parakkum

Out of curiosity, I recently checked up on the publishing record of my entering grad school class, via Pubmed. Out of, I think, 30 or so people who started the class...

2 quit grad school
17 have some kind of authorship on a research article
7 are first authors on a research article

As I'm in that last group (and have another first authorship in the pipe) that made me feel pretty good.

Also:

2 students have defended (one more is about to)
1 of these two has left and gone on to a postdoctoral position

Now I just need to arrange to have all my faculty in the same place at the same time, so I can defend and leave...

As naturally goes along with preparing to dissert and defend, I'm currently looking at and for jobs in biotech. Possibilities include industrial postdocs (that is, a postdoctoral fellowship in a biotech company) and possibly other starting jobs, though positions that require no work experience past the doctorate are limited.

So naturally, if any of my humanities and computing friends turn up a biotech job that fits, I'd love to hear about it.

As likely as that is.

My defense date is set: August 6. Time and exact location on the UCSD campus to follow. Friends are invited to attend, assuming making your way to San Diego isn't a huge inconvenience.

Counting down to that PhD...

I just sent out (well, entered into a form-laden web interface) my first job application, for a postdoctoral position at SRI.

Now I'm pondering emailing the person who I would most likely end up working for were I to receive the job. Would that be good, or annoying?

I'm taking a moment to address a pet peeve:

"The Government" doesn't do anything. Seriously.

People are fond of saying that The Government has done this or that awful thing, and really ought to change its policies and so forth, as if speaking of a single queen bee that operates through its workers and drones.

That concept is, in short, goofy.

The actual government, at all levels from local through Federal, comprises an assortment of individuals from the exact same communities it ends up governing. Every police officer, DMV staffer and ATF agent is just some guy or gal who ended up in that line of work, just like everyone else.

But for people to make sweeping, incorrect assessments and have an easier time thinking about how the world works, these government employees have to be depersonalized into part of The Government. Which is, again, goofy. If the FCC makes a bad ruling, that means that some actual, indivual people up there made a bad ruling, after thinking about it. Perhaps they were corrupt, perhaps they don't have your or my interests in mind, but they're actual people, and not part of the monolith.

All of this stuff springs to mind both because of talking to my pal Tim, who trusts in governmental structures a little less than I do (but isn't the kind of kook to talk about The Government either, which is good), and I just read Danny Coulson's book No Heroes, which describes his career in the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. Some salient things to draw from this book:

1) Coulson is an actual person, and describes in great detail how he came into his line of work, and how he thought about his job when he was in it. Notably, he never shot anyone, and considers violence a failure.

2) The shooting of Vickie Weaver at Ruby Ridge was a reasonable yet tragic mistake, and it pretty much ended the career of the HRT officer who took the shot. Note that the shooting happened along the true FBI deadly force guidelines (i.e. only to protect life from imminent harm -- the Weavers were shooting at an FBI chopper) and not under the wacky "shoot anyone with a gun" guidelines that a middle manager wrote without approval from headquarters. In fact, all the HRT and SWAT members on scene made a conscious decision to ignore the nonapproved guidelines.

3) The siege at Waco was necessarily going to end badly, once it started. Koresh was intent on keeping his power and fully willing to kill his followers (including many children he'd molested) to do so. Many of the children who burned when the Davidians torched their compound were shot, knifed, or bludgeoned to death prior to burning. It's also worth reading about Coulson's peaceful resolution of a very similar situation nearly a decade earlier. Sadly, the peaceful circling and negotiation he used before could not apply after ATF's botched raid (and geez, who approved a frontal assault on a complex full of automatic weapons and .50 cal sniper rifles?).

Final parting thought -- people, by and large, commit these unprovoked acts of violence because they want to and it makes them feel good. Ideological justification is secondary. If you're bombing a building with a childcare center, it's because it makes you feel powerful and validates your existence, not because it's a reasonable target in some kind of war.

Today was the first time giving blood ever hurt -- which is not a bad record, since I've given a lot of blood.

For the past year, I've been donating by apheresis, which basically entails having blood removed, like a normal donation, separated into its component parts, then some of it pumped back into you. Today, as in all but one time I've done this, they collected a double dose of red blood cells, returning my plasma and saline.

Unlike every other time I've done this, my vein ruptured on the second return, and plasma and saline pumped into the surrounding tissue. The moment I could feel the needle and then a growing pain, I figured this was what happened. It really hurt by the time I waved the attending nurse over, but she nicely DCed the needle and put an ice pack on it, and the pain went away.

But definitely no heavy lifting today, and I'll probably have some kind of bruise tomorrow.

That's okay, though. I happened to see their little printout of current RBC supplies. 0.4 days worth of O+, which is my type. Figure they really, really need the help. I also saw them actually assign my blood units to a request form from a medical facility, which was new, and quite cool. From the conversation, I know that my blood was not going to an infant (as some of the blood that day was) and thus didn't require resting for CMV.

...and sixteen weeks from now, I can do it again. :) If you're able, do give blood. It's by far the easiest form of major altruism I've encountered.

As it says. My arm didn't bruise after all.

It is 9:44pm on a Saturday night, and my dissertation is almost complete. I spent the last six hours putting in page numbers (for the figure pages), then threading it all together into a beautiful whole (well, whole chapters as PDFs), then completing the table of contents. I now have left to do:

Acknowledgements
Abstracts
Table of tables (it's a handful of entries short)

Which is good, as I want to hand this off to my committee in the coming week. Next week I take it to the Office of Graduate Studies and Research and they check the formatting to make sure it's all good. Hopefully, it will be.

...and, like someone with an optical media tic, I continue to back this up onto CDs repeatedly.

So, things left to do before the Comic-con this Thursday include the above, as well as...

