The Nothingness of Narnia

Re: Immininent U.S. Attack On Iran?

2009-02-07T22:23:00.028-05:00

Continuing on the theme of dredging up old emails in lieu of posting anything new, I found this reply I gave to my mother who had forwarded to me a widely circulating email. The circular suggested an imminent U.S. attack on Iran while hypothesizing false-flag operations would precipitate the event and referencing a film called "Terrorstorm". She asked what I thought, if investments need to be protected, and if I had heard of the film. My reply, posted Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 1:14PM is as follows:

It's unlikely that anything large-scale is imminent. Moreover, it's extremely dubious that any administration can plan and execute self-injury to its own naval vessel.

This is not to say that were accidental injury to occur that the event would not be propagandized mercilessly in an opportunistic manner. The Spanish-American war of 1898 precipitated in large part due to the sinking of the USS Maine on February 15, 1898. While the cause of losing the vessel was deemed inconclusive both by independent experts of that time and by those today, the U.S. Govt. under strained relations with Spain decided to spin the event as a deliberate attack by Spain. The rest is history. Current theories as to what caused the USS Maine to sink agree that the ammunition magazines in the ship exploded, destroying the vessel. The theories then diverge from there, one believing the vessel detonated a Spanish mine and that ignited the magazines and another believing the high-temperatures of the coal-engine ignited the magazines. Despite the theories, it is widely agreed that Spain desperately wanted to avoid any confrontation with the U.S. because it was more than aware of its naval inferiority to the newly industrialized U.S. Why a nation aware of the certain defeat it would suffer if engaged in a war with the U.S. would precipitate one stands against reason; yet, in 1898 the U.S. Govt. played Spain as the aggressor and emanated its views across all distribution channels.

One thing to note, however, is that the U.S. Govt would never explicitly execute injury to one of its own vessels because the gravity of that act would be so earth-shattering that it could simply never be kept under wraps. Too many individuals would need to be involved and the risk exposure too high. Passive negligence is the successful modus operandi, as some suspect Roosevelt employed with Pearl Harbor. The passive negligence Roosevelt is suspected of is in concealing and not relaying in a timely manner information pertaining to an imminent strike on Pearl Harbor, in the hopes that a successful Japanese strike, even if on a remote outpost in the Pacific, would engage the American public in furor. Of course, as witnessed with the slow information pipeline under the Clinton administration regarding the 1998 Pokhran-II tests, it seems reasonable that inefficiency and lack of readiness is caused by bureaucracy and not by malicious intent.

All that said, is an invasion of Iran imminent? The option of passive negligence is always available and it would inevitably lead to a confrontation of some kind with an enemy of the Govt.'s choosing, presumably Iran. However, I do not think our current administration would exercise such an option for two reasons.

The first reason is that the military command structure has built-in shortcuts to bypass sending every decision to Bush. If reinforcements or some other defensive precaution is needed, the military can carry out the needed tasks without involving Bush. The only time the president is necessary is in transforming intelligence provided by the CIA into action carried out by the military, and the president can choose to delay this process as some claim Roosevelt had. While the CIA may provide vital information which Bush has the ability to be passively negligent of, the strong presence of the U.S. military forces in the middle-east supply the military with a self-sufficient source of intelligence, effectively diminishing the utility of the CIA and removing opportunities for Bush to be negligent.

The second reason is that Bush's political capital is extremely low, both with allies as well as with ordinary folk, and I doubt he would successfully manage to convince everyone that stretching our military thinner than how extremely thin they are already stretched is a good idea.

Of course, it's likely that Ahmadinejad's advisers have made similar analysis and will try to push the boundaries of what the U.S. will allow them to do. This could spiral into brinkmanship. As of yet, there hasn't been any serious news of Iran testing the patience of the U.S. Without properly testing our reactions to various, minor infractions of internationally acceptable behavior under the current settings, Iran would not be able to triangulate a clear enough landscape of permissibility. Thus, even if they are aware that the landscape of permissibility has expanded due to an emaciated Whitehouse and depleted spare military power, they are in the dark as to the exact boundaries of this new permissive landscape. So long as they are uncertain what our reactions will be, Iran will not take any path of major consequence. Of course, I could be over-estimating Iran's prudence and they may decide that venturing into an unknown landscape is of high enough value to merit the risk.

Still, should investments be protected? Of course. But the advice is no different than it always has been: a well-balanced portfolio. Equity, currency baskets, funds, etc. I don't think anything in particular needs to be done whether or not we invade Iran. In the extreme case, the Govt. might issue higher-interest bonds to summon additional, immediate spending power for war-financing, thus reducing the price of existing bonds currently trading at lower yields and reducing the price of mediocre equity. The impact on stocks would not be as dire as one would think. If war-financing is conducted through the issuance of bonds, the US Dollar will weaken further, having two effects: firstly, better exports to Europe; secondly, cheaper labor and higher inflation. Traditionally, such devaluation has a positive effect on the economy because the mood of the consumer revolves around nominal wages. Thus, if they make 45,000 now and 52,000 next year, even if purchasing power has diminished, they tend to be giddy with joy at, yes, earning less, but receiving more currency units. This consumer confidence acts as a steroid, bolstering demand for almost every product, and helping stocks perform.

No, I haven't seen "Terrorstorm", but I now quickly googled and read reviews about it. It seems to be done with the theme that the govt manufactures a perpetual state-of-war in order to subdue domestic freedoms and attain maximum centralized power in order to perpetuate status quo and concentrate wealth to an elite class. It's a bit like the elected chancellor in Star Wars who manufactures an enemy to help receive enough votes to assume dictatorial control, legally, so as to manage the war effectively. "Terrorstorm" seems to be a mix of 1984 and Machiavelli's The Prince, done with a collage of news events. I think it assumes a higher degree of cohesion and capability than exists in reality, even if its assumptions that greed and self-interest fuel most administrations are probably correct. However, even if most top-officials are corrupt and greedy, I think it would be disingenuous to assume that the corrupt and greedy are mostly top-officials. There are plenty of corrupt and greedy people acting purely on self-interest at all levels, from high-school dropouts at the lower rungs of the UCLA campus police to various mayors of small, insignificant towns.

It's not disconcerting that greed and corruption are pervasive, since that's an unfortunate reality; what is disconcerting is that the central govt., which is best suited to "policing the police" is instead distracted with imperialistic dreams abroad and is inattentive at home, or, worse, an enabler in granting an oversupply of power to domestic bureaus and state law-enforcement with little to no oversight. While the '60s showed a central govt. willing to act for civil liberties by stepping in with U.S. Marshals and other federal forces to ensure that black students were permitted into white schools in the South, despite opposition from the Southern governors and local police, it now no longer seems conceivable that the new central govt. would use forces to protect citizens against rogue police. The path currently taken seems to steal focus away from domestic abuse and onto foreign affairs, leaving local forces with a carte blanche in using newly conferred powers. With the evaporation of habeas corpus and other guarantees to prevent abuse, there's less and less apart from per-capita income that differentiates the U.S. from a stereotypical non-democratic regime.

Love,
(My name)

Re: high school graduation speech

2009-02-05T09:39:00.014-05:00

Walking down memory lane with my gmail archive, I found an interesting email I sent in response to Paul Graham's graduation speech. I had emailed him on Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 3:57 PM, the following:

Hello Paul,

I hope you're not being inundated with slashdot readers writing their feedback. I'm certainly not lessening the effect by writing, but I feel I should write since I enjoyed reading your graduation speech and am as dismayed as you that it couldn't be delivered. I'm not in highschool anymore, but mentoring highschool students in my free time I know your advices and anecdotes to unveil reality are good ones. I've even forwarded your webpage to my younger cousins who themselves are in college but still very curious about life, the division between childhood and adulthood, and the "point of life" - to stay upwind as you put it.

Apart from my compliments, I also have a suggestion, which I'll get to after a short anecdote of my own. I was very mathematically inclined as a kid and delved into software more than most I knew. All along, I had only one friend whom I could learn from and he equally learned from me. Even my father who was a software developer was uninterested in the murkier topics of computer science theory, such as lambda calculus, frequency analysis, and feistel networks, as the practicing world cared more about programming libraries. Needless to say, it was a difficult journey to learn and a lonely one at that. I knew college would be better, but that's eons away when you're in eighth grade. I stumbled upon linux, open source, and a community working on things without monetary purpose nearing the end of my tenth grade. My first email communique outside of my highschool was to Andrew Tridgell, then the sole samba developer. I had my vague notions of tcp and udp and OS datagram frames but in one email response he clarified questions I would've spent the next year analyzing. Instantly, solitary learning where I learn from my mistakes like an ape became human learning where I stood on civilization learning the past mistakes of all. It was incredible, and I wish I hadn't had to have stumbled on that revelation.

I'm not saying open source is the answer to everyone's grade school intellectual doldrums, even if it was my answer; I'm saying that a useful community will inevitably exist outside college, and highschool students impatient for that college life can tap into it earlier. The key element is people. Most students, including both the academic ones trying to learn and the non-academic ones trying to be popular, will benefit from the idea that there are more people to know and learn from than those in their own school. I know of far too many students who never communicate in email or chat beyond their school classmates, and parents unfortunately find that comforting. The concept I couldn't grasp was how many 6 billion people are and yet how only a few dozen people would be interested in samba in 1995. As a ratio, it's astounding. However, these non-popular -- distinctly separate from the unpopular -- projects are bastions of clever lonely people, the perfect type for a student with little to offer besides attention and a lot to gain such as knowledge.

