Northernplanets

I don’t think much of Amazon’s supposedly-targeted advertising emails, or “spam” as I call them. It’s annoying enough that they keep sending me emails pushing their products: I know what Amazon sells, don’t call me, I’ll call you. But what really gets me is emails like the following:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

Because you’ve bought Mangas, you might like to know you can download free shows from Amazon’s huge new anime store and save up to 30% on seasons. Watch them tonight on your PC or TiVo box.

Mangas? I’ve never bought a manga video in my life, not from Amazon, not from anyone.

And in fact, while I am very interested in purchasing videos by download for watching on my PC, Amazon isn’t interested in selling them to me. They know where I live, so I don’t know why they keep trying to sell me something that they have no intention of providing.

I recently came across this post that briefly discussed the loss of life in the trenches of World War One:

1.4 million French killed in WWI, of a population of 39 million.  3.6% of the total population, and mostly young men.  Fewer than 1 million U.S. soldiers have been killed in all wars in our history and that includes Confederate soldiers.

I had never quite realised just how badly France had suffered in WW1. I’ve frequently been critical of France’s spiteful ill-treatment of Germany after the war, treatment which probably contributed more than anything else to WW2. But, considering the blood they shed to defend their homes, with more than one in ten people killed or wounded, I’m more understanding of them being such poor winners.

I still think they were wrong to do so, but their actions are more understandable.

France had 11% of its people killed or wounded; Austro-Hungary 10%; Germany 9%; Great Britain 8%; Italy nearly 6% and even Australia about 5%.

Not that I’m particularly in a hurry to see the extinction of Homo sap (a.k.a. Pan narrans), but there is something absolutely fascinating about the idea of human beings disappearing from the planet. It isn’t necessary to think that we’re some sort of “cancer” or “virus” to wonder what would happen if humanity disappeared. Watching New York city turning into wilderness in I Am Legend was thrilling, scary and poignant all at once.

That makes the History Channel’s documentary Life After People something worth watching, if you can find it.

I don’t know the context behind this interview with Harlan Ellison. From everything I’ve heard about him, I doubt that it has anything to do with the current writers strike, but I could be wrong.

I missed this when it happened, but it’s never too late for a bit of schadenfreude: SCO was deregistered on December 27th. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.

This is what happens when your flagship product is a great big steaming pile of manure, and instead of fixing it, you try to bluff on a great big hand of nothing by claiming that IBM stole your precious, precious software and put it into Linux. It might take a while, but even Microsoft’s money won’t save you.

Here’s their share price five-year chart:

(Click for larger image.)

If you were one of the gullible fools who bought into their story in late 2003, wouldn’t you be feeling silly about now?

Here are a couple of links to short but interesting blog posts:

Mudge from Balderdash writes about bogeymen:

The early fears of the cold war, right after the Soviets acquired atomic weapons, and in the era of the “hordes” of Chinese crossing the border in Korea, were hysterical.  The hysterics led to McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee.  It led to personal bomb shelters in the early sixties.  [...]  Gradually, although the Soviets remained rather belligerent, the hysteria subsided.

The post-9/11 era is similar.  The hysteria is, as largely in the 50s, Republican generated and it is greedily ingested by those unfamiliar with cognitive procedures.  The enemy is now the great undifferentiated bulk that is Islam.  And how inconvenient it is that the bogeyman is not a singular horror, but a mixture of Arab, Pakistani, Irani, Turkish (who, of course, get a pass) and (let’s not forget the largest Islamic nation) Indonesian nationalities that practice two, historically incompatible forms of Islam.  As a result, rather than focusing on the small, radical Wahabi sect exemplified by Osama bin Laden, which is too small to generate an appropriate hysterical response, the Bushies have expanded it to all of Islam, most of which is not radicalized against Western civilization. 

And he also talks about the concept of “The Great Wall Of Intellect“, that people — well, okay, he names George W. Bush, but it applies equally to many others — can put their ideas and thoughts behind a wall, proof against any external influences.

I’m not sure that actually applies to Dubyah. He seems to be awfully incurious about, well, everything, but as President he has to have opinions on many things. Unfortunately, he’s ended up surrounded by neo-cons, despite not being one himself. (Or at least, he didn’t start off as one.) Dick Cheney in particular has been known as “the Co-President” for the extraordinary level of influence he’s had in getting Dubyah to swallow Dick’s opinions whole.

Regardless of where the Junior President is getting his ideas from, he’s certainly open to external influence: anybody who flip-flops as often as he does can’t be entirely closed-minded.

Just think, if not for Karl Rove and the neo-cons, Dubyah could have been known for nothing more than being the Party President, spending most of his time on holiday at his ranch or entertaining friends in the Whitehouse. Somehow I doubt that the country would be worse off after eight years of inattention.