Put together any pitch packages I want to have on me
Edit and update an article I wrote back on 2000 for my black belt, since the program now wants to publish it in their scholarly journal (this came at an excellent time, as you can see)

*twitch, twitch*

My thesis defense is this Wednesday. It's good, then, that I finally acquired the last signature on the predefense evaluation form today.

Stress, man.

I give the talk, then I have a week to revise the dissertation (including adding a brief chapter on future directions, which I didn't have in the original), print it properly and hand it over to be bound and included in the university library. Now I have to find some more forms...

I have given my talk, and my committee has signed off on that portion of my requirements. Now I have to revise the dissertation, then turn it in.

One step closer, one step left.

Actually, that makes it sound adversarial, which it wasn't. The very nice lady at our Office of Graduate Studies and Research caught one mistake in my dissertation -- a table that strays into the right margin too far. Tsk. So I must replace page 67 in both archival copies before they can be passed on to the library and microfiche archivist, respectively.

This is actually not a big deal, since I am also missing a signature needed for those same reasons, and won't have it until Tuesday, when our department chair returns from wherever he's gone.

The experience was interesting, though. She is obviously a dissertation-scanning expert. It's something like:

FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP --

*pause*

Place page 67 on different stack, for reasons that are immediately apparent.

FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP
FLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIPFLIP --

*done*

I just returned from a trip and found a bunch of junk mail and an envelope
labeled "Republican Census Document Enclosed." Inside, we find the following:

Dear Fellow Republican,

You are among a select group of Republicans who have been chosen to take
part in the official CENSUS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

Enclosed is your GOP CENSUS DOCUMENT which was assigned and prepared
especially for you as a representative of all Republicans living in your
voting district.

Your answers will be used to develop a BLUEPRINT for the Republican Party
for the next 10 years.

The 2000 and 2002 elections showed how _critical_ it is that we _identify
and contact EVERY SINGLE POTENTIAL Republican voter in America to get them
involved_.

Because it is cost prohibitive for the Republican Party to print and mail
an official REPUBLICAN PARTY CENSUS to each and every one of the 55,000,000
Republicans nationwide...

...your answers will represent the views and opinions of all Republican
voters living in your voting district.

There's more, but I'll pause here to explain. I'm not currently a
registered Republican. Right now, I'm a Democrat, but I'm not a dedicated
Democrat either (though they have a much better track record of not being
egregiously wrong than the Republican party, to be sure). In the past, I
was registered as an independent, before someone astutely pointed out that
I couldn't vote in any major party primaries. Since that time, I've
registered depending on which primary I most wanted to vote in. This year,
it was the Democratic primary. One presidential cycle back, it was the
Republican (I voted for McCain). I'm not sure why they didn't take my name
off the rolls, but hey, I'm always happy to help determine policy,
especially for a party that's been doing such a terrific job of wrecking
our country.
So let's see what they're asking. For each question, the possible answers
are Yes, No and Undecided. I'll post the questions and my answers. I'm
mailing this out tomorrow, as it requested that I send it back within seven
days and I don't know when I received it.

Biased survey in the extended

For my remaining time in lab, I will officially be a postdoctoral researcher (as I am no longer a grad student). One upshot of this is a salary increase. I picked up my appointment letter today and discovered that I'll be picking up an extra 750 bucks a month. Nice.

(I am still paid less than all my computer-workin' friends, naturally.)

Now working on lining up the next job. I should have done this earlier, but was concentrating on my work here. That may give me some lag time, so I've been considering applying for a temporary lecturer position for the coming Spring semester at SJSU or one of the local community colleges. It doesn't pay well, but it would pay and would be better than sitting around (not that I don't have lots of other things to do...).

I'm currently in the midst of job finding. Up until earlier this week, I was considering:

A job in biotech
A postdoctoral fellowship in an academic or corporate setting

I now have a new option.

My friend Tom attended a recruiting session last week by McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm. They’re looking for candidates with professional degrees to work as consultants. Tom gave me a rundown of what they’d presented, then I spent some time looking through their site, including the specific site for people with advanced degrees (here).

I'm intrigued.

I already knew of consulting generally, and that some consulting groups hired Ph.D.s, on the principle that we've been taught to think analytically. I don't know enough to compare across consulting firms, but McKinsey's site says that 48% of their consultants have advanced professional degrees, with the rest holding MBAs. They advertise a fact-based method of problem solving, which definitely has appeal. I don't think I could work for a company whose consultant role centered around nebulous concepts of improving the client company's morale, for example. But fact-based problem solving sounds genuinely interesting.

The job frequently involves a lot of travel, but I'm totally fine with that. I really don't mind waiting in airports and on airplanes. The job is also supposed to pay well - the cited figure for the first year, with signing bonus, is on the order of $180,000. Naturally, there's a lot of work involved. However, as Tom pointed out, there's just as much work involved in a postdoctoral research position, only for one sixth the compensation.

Now that the possibility of consulting has entered my mental space, I've looked into other firms. So far, I've checked out:

Accenture
Bain & Company
The Boston Consulting Group
The Parthenon Group

I haven't yet formed a complete opinion on any of them, If you've heard of or about any other groups, feel free to tell me. I'm now quite interested in seeing what the field is like.

The application process for McKinsey begins with an online application, with a school-dependent deadline (so if you're interested, check it out now, especially if you're on the East coast). If they like you, then you take a written test. If they still like you, you have an interview featuring a case question, which has you walking through a model consulting situation.

I'm currently on step one, applying. I revised and updated my resume today. This is a nice activity, because my resume makes me feel pretty warm and fuzzy about myself.

Next I'll have to write the short essay (they do mean short - 400 words or less) on teamwork. The actual prompt is:

We almost always work as members of a team. Please describe an experience in which you worked as a member of a team, your role, the relationships you built, and your contributions to the team's effectiveness.