Ergo, my suggestion. I believe it would be highly useful to impress upon students how they should look beyond their region - that while their home town may be the only place in the world to know certain inside jokes and terms, there are things far grander in the world and fractious enough as to make the individual teams small, closeknit, and meaningful. While being trendy and knowing the latest, local, and popular things can make one feel good about oneself, the eclectic, esoteric, and historical things are longer lasting benefits which compound with themselves in value over time. To be eclectic, however, one cannot be content with what is provided. I was very distrusting of supposed quality, and knew the world contained a spectrum of quality far greater than I could contemplate. Far too many people cling to the first anchorman, reporter, or developer they meet if they're interested in that subject. I suggest exploring and discerning whom to emulate.

Being mindful of history is necessary in order to be eclectic. Old news tends to be overlooked, or be seen as unprofitable, making it somewhat immune from the noise of limelight seekers' premature ideas and from marketing propaganda. There's money in making software, not in writing a taxonomy of comparisons between, or meticulously documenting the concepts wielded by, different software. There are even taxonomies on taxonomies, each level becoming less popular and less profitable and taking longer to complete, thereby missing the slim window of public interest. However, by sitting in 1995 and reading tcp/ip lessons in 1994 about lessons from 1991 etc., dating back to the release of the cornell worm in 1970, one could learn a lot more than if one had only read some arbitrary book circa 1980 focusing purely on unproven and trendy '80s paradigms. I've given the following advice to many: we should look at the thirty year topics that are still alive today, even if barely, and trace the discussion back to their origins. By learning from the collective discussion, any contemporary incident can be seen through the lens of a learned person, yielding an amalgam of concepts surviving a darwinian massacre of preceding years' ideas. Once the lens has been shaped, it serves as a crude tool to craft finer tools. Apply that lens on another, more recent, incident, and repeat the process until you're looking at present day situations with an extremely well-pruned, eclectic corpus of knowledge with which to interpret anything you choose. This strategy works tremendously well at solving the problem of "noise" -- too much nonsense posing as quality work; and, interestingly, this same approach is taken by bayesian spam filtering.

Sorry for writing as much as I have - it was originally meant to be two or three short paragraphs. Pardon me for any typographical errors.

Cheers,
(My name)

Fun with Number Theory: Guessing Your Age

2008-04-22T00:53:00.091-04:00

Take the last digit of your age, multiply it by 2, then for every decade you've lived add 1 to it. Color this result Blue in your mind
Think of your favorite digit, any digit at all, multiply it by 11 and color it Red in your mind.
Add the last digit of your age to your Red number in your mind, then for every decade you've lived subtract 1 from it. This result is your new Red number.

Alright, now tell me your Blue and Red numbers and I will guess your age!
© 2008 by Thoreaulylazy. All Rights Reserved.

Spoilers:

Are you sure? It could be a lot of fun to figure out the trick yourself...
Yes, I'm sure.

Don't say you haven't been warned.
I won't.

You're very persistent. Are you sure you don't have any psychological problems?
Just show me the spoilers already!!! AARRGH.

I tried to warn you earlier, remember?
Sigh.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

I don't know

10 meters per second

African or European?

Spoilers:
Why did you waste your time like this?
For starters, I was sick and bedridden for the day, so it wasn't as if I had many productive alternatives. Secondly, I was inspired through the sheer level of disgust the trick "Your Age by Eating Out" instilled in me. To save you the trouble of reading about that other trick elsewhere, I'll give you the gist of it. It's a puzzle that makes you compute (2*randDigit + 5)*50 + (bdayThisYear?1757:1756) - DOB. Yes, I was rather aghast at having to subtract my date of birth, especially from a number that differed by one depending on whether or not I had my birthday this year. What sort of 'puzzle' is this when it's the spanking facsimile of how age is normally computed? Unfortunately, if you view the google hits when searching for that puzzle, you'll find – almost without exception – glowing reviews of how amazing the puzzle is. I needed to right this travesty of mathematics, and so I devised a puzzle that could baffle nearly anyone who wasn't a math or cs major, and managed to successfully validate this claim on a sample of well-educated engineers.

How did you get my age?!
Well, age = ( 77*(Blue div 2) + 770*(Blue%2) + 133*Red ) % 209

77, 770, 133, 209? .. Where do these numbers come from, and why do they work?
Well, I first picked a number theory topic. A popular one is the Chinese Remainder Theorem, which states that, for an unknown x, if x % p_i is known for some sequence of prime p_i, then x can be solved in the domain 0..Π(p_i)-1. This is powerful because the domain grows factorially: an innocuous sequence of small primes, like 11 and 19 can solve an integer in the range 0..(11*19-1) = 0..208. That is, if I knew what the modulo of someone's age was with respect to 11 and 19, then I can solve their age for anyone aged between 0 and 208. I chose 11 and 19 because 10 ≡ -1 mod 11 and 20 ≡ 1 mod 19, which means I can easily harness people's comfort with base 10 to extract information regarding primes 11 and 19. Moreover, such simultaneous congruences are fun because they're very similar to a system of linear equations, except middle schoolers are well-acquainted with solving SLEs whereas simultaneous congruences are tackled usually only in math and computer science baccalaureate curricula.

age = ( (age%19)*(Π(p_i)/19)^φ(19) + (age%11)*(Π(p_i)/11)^φ(11) ) % Π(p_i)
= ( (age%19)*11¹⁸ + (age%11)*19¹⁰ ) % 209
= ( (age%19)*77 + (age%11)*133 ) % 209

age % 19 ≡ age - k₁*19 ≡ age - k₁*20 + k₁ ≡ (age % 20) + (age div 20) ≡ (age % 10) + (age div 20) + 10*((age div 10)%2) ≡ (Blue div 2) + 10*(Blue%2). mod 19

age % 11 ≡ age - k₂*11 ≡ age - k₂*10 - k₂ ≡ (age % 10) - (age div 10) ≡ Red. mod 11

astrology in the modern world

2008-03-10T17:30:00.011-04:00

Below is my comment left on a Slashdot article regarding astrology. I was replying another poster who wrote something along the lines of "astrology is 100% wrong."

I think you meant to say astrology is 50% wrong, because if it were 100% wrong, it would have perfect anti-correlation (akin to scoring a perfect zero on a T/F test, and is just as difficult as scoring a perfect 100). If astrology is 50% wrong, it therefore is 50% right, and depending on the brain chemistry of the person, happy memories may get weighted more than unhappy memories, and therefore the weighted average of astrology working can be significantly higher than 50% - assuming a person who adheres to astrology derives happiness from when it is correct. In fact, for such a person whose happy memories are weighted more than unhappy memories, any catalyst for increased variance will lead to a happier life, including a coin-toss on whether to drive or walk to work. If astrology is a method to higher variance in the day to day experiences of its adherents, then so be it, it results in a happier life among those humans who benefit from high variance. Conversely, for those whose brain chemistry weights unhappy memories more than happy memories, lowered variance in day to day experience is the best method for maximizing happiness. The world needs both people, those who enjoy variance and are willing to eat a mysterious berry, be it a sweet, tasty berry or a bitter, sour berry, and those who hate variance and will only eat the safe, known berry. The risk-takers help society learn about new, tasty berries, and the risk-averse help society continue the species in case the berries were poisonous after all. Astrology is merely a shrub blooming random berries, half of which are sweet (+1 correlation), half of which are bitter (-1 correlation).

Re: Oscar's

2008-03-02T20:53:00.006-05:00

Below is my comment left for a Time.com article about Barrack Hussein Obama and the tale of Gaydolph Titler's unsucessful 1940s presidential bid retold at the Oscar's by Jon Stewart:

As an octogenarian, I remember vividly when I was at the voting poll having to decide whether to vote for Gaydolph Titler or not. I recalled the numerous positions Titler had held and while I agreed on his stance on nearly every issue, when it came down to pulling the lever and casting my vote, I just couldn't in good faith vote for Titler. It was a shallow decision which I have regretted to this day. Now in my ripe old age, I worry far less what others may think of me, and this time around I shall cast my vote for Barrack Hussein Obama with my chin held high, or at least as high as my Osteoporosis permits me.

My Workplace (cont'd)

2007-05-30T23:52:00.000-04:00

My Workplace

2007-05-30T22:48:00.001-04:00

The Culture Divide

2007-05-26T19:03:00.008-04:00

The following is my reply to someone over the topic of anti-intellectualism.

I agree with you that there's a growing culture of living under a rock, more so since the end of the Cold War and the discontinuation of civics classes.

I think part of the problem is cultural – it's "cute" to be dumb, but "loserish" to be unathletic. A good deal of my classmates in university were foreign and I was amazed how in their societies, the school celebrities were the 4.0 GPA guys going to math olympiads and the dudes playing sports were simply dismissed as loserish. Part of it comes from the fact that in most societies, but not ours, all exam scores are published on "The Wall". The Wall is a powerful tool in controlling social hierarchy. Anyone listed at the top becomes Alpha, by definition. Somehow, in our society, we stopped publishing exam scores, fearing that studies were becoming too competitive instead of collaborative. Yet, sports scores continued to be published, as were individual highschoolers' sports statistics. Therein undergirds our "jock culture". I truly believe that cultural differences are the consequence of social engineering and not historic reasons; the culture of a country can be changed on a dime, through informed govt. policies in social engineering or an uninformed govt. random walk.

I think another part of the problem is socio-economical. When the U.S. was poorer, certain professions were more valued. That is, the higher paying professions of doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, and bankers were seen as intrinsically more valuable than the lower paying professions of cashiers, hairdressers, and performance artists. This stereotype was reinforced at all levels, from politics to media to family values. Quite a few families in the '70s would sit down with their three to four kids and have "the talk" about which one of them the family can afford to send to college. To impressionable youngsters, this sort of separation of the wheat from the chaff can have a profound impact, perhaps exaggeratedly so, on the value of education. In many countries, this "talk" continues; many families still can only send one child to college, and it's important enough that it offsets the ostensible fairness of sending none of the kids to college.

