Interesting Stuff

The US, by 2007, will require all citizens re-entering the country to have passports, even if you’re just going to Canada, Mexico, or other nearby, friendly countries. Before then, all you needed was any kind of government-issued ID (such as a driver’s license). This is designed to combat “terrorism,” though I think it’s a horrible idea. First off, most Americans who go places like Canada (including myself), don’t go into Canada very far (maybe 10 miles over the border) or very long (the most time I’ve spent at once in Canada was an afternoon). If everyone like that is running around with their passport (which is quite valuable on the black market), people are going to get mugged. There will also be a lots of stupid people who have been taking weekend jaunts over the border for years, who suddenly get stuck in another country, and possibly detained, because of this new law. As the article mentioned when it talked about ferry operators, this will decrease tourism (though how significantly, I’m not sure).

Let’s use Bruce Schneier’s algorithm for decision making:
1) What are we trying to protect/prevent? Terrorists from entering the country. That’s fine. Stopping terrorists is a great, noble goal.
2) How will this measure help us? Presumably, terrorists don’t have passports, and this will make it harder for them to enter the country. However, the terrorists from America already have passports, and the ones from abroad (along with other foreign visitors) won’t be affected by this rule.
3) What are the costs? This will inconvenience the millions of people who don’t have passports but go to Canada/Mexico regularly. This will put a strain on passport manufacturing, and cost a fair amount of money for everyone who needs to get a passport. Some people may need to cancel their travel plans if they cannot get a passport soon enough (this is particularly true for funerals and other unplanned events).
4) Are there any side effects/downsides? A few people will probably be stranded in Canada/Mexico because they didn’t bring their passport with them. Tourism will drop. However, I expect that both of these will be minimal.
5)Is it worth it? Keeping in mind that this will have virtually no effect on terrorists but inconvenience millions of citizens, no. This is an awful idea.

The thing that gets me is that this was handed down to us by the Department of Homeland Security. It looks like this was a couple guys saying, “how can we justify this entire department? We need to do something significant that affects everyone.” This was not voted on by Congress, nor was it debated in a setting with public records. This was passed into law without going through the due process of law. Stupid, fucking government!

So, today, I’m giving a tour of Mudd with Tia. One of the prospective students mentioned he was interested in Engineering, so we go up to Engineering, and get Prof. Wang to give a little spiel about the department. Here’s roughly what happened:

Prof Wang: … at that, in a nutshell, is the Engineering department.
me: Thanks very much Prof. Wang. Tia, do you want to take over the tour for a bit?
Tia: Sure. If you’ll follow me this way, we’ll go see the Math department. The math department has-
Prof King: Is this a tour? Great! I will spend the next half hour showing you all of my different clinic projects!

On the bright side, I got to go into 4 rooms I’ve never been in before, and I got to see some really neat stuff (and so did the tour). On the other hand, we had to rush through the rest of everything (at that point, we had only seen engineering and humanities), and we still ended 20min late. About half the tour left early, but it worked out anyway. Kinda.

On an unrelated note, Deren Finks’ retirement party was today. It’s really too bad that he’s going, but his health comes before his job. He hopes to visit often, though, so that should work out.

Last week was spring break, which went much better than I expected. My parents came into town, and we ran around LA and San Diego – WB studios, the Wild Animal Park, Balboa Park, various art museums, a tide pool (I even got to see an octopus!), the aquarium in Long Beach… It was pretty good.

School has been a real bitch this week, which I also hadn’t expected. However, it’s over, and things are looking better. Psych paper, giant-ass Algorithms assignment, the usual LSD monstrosity. In Exile And Cinema, however, we actually watched a fantastic movie. “The Scent of Green Papaya” is a subtle, rich, sensuous masterpiece about a 10 year old girl who goes to work as a housemaid in Vietnam in 1951. I’d be up for seeing it again if anyone else wants to watch it.

Last night, Robert had another jacuzzi party, which was wonderful. And then this evening, we had a Without A Box show (quite possibly the best since last year!), followed by a We Are Scientists/Bishop Allen concert. BA wasn’t that great, possibly because half of their members have been replaced by newer, worse people. However, WAS was, as usual, fantastic. I now have to buckle down and do work, but it’s been a pretty nice weekend so far.

I’m sure you’ve all been hearing about the Shiavo case, and I just want to say that it’s fantastic that the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. I think it’s appalling that the Federal government stepped into this at all. And to think that the Republicans claim they stand for smaller government and more personal control over people’s lives!

I’d forgotten how great it is to have sound on a computer. For the
first few days that sound didn’t work, I didn’t really mind not having it, and then I didn’t really think
anything of it. However, sound is great. I’m rocking out to Garbage
right now (hence the title of this update), and it’s wonderful.