Incidentally, if you're a grad student who will be done in 2006, they have internships you might be able to take part in. If you think you'll be done in 2005, apply now.

Having just finished my Ph.D., I'm naturally in a position to think about the next step. Most accurately, I was in that position months ago, and really ought to have done it then. Still, there's nothing wrong with a break. However, thinking about what I want to do and considering things such as Consulting has left me pondering what I'd actually like to do with my life.

I would like to:

Make things

(Thus, writing.)

Think about biology and life sciences

(I do feel a sense of moving away from possibilities when I consider leaving the direct research role. At the same time, I don't really want to be doing grunt research that much, nor am I excited about the possibility of being an academic.)

Influence the world

(I'd like to be in policy, I think. I'd like to be a person who influences how people think about world governance. I'd like to be able to influence people such that they:

Pay attention to major world diseases (malaria, etc)
Adopt a policy of buying people off whenever possible
Act reasonably and in ways that leave a world I find better)

Be happy with what I do day to day

(The consulting seems to appeal here -- it's problem solving, and I really have had a lot of fun over the years with the troubleshooting part of my work. Getting results and figuring out experimental plans and possible hypotheses is a lot of fun, but overcoming a problem is really satisfying. I also wouldn't mind the security of additional financial resources.)

Just some thoughts, as I read about Consulting Groups, send email to labs where I might do postdoctoral work, and generally consider my goals and next direction.

So what does everyone else want to be when they grow up?

How might one say the following in an ancient language of your choice?

dark days

new day

I was writing up information on the propositions in California for my intensely busy girlfriend, so I thought I'd post that here. Also, here's a link to an insightful blog by someone serving in the military in Iraq:

http://atease.blogspot.com/

Right now, he's going through the top ten reasons to not vote for Bush, with extensive, effective discussion of each reason.

Now, the propositions:

Prop 1A: "Protection of Local Government Revenues"

Currently, some portion of local property and sales tax goes off to the state; this basically makes those funds inaccessible to the state unless two thirds of the legislature agrees that it's necessary to access them. I'm kind of ambivalent about this one, since it will make local governments more flush while depleting the state's income.

I'm going with No, but it's not a strong No.

Prop 59: "Public Records, Open Meetings."

This concise prop requires open meetings and writings for public officials, as well as requiring that access be construed to be as wide as possible, while restrictions be construed in as limited a manner as possible. It does not apply to records relating to cops, nor is it supposed to allow breaches of privacy. Seems pretty sound, as public access to information on how the government runs is a nice thing.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 60: "Election Rights of Political Parties."

This is a counter to prop 62, below. It requires that if a party has candidates in a primary, the one receiving the most votes among those candidates must appear on the final election ballot. Basically, it's a guarantee and restatement of the process as it currently occurs.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 60A: "Surplus Property"

Prop 60A requires that proceeds from sale of state property must first go toward paying off the bonds issues earlier this year as part of the Economic Recovery Bond Act, which was meant to stopgap the $15 billion deficit. This strikes me as a sound way to prevent foolish spending when such a large debt is still outstanding.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 61: "Children's Hospital Projects"

This is a $750 million bond measure to fund capital improvements in various children's hospitals. It will cost 41.5 billion to pay off over the next thirty years. I'm not fond of bond measures, and I don't think capital improvements (that is, physical items and structures) the the key changes and upgrades needed in serving children in this state.

I'm voting No.

Prop 62: "Elections. Primaries."

Prop 62 would change the election process such that we'd have open primaries (that is, you can vote across party lines), but only the top two vote getters would appear on the final election ballot. It does not apply to presidential nominations.

While open primaries seem like a fine idea, this basically cuts off a substantial portion of the final election, which is worrisome. There's something basically threatening about the possibility of having two candidates from, say, the same party being your only choices on the final ballot. I can imagine ending up with two unsavory choices on the final ballot. For example, you could have:

5 candidates of your favorite party vying for nomination (with 100,000 total voters)
2 candidates from the party you don't trust vying for nomination (with 50,000 total voters)

Whereas under the current system your final ballot would automatically have the highest vote getter from each party, you could imagine in the above case that if each nominee received an equal number of his or her voters votes, that you'd see each of the 5 candidates you might like getting 20,000, and each of the two icky candidates getting 25,000, resulting in a final ballot where you have to pick between two candidates that two thirds of the voters wouldn't ever want to pick.

Naturally, I'm voting No.

Prop 63: "Mental Health Services Expansion, Funding. Tax On Personal Incomes Above $1 million."

Prop 63 funds additional mental health services by taxing personal income past the first million. It's a clever approach to gaining revenue without alienating most people. Naturally, opponents say that it will drive people out of the state. Possibly. If so, we'll live. We need more mental health services.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 64: "Limits on Private Enforcement of Unfair Business Competition Laws."

In short, Prop 64 changes the law such that you can only sue someone for unfair business competition if you have directly lost money because of their practices or if you're the attorney general, a district attorney or something similar. This chiefly prevents lawsuits made on behalf of the people of California by parties that aren't directly involved. The proponents of this prop argue that it prevents fatuous lawsuits by money-grubbing lawyers; the opponents cite public-interest cases that wouldn't have been allowed were this law in effect. This law is heavily backed by large, corporate interests.

I'm voting No.

Prop 65: "Local Government Funds, Revenues."

This is another version of Prop 1A. Prop 1A is the revised version, so if you like the concept, vote for 1A.

I'm voting No.

Prop 66: "Limitations On 'Three Strikes' Law. Sex Crimes. Punishment."

