Interesting Stuff

So here I am, working on my Big Algorithms assignment and listening to music (I’ve finally gotten my iPod to work with Linux, which has made everything really convenient!). One of the questions on this weeks assignment is about splay trees, and why a simpler, though more intuitive, design does not perform as well. As I am LaTeXing this up, I’m listening to Float by The Music, the chorus of which consists of the phrase “you wanna be free” repeated over and over. In a particularly topical mondegreen, I mishear this as the singer repeatedly telling me that “you want a B-tree!” Although I much prefer splay trees to B-trees, I was still quite entertained.

On a tangential note, earlier today I tried to use the word “mondegreen,” but totally forgot it. I tried looking it up on the web by searching for “vendement” and various spellings thereof, but could not find it. I had finally given up, when I happened across it again. What a wonderful word!

On a more newsy topic, President Bush has unveiled his budget proposal, in which he increases the spending for the military and the DHS, while cutting the budget to almost all civil departments: not only Medicare and Medicaid, but education, agriculture, medical research, not to mention the Departments of Justice and Transportation. Although this is an excellent strategy if you’re playing Sid Meier’s Civilization II, I fear it’s a bad policy for our country.

Finally, last week, a Danish newspaper, while running an article about how many illustrators are afraid that the Islamic community will grow angry if they draw Muslim-related pictures, published 12 drawings of the prophet Muhammed (which can be seen here), with the intent of showing that Muslims won’t be enraged by people drawing pictures of their prophet (Islam forbids the creation of pictures/sculptures/etc of Muhammed, although people have done just that, and celebrated their work, throughout the years). However, this totally backfired – the Muslim communities have had riots, several countries have withdrawn their ambassadors from Denmark, and the Danish embassies in several cities have been torched. However, Europe seems to be standing strong, with the pictures reprinted in quite a few newspapers all over the continent. I found a very thoughtful article on the subject here. Personally, I think this is just ridiculous – the way to get people to stop stereotyping Muslims is to show that they’re really just people, not mad, suicidal, murderous jihadists bent on ruling the world with Sharia. However, the Muslim community apparently wants to do just the opposite. Indeed, the death toll is mounting…

Right. I have to go back to my homework.

It seems as though Halliburton has been supplying US troops in Iraq with contaminated water, and have known about the problem and just kept quiet for months. Although I originally found this on Fark, the article I have linked to is, in my opinion, a more detailed account. Still, I liked Fark’s caption:

Stealing billions from US Taxpayers and doing business with Iran in direct violation of US Sanctions was obviously not enough. Halliburton is now giving polluted water to US Troops. Cheney seen mumbling “excellent.”

I wish it were possible to just put this company out of business once and for all. Bastards.

On a totally unrelated and happier note, I’ve begun watching Firefly, which really is an amazing show. It has some very subtle points in it, which obviously took a lot of thought from the creators: the ships only make noise when they’re in a planet’s atmosphere (they’re silent in space), everyone is bilingual in English and Chinese, and they slip Chinese expressions into their dialogue, etc. Not to mention that the characters are fascinating and the plot is quite fun. If you haven’t seen this, you might find a copy and watch at least the first couple episodes.

I suspect this case will grow to be as big a Right To Die issue as the Schiavo case was. I’m not sure how I feel about this yet. Time will tell what happens…

In other news, Google has refused to comply with a federal subpoena asking to see search requests it handles, presumably to learn more about who is looking at pornography (shocking as this may seem, some people search for, and find, pornography on the internet!). Google, standing firm under its motto to “do no evil” claims that divulging this information, even if it contains nothing that links any searches with actual people, would be a violation of the privacy of the users of its search engine. Google seems to be the only company who has stood up to such requests. I have more and more respect for Google as the days go on. The only thing I see wrong with Google is its ongoing legal battle against the shopping website Froogles. At this point, Google and Costco are the only companies with my admiration.

