place. We’ll see what happens.

So, I really should have posted this a couple days ago, but I wasn’t on the ball. Despite the authorities claiming that everything is under control in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, This is simply not the case. This is clearly shown by this FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT blog (special thanks to whosdamike for showing me this). It seems that the entire area is having troubles, with policemen committing suicide because they are simply overwhelmed with everything. The Army is apparently throwing relief supplies off of their trucks to people, but the supplies hit the ground and break open, so little usable water is getting through. There aren’t enough busses to get everyone out of the area, but they won’t allow civilians to come in and pick up people to take elsewhere, so many people are stuck, living in squalid conditions and resorting to looting to simply survive. There are elderly people stuck in their apartments because they have trouble getting around, and who are out of food and medicine. The people have grown impatient with the inneffective relief efforts and have begun setting things on fire and then shooting at the firemen who come to stop the blazes. The situation is absolutely terrible. It’s now a week later, and things are just barely starting to get better.

Also, Elaine brought up an interesting little theory last night – she suspects (and apparently the BBC agrees) that a response effort would not have taken nearly as long if this were a rich, white city (this is at least partially corroborated by this post, in which car looting was allowed until it moved into a rich neighborhood, where SWAT teams descended upon the looters). She seems to think this is much more of a class/race problem than a “we don’t have the supplies” problem. I actually see it the other way around – if it were a richer neighborhood, more people would have had the means to leave the area before the hurricane struck, and there would be fewer people who need assistance. The same amount of relief would go farther on these few people. However, since it is a poorer area, many people didn’t have cars or other means of getting away, so there are more people who need help.