California currently has a law whereby folks who have committed a serious or violent felony are given life sentences after accumulating their third felony (of any kind). This has resulted in a higher prison load in California than in some other states. It also means that someone can, say, mug a person (serious felony), then shoplift twice (two routine felonies) and end up in jail for life. You can also receive multiple strikes at once (that is, if someone commits multiple crimes at once, as frequently happens, they can be tried for all of them at once and they all count as strikes). Prop 66 would revise this to require separate convictions for _serious_ felonies for each strike. It would require resentencing for people who don't meet the new requirements. It also incidentally adds extra prison term time to some crimes against children.

I don't like this, because requiring offenders to seriously harm three people before they're locked away for a long time is no good. Successful measures to reduce crime would necessarily focus on prevention, through addressing the situations that contribute to crime in the first place. If someone committed a single serious crime, I want them in jail for a long time; if they facilitate that by shoplifting, that's fine by me. Prison isn't a way to change their behavior; it's a way to have them not be around and threatening people.

I'm voting No.

Prop 67: "Emergency Medical Services. Funding. Telephone Surcharge."

This Prop adds some additional telephone taxes to pay for emergency medical care. It's chiefly opposed by (shocker here) telephone and cellular companies.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 68: "Non-Tribal Commercial Gambling Expansion. Tribal Gaming Compact Amendments."

Prop 68 would require that all tribes with gaming compacts with the state accept a new compact. If they don't all do it within a fairly short time limit, casino gaming would be allowed at sixteen non-tribal gaming sites.

This is an ambush prop, designed to allow large casinos outside of tribal control. I like the casinos where they are now -- out of the way -- and I don't see a problem with people who have been hunted more or less to near extinction being allowed to make some money.

I'm voting No.

Prop 69: "DNA Samples. Collection. Database."

Currently, DNA samples will be kept on file with the state if you are convicted of certain felonies. This prop would adjust the law to place your information on file if you are /charged/ with certain felonies, and to broaden the scope of allowed checking so your DNA can be used not just to evaluate the current case, but also see if you match any other unknown cases. You can theoretically get your DNA record purged if you aren't convicted, though in practice that would be rather difficult and time consuming. Naturally, people are worried about a potential loss in personal privacy, but I'm a fan of the increased clearance rate this offers for crimes committed by unknown subjects.

I'm voting Yes.

Prop 70: "Tribal Gaming Compacts. Exclusive Gaming Rights. Contributions to State."

This prop engages tribal gaming from the other direction, requiring a 99-year compact that guarantees exclusive gaming rights to tribes. I don't think this is necessary, either, and 99-year anythings aren't that good, by and large.

I'm voting No.

Prop 71: "Stem Cell Research. Funding. Bonds."

This prop would lay out $3 billion in bonds to cover stem cell research in the state, costing $6 billion over the next thirty years. While it offers the potential to make California into a mecca of stem cell research, which is quite tempting, I don't think it's financially sane for the state to put itself that for into debt. If the presidential election goes the way I hope it will, then stem cell research funding nationwide will pick up, making this massive work-around not as necessary.

I'm voting No.

Prop 72: "Health Care Coverage Requirements."

This prop would require employee healthcare coverage from large and medium companies. While it may not work with an older Federal law (we'll see how that works out), I like this idea. Opponents claim it will drive companies out of the state. I disagree, since the companies that currently are causing our public health system the most damage by failing to ensure (Walmart et al) (1) probably won't leave (2) are easily replaced and (3) aren't a positive contribution to the state. Companies that we don't want to lose won't leave because they are (1) high-tech and biomedical firms that already cover all their employees or (2) agribusinesses that use substantial day labor and other workers who won't be covered. I mentioned Walmart there because they're one of the biggest opponents of this prop.

I'm voting Yes.

As I discuss propositions with my friends, or read their opinions, I find it comforting that I am able to think critically, take in their ideas and input, and perhaps reconsider my choices given the new concepts they've presented.

Naturally, I am disturbed that our current president imagines this to be a weakness.

Last night, we watched Tony Blair speaking with parliament on CSPAN. Can you imagine our current president having to face an hour or more of rapid-fire questions ranging across the entire scope of foreign and domestic policy? Then can you imagine him giving convincing, fact-based answers to all these questions?

Added bit, at the request of honeyfields: What I actually said to her about Blair was that I have a "governmental crush" on him. If only we had such capable politicians.

As it says. I changed my opinion on 71 (voted yes) and 60A (voted no). Otherwise, as written.

I did my first write-in vote ever, for a local position. In an interesting turn, the only ethical member of the city council here decided to run a write-in campaign for mayor, and at last polls yesterday, she was at 30%, with both the listed candidates at 27% each.

I noticed a paper explaining how anyone can check the voter log at the voting site with the intent to carry out "get out the vote" efforts -- that is, to call people who have not yet voted. I didn't know that was allowed. Pretty nifty.

I just read KWC's post about how the tilt towards Bush made him sick.

I had to stop following the news after a while today because I, too, felt sick.

In fact, I felt sick pretty much the way I felt sick when I woke up on September 11, 2001 and saw pillars of smoke instead of the World Trade Center. Sick and angry.

I'm mad at half the people in this country who can't reason and would doom us to another four years of hideous harm to this nation I love.

I don't have hope for Ohio, but please, let it come through.

I now have a four-hundred dollar Mac gift card, which can only be used in a physical Mac store (rather than online).

Anyone need some Mac products? Wanna trade me for slightly-depreciated-against-the-Euro dollars?

Or maybe I should just trade for Euros. I don't think the local comic shop accepts those, tho'.

I was, as my friend put it, "dinged" today, so I won't be going on to a third round interview with McKinsey. The interview process was quite pleasant, overall. Though I was nervous at times, the interviewers were helpful rather than antagonistic.*

Curiously, while I was rated with a "uniquely good" (**) performance in group case questions in round one, my main flaws were in one-on-one case questions in round two. The advice was to make my later-stage problem solving more structured and to make more of an effort to synthesize and develop insight based on my analysis. Based on my recollection of my peformance in round two, I'd tend to agree with those as points to bolster. This time around, my "personal impact" (background questions, more typical of other interviews) was rated as quite strong.