More on socio-economics: I think the rise of nuclear families has divided our country along ideological lines. We nowadays choose our inner circle, presumably with toady fawners reinforcing our own world views, whereas with family, "you get what you get" – and this means dealing with, listening to, and respecting, a sundry of siblings, cousins, uncles, et al. who probably can never agree on anything other than that family must stick together through thick and thin. The level of compromise and empathy a few decades ago relative to today is phenomenal. With financial independence, an individual in 2007 has gained a lot of freedoms, but has lost, I believe, many of the qualities of interdependency that are necessary to broaden our horizons and to form a cohesive society. Not only that, but when failure is impossible or near impossible, as is true with our advanced society and fondness for safety nets, the Darwinian evaluation of people's choices disappears; all choices pass Darwin's test, and the new arbiter on which choices are "good" or "bad" no longer becomes survival, it becomes the echelon of pundits, priests, and other demagogues using the most specious of justifications.

There's a lot to be said about the power of heterogeneous families in removing barriers between cultures. Although too heavy handed by today's standards, Alexander of Macedon was a shrewd social engineer when ordering his generals to marry Asiatic wives to form Macedon-Asiatic offspring who would bridge the cultural divide. Ataturk ordered his subjects in Turkey to shave their beards and adopt European styles to stem the growing rift between Islam and Europe. There was a brief period when NASA and space research captured the awe and imagination of the nation, so perhaps there is hope for the future.

a dark descent

2006-10-03T19:45:00.000-04:00

Watching The Aviator, a film contrasting the multiple faces of Howard Hughes, I am reminded of a certain dark, humorous claim. The claim goes, "the only difference between madness and eccentricity is that the mad are poor and the eccentric are rich." The truth is, while the manifestation is often difficult to distinguish, there is often an overlooked, fundamental difference -- that being the difference between the loons who live outside any conceivable reality and the disturbed who obey sophisticated scripts and codes of behavior from a nightmare, a nightmare in which the sole exit door becomes increasingly difficult to open and, eventually, to even find.

To fully grasp this difference, one needs to examine why, and how, nightmares are highly prevalent among dreamers. The capacity to conceive and envision often seems to dominate wishes to steer such untethered freethought toward constructive endeavors. More tragically, those with seemingly unbounded motivation and drive are motivated and driven by the same fuel on which the monster of insanity feeds, the fuel of self-programming, of mental constructs, of illusions.

Many credit adrenaline and various chemicals and hormones coursing through our veins as the fuel that drives us. While such biological assistants no doubt play a role, their effects are temporary, and their potency limited. In contrast, the truly powerful fuel is one that irreversibly reshapes our very perception of reality. Such discrete alterations to the psyche are rare, but many people know of them, and call them epiphanies. The brilliant are often blessed, and cursed, with far more epiphanies, and at such rapidity as to knock the psyche about until it loses the concept of stability.

This state of uncentered flux is not ominous; it is often transient, a time when men and women rediscover their being and contemplate on a redefinition of themselves. While the majority of people may redefine themselves once, twice, or thrice, in their lifetime, a few seem to harness the power of a mind that has lost a stable center on which to crystallize new thoughts predictably. A mind not allowed to solidify will remain in the unstructured, malleable state; this is the state in which young children live, in which they will believe what is told, in which they are programmable.

Of course, an adult mind cannot remain completely unstructured; the harsh realities of life would devour someone who exhibited neotenies like naïveté or ignorance. This results in a subconscious agreement of sorts, an agreement to keep the mind naïve and programmable only to itself, while keeping the mind highly wary and skeptical of others. This protection that seeks to guard the susceptible kernel of a malleable mind can exhibit itself as paranoia, sometimes at the healthy levels of a shrewd businessman, and other times at unhealthy levels of delusional proportions, both witnessed in the portrayal of Howard Hughes.

The ability to program oneself is a very peculiar one. It is an ability to alter the will of the subconscious with the forethought of the conscious. It is an ability that can lead to greatness. Many who know of the effort, diligence, and zeal required to attain success would envy anyone who possessed the ability to muster with merely a thought those same attributes while simultaneously banishing the psychological impediments of hedonism, lethargy, and timidity.

However, gaining such ultimate governance over oneself comes at a terrible price. While attuned thoughts of achievement can propel the pliant mind into attaining lavish goals, morbid thoughts can just as forcibly subjugate the pliant mind into vulgar obedience. The surreal quality of starkly teetering between unprecedented success and unprecedented dementedness only further stokes a fascination with crossing the boundaries at each end. At a certain point, the descent into dementia takes its toll on attaining further success, and instead of teetering between the two, one is plummeted into severe dementia. A normal mind would have dissenting opinions from within when an extreme action is contemplated, not so with someone suffering dementia. The seriously ill mind is under the control of a tyrannous dictator who brooks no tolerance for dissent. Even the most peculiar thoughts must be obediently carried out, not by an army of peasants, but by a single servant, the ill individual.

Fortunately, Howard Hughes' predicament isn't as bleak. While rumors and speculations of his mind's unraveling were rampant on account of his reclusiveness, Hughes managed to keep his wits intact long enough to become the nation's wealthiest man by 1966. Unavoidably, his world-famous eccentricities seemed to have caught up with him near the end years of his life, a time when his hedonism prevailed and he forwent the responsibility of caring for his own body. The claims that Hughes stored his own urine in bottles lie unsubstantiated, but history has substantiated claims that Hughes stopped brushing his teeth until they all fell out, that he let his hair and fingernails grow to grotesque lengths, and that he developed an insatiable desire for candy and brothels as his mind began its final, dark descent.

Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum! I smell the blood of an English data miner

2006-07-04T20:17:00.002-04:00

Oh, how I love engaging in quackery on the once noble field of statistics! I found in my gmail nest an email to myself, dated 18th of September, 2005, containing a dictionary analysis using the venerable turd-machine, Google. In the email were my dataset and its associated scatterplot piccies, as was a Google Ban™ screenshot which I shall forever keep with me as a data miner's evidentiary badge of honor. No one need fret, as a simple dhcp release and acquire is all that's required to set one's ipv4 address straight, and, in retrospect, to poison the address pool with a bum addy that cannot even 'oogle... Hmm...

Fig 1. Google Ban™ screenshot through IE; 13,400 queries made in the span of approximately two hours

The datasets are partitioned by the host which I told Google to search within. I originally contrived an idea that I would somehow compare and contrast BBC, LiveJournal, Blogspot, and the general English corpus, but because of the nuissance posed by the wide fluctuation in the wordcount per webpage, I grew weary of trying to formulate insightful commentary that the data would support. The lazy bastard and quitter that I am, I shelved the idea of writing about the findings - or lack of findings - until this very epiphanal moment when writing about such a thing became the least boring in the long list of nauseatingly boring things I could be whiling away my time at.

Fig 2. x-axis represents frequency rank, 1 being highest; y-axis represents frequency in units of webpages per billion in domain-specific corpora as measured by Google; dataset contains 3,500 randomly selected words from the 1913 Unabridged Merriam-Webster dictionary queried against each of 4 domains

The horizontal axis represents the ranking order of a word by descending frequency. That is, x=1 represents the most frequent word for each particular dataset, which may be "the" for one set, and may be "an" for another set; and x=383 represents the 383rd most frequent word for each particular dataset. The purpose of keeping things in descending order of frequency is to form a Zipf curve, which is visually smooth and tenders brownie points for allowing me to mention Zipf.

The vertical axis represents the search results returned by Google, multiplied by a coefficient that lets us pretend the most frequent word of any dataset has 1 billion search results. This multiplicative shifting was necessary to make the superimposition of datasets in a single plot less jarring. Unfortunately, such arithmetic jugglery creates jagged artefacts near the tail-end of the curves, as the words become less frequent. This unsightliness is the graphical pronouncement of integer search results multiplied by what was necessary to make the most frequent word show up as 1 billion. Under a log scale, there is little difference between 1023 and 1024, but quite a bit of difference between 1 and 2.

Fig 3. unscaled version of Figure 2

A notable, consistently reappearing anomaly is a discontinuity in the curves. This discontinuity, what I would dub The Google Chasm were it not for my vanity insisting on it being called The Thoreaulylazy Plunge, shows a steep dropoff in search results once the search results reduce to a navigable amount, which is 1,000 if you ever care to try to navigate to further and further pages in the google resultset.

Fig 4. asymptotic region requeried the following week to check for reproducibility; plausibly inflated results multiplicatively deflated through division by 10 (approximately)

As a logical being, I would exhaust all avenues of explanation before spouting off fervently in an accusing tone. That said, I am baselessly laying the blame squarely on a Google conspiracy to inflate search results by a factor of ten once the results are no longer navigable and hence no longer easily verifiable. At some point, I should access the Google APIs under the free academic license and find out once and for all what this crevasse is all about. A mosey down into yahoo-land and a repeat of this data mining escapade may also prove fruitful as ammunition in my Google conspiracy claim. Ah, who am I kidding, I'm not persistently passionate enough to furnish any evidence.

highly frequent words in the english lexicon

	universe	bbc.co.uk	blogspot.com	livejournal.com
1	and	and	and	not
2	home	home	that	add
3	site	help	not	help
4	information	policy	home	and
5	that	skip	they	site
6	help	not	no	ask
7	policy	that	site	information
8	not	e	don	lost
9	e	responsible	see	yahoo
10	see	site	them	e
11	no	see	very	press
12	program	they	today	policy
13	press	edition	old	legal
14	they	related	big	that
15	related	northern	every	every
16	science	watch	place	kind
17	them	pictures	help	no
18	today	science	found	don
19	network	no	though	anyone
20	skip	them	photo	looking
-5	direfrench	gristmill	galopade	meruit
-4	vorspielgerman	congeries	exaltee	appurtenant
-3	grstorgegr	enthymeme	conferva	inexpugnable
-2	slipstickcoll	nosce	pegomancy	livraison
-1	metrongr	federalize	solecize	chronogram

a biennial anniversary of a stillbirth

2006-06-20T03:41:00.000-04:00

I stand in amazement - figuratively, since I am seated, but if I were... ah, there, I momentarily stood up so now my initial statement is quite appropriate. Amazed at what, you might ask - again, figuratively, since I have no readers, thus there is no "you" to address. Rummaging through the gmail graveyard of my self-sent emails, I found a cornucopia of files, tips, and hyperlinks that date back to the inception of my gmail account in 2003. In one of these time capsules, I found a story I began to write, a story I could not even recognize as my own!