In the news department, it has been revealed that NASA didn’t do any risk analysis
before saying that repairing the Hubble Telescope is too risky. This is
really stupid. NASA seems to be slipping. They used to be absolutely
fantastic, but it looks like they keep getting worse and worse (the
Mars rovers being the exception – I still don’t know what was so great
about Cassini, even). Mind you, they’re still pretty great, just
significantly less great than they used to be. At first I was dismayed
that they decided to kill Hubble. However, as someone pointed out,
Hubble used
to be
great. Now, we have better telescopes, and much better ones are only a
few years away (the James Webb telescope will be ridiculously
fantastic). What could we attain with Hubble that makes it worth saving
any more? It would be neat to put in a museum, though that’s a bit
impractical. Consequently, I’m not that sad about this any more.

Finally, I read on jcmdev0‘s blog this wonderful article.
It really makes you think. I’m not usually the kind of person who
compares everything I don’t like to Hitler, but this is eerily
similar to the current situation. Let’s hope history isn’t repeating
itself here…

OK, time for an update. This past Saturday (a week ago, I mean), Andrew and I went to the Los Angeles regional bridge tournament. We had a frustrating game – I thought we did pretty well, and managed a pretty good 45%. However, this put us in last place, even though we were in a stratified 299ers game. The 1st place team only had a 56% game, so competition was pretty tight. Hm…

On the computer front, several weeks ago, I updated something, and my sound card stopped working. Yesterday, I had some free time, so what’s the first thing I think of? “I’m gonna start learning Esperanto.” Yeah, that’s right. It sounds ridiculous, but I’ve actually been meaning to do this for a couple years. I check the portage tree, and find that Gentoo has a Teach-Yourself-Esperanto program that you can install. It even pronounces the words out loud! However, I decided that if I was going to do this, I should get the sound to work first. Well, I spent last right rebuilding my kernel, and didn’t get it to work. I also spent much of this evening working on it. I even managed to get several kernels to fail their CRCs (cyclical redundancy checks make sure that the code is consistent with itself). Hm… However, after about 10 rebuilds and a whole bunch of messing around with stuff and remerging, I got it to play. Now everything seems to be working fine, and I am listening to XMMS right now! Whee!

Robert’s sister and her friend are spending the night, and tomorrow they’re going to some program about women attending Mudd (they’re both starting to look at colleges about now).

And that’s it for a while. I was gonna go start learning Esperanto, but I think I’m gonna go do something else for a while instead.

Tonight, Sara, Robert, and I played the most ridiculous game of Scrabble I have ever seen. The two blank tiles are an L and an E, respectively. The final score was 215 (Robert) to 224 (me) to 238 (Sara, who went out of tiles by playing the T in the lower left corner to make HET and ET, scoring 16 points). Sara had a fantastic game, playing the OU of OUR in the upper right corner after everything else had already been played there, then JADE under AXE, with the J on a double letter score, and then the A of VISA and ALONG after both VIS and LONG had been played. Linguaphiles unite!

‘Tis brillig, and I have been revisiting my erstwhile haunts ’round the internet. Surprisingly, I chanced to look back to Take Our Word For It, and discovered that they have begun to make new issues again! In honor of this, I have essayed to use a more aureate patois in this update, though my writing has become rather torose. Consequently, I shall keep this short. TOWFI is an online newsletter dedicated to etymology, and they have a wheen information in the archives (a particularly emolient example can be found here). They now appear to be run by The Institute for Etymological Research and Education, which makes the articles more authoritative yet less jovial than the old ones. Nonetheless, I am quite blithe.

As promised, here is a hand we played this evening at bridge club, as copied down by Andrew’s computer. Andrew was North, Kai was East, I was South, and Carrie was West. Kai opens with 1D, and I double (a classic example of a Takeout Double). Carrie passes and Andrew bids 1S. Undeterred, Kai bids 2H, which I double (this time it’s a Penalty Double). Carrie passes, and after a pause, Andrew passes as well. Kai gets scared and runs to 2NT, which I am happy to double (penalty again), and then Kai continues to 3D. At this point, I lose my confidence, and pass. Andrew, however, does a Penalty Double of his own before everyone passes. In the end, we took 1 spade trick, 2 diamonds, 1 club, and 3 hearts (one of which is a ruff), and another trick somewhere (I don’t remember if it was another heart ruff or another spade, but there was something else in there) for a total score of 800. Had we bid more and doubled less, we probably could not have made game, let alone grabbed 800 points. It was a lot of fun to bid – I’ve never made 3 doubles in a row before.

It’s late, and I’m stalling so that I don’t have to work.

First off, for all of you etymology fans – today in Psych class, I was bored (as usual), when the prof used the word “influence.” It then occurred to me that it’s probably an Old English spelling of “en-fluent,” which I would take to mean, “to make something flow.” A quick check in my dictionary reveals that yes, it originally referred to power flowing from the stars to change things. Neat!

Tonight’s bridge club was ridiculously full of doubles. I shall put up an example hand soon. Also, it looks like Andrew and Sunshine Purvis, Kai, and I will be playing in a Swiss event at the Regional tournament next Sunday. Here’s hoping!