Though it's disappointing to not make it this time around with McKinsey, it's good to have made it to round two. Now on to applying to other firms.

*Though I wonder whether this makes people more prone to exposing weaknesses, and whether or not that's an intended outcome.

**Yeah, the interviewer did use "unique" as a superlative. Ah, well.

I'm disappointed in our country's initial offer of aid to the nations affected by the tsunami. It's ridiculous that we went with anything less than one hundred million right from the start.

First, that's pocket change relative to our national budget. Second, one hundred is a magical human number, seeming much more like a substantial amount than even ninety-nine million. Third, we really ought to be giving many times as much as the next nation down.

The unit cost for a single F-22 Raptor is over two hundred million.

I'm going to write to our executive branch about our deficient aid. Never hurts to write.

If people are interested, this is the email I just sent. I also tried calling, but the office is closed at the moment (pretty natural, given the time of night). I will attempt to call tomorrow. The email:

Mr. President-

I am writing to express my disappointment in our low initial offering of aid to countries in the tsunami-affected region around the Indian ocean. While it is not too late to recover from this flawed opening, there are several reasons why we should have offered at least one hundred million dollars in aid initially.

First, one hundred million dollars in aid is a miniscule amount compared to our national budget. Second, one hundred is a "magic number"� for human perception, and would have bought us instant good will with the recipients. Third, we should be giving many times as much in aid as any other single nation.

Remember, the unit cost of a single F-22 Raptor is over two hundred million. For half that we would have won instant, long-lasting gratitude from a number of nations, including the largest muslim nation in the world, which was also the hardest hit. This good will simply can not be purchased with donations from individual Americans, no matter what they add up to. It is what our government does that matters.

Though we have missed out on the first impression, it is not yet too late to leave a lasting impression. We should be there, distributing our tremendous wealth and proudly displaying the flag as we do so. The United States should be great in all things, especially generosity.

Thank you -

- Alexander Shearer, Ph.D.

All hail the Mountain View police department and their near-instantaneous response time.

Last night (Saturday) as we were set to go to sleep, massive bass started thudding through the walls with a chaser of loud voices as patrons from the local night club started an impromptu after party in the parking lot across the street. I'm pretty tolerant of noise -- after all, my downstairs neighbors of five years in San Diego liked to play explosion-laden video games in the wee hours and I never really cared. This was pretty obnoxious, though, and honeyfields wanted me to yell at them. I thought that might be confrontational and a little ineffective with potenitally drunken dumbasses, so instead I placed a non-emergency call to the Mountain View PD and asked if they could maybe just have someone swing by to take a look.

After the call, honeyfields asked me about three questions (e.g. "What did they ask?" "They wanted to know how many people, and what kind of cars...") and then, no more than ten seconds later, we heard the distinctive sound of a police car bullhorn. I watched for the next few minutes as another police car showed up and the officer told the obnoxious folks to get in their cars and leave. One car left, then the others were finally persuaded to go when the three officers got out of their two cars and walked out to talk to them. The whole thing was over in a couple of minutes.

This tells me two good things:

1) Police response time at my place is excellent

2) Mountain View must be a safe place, if two police cars can show up for a noise complaint on a Saturday night

Mountain View PD may never be on Cops, but I think they're cool anyway.

Barbara Boxer is taking the approach I want my senators to take to dealing with the current administration:

Boxer challenging the electoral vote

...and...

Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearings

The second article focuses on Kerry's role in the hearings, but I appreciated Boxer's questions. At one point, Rice requests that Boxer not impugn her integrity. Really...why not? It's as if impugning her integrity were somehow off limits, when her lack of integrity casts serious doubt on her ability to operate as the head diplomat of our nation.

Based solely on her performance in office during our current president's first term, I do believe Rice lacks integrity. It is quite odd to me that she, as one mouthpiece and policy maker in the current administration, is unwilling to say something like, "Saddam Hussein's policy of deception worked too well and we were fooled," and prefers to patch new 'reasons' on as each old one falls away. That's particularly vile, and quite worrying. It's an extreme form of mission creep. Not only do we expand and diverge from the original mission -- we forget what that mission was.

I'm currently proofing my portion of the manual for the update of the main software our group uses, and I hit this bit which I spent a while trying to parse:

The key is updated dynamically with successive highlights. However, if you undo the previous highlight (see below) the corresponding key entry is removed and will not be recovered should you choose to Redo the last unhighlight (see below).

Can you spot the error?

Note that "seeing below" doesn't really help explain this one as written, though it clarifies where the mistake is.

Overall, though, very few errors and generally good writing.

It's disturbing that very few media analysts are doing the kind of "then-and-now" look at the current administration's stated reasons for war that the Daily Show has been putting on. It's discouraging, though not surprising, to see people accept this change:

Then: Iraq is a threat because it has WMDs and is developing additional ones, and is trafficking with terrorists.

Now: We've liberated an oppressed population.

The second reason is closer to what I believe are the actual core reasons of our current batch of policy makers. They want to make the world into a more workable place, and see the removal of belligerent political entities as a means to do that. Of course, the particular mad-on for Iraq also has a lot to do with the feeling that the "job wasn't done right" earlier, and that Hussein has been mocking us since then.

Naturally, that would be a harder case to make to the U.S. public.