The sense of suspense, the idea of even having suspense at all considering I read my own words, was exhilarating. Each new sentence drew me inside an exciting story world, so much so that had the story kept going, I would be dedicating an all-nighter just to reading it. Alas, it abruptly ended, mid-sentence no less! It was written during a time of transition, when I moved from California to Connecticut, and the date of my self-sent email, Friday, June 18th, 2004, was precisely the day I packed my computer for transport. Quite a shame, really. The story had such marvelous potential, and now it lies stillborn.

I feel a slight, incestual dirtiness loving a story I myself wrote, but considering I had absolutely no recollection nor reminding artifact of it for two entire years, I could not read it with the cruel criticism I otherwise would. Below is the full content of what was written:

“Ha ha,” Quincy ran in with that usual mischievous look to which Tom and Amanda could only greet with a gulp of trepidation. “You two absolutely have to come and see this!” he continued. “Well, put on your boots,” he chirped at the two, puzzled at their longer than usual stupor at being asked to go. The only thing more predictable than going on unknown expeditions with Quincy into the forest landscape surrounding their cottage was the certainty one would be beaten to a pulp refusing to go with him. He was the usual tall and husky kid, the type not to know his own strength when shoving his younger brother and sister into the dirt until they give in. It wasn’t as though Quincy was all bad – it’s just that Tom and Amanda have never seen him when he wasn’t. “Let’s get our boots Amanda,” Tom wearily slurred as he went to fetch them. “Hurry up!” echoed Quincy’s voice as the two emerged fully set for the outdoors.

* * *

“We’ve been out here for two hours; aren’t you going to tell us what we’re going to do this time?” Tom softly spoke in a resigning way. “Stop. We’re here!” Quincy’s voice bounced. “And,” Quincy turned to Tom with a sinister smile, “it’s not a question of what we are gonna’ do. It’s a question of what it will.” Tom could feel Amanda silently tightening her grip on his hands, to which he tries to reassuringly squeeze back. “Okay Quincy, let’s see it then.” Tom had a brave face on. “Oh, but first we have to have it see us,” Quincy added mysteriously, reaching into his jacket pocket to reveal a small hand mirror. After a bit of side-straggling, he positioned himself under strong rays of sunlight that managed to pierce through the treetops. He took the mirror and redirected focused light to what now appeared to look like a cave entrance, only it was so dark before no one saw the entrance apart from the adjacent rock. “Now we wait, it will come to us.” Almost as soon as he spoke, bats poured out of the cave like a flash flood, littering the entire sky with their dark fleshy wings and horrific shrieks. “Wait, just watch. Ah, yes, I can feel it rumbling in the air.” Oddly, Quincy didn’t seem interested in the bats; he had his eyes intent on a different place of the sky. “We’re not here to see those bats?” Tom questioned. “Shut up; of course we’re not here to see shitty bats. They’re food for it.” Amanda let out a muffled gasp, trying not to outright scream, her face now buried in Tom’s sweater with only one of her eyes peering out into the sky.

Everyone could now hear a rumbling in the air. At first it sounded like a dam breaking, but unlike a dam burst this rumbling was incessant. The bats shrieked louder and scrambled haphazardly in every which direction. No one was paying much attention to them, however. Quincy and Tom were gazing at the silhouette of a creature now growing larger as it came closer to the earth from the sky; Amanda peered occasionally at it while intermittently covering her eyes again with Tom’s sweater sleeve. It was majestic, yet ominous. Were it not for two faint shadows of wings to its side, it could easily be mistaken for a meteor. Then it dove faster, piercing the air and leaving a stream of what could only be plumes as it came into vision.

Its body was shaped like a griffin, and it would easily measure seventy feet in length. “A whale of the sky,” Quincy whispered in deference. The remnants of twenty or so bats could be seen held in the talons of this behemoth. It was close enough that all three, Quincy, Tom, and Amanda could feel the air and earth tremble under the thunderous flaps of its wings. It was otherworldly to see, as Quincy put it, a whale of the sky, dance as it did in the air, ensnaring some more of the now dispersed bats. “AEhh…” Amanda panted and Tom took notice of what she was panting at; some bat carcasses were dropped just yards from where they stood. The bodies were mutilated with nothing left for recognition. “This is dangerous and disgusting, Quincy; we …” Tom stopped; he couldn’t find Quincy nearby. “I want to go home.” Amanda was nearly crying. “Yes, I’m sure Quincy won’t mind if we do. He’ll find his own way back.” Tom led off, Amanda following him, still tightly clung to his sleeve.

* * *

The steamy broth being prepared at daybreak filled the cottage with a moist flavorful smell to which Tom instantly woke. Amanda’s bed was well made and Quincy’s was still horrendous looking with bits of grass strewn about it as usual. It was a Tuesday, the day when fresh produce is available in the nearby village, and in preparation Tom dressed in his finest. He slicked his hair back, wore his father’s brown leather boots, stuffed with leaves to fit, a cotton sweater without any large holes, and a trouser with no stains except at the knees. Yes, indeed, Tom was looking his best, and he grinned at the mirror. After finishing admiring

Quite a cliff-hanger. Oh well, one of these days I ought to finish it, assuming I can ever write that alluringly again.

Homeopathically Unwrinkling My Left Toenail, an Anatomical Treatise vol. 1

2006-06-16T16:15:00.002-04:00

Despite utmost care for, and good governance of, one's own nails, a single careless action can and will render uniform keratin smoothness a dream, a desire, a mere memory of the perfection that was and the imperfection that is. Due to the irreproducibility of such tragic trysts with destiny, the cure to such life-altering ailment has remained elusive since time immemorial – that is, elusive until now.

Firstly, it is of paramount importance to distinguish wrinkled toenails, that is, those with fine chaffing along vertical lines, from toenails with deep horizontal grooved lines that Joseph Honoré Simon Beau posthumously likes to call “Beau’s lines”. While both stem from damage to the nail fold, fine vertical lines affect luster while horizontal ridges are just plain despicable. This treatise is targeted solely towards homeopathically healing the fine vertical lines and the associated chaffing and not the hideous Beau’s lines. The recently wrinkle-afflicted should not worry if horizontal lines temporarily appear soon after injury. Cosmetic damage will eventually be grown out to clippable area; only damage to the nail fold will produce a constant stream of wrinkles which create vertical lines as the nail is grown.

Now, before delving into the cure, let us first harken back to the shrill cries of my badminton-playing self. I had kept my eye on a lobbed birdie, but in spite of its clear trajectory out of court, I had the urge to smash it powerfully with my racquet. That urge for display of power, that very urge to feel the harmonious 'twing' resonate and reverberate through my forearm was my ultimate downfall. As I ran beneath, squinting against the midday sun to see the faintish outline of an inbound shuttlecock, a sharp, excruciating sting permeated from my afferent nociceptors until the entire path of dendrites and axons from my left toe to the dorsal root ganglion affixing my consciousness transcended into a highway of pure pain. Regrettably, I wore open-toed sandals and stubbed my toe into the raised pavement area around a well. On the positive side, the various assortment of insects were presented a feast of blood-drenched sandy pavement. Reparations, perhaps, for my trespass into their court. By cracking my toenail, I became a silent member of the eschewed millions whose left toenails no longer had the sheen, the luster, the polish that makes us entirely whole. I was only twelve years of age, too young to be afflicted with a wrinkled toenail, a haunting reminder of the mistake once made; but the cruel fates confer no mercy for innocence and youth.

Two days ago, a miracle of circumstances occurred. Wearing improperly velcroed house slippers, I spirited up a staircase when three stairs shy of the top my slippers slipped and while I am uncertain of the exact sequence of events, I was left panting and knelt, with my knees on one of the topmost stairs and my two hands firmly prostrated on the ceramic tiles of the floor I wished to be on. More importantly, my left toe seared with blunt pain, the kind associated with blue bruises and an absence of external hemorrhaging. Resuming my bipedal locomotion, I channeled my dedication toward composure and continued on with my day unfazed. Later that night, shortly before heading to bed, I inspected my left toenail and to my astonishment, the blunt force seemed to have unwrinkled the nail plate, shaping it to the smoothness of the tender skin beneath. I now eagerly await as the entire nail replenishes at 0.1mm/day from the now corrected lunula. Preliminary findings support the case that in a couple months’ time the entire toenail will be correctly regrown, erasing all remnants of a wrinkled past.

Unabridged, Unedited Conversation with YVXQXJJ

2006-02-21T23:11:00.000-05:00

Monikers have been replaced with anagrams to protect the insane.