At the risk of being hit by vast waves of comment spam, I’ve disabled moderation on this blog. Now anyone can comment, provided that their comment passes WordPress’ automatic spam detectors.

Brave or fool-hardy? Time will tell.

Here’s a trick question for those who find the Monty Hall Problem too easy.

Suppose you have two five-card poker hands dealt from separate decks. You are told that the first hand contains at least one ace, and that the second hand contains the ace of spades. Which hand is more likely to contain at least one more ace?

(Problem courtesy of the Quantum Pontiff, with the solution found here.)

People’s guesses over at the Quantum Pontiff site typically were that the probabilities would be the same, or that the first hand would be more likely to contain one more ace. Typical reasoning is something like this:

In the first hand, we’re told that it contains an ace, but not which one. So it could be the ace of spades: the answer for the first hand includes the answer for the second, so must be bigger.

Intuitively obvious, but incorrect.

One commentator makes an excellent point:

Here’s my general rule that I also try to get my students to use (especially the pre-med folks I teach in my intro. class).

Rule #1 (I have others): Don’t overthink the problem!! Note this is really just a variation on K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid)
[...]
Before asking the question, I try to get my students to learn Rule #2: Make sure you ask the right question.

Ask the right question, and you find that the actual answer is the opposite of intuition: the second hand is more likely to contain another ace.

Unintuitive, but if you do the maths, it is absolutely correct. I’m not going to reproduce the maths here — follow the links for it. And remember: this is why ordinary blokes will never beat the casino in the long term: they hire mathematicians to work this stuff out, we try to guess.

If you’re still not convinced, I created a little quick-and-dirty simulation in Python. Here are the results:
Total of 10000 trials.
Number of trials where an ace was drawn: 3412
Given there is an ace in the hand, what is the probability of another ace? 0.124853458382
Given there is the Ace of Spades in the hand, what is the probability of another ace? 0.228758169935


Sure enough, the second hand is more likely to contain another ace.

(Note that the probabilities found in that run of the program are not the same as the exact probabilities. The program calculates the probability based on a random sample, not an exact value based on every possible result.)

For those interested in this sort of thing, after the cut I have included the source code of the program so you can play with it yourself.

(more…)

Let’s suppose you are Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller, and you’ve been appointed head of a senate committee charged with investigating the widespread and illegal wiretapping of American citizens. You’ve previously written a personal, hand-written letter to Vice-President Dick Chaney expressing your concern about the spying on people without judicial oversight.

Let’s further suppose that, out of the blue, Verizon and AT&T executives start sending you cheques as donations for your re-election campaign. As this graph shows, not a lot of cheques: less than $50,000 in total. Neither company had given you more than petty cash in the past.

Naturally, you do the dishonorable thing and immediately begin campaigning for retroactive immunity for Verizon and AT&T. Surprised?

No, I don’t suppose you are.

More here, here and here.

[Correction: in the first post of this, I mistakenly called the Senator John instead of Jay.]

An interesting example of the bellwether principle: all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, a dozen people suddenly send PZ Myers links to a story about an American atheist couple who were prohibited from adopting a child because of their lack of religious beliefs — from 1970.

As Myers writes:

Yeesh — now I discover this is old news, from 1970. Why did so many people suddenly send this in to me, anyway?

Good question. The story was on reddit, and digg, and probably other sites as well. It was the second most emailed story on the Time website. Is there a Pip on the Internet?

Silly question. Of course there is.

The story might be nearly forty years old, but it is still relevant today:

Judge Camarata denied the Burkes’ right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes’ “high moral and ethical standards,” he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that “no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience.”

Hmm… one wonders what would happen should somebody decide that Almighty God demanded human sacrifice? Sounds like New Jersey would be the state to move to.

Judge Camarata was concerned that atheist parents would prejudice or prevent the child from freely choosing a religion. Judges are generally quite intelligent, trained in law, well over the average in IQ, but notice that they can still have mental blind spots. Camarata no doubt would not have batted an eye at the thought that religious parents, be they Baptist or Catholic or Jewish or Methodist, prejudice or prevent their children from freely choosing any other religion. At least for religions he approved of.

The ruling against the Burkes was reversed in 1971. I imagine that part of the reason for the reversal was the very next clause of the law, which Camarata conveniently didn’t quote: “…nor under any pretense whatever be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his faith and judgment”.

Like Richard Dawkins, Myers believes that the religious indoctrination of children is a serious problem, a real form of child abuse. The typical reaction from the more… excitable… Christians and Creationists has been hysterical claims that Dawkins wants to steal your children if you take them to Sunday School. Myers says:

Now we can understand it all as a perfect example of projection: if you don’t take your children to Sunday school, the Christians will try to take your children away.

[...] I hadn’t known that theists had in the past tried to remove children from atheists. No wonder some freaked out at Dawkins’ description of religious indoctrination as child abuse…again, it’s projection.