But say you do accept their current public motivation -- liberating people who are being oppressed, abused, tortured and killed. Given that, isn't there a strong case for occupying the following countries (not a comprehensive list):

Iran -- totalitarian religious government with a population that wants more freedom
North Korea -- totalitarian regime that is starving its population at large while maintaining an enormous army
China -- odd mix of capitalism and totalitarianism, with strong suppression of protestors and a lack of religious freedom
Sudan -- genocide in progress, being ignored by the government
Saudi Arabia -- lack of human rights, harsh punishments (and, incidentally, support for some brands of terrorism)
Pakistan -- ruled by an unelected military leader
Syria, Egypt, Jordan -- more problems with lack of democracy and civil rights

I'm sure you can add more. Now, we obviously don't want to be in the position of occupying all these countries, and there's a reasonable case to be made for scaring some countries into line (e.g. Libya) by how we act toward other countries. Unfortunately, that doesn't work if a country's government is confident that they represent an unacceptable risk (e.g. North Korea).

There is one clear reason for a country to go to war -- to protect its own existence and the lives of its populace. To this, I've heard added "halting genocide" as the only other legitimate reason to go to war with a country on a basis outside of self defense.

Certainly, it's impractical to take a military approach to all problems. It's galling, however, to see such a failure in perspective on when we do or don't take that kind of action. Consider:

If Iraq did have WMDs (and we honestly had good reason to believe they did, based on their own program of deception) they were still unlikely to pass them off to terrorist groups. On the other hand, North Korea sells weapons to all buyers. Not only that, but they're sitting right next to one of our allies with a massive army, and they've been sending terrorists over to that country for years. Iraq contained some terrorist camps in uncontrolled regions. North Korea kidnapped people from Japan to train its agents, and has sent a number of terrorists over to South Korea to kill people. If you're worried about nuclear-armed terrorists, where better to start than the country that produces both nuclear weapons and terrorists?

Not that I want us to invade North Korea. Just saying that we're deep in double standard territory here.

I had a conversation earlier this week with my friend Tim around this topic and about setting standards for success in military actions. People are averse to setting up rules for things like when we should invade other countries and when we should subsequently leave them. I think it bothers some people to have actual guidelines for these things, even though it would clarify our goals, needs and available options.

I'm not quite sure why that is, though it feels like a very human thing to do.

This was a comment I made elsewhere, and I thought it'd be worth reposting here:

(Discussing the inherent human inability to assess risk.)

I was at a scientific meeting last summer, and two of the facility staff were talking. One mentioned that his friends were planning a trip across the country. For context, the massive train bombing in Spain was quite recent:

"My friends are going to California next month. They were going to take the train instead of flying, because flying isn't safe, but now with that train attack, that's not safe anymore, either. So they're going to drive."

This is tremendously poor risk assessment. Even lacking statistics, let's look at it this way:

How many car crashes have you seen in the last month?

(I saw one yesterday, and see them fairly regularly when I drive.)

How many train crashes or bombings have occurred in the United States in the last decade?

(Train crashes occur sporadically, but for attacks on trains, I can think of one in the last decade, and that was track sabotage that lead to derailment with injuries rather than a gruesome train bombing like Madrid.)

How many airplane crashes or hijackings have occurred in the last decade?

(Again, airplanes crash every so often in the United States, but hijackings are vanishingly infrequent -- and most of the last decade was before increased security.)

The concept of driving a couple thousand miles (from Vermont to California in this case) being safer than flying it or taking a train is astounding.

It's this kind of thinking, however, that says that terrorists are more dangerous than fatty foods, smoking and driving. I've heard it argued that we only need to worry about terrorists if they have nuclear or biological weapons. But it is hard to think about things this way (for some very natural reasons, I think).

I just updated an entry in our Pathway-Genome Database from "putative peptidase" to "putative zinc peptidase."

The current LJ thing is "Ten Things I've Done That You Probably Haven't," Here's my push at it:

1) Gotten genuinely lost alone in the San Bernardino mountains and found my way back (hurrah for Boy Scouts)

2) Participated in a traditional Japanese wedding in the Meiji shrine in Tokyo

3) Participated in a somewhat less traditional Hawaiian-Japanese-Jewish wedding in a synagogue in Milwaukee

4) Broken someone's ribs

5) Discovered a novel mechanism of protein regulation

6) Made genetically modified organisms

7) Been the top-ranked Mechwarrior player in San Diego

8) Certified as an EMT

9) Earned my Eagle rank (again, Scouts)

10) Watched a nuclear reaction with my naked eye (other than the sun, naturally)

I'm riding Caltrain to San Jose tonight. I thought I might catch the connecting 65 bus line to downtown San Jose.

Caltrain arrives at the San Jose station: 8:45pm
VTA bus leaves the station for downtown: 8:44pm

Yeah.

License plate seen today in Mountain View: TIVOROX

While searching via Google for a reference related to work today, I hit a page in Japanese, which Google offered to translate. Here's a sample of the translation output:

Q3:
Oil field Shigeru one who appears this time, as an owner of rival club. The secret as for you it was possible to procure even accidentally. You who obtained the secret went to the origin of the oil field owner, could obtain financing 100 hundred million Yen beautifully. Well, does secret of the oil field owner whom you inserted in the hand probably mean that it is what?

A3: Every night, the gown the Persian cat is placed to the feather weave and the knee,
To blow first class leaf volume, the wine in the one hand,
Looking at the video of gold eight teacher, you have had to have wailed,

The question seems vaguely parsable, but the answer is purely esoteric.

Until it improves, I'll use Google's Japanese-English translation to produce Zen master answers and the rantings of madmen.

Thought for the moment: best try not to clip an ally with the soul-stealing blade.

Tonight's major Moorcock flashback is brought to you by the first season of Angel.

I pulled this from Gray Watson's quote list and while it is attributed to Joe Paterno, Mr. Watson's still looking for documentation for that. Regardless, this is a very good admonishment:

"If you manage to reach the endzone, act like you've been there before."

...and is, in fact, useful in making sure you convey your message in an understandable form.

I'm reading user survey responses* and there are a handful that I'm simply going to have to reply to by asking, "What exactly did you mean?"