(21:32:55) PLZNYFGDJ: good grief

(21:52:04) YVXQXJJ: hi

(21:56:13) PLZNYFGDJ: how was your day

(21:57:14) YVXQXJJ: not bad. had the day off. we got customer approval on a project I worked all weekend on, so I told the boss I needed a day to refresh. how about you?

(21:57:24) YVXQXJJ: and what was the "good grief" for? :)

(21:57:58) PLZNYFGDJ: my exasperation over people who are illogical

(21:58:32) PLZNYFGDJ: logic just says you don't have a contradiction - it otherwise never places any constraints on how crazy your axioms can be

(21:59:22) PLZNYFGDJ: there are 4 types of people: crazy but logical - great! crazy but illogical - eek. sane but logical - yawn. sane but illogical - good grief

(22:00:11) YVXQXJJ: lol

(22:00:47) YVXQXJJ: my last ex - for all of a month - was the 2nd type.

(22:02:36) PLZNYFGDJ: I just IMed some woman who as far as I know is sane -- hasn't killed anyone yet.

(22:05:25) PLZNYFGDJ: But she got into some cockamamie claptrap about how we all have choice (she doesn't believe in determinism). Okay, I disagree with free-willists, but I enjoy their nonsense so long as they're using logic (and it's one of those philosophical stalemates where two good philosophers, one supporting free-will, one supporting determinism, can never find a fallacy in the other's statements)

(22:06:31) PLZNYFGDJ: So, I decided to egg her on by stating that, well, how come I'm not the prince of england, since I would've chosen to have been born as one

(22:07:34) PLZNYFGDJ: now, this is where she went from just screwball humorous (but otherwise logical) to illogical. She claims that she believes that we do decide whom we're born as, and at some level I wanted to be born as I was

(22:07:47) PLZNYFGDJ: now, on the surface of things, there's nothing illogical about what she siad

(22:08:18) PLZNYFGDJ: however, and I mentioned this to her, the consequences of what she said lend way to contradiction, disproving her premise. The consequences are as follows:

(22:08:48) PLZNYFGDJ: that means more spirits are deciding today to be born, since we have a global population of 7billion and growing

(22:10:03) PLZNYFGDJ: more spirits prefer to live impoverished lives with a 90% certainty of dying of starvation than to be born into a middle-class family (hooray for free-will!)

(22:11:57) PLZNYFGDJ: And, the clincher --- I can envision a hypothetical evil genius who controls trillions upon trillions of human embryos in a matrix, and can decide on the flip of a switch to fertilize them all and can decide just as easily in another flip of the switch to flush them into an abyss. It's against reason that trillions of spirits would decide at a single moment to infuse life into cells just to be flushed moments later.

(22:12:10) PLZNYFGDJ: Those are trillions of retarded spirits, in which case.

(22:13:55) YVXQXJJ: well, yes. most people are retarded.

(22:14:33) PLZNYFGDJ: bleh

(22:14:38) PLZNYFGDJ: defies logic

(22:14:49) PLZNYFGDJ: at least free-will philosophers employ logic

(22:15:20) PLZNYFGDJ: unlike people who "believe" and can't reason their way about why an even number plus an even number cannot be odd

(22:16:05) YVXQXJJ: philosophy - and philosophers - confuse me.

(22:16:17) PLZNYFGDJ: nah, they're fun folk

(22:16:27) YVXQXJJ: heh

(22:16:39) PLZNYFGDJ: they're basically mathematicans but with dumb/inconsequential axioms

(22:17:15) PLZNYFGDJ: but as any mathematican, logician, or philosopher will agree, whether or not an axiom is valid is only determined by whether or not you can infer a contradiction

(22:17:31) PLZNYFGDJ: so long as the system is consistent, you can have two separate systems with opposite axioms

(22:18:18) PLZNYFGDJ: e.g one system where the axiom says "God exists" and another where it says "No god exists" can be completely valid systems within which no contradiction can be inferred

(22:19:05) PLZNYFGDJ: mathematicians just pick more useful axioms, like "Given a Euclidean space (defined by 10axioms), a triangle's inner angles sum to 180"

(22:20:04) PLZNYFGDJ: a philosopher would pick, "suppose our bodies were merely mental projection with no tangible component, ..."

(22:20:39) YVXQXJJ: that's more or less it. one matters, the other does not.

(22:20:59) PLZNYFGDJ: In fact, philosophers so often picked insane axioms that instead of having to prove a contradiction, it was agreed upon that "reductio ad absurdum" was a valid enough counter-example to stop philosophizing over it

(22:21:34) PLZNYFGDJ: essentially, reductio ad absurdum states that if you prove that philosophy is unnecessary, then stop! Change your axiom before we philosophize again!

(22:21:52) YVXQXJJ: the world would cease functioning without math. philosophy... eh. some college profs would be out of a job, and some publishers would take a hit on their profits, but I'm otherwise not affected.

(22:22:03) PLZNYFGDJ: E.g. "what if the universe were created just this instant, with all its atoms and molecules arranged as they are and animated just now..."

(22:22:32) PLZNYFGDJ: that's a famous philosopher's dilemma -- there's no way to prove it's not true -- the universe may very well have been created just now!

(22:22:52) YVXQXJJ: my counter to that is they think too much.

(22:23:10) PLZNYFGDJ: However, if it has been created just now, then all this philosophizing we've been doing hasn't been philosophizing at all -- you and I were just created this instant with the illusion of having had a conversation

(22:23:16) PLZNYFGDJ: In which case, reductio ad absurdum!

(22:23:48) PLZNYFGDJ: Which is quite different from saying the axiom is wrong. Reductio ad absurdum does not say it's wrong -- it just says it's absurd! It's not worth talking about

(22:24:22) PLZNYFGDJ: If the very nature of talking is undermined under the axioms, then it's not worth talking anymore

(22:24:41) PLZNYFGDJ: beautiful, huh? Took thousands of years of bickering to come up with that one gem

(22:24:43) YVXQXJJ: right. my version of that is usually "shut up, quit talking. I don't have time for you, I have email accounts to fix and users to edumacate."

(22:25:56) PLZNYFGDJ: philosophy is a good exercise of logic, sort like bicycling is an exercise for the calves

(22:26:19) PLZNYFGDJ: but otherwise, yeah, it's inconsequential

(22:26:59) PLZNYFGDJ: exercising logic is pretty good though -- it helped usher in the age of enlightenment and all that

(22:28:30) YVXQXJJ: *nods* I've never been interested in philosophy or anything related. I think I've got logic down enough for what I do. I don't need to focus on it - if I don't have moments without logic, my mind breaks.

(22:31:09) PLZNYFGDJ: I need logic, not necessarily sanity, but definitely logic. For example, SG-1 adventures to new planets and everyone seems to speak english yet everyone seems to have mutually incomprehensible written language. Okay, bizarre, but it's not illogical. It's just an axiom of this fictional world, and it doesn't contradict anything! I like bizarre, as long as no contradictions arise

(22:32:31) YVXQXJJ: I just imagine that SGC somehow developed the universal translator and neglected to tell anyone about it.

(22:32:42) PLZNYFGDJ: heh

(22:33:14) PLZNYFGDJ: See, if the authors tried to explain why everyone spoke english (as you just did) rather than it being an axiom, then they might create some contradictions in all that complexity required to explain it.

(22:33:37) PLZNYFGDJ: For example, by trying to explain it with a universal translator, you just created several contradictions!

(22:34:01) PLZNYFGDJ: e.g. then why do they need Daniel Jackson to keep translating all these written works if they have a universal translator

(22:34:46) PLZNYFGDJ: a universal translator is illogical. Leaving it unanswered why they can verbally communicate is the best answer

(22:35:13) PLZNYFGDJ: trying to explain these things just creates inconsistency, and inconsistency is doom for any Sci-Fi would-be story

(22:36:30) YVXQXJJ: it can't translate written documents because the project went over-budget, so something had to be scrapped.

(22:36:54) PLZNYFGDJ: pfft. heh, see you're just adding more complexity and creating even more paradoxes!

(22:38:00) PLZNYFGDJ: Simplicity is key. Only add complexity when you're sure you've thought it through and it makes sense within the rules you define

(22:39:39) YVXQXJJ: something tells me you would hate certain Neil Gaiman novels.

(22:39:53) PLZNYFGDJ: you can define baseball, you can define chess, you can define any fair game and people will like to play with you -- if you create a game where the 2nd player always loses, you've made a pretty lousy game, and a system with a contradiction is a pretty lousy universe to set your fictional story in

(22:40:41) PLZNYFGDJ: it's broken. it's buggy. it's like m$ windows =)

(22:43:06) PLZNYFGDJ: fyi - when I said "the 2nd player always loses", I'm talking about the 'perfect-play', i.e. the players are both trying to win. You can obviously still win as a 2nd player in games where the 1st player must win under perfect play if the 1st player purposefully throws the game

(22:44:00) PLZNYFGDJ: And some bad sci-fi reads like a broken game where some player must win under perfect-player, but the characters are so dimwitted they still manage to bungle and almost-lose if not lose completely.

(22:44:39) PLZNYFGDJ: e.g. in Harry Potter, I near banged my head on a wall when Hermione used a time-travel device. WORST IDEA EVER. Bad, Bad JK Rowling!

(22:45:20) PLZNYFGDJ: I know she wanted to introduce the idea to little children, but she should've mentioned it as a device long ago that was destroyed because it was too powerful. Instead, she gives it to a 10th grader! Ugh

(22:46:23) PLZNYFGDJ: And then she quietly forgets about it. Dumbledore's dead? Time travel back and fix it! Something bad happened? Time travel back and fix it! See, the time-traveller is guaranteed to win under perfect-play! That kills the story.