For the first time in quite a while, the Supreme Court made a very nice decision to uphold an Oregan law allowing doctor-assisted suicide (which is only for terminally ill patients who will die in less than 6 months and are in sound mental condition, and which is actually a very thoughtful law to give back to terminally ill patients their dignity and to lessen their suffering). I think this is wonderful, and it’s the first time in quite a while that I’ve heard about a Supreme Court decision that I was happy with (the last one I agreed with was in the Schiavo case, and I don’t remember the one I agreed with before that).

Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissenting vote is a bit worrisome, however. I really hope he doesn’t turn out to be another Antonin Scalia, although he didn’t come off that way during his confirmation process. Time will tell…

I’m a bit surprised that Gore is doing this (he usually doesn’t come off as very assertive, but perhaps he’s changing), but Al Gore is finally standing up and making a direct challenge to the legality of the Bush administration’s policies. Personally, I feel that domestic wiretapping without going through the FISA court, the current policies on torture and extreme interrogation, the indefinite holding of “enemy combatants” (including American citizens!), the manipulation of information that led to the war in Iraq, and the USA PATRIOT Act as a whole are blatantly illegal (except the PATRIOT Act, which is unconstitutional and should not be legal). I’ve been waiting for someone to actually call the Bush administration on any of this, and it finally seems to be happening.

The Bush administration has a very clever policy of ignoring criticism and just going ahead with their stuff anyway. This has allowed them to accomplish a lot of things, and I feel powerless to stop them. I have relied on higher political powers to challenge the president, and have been severely disappointed. I really hope this is the start of a new trend.

Today, the Bush administration attempted to defend its domestic spying program, claiming that when Congress gave the President authorization to use military force in the War on Terrorism (back when we were actually fighting a justifyed war against Afghanistan), it implicitly gave the Presidency authorization to do wiretaps and other intelligence gathering (since wars need intelligence to figure out what the enemy is doing). I feel silly asking this, but are we still officially at war? Certainly we’re still in the War on Terror, the way we’re also still in the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty, last time I checked. However, I don’t think that implies that we can use domestic wiretaps to spy on druggies or poor people. Moreover, I’m surprised that the administration claims that the FISA board is too slow. I had heard that they could do things fast, but I didn’t know that they held emergency meetings at 3AM to do things that fast. On top of that, the government is certainly permitted to spy on people for up to 72 hours before getting FISA approval. I still don’t understand how anyone can justify sidestepping FISA completely by saying that the court is too slow.

On a much happier note, all of Britain now allows gay civil unions which afford pretty much the same legal rights as marriage. Today, Sir Elton John married his long-time partner under this new law. I don’t usually care about celebrities, but I think this is pretty fantastic.

This entry has been edited for accuracy. The old version equated the current Sony DRM with the old Sony DRM rootkits, but they are two separate pieces of malware. This paragraph has been changed to correct this error. See the apposite comments for more information. It now appears that the CDs with Sony’s DRM technology on them (the CDs with rootkits have been recalled, so you luckily can’t get them any more, but other DRM’ed Sony CDs are still out on the market) will install their software even if you do not accept the EULA. Woah. This has definitely crossed some new sort of line that it hadn’t crossed before (and the old DRM rootkits had crossed several lines already). I hope Sony gets what’s coming to them…

On the terrorist front, the Bush administration appears to be afraid to defend its enemy combatant policy in front of the Supreme Court. One of these cases, in which a US citizen has been held without charges for 3 years on suspicion of planning to detonate a dirty bomb (he was recently charged, though these charges made no mention of such a bomb), has finally been appealed to the Supreme Court. In response, the Bush administration has attempted to move him to a civilian jail, rather than the military prison he is currently being held in (this would nullify any ruling that would otherwise be appealed to the Supreme Court). The Bush administration also tried to overturn a ruling which stated that the government could hold such people indefinitely (although this seems counterproductive at first, such an overturn would also keep this from going to the Supreme Court). The Bush administration’s actions on this case give the impression that they are afraid that the Supreme Court will rule against them in favor of basic civil liberties, and the administration appears to be trying their best to weasel out of this and continue holding citizens indefinitely. I really hope this hits the Supreme Court soon.