It's the ones with poor concept division further exacerbated by the absence of punctuation that really feel like the textual equivalent of listening to someone with a significant mental disorder talk. This isn't meant facetiously, as I've done just that more than once -- it's the same feeling that somewhere inside them, it makes sense, but I'm simply missing a critical filter or reference that will make everything fall into place.

*Over four fifths of these folks are at academic institutions, and a full two thirds are grad students, postdocs, or heads of research groups (professors and such). Naturally, a number speak English as a second language, but it's usually clear when an entry is confusing due to foreign language issues. Those don't tend to have the schizophrenic feel.

I've been looking at names for a writing project. "Meta" is a Danish version of Margaret.

Wacky.

I'm looking for a place to have two copies of my dissertation bound; searching for such online naturally kicks up sponsored links to companies that offer to write your dissertation for you. I'm not going to link to any of them, but here's a bit of ad copy that amazed me:

We know how they feel when their professors keep rejecting their dissertations due to insufficient data, inadequate research, ineffective writing style, or incorrect formatting and compilation.

Um...what?

I can understand student frustration with the amount of emphasis put on formatting. After all, you've finished, say, five years and change of work on your topic, had more than one first author publication or conference presentation, and now someone's going to hold you back until you fix a margin? That I get. However...

...due to insufficient data, inadequate research...

Dude. I hope a student would be held back for those things. We really ought to be past social promotion by the time someone is in, say, a Ph.D. program. If you're in a field that requires a researched dissertation, the idea is probably that you know how to carry out effective research. If you can't, then maybe you need another six months or a year to figure it out.

...and I can't imagine, now that I have a Ph,D., being anything other than dreadfully pained by spending any amount of my life writing dissertations for people who must, pretty much by definition, be less capable than I was (assuming I, as the imagined dissertation service person, didn't have the help of a service myself).

One of the more pleasing moments in my life concerning evaluation and social promotion came when I certified as an EMT back in 1999 (a certification I'm about to let run out, actually). In my class, I could look at maybe a third of the people and hope that they would never, ever be the ones rendering aid to me during a medical emergency. They weren't paying attention, they made mistakes, all that.

Gratifyingly, when we had the written and skills test, none of these people passed. I was so used to people being able to maneuver around qualifying tests that it was a welcome surprise to see this one successfully filter out the people that gave me the willies.

For Tim:

The price of a single F/A-22: $257 million

(Note that this is the combined development and production cost distributed across an order of 279 fighters. This combination of costs is reasonable in light of the fact that we're unlikely to sell these to anyone else, so it really is costing us that much per plane.)

The price of a single Russian-made Su-30 fighter-bomber: $37 million

The Joint Strike Fighter is intended to cost as much as a Sukhoi, but is, naturally, experiencing cost overruns and curtailed performance.

The price of a single A-10 Thunderbolt: $13 million

The following sentence is from a non-native speaker of English. It sounds suspiciously like something a native English-speaking business grad might come up with:

[It] gave an overview for adequating the objective to my project.

I'm going to Detroit for a conference tomorrow. Anyone know good things to do (or places to eat) in Detroit? Especially near the Renaissance center?

Mmmm...Detroit.

The Black Arts Society promises to teach you "The World's ultimate fighting system for military, police, special forces and civilians."

The Black Arts is a complete fighting system including military style hand to hand unarmed combat, weapons disarming, grappling, ground fighting, edged weapons training, police control tactics, pressure points, dim mak, and internal energy development.

Ah, Dim Mak. Thanks to Palladium's Ninja's & Superspies roleplaying game, I know all about the classic death touch. So, apparently, do the credulous folks at Black Arts.

Especially precious is their gallery. If you click on the first image, you get a slideshow that progresses, taking you through 138 pictures ranging from generic to painful. Some prizes from the captions:

"Delta force agent" -- That would be a soldier, colloquially known as an "operator." Or, perhaps, some random person in the picture whose face was fuzzed out.

"Pressure point knockouts" -- Too bad these folks are in London. It'd be fun to let them try those on me.

Going after a "painful nerve center" under the nose -- I agree that having someone push up on your nose is painful. I don't like people tugging on my ears, either.

"Getting out of the guard" -- Gee. Why not use your Dim Mak death touch?

Direct quotes:

Terry Workman brings down Josh Jaques. Size and Strength do not matter when The Black Arts techniques are executed properly. (Naturally)

Sensei Greg Green performing an anti - terrorist gun disarm. It's very important that you not confuse this with the far-less-trendy random-mugger gun disarm.

...and my favorite...

Matt Workman and Matt Courey practice some Dim Mak. Good lord. I do hope they signed waivers.

May they all be so fortunate as to never get into an actual fight.

Something I should do more often -- write to political officials, especially those making poor decisions. Here's my email to the president today:

Mr. Bush --

I have relatives and friends working in the intelligence agencies and military of our country. I was deeply disappointed to see that anyone would be willing to harm our country by revealing one of our covert agents, as was done with Valerie Plame. It angers me that someone could be so disloyal to the United States as to do this for political gain.
Naturally, then, I am furious that your administration did just that. I suspect that as the investigation proceeds, you will distance yourself from Karl Rove. He is willing to take this hit for the cause. Indeed, he is willing to put aside ethics for his cause.
Please don't disappoint the American people by taking this course. Gain our respect by admitting to your mistake and never, ever doing something like this again.
Your administration and its supporters have made a point of questioning the loyalty of those who disagree with you. However, I have never seen any of your detractors do anything as blatantly disloyal to our country as this.
Please don't continue to be a party to it. It's never too late to do the right thing.

--Alexander Shearer

First, an essay on why this isn't such a big concern, and you really ought to go get some exercise.