(22:47:04) PLZNYFGDJ: proper time-travel is like how Sliders portrayed it, where you travel back to an alternate past, not your own past.

(22:48:04) PLZNYFGDJ: and that's also proper multiverse tiling according to Hawking-Penrose models of spacetime

(22:48:17) PLZNYFGDJ: anyhoot. I ranted

(22:48:39) PLZNYFGDJ: thanks for being the anonymous half-listener =)

(22:48:46) YVXQXJJ: lol.. no problem

Odyssey into the terrifying world of one Ms. Recipient's messy and overpopulated Inbox

2006-02-17T19:57:00.000-05:00

This email began with the ambling keystrokes of one Mr. Sender, pressed through the telltale precision of a ten digit wielding writer with vacuous chasms for a brain. No thoughts could churn upstairs, so this email is poorly devoid of worthwhile content. All the same, it occupies space, and oh what space it occupies! Letters and words and sentences, all lined up in sequence in an overt attempt at being meaningful while still without meaning.

If this email could tell its story, it would tell of its communion with the digital gods as it hurdled past scrutinizing network devices, shedded off its outer TCP layers in a desperate attempt at passing on its seminal data to the next transport layer. It would, if it could, tell of its ordeal through Bayesian spam filters and the harsh interrogations thereafter of its header. Oh, if only it could tell these things and more!

This email, however, is quite silent, as all its strength to reveal its odyssey was drained by the very odyssey itself and the maddening hours it spent enveloped in solitude, awaiting deliverance. It clings, nonetheless, with the last ounce of its spirit before it decays into your post-read trashbin, to solemnly deliver, as any duty-bound email would, the laconic message of its author. Therefore, with this email's dying breath, it reveals unto you, oh most valued deity of the Inbox, these words:

Yo, it's me.

'sup? You weren’t online. Msg me when you’re back.

Ciao.

Towels: What Walks with Three Legs at Night

2006-02-03T15:03:00.001-05:00

“Sir, how did you get here?” a boy in rags asked in cautious tone. “Sir? Are you…”

Heaps of towels sloppily providing the comfort of a blanket began to rustle until they were abruptly tossed off, revealing a disheveled, gaunt man beneath. He sat up with a few groans and then faced the boy with his head leaned back so his grizzly white beard protruded and his long flowing locks of white hair kept away from his eyes. Squinting judgingly, he began measuring the boy up before discourse.

“I am Ethikos. What business have you with me?” The message was delivered loud and forcefully but a few ensuing wheezes and phlegmy coughs quickly diminished any effect of grandeur. Without giving a pause and for seemingly no reason, the man, Ethikos, reassembled those stained towels of his and slipped under them again, unconcerned.

“Sir…” the boy spoke with a quiver, puzzled and uncertain how to proceed. “We met a few hours ago. I was thrown in this cell…” but before completing, Ethikos jumped up and shouted.

“Vagrant! Thief!” Ethikos pointed accusingly with a mess of towels now abound and one towel, uncertain how to fall, flapped indecisively on his outstretched arm.

“No… please, sir, try to remember - it’s not like that… don't you remember?”

“How dare they shove a criminal in with me!”

“Please, sir, try to remember, I’m innocent as you are.”

“Lies! Treacherous lies!”

“Sir, you’ve been here a long time… today they put everyone in prisons…”

“Everyone?” Suddenly and unpredictably, Ethikos turned calm. “Yes, they are the sorts to devolve into something devious like this. Imprisoning everyone… as I suspected! No one listened. No one ever listens.” Ethikos reclined and, while still mumbling, groped the adjacent ground for his towels and slowly buried himself in them once more.

ELO: Elven Liver Oxidation

2005-12-01T18:13:00.000-05:00

It all began innocently enough. I started with the 'umble variant of "hello", with an elision of the first consonant and a simplification of the bicameral ll into a softer, single l, but then an absence of a response sparked a desultory monologue that, while of absolutely no worthwhile content, was mildly amusing, at least more so amusing than witnessing myself furthering the art of twiddling thumbs. Sadly, at no point during this reflexive exercise did the party I was trying to contact respond. Below I have copied the text, providing line breaks at each point a message was sent.

ELO

Elven liver oxidation.

It's a debilitating condition for elves arising from overconsumption of alcoholic beverages.

Policymakers are nonplussed at the precarious situation wherein ELO, already admitted by those in the know of certainly reaching pandemic proportions, is the only inhibitor preventing the generally rowdy demeanor of elves from physically manifesting into fisticuffs with those race of bears fondly known to televise "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires."

Republicans announced today a strategy of preemption, gunning down Smokey the Bear and his ilk and thereby cordoning off the one likely outlet for sober Elven fury. Insiders ruminate how Republicans haven't really ironed out how to then get the elves to stop drinking and mitigate ELO's rampage across Elven communities. Insiders continue by stating, "We think the Republicans just want to kill Smokey the Bear. This whole tactic of trying to find an avenue to cure ELO without violent spillover is a rouse to accomplish a long harbored right-wing stratagem to take down Smokey."

Democrats meanwhile protested Republicans' unilaterally decided path and demanded an end to "a blatant witch-hunt against the Smokey Bears who have almost no link with the drunken elves." Voting on whether to take down Smokeys fell fairly along party-lines but a band of anti-Smokey democrats crossed over to help pass the bill through a slender majority. Many Smokey Bears have fled for Canada but one remained behind and allowed itself to be interviewed. When asked what its reaction is to this new crackdown on an otherwise ignored minority community of bears, Mr. Smokey, as it asked to be called, commented glumly, "Only you can prevent forest fires." Mr. Smokey was visibly shaken, demoralized, and obviously under tremendous psychological pain, apparently so much so as to be unable to coherently say anything else.

Elves meanwhile continued their drunken revelry as no government task-force has yet been assigned the pressing issue of ELO. Senior Analyst of Elven Affairs Sean Connery reports, "What we're seeing here is a silent admission by staff officials that elves and alcohol are inseparable. With the Republican aim of cleansing out Smokey Bears, forests are now free to be burned down for mini-malls and prime television ad space previously used by Smokey is opened to new players. ELO was never a concern, and I think now that the party's objective is accomplished, attention over ELO will be redirected to other pressing matters."

Democrats, fuming at having had public funds siphoned for hawkish special interest groups vying for television ad space, staged a walkout from congressional and senatorial deliberations. Democrats then marched into the streets in protest where they were promptly assailed by a gang of drunk elves merrily prancing about. Some Democrats whose names are being sealed per Circuit Court order seized a few of the Elven whiskey bottles. Details of what immediately ensued are still sketchy but twelve Democrats are confirmed dead and five elves injured.

An outpour of public fulmination over the incident has forced Republican hands to covertly allow Smokey Bears to reenter the country under a clandestine agreement provisioning some airtime, albeit reduced, to Smokey ads in exchange for curing the deteriorating relationship with the Elven community. A local sheriff whose rise to fame last year was the capture of a picnic-basket thief named Yogi has alerted locals that the Smokey Bears and the Elven communities are engaging in gang warfare and humans should remain calm and stay away when spotting either nearby. Hospitals are reporting an influx of critically wounded elves, possibly indicating that Smokey Bear clans are expediently executing an eradication campaign.

Pundits analyzing the situation paint a bleak picture when asked about the likelihood of achieving social harmony any time soon but agree upon the longer-term benefits of a reduced Elven population. Already, mean young elves are throwing away their bottles of whiskey to hone their skills at bear hunting. This itself will, as pundits point out, ameliorate the spread of ELO. Bears meanwhile are unfazed by the new sober variety of elves and are finding it highly lucrative near the Christmas season to capture elves for resale in the slave trade. China has criticized this new labor force and has opened a complaint with the WTO that Santa's workshop is using slave labor, unfairly competing with their lowly priced merchandise. Santa has defiantly obscured access of investigators working to assess claims of Santa's crimes against elfanity. This matter is still pending in International Criminal Court.

Entaharn

2005-10-31T20:58:00.000-05:00

Sarah seated herself under the shade of a walnut tree, pulling her white frock neatly around her and patting off loose blades of grass trapped in the lacing. Taking a deep breath, she motioned with just her mouth letting no sound out “Mentaharnin…” but before being able to continue a sudden shriek and then joyous laughter from behind broke her concentration.

Someone had just won, or scored many points in a game, Sarah guessed not really thinking. It was true, the other girls her age of Rosemary Manor were playing hopscotch; but the laughter was over Amy Henderson who trying a very challenging sequence had fallen flat on her rear, initially letting out a shriek but then bursting into laughter with the others over her own abysmal performance. None of this concerned Sarah, she always seemed to find the things that brought others great joy to be immensely trite.

The momentary cacophony died down and another round of hopscotch quietly ensued. Sarah focused intently on the sound of the breeze rustling the tree leaves until her mind was completely clear once again.

“Mentaharnin acquinte oransk” she chanted silently, motioning every syllable perfectly just as she had done each week the past three months. Immediately, Sarah felt the familiar, uncomfortable twin piercing at one side of her neck and a withdrawal of warmth. She sat motionless, staring toward the horizon as wispy clouds now stayed their position in the afternoon sky.

“Entaharn, refreshed?” Sarah thought without speech, feeling two incisors slide out her in response. She leaned forward but the air seemed unwilling to move. Defiantly fighting the immobile ether, she struggled forward with increasingly greater effort, and, suddenly, as if a glass door had given way, she hurled forward at frightening speed. The ground and sky spun around her, colors washed from blue to red to green and back to blue, and finally as suddenly as it all began, it stopped. Everything stopped. The sky was reassuringly above her and the ground thankfully beneath her. She noticed herself still seated on grass, but not where she had sat; then, looking forward, she saw nearly fifty meters ahead her own body still under a walnut tree, completely motionless.