The good news: the president of Diebold resigned after enough problems with the ethics of his company, his products, and his personal business dealings. I maintain that if people are hell-bent on electronic voting (and I personally am hell-bent against it), the system should be transparent and open-source so that anyone can both verify that it is correct and formulate improvements to the system.

The bad news: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran claims that the Holocaust never happened. This is significantly less forgivable than claiming that Israel is a blot in the middle of the Arab world that should be wiped off it. It makes my blood boil to hear people say things like this. I might be able to understand the claims if the Holocaust had happened centuries ago, but some of the people who were in it are still alive today! Is President Ahmadinejad actually trying to claim that my grandfather did not get shipped to France to fight the Nazis? Is he claiming that 20 million Russians did not actually die in some fictional “World War,” and have merely been hiding in their basements lo these past sixty years? He certainly seems to be purporting that everything from Kristallnacht to Auschwitz is an elaborate hoax. Argh!

The ugly news: I have 3 tests to take, a 10-page paper to write, 4 assignments to grade (with 20-ish people turning in each one), 7-ish ACM problems to code up, and 3 more grad school apps that need to be finished this week. I wish I could say I’m almost home, but I’m not.

Up until now, I’ve been thinking the US has been making a big stink about Iran’s nuclear programme over nothing: just another superpower hoping that their enemies will not be given their inalienable right to improve their lot. However, I’ve been reading more on the subject, and it looks like there may very well be a sinister undercurrent to Iran’s drive for nuclear research. It’s a bit conspicuous when you step up your nuclear research while at the same time calling for another country (within missile range, no less) to be wiped from the face of the Earth. I kind of like the Russian deal, which is that Russia will supply Iran with reactor-grade nuclear fuel to be used in Russian-designed power plants, and Iran will return the spent fuel to assure that it is not diverted to make weapons. The US doesn’t seem to be going for that either, however, and I’m still confused as to why not. Whatever happens, it should finish up in a few more months.

Here’s the weird thing, though: suppose that Iran is actually doing this to be able to nuke Israel. If they hit Jerusalem, this will make Muslims, Christians, and Jews all angry, and since Iran wants to stay on the good side of at least the Muslims, I doubt that will happen. So suppose that Iran nukes the rest of Israel, and leaves Jerusalem alone. This would have absolutely catastrophic effects for Iran as well as Israel, because the rest of the world would be so surprised, appalled, and outraged that nearly every major country in the world would declare war on Iran and conquer it. Surely Iran doesn’t want to be conquered. Wiping out Israel in such a manner would also wipe out Iran itself. Consequently, I doubt Iran is planning to nuke Israel. Therefore, I believe that it is in Iran’s best interests to not nuke Israel. However, if this is the case, why try to develop nuclear weapons at all? To be used in some sort of blackmail/coercion? To counter any country that tries to invade (I don’t think Iran needs defenses to repel any invading countries any more; that ended about a decade ago with Iraq)? Making nukes to repel any aggressors who wouldn’t invade unless Iran builds nukes seems unnecessarily circular, and would only hurt Iran. Why would they do this? Perhaps they really are just trying to build power plants? But if that’s the case, why aren’t they being more cooperative with other countries? Something isn’t adding up in all of this.

O’Reilly and his fellow right-wing conservative religious bigots are now claiming that Christmas is under attack by people who want to be more inclusive and use phrases like “happy holidays” and “winter break.” Apparently these are anti-Christmas sentiments, and FOX and O’Reilly are advocating boycotting any store that uses them instead of explicitly saying “Christmas.” How is it that these people are so highly regarded that they have radio shows, “news” shows, and widespread public support!?