Second, the BBC's Mark Urban, of Newsnight, as quoted in the July 25, 2005 issue of The New Yorker:

"The I.R.A. had a political arm, and a political goal, however unreal: they killed to get people to the table. What is there to negotiate with these people? An end to the American presence in Saudi Arabia? All right, we'll consider it. The elimination of the State of Israel? Hmmm, that may be a bit more difficult. The restoration of a universal Islamic calpihate? It may be a bit of a deal-breaker, that. This is not a program, really. It's a wraparound justification for a violence whose real end is the expiation of shame through massacre."

Earlier this week I found the oldest ancestor I can identify in my direct line of ancestry:

John Fenimore, born about 1480 in Newton Purcell, Oxford, England. Died on the fourth of April, 1541, in Tingewick, Buckingham, England.

One of my great, great, great and so forth grandfathers. James Fenimore Cooper was related to my ancestors on this side.

I'm sure a lot of you can track back farther than 525 years.

This is in response to this post about how short-sighted 1980s anti-Soviet policy built Al Qaeda. I liked my answer enough to want to repost it here:

In his book The Main Enemy, Milt Bearden talks about his time working with the Mujahadin against the Soviets. Though most of this is couched as a very positive experience -- he's almost gleeful about the destruction they caused in Soviet military units -- he also mentions how he was a little unsettled by the religious extremists. They were the ones who got things done, though, so the support went to them.

American foreign policy has been marked by many instances of dangerously short-term thinking and unrealistic assessment. Afghanistan is a pretty good example of this. The approach taken by Reagan was one of "any means necessary" to damage the Soviets without directly causing a war. To that end, inducing military and political attrition in Afghanistan seems to make sense.

However, the resource and political burden of Afghanistan was always dwarfed by the resource and political burden of simply facing down the United States. Even though we didn't necessarily know we were bleeding the Soviets to death just by forcing them to maintain an unrealistically large standing military (given the Soviet economy), we could calculate the relative costs they had to be incurring from Afghanistan versus their normal standing military. Based on this perspective, it isn't worth it to fund people who area /already/ killing Americans just to cause problems for the Soviets.

Of course, I think there was an extra motivation here, along the lines of "We had our Vietnam, now you fuckers get to have one, too." That, and the frustration of direct military action against the Soviets being unrealistic.

confusing-ad
Originally uploaded by parakkum.

This is an advertisement from the Al Jazeera website that's meant to promote their SMS mobile service. I'm not at all clear on how the imagery in this advertisement relates to the thing being advertised or even to the ad copy.

Mr. Bush --

I am writing to let you know that I am stunned by your failure as a president. I may have disagreed, sometimes severely, with the policy decisions and ethos of presidents prior to you, but none of them have been so stunningly incompetent. It is distressing to see the damaging effect you have had on our nation.

Before we went to war in Iraq, I believed that they possessed chemical and biological weapons and intended to make more. After the fact, I probably would have believed you if you, like David Kay, simply said "We made a mistake." But I can only conclude now that you willfully misrepresented many things in an effort to start a war with the intent of restructuring the Middle East.

Leaving that aside, your failure to address reality in your execution of the war and subsequent rebuilding of Iraq has led to many deaths among our soldiers and civilians and has now created a training area for Islamic militants. The situation can still be resolved successfully, if you or someone else -- with more competence than you have shown to date -- will actually define goals with associated metrics of success and failure.

The present crisis has convinced me that you are not specifically incompetent at foreign affairs but are, in fact, generally a failure. You said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we're having to deal with it and will."

I don't know if this was a willful misrepresentation to deflect blame, or if you were on vacation and couldn't be bothered to do research, but your statement is untrue. People were concerned about the failure to do upkeep of the levies, and of your dramatic funding cuts to same. Emergency preparedness exercises for New Orleans expected storm surges that would exceed the height of the current levees, flooding the city. Many, many people anticipated this problem, and worked very hard without your help to try and prevent the death of New Orleans.

You, sir, are personally incompetent, and you are dragging a good country down with you.

But there is still hope.

My simple advice is this -- try very hard to learn how to do the job. Stop making excuses for your failures. Stop setting up photo opportunities and scripted appearances. Stop bragging about your emergency measures when people are dying and CNN is more up-to-date than your emergency agency. Stop going on vacation -- the job is only yours for another few years, then you can retire.

Please do this right now. You're killing a great nation.

Sent today. I am angry.

Mr. Bush--

In your weekly radio address, you said this:

"All Americans can be certain our nation has the character, the resources, and the resolve to overcome this disaster. We will comfort and care for the victims. We will restore the towns and neighborhoods that have been lost in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. We'll rebuild the great city of New Orleans. And we'll once again show the world that the worst adversities bring out the best in America."

This is all true. Our nation does have the character, resources and resolve to overcome this disaster. Your ill-timed vacation and sick fascination with covering yourself and enriching a small group of allies curtailed our nation's response. The people on the ground did their jobs, when they were allowed to. Ordinary Americans, myself included, have donated to the effort to save lives. But because of your thoughtlessness, hundreds have died who could have been saved -- who had rescuers ready and able to save them, if only you'd led the way.

It is true that we, ordinary Americans, will comfort and care for victims -- even the relatives of those who died because you refused to act or listen, and have crippled our nation's emergency response.

We will restore these towns and neighborhoods, many of which might not have been lost had levees been maintained as they should. We will restore them even though many of their residents are dead, and many more have had their livelihoods destroyed. We will do this, of course, without any expectation of help from you. Unless we are, perhaps, already quite wealthy and due for a tax break.

The worst adversities do bring out the best in America -- at least, in the true Americans I know. So far, it has brought out the worst in you. Instead of strong, decisive leadership, you have given us craven weakness trying to hide itself from blame. You preach sacrifice then make sure that you and your friends need never face that sacrifice.

You're going to have many years after your term expires to consider your career as President.