“Elegant, always so very elegant.” A boyish, cavalier voice chuckled all around her. “Do you always tumble like that?”

“I’m still practicing,” Sarah retorted a bit embarrassed but returned to a regal tone, “Hurry up and repair that body over there.”

“Ah, yes; fixing your problems.” The same voice was distinctly in front of her but its owner remained unseen. “My, my… an entire centimeter in almost momentary time. I commend your effort, but ripping your flesh seems a rather coarse way to…”

“Just fix it!” Sarah snapped impatiently. An entire centimeter this time, she thought to herself worriedly. Entaharn had explained to her before the dangers of corporeally moving when time slows to a fraction of its original speed. Her whole body could irreparably dissolve under enough acceleration, and with a centimeter of movement this time, it had nearly happened.

Have a Hallowed Eve!

number theory: ah, those funny li'l modulos

2005-10-24T16:14:00.000-04:00

There were only a handful of tricks with numbers that the typical elementary school student would be inculcated with during those years I enjoyed (well, attempted to enjoy) primary education. To cast the bleak bleaker, the divisibility test by 3 is often the only ubiquitously taught trick possessing some semblance of novelty. In case anyone wondered as a kid but failed to discover the reason, modulus arithmetic is the preferred foundation with which one derives efficient divisibility tests. For some reason still unbeknownst to me, I decided to raise this ol' topic and began concocting digit-wise divisibility tests for the primes 7 and 11. I urge readers to please have ready several pitchers of water, since what follows is fairly dry...

When X is a string (of some radix) of numerical value Σ(X[k]*radix^k)_{∀k∈0..X.length-1⊆Z}, then (int)X ≡ 0 mod Y iff: Σ(X[k] * cycle[k])_{∀k∈0..X.length⊆Z} ≡ 0 mod Y, where cycle is the repeating series { radix^k mod Y }.

Let's pick a radix we all know and love, base10:
Let Dn = { 10⁰, 10¹, 10², ... }
Dn mod 3 = { 1, 1, 1, ... } = Cycle (1). Since cycle[k] = 1, we get the age-old mantra "X is divisible by 3 iff the sum of digits is divisible by 3".

But let's look beyond 3,
Dn mod 7 = cycle ( 1, 3, 3*3≡9≡2, 2*3≡6≡-1 ..) = cycle (1, 3, 2, -1, -3, -2)
Dn mod 11 = cycle (1, 10≡-1 ..) = cycle (1,-1)

Interestingly, but with less power than an iff relationship, since lcm(2,6) = 6 and both Dn mod 7 and Dn mod 11 have half-cycles (-1 as an element), then X ≡ 0 mod 77 if X in decimal form can be grouped into 3digit strings, where every other 3digit string is marked red and those in between are marked blue, and the { reds } minus { blues } = Null.

For exampe, let red = { 123, 444, 812, 912, 083, 948, 020, 436 }
Thus, blue = { 123, 444, 812, 912, 083, 948, 020, 436 }
Let shuffle(blue) = { 444, 948, 912, 436, 083, 812, 123, 020 }
Then interlace(red, shuffle(blue)) = 123444 444948 812912 912436 083083 948812 020123 436020. This now yields a base10 string which is divisible by 77 (and obviously also by 2, 5, 7, 11 and all the other factors of their multiple 770): 123444444948812912912436083083948812020123436020

Too big a number to verify with a pocket-calculator? Here's an easy multiple of 77 to generate: 001001 = 1,001. A pocket calculator can verify it is 13*77.

But then, what's the ratio of densities between these simple multiples and the full set of multiples? In the case of 77, cardinality of the full set of multiples for base10 string X is (1/77) * (10^X.length). Cardinality for the parlor-trick partial set is:
Let red_i = ∪(X[6*i+0..6*i+2])
Let blue_i = ∪(X[6*i+3..6*i+5])
Let g = X.length/6
(Π(φ(∃unique j s.t. blue_i = red_j))_{∀i∈0..g-1⊆Z}) * (10^X.length)
= (Π(1 - ((10³-1)/10³)^k)_{∀k∈1..g⊆Z}) * (10^X.length)
= (Π(1 - 0.999^k)_{∀k∈1..g⊆Z}) * (10^X.length)
lim_{X.length→∞}( Π(1 - 0.999^k)_{∀k∈1..g⊆Z} ) ≈ 7.4210E-713
Thus, the ratio of the two is (1/77) : 7.4210E-713 ⇒ 1 : 5.7142E-711. In other words, the parlor trick while being a very good way to generate multiples is a rather improbable way to test for divisibility by 77. The only rigorous divisibility test is the one where iff is ensured instead of the comparatively impotent if.

Manure

2005-10-19T12:40:00.002-04:00

“Hello Mr. Hess,” I began friendlily but was cut off by the steely eyed dean obviously refusing to cow before a well-situated and grown up former student of his.

“Ravi, yes”

Yes, first name basis will do, I thought grievously. My mind stalled for a moment to recollect his first name. It had been so long since seeing him, since seeing Andover, since even stepping foot back into Massachusetts. Then I was considered the short, pudgy son of a mediocre family; others knew not of my true legacy or the future legacy I would create. Today I towered in my custom tailored suit and polished leather shoes, and not because I sought to impress; oh, no, seeing in front of me in tawdry Macy’s attire with a frail figure a man who once caused me anguish was a mere bonus, a treasure of fractional value to why I was here.

“Richard,” I finally remembered his first name as I gazed at the frays of his cuffs, “the headmaster and I had a little chat earlier and since I have been elected to head…” but I was interrupted again,

“Bought to head” Richard finished. His boldly begun words waned into a whisper.

Perhaps it was only because of money I am here again; but money reigns supreme and I possessed a terrifying sum to now head the board of trustees for this school. Even Richard through his thick skull can see this, and through all his defiant pretensions, streaks of fear quiver through his voice and actions. Perhaps Richard need not be disposed after all, I mused. Fear for his job is sensible.

“I have heard a lot of discontent,” I continued, ignoring Richard’s throat clearings, “about the direction of the school and I cannot ignore the extent to which the dissatisfaction has grown. I haven’t invested three hundred million in this place to watch it meander its way into an abyss; I…”, noticing Richard’s open mouth my voice raised, body lurched forward and eyes widened to prevent an interruption, “I want to see this school succeed!”

The words were followed by a short silence, letting me lean back before I continued. “And I assume you do as well, so let us work together. I want to keep you around, but you cannot continue being insubordinate.” His eyes looked more resigned now, and, for once, the idiot had nothing to finish my sentences with.

I Service the Machine that Services the Machine

2005-10-17T14:46:00.000-04:00

Every morning before breakfast, a whistle shoots up high above the rooftops of the nearby service station and blows with all the fury it can muster a high-pitched "Wheeet." That’s the sign. That’s the sign that a baby lord machine has been hatched. We the servicemen rush from our homes, leaving our cereal bowls vacated. Forty leaps with all the might our legs can afford and the service station’s door is in sight. A swipe of the badge and a careful walk past the sterile threshold to the station reveals the little lord machine, shining wetly and acquainting itself with servicemachines fondly dabbing warm cloth on its chassis to prevent any buckles during the cooling process. This time of day is always a treat, since it is the only time we servicemen can gaze upon a lord machine. Our task is not to care for it directly, but to ensure all the servicemachines who do care for it are well cared for themselves. All one servicemachine need do is let us see its light lit orange and four of us will come walking hurriedly to it with clean oil, chilled water, and a sizable, freshly charged battery pack. Mere feet away from a lord machine, our pride swells; to attend to the machine directly attending a lord machine is a privilege bestowed upon the few, the lucky.

do not incense the crack-addicted squirrels (source)

2005-10-10T18:10:00.000-04:00

Rare is it when I start rehashing periodicals, but it is imperative I report that English rodents have gone wild. The fuzzy, cuddly bunnies fondly dined upon by bambi-slaughtering, full regalia donning lords with knives and forks carried in proper hands are not the morsels at play here; rather, unlike rodentia-posing leporidae, these are true rodents who have been feasting upon saran-wrapped packets of crack neatly patted down with topsoil in the gardens of dubious white-powder-shrub gardeners. These are critters teeming with more satanically horrifying vices than contained in all the FOX reality shows and almost as much as contained in Jane Fonda's hair – leave a few cubic hectares of eye-burning aerosol. That's right, these are squirrels, now most easily identified by disheveled fur and the harrowing glare of their blood-shot, demented eyes, and the squirrels have taken a liking to stash buried by scuzzy junkies. Through the mighty rodent quest for granulated satisfaction, squirrels are leaving in their wake a dazed lot of heart-palpitating Londoners.

As always, the bushy tailed recidivism began with the bobbies. After a recent rash of anti-drug enforcement, gardens-turned-safehouses began storing "the goods" and in a double whammy counteracted both the sleuths and the residual yet pungent anal odors gifted by intestinal convoys aboard a long British Airways flight from Lithuania. Of course, now look at the mess; the capital of the mightiest of feeble empires is being overrun by panicky and angsty teens suffering withdrawal and feverishly irascible squirrels who some speculate have already formed a powerful crime syndicate and have half of parliament in their pockets.. pouches.. er paws. Obviously also paid off, the nearly vowelless RSPCA has tried to contain rampant fear by insisting the thimble-sized hearts of our fury friends would go supernovae upon receiving any cocaine. Unconvinced and alarmed by the growing British fiasco, French authorities have decided to examine carefully the baroque snuffboxes of their infamous wayside frogs for any traces of the serious stuff concealed within.

neither 42 nor 47 are interesting

2005-09-13T21:52:00.000-04:00

Infected with an unfortunate meme of geekdom, I've grown unnaturally sensitive toward hearing the numbers 42 and 47. These numbers are almost mythical in nature, 42 for possibly being "the answer to the ultimate question", and 47 for supposedly having an anomalously high frequency of use in daily affair. In a bid to cure myself of susceptibility to mind control by those who'd reap the awesome power of these two numbers, and under the premise that few enough netizens are infected with these memes to constitute any significant alteration to these numbers' use — a premise I'm sure we can all agree upon given the growing ubiquity of non-geeks online — I thought I'd query Google, our very own 'Deep Thought', on what it thinks about single and double-digit numbers. Here are the results:

x-axis represents the number queried, y-axis represents matched documents in millions under Google's Sept 13, 2005 corpus

Thankfully, there existed no easily roused DoS-prevention logic and so my perl script was sportingly allowed to run unimpeded.

Observing the data, we see that lower magnitude numbers reign supreme as expected, followed by their products by 10 and to a lesser extent theirs by 5. Our odd decision to make seconds and minutes base-60 probably encouraged the high popularity of 30. Shopkeepers who price everything one or two cents shy of a whole buck are the likely reason for the spikes at 98 and 99. Curse their financial legerdemain! I snuck in 100 despite it being triple-digit to show my solidarity with our love of base-10. If you must know, I originally had 0 as well but it made the scatterplot rather messy with its frequency being between those of 12 and 13. Notably apparent from the chart, there is nothing strikingly special about 42 or 47.

So there you have it, confirmation that the '80s really were boring, and incontrovertible proof that neither 42 nor 47 are in any way more spectacular than other numbers in the hearts and minds of sane, normal people. The atypically higher frequencies of 44 and 64 do on the other hand raise new questions...

After all this faux statistical analysis of 'cult-figures', it is perhaps prudent to reflect on the sagacious words of Homer J. Simpson.

1F09, 1/6/94 Homer the Vigilante
Kent: Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack-beatings are up a shocking 900%?
Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that.

His eminence's eloquent words denouncing statistically based reasoning. Amen, Mr. Simpson, amen.

Attending a Desi Wedding in Cincinnati

2005-09-06T02:26:00.000-04:00

Labor day weekend went by rather well! Whenever any sort of long weekend creeps up, my family begins by expressing a warm, embracing intention to vacation somewhere. This wishful thinking must be quite taxing because my parents seem to move directly onto appeased inaction, bypassing the entire stage where one normally would book a flight and a room. This brilliant tactic of omission allows a vacation "planned" a month in advance to disintegrate into ether, leaving my family panic stricken the week of our supposed excursion and ultimately resigned to satiate our wanderlust another time. Despite this, somehow, maybe when the stars align, we get our act together and manage to go somewhere. This labor day weekend owes itself to one such cosmic arrangement. And, oh, what a weekend it was!

The Groom as White Knight

The Bride and Groom

Weddings are always special occasions, but this desi wedding meant a three-day gala affair with the groom riding on a white stallion! In the picture to the right you can see the groom mounted on the steed. Truth be known, an equestrian trainer pulled it along, and it was for less than an hour, but still... a horse!

Since the groom is Tamilian and the bride is Gujarati, the wedding combined traditional North Indian style with traditional South Indian style. Hey, if it means more variety in sweets for the guests, I say combine away!

Unfortunately, owing to the paucity of Indian weddings I've attended, I'm not exactly sure which all aspects were Southern inspired and which all were Northern inspired. The ancillary use of the horse, by the way, is primarily a North Indian phenomenon, and may even be confined further to Gujarat. I know, I know, I'm a bad coconut with only a vague understanding of these things. I'm trying, right?

The photo to the left shows the general theme and the apparel worn. The guys in red on the rightside are mostly the groom's friends from Chicago. The girls in red saris are sisters of the bride. People are pumping their arms into the air as they dance to Hindi music in a procession behind which faint and gentle clacks of horseshoes emanate.

Arches and candles are among the more artistic items one can capture with a still; yet, some guy has the impeccable timing to get up and ruin my shot. Oh well.

I probably should cast a little of Cincinnati's limelight over on Kentucky since the latter is where most of the events actually took place. Barefaced about being a geography dunce, I never realized Cincinnati practically grows out from Ohio and into Kentucky! Makes me wonder, though, if Mr. Ed from the first photograph was ever in the Kentucky derby.

Acting with a Gracious Aussie, Politics at the Pool Table

2005-08-30T02:02:00.002-04:00

I won! Wait, I won?

It takes quite a lot of skill to throw a game convincingly. The fact I'm still uncertain over whether the game was actually thrown is testament to my opponent's crafty generosity, if he really did let me win. I suspected something was awry when I narrowed his lead over me while he kept encountering a rash of difficulties with getting the 8-ball into any pocket, until that cathartic moment when, after a few of my own fumbling moments with the 8-ball, I won. Wow. At that moment, as strongly as I sensed victory was being handed to me, a feeling of redemption engulfed any other worries or misgivings I had. For an instant, lingering questions on the legitimacy of the victory evaporated, as did the tension of being down 0-4 games, a tension I grew so accustomed to as to fail to recognize how taut and clenched-fisted it had been keeping me. While the tension seemed permanently subsided, those lingering questions were less willing to go, coalescing into an anvil and thudding atop my head with the pestering realization that I need to think of how to respond beyond showcasing motionless stupor and disbelief.

What's the protocol, I wondered; do I sneak in a teaser about how he let me win? Should I thank him for the gracious gesture? Perhaps he would be offended if I garishly threw noise on a donation he so discretely made. Then again, I did still have to struggle - he certainly wouldn't have fiddled with that 8-ball long enough to embarrass himself. In fact, in addition to the onus of winning being on me, I had to endure the added pressure of potentially losing to someone playing on a five shot handicap. Yes.. yes.. the victory was well earned. Besides, I continued to reason, it would be sacrilegious of me to call his act an act when he expended considerable effort to make his loss credible. I decided to accept his donation; I played the intended part and offered a courteous "good game" with an appreciative smile and a nod. I instantly second-guessed myself, wondering if silently accepting someone's largesse would be considered tawdry, but, thankfully, the comforting return of relief from my opponent's starkly more relaxed look allayed any fear of misstep. He bought the act, or so I believe.

Robert Blackwill, Dictionaries, and p[a-z]*pot(ate|ent)

2005-08-09T02:47:00.000-04:00

Despite a gleaming mention in the subject, Robert Blackwill has very little to do with this particular journal entry. In fact, he is merely part of the ambient noise surrounding a slippery word that tantalizingly evaded me. It's quite odd how, when focusing so intently on recollecting one thing, loosely related items emerge into thought and, though unsolicited, they emerge with unbridled clarity and brilliance.

I began explaining to a friend how I hate synonyms and prefer words which carry a larger concept - a purposeful word useful in reducing the amount of time to convey an idea. At that moment, I caught the shadow of a word which would be of prime example; unfortunately, anything more than the shadow eluded me. Lilipote? No, no. What was it? I struggled to think. I knew its definition is the use of a euphemism or understatement for emphasis. I started rattling off to my friend whatever I could think to see if the word would come to me. If two people are berated by an extremely mean officer, one can later use hyperbole to tell the other "that's the worst officer ever in history!" One can also use sarcasm to tell the other "he sure is a nice guy." One can also use a .. er .. lilipote to tell the other "he's not an extremely nice guy." Tragically, I was in the car without internet access. I asked my friend over the phone to google "lilipote" and although I was expecting no results, it was disheartening to be confronted with that reality. It did make for a decent segue into Lilliputs and from there the conversion meandered to other things of interest, such as the movie about a 40yr old male virgin, and away from this mess of grappling with quarter-life senility.

To ensure no one's spirits have risen in thinking this blog will delve into the interesting parts of that conversation, I should make clear that interesting movie-related discussion will never be in any blog I write. Interesting stories can easily be told to people, real-time; it's the uninteresting things which require the occasional straggler who resorts to reading blogs, having tired of hours of solitaire.exe and an additional hour of repeatedly dragging rectangles on her desktop to see icons highlight. Right, now that we've squared that away.. Once I arrived home and the conversation ended, I managed to remember 'litotes' was the word I likely was looking for, and a quick validation on the web vindicated my belated answer. Naturally, just before feeling the burden lifted, I remembered once knowing a word used in a many years old NY Times passage about then ambassador Robert Blackwill being autocratic and sinking his staff into depression by incessantly denigrating them. I knew the word meant something along the lines of being given authority or power by appointment; other than that, I only knew it began with something like "pen" and ended with something like "potate" or "potent" which is sadly insufficient to query a web dictionary, or a printed one for that matter.

Cursed word-based queries, grep would solve this in seconds, I muttered. Wait, yes, grep will solve this in seconds! After some longer than anticipated tar.gz hunting, I seemed to find numerous providers of the 1913 Webster's unabridged English dictionary, which has fortunately been released into public domain. With some tr, sed, and sort -u, I had a nice greppable txt file revealing 'plenipotentiary', carrying as a noun the meaning "a diplomatic agent, such as an ambassador, fully authorized to represent his or her government" and as an adjective "invested with or conferring full powers." Aha, excellent. If only there had been a web service to do this generally! Are you listening, Google? I seriously need a mind-augmenting persistent cache to prevent memory loss. As an aside, as if this whole posting wasn't a giant one, a month and a half ago I managed to utter "Al Grove" in place of "Carl Rove", seamlessly morphing him with a certain former vice president and presidential candidate I'll leave unnamed. Needless to say, that gaffe instantly clinched an unofficial debate victory for my heckling opponent.