Marked for Dearth

One woman’s account of riding a motorcycle through the Chernobyl disaster area is back online, complete with new photos and commentary.

Back in January, Paul Graham wrote a thought-provoking essay on “moral fashions”, behaviors/beliefs considered moral/proper by the inhabitants of a particular time/place. Hmm - that may be one slash too many. Anyway, it’s in your best interest to read it. Here’s a representative excerpt:

If a statement is false, that’s the worst thing you can say about it. You don’t need to say that it’s heretical. And if it isn’t false, it shouldn’t be suppressed. So when you see statements being attacked as x-ist or y-ic (substitute your current values of x and y), whether in 1630 or 2030, that’s a sure sign that something is wrong. When you hear such labels being used, ask why.

On a somewhat related note, recent world events have led me to the irrefutable conclusion that harmful memes are behind most of the world’s problems. Expect a more complete, more rant-like treatment of this topic in the near future.

Last year, a musicians’ strike shut down eighteen Broadway musicals for a few days. Citing acoustic advances, producers wanted to scale down the number of musicians required for each production. Musicians, meanwhile, worried that such a change would eventually lead to the end of all live music on Broadway.

The day after the strike began, the professor of a jazz class I was taking did his part to rally the troops. Shelving his lecture on Dizzy Gillespie, he launched into a long, pointed rant about greed and class warfare. Musicians, it turns out, deserve to hold certain jobs and get paid certain wages. Every time a musician gets fired, an angel catches a beating - or something along those lines.

In the past, displaced Broadway musicians could always use their audience entrancement (entrapment?) skills to moonlight as car salesmen, but new robots from Honda and Toyota are programmed to add insult to injury. Not only do they play the trumpet, walk, wave their arms, and bow (the Juilliard core curriculum), but one named Crazy HAL may try to sell you a lemon some day.

What’s even more demeaning? To make the robots cute and non-threatening, their creators made them only four feet tall. An especially endearing “chubby” model is reportedly in the works. Some worldly musicians are taking their last chance to bow out gracefully.

On March 9, Florida Gulf Coast University opened an art exhibit called “911 Days: A Dialogue with Words and Images” that it hopes will prompt attendees to more thoroughly reflect on the events that have transpired since September 11, 2001. Yesterday, on March 11, at least one source covering the horrific train station bombings in Madrid reported that the attacks occurred exactly 911 days after 9/11.

So which date actually follows 911 days after 9/11? Python says neither:

I wonder who goofed. Did a journalist or administrator, all too eager to connect the dots, simply overlook the error? Was there a scheduling conflict? Did somebody forget to carry the one?

Some people find solitude in a quiet room; others like to lose themselves in a crowd of anonymous passers-by on a busy street. One woman has a better idea: grab a Geiger counter, hop on a motorcycle, and cruise the Chernobyl disaster area.

Her account is a strangely satisfying combination of haunting photographs and topical commentary (in broken English) with occasional light-hearted asides. Even though the accident occurred only eighteen years ago, many of the scenes have an eerie, post-apocalyptic feel.

But maybe I’m just recalling one Fallout cutscene too many.

[UPDATE: I have removed the link as the site appears to be down for maintenance.]

[Via Slashdot]

Each year, a number of well known organizations sponsor national and international programming competitions. Even though I haven’t taken a personal interest in these events since high school, I’ve discovered that reading over the rules and prize descriptions makes for good procrastination. But recently, I’ve started to wonder about the real function (pun intended) of such contests. What kinds of competitions are out there, why do organizations sponsor them, and whom do they really serve?

The self-professed “oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world” is the ACM IC Programming Contest, sponsored by the ACM and IBM. It is a multi-tiered competition for university students that begins with numerous regional contests and ends with a single world finals event. Since the ACM is so firmly entrenched in CS departments across the country, participants who do well can probably expect some amount of recognition within the academic community in addition to tangible rewards.

Google also ran a programming contest in each of the last two years. The first one challenged entrants to do “something interesting” with a large collection of pre-parsed web pages. Daniel Egnor won with what eventually became the Search By Location feature on Google Labs. Last year’s contest, unlike the previous one, was timed and tournament-style.

Before I give my last example, let me return to a question I posed earlier. Who benefits from these competitions? Well, participants benefit because they presumably enjoy competing. Winners benefit in the form of prizes and alpha-geek bragging rights. Corporate sponsors benefit because these competitions are good for publicity, help recruit smart people for employment, and - as in the case of geographic search - may actually produce marketable software.

Microsoft has discovered yet another way to extract value from the contests they sponsor: use entrants’ submissions to promote their own platforms and technologies. Although the company attests that Imagine Cup is “for those who take a purer pleasure in discovery, art, and innovation”, spend a minute reading the web site and you may notice a few impurities:

Contest entries will be judged in part on their abilities to showcase the Windows platform and the .NET Framework.
…
By accepting a prize, winners must agree to allow Microsoft to use participant’s name, trademarks, or company logos on presentation slides and other .NET marketing materials.

The other contests do not mandate a specific language or platform. If you were deciding whether to take part in a programming contest, would terms like these influence your decision? Do you find them ideal, acceptable, dubious, or outright unethical? Post your thoughts.

Going through with a name change requires many different kinds of hoop-jumping: a court appearance, five or six mail correspondences with the courthouse and a newspaper company, anywhere from two to four months time, and a few hundred dollars. Once the change is legal, I’d also need to contact a few state and federal agencies to update paperwork.

The change will still happen, but uncertainty about how long the process will take means that I’m going to wait until after graduation. On the plus side, I’ve:

• renewed my distaste for legal forms and jargon
• learned that adding “-site:com -site:org” to a Google query does wonders to filter out junk when searching for official government information
• decided against going with only one name - it may have worked for Gordon Matthew Sumner or Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre, but it’s not for me

I haven’t settled on a replacement last name yet, but this extension will give me some more time to consider alternatives carefully. Thanks again to everyone who’s made suggestions.

[Background: Part 1, Part 2]

Technology is most appreciable when it improves the things we use most. With that in mind, I bring word of the Toilet Reservation System, Version 2.0.

A combination of software and wired locks, the TRS intends to eliminate the frustration of taking a trip to your office bathroom and finding all the stalls occupied. The system seems fairly feature-packed already, although this one strikes me as a bit odd: “You can now book ahead by up to six months and can even set a recurring booking for the same time each day.” That will come in handy when the four-day-old burrito I plan to have for lunch on August 17 disagrees with me…

I can think of at least three improvements:

1. Allow people to indicate the urgency of their trip. Because sometimes, you really have to go.
2. Throw the Jasmin Washlet into the mix. Once I enter a stall, the TRS should have this smart toilet (recently deployed at Google) automatically recall my preferred settings.
3. Finally, use Real Time Credentials to manage the access privileges. How else will we bring this technology to busy construction sites and low Earth orbit?

I’d like to call attention to this quote from a recent Kuro5hin article: “Whether you agree with Bush’s stance on the issue of homosexual marriage or not, the fact that the constitutional process is being discussed by citizens across the country can only be a good thing.” Nevermind the rest of the article. I’m more interested in challenging (read: cynically whining about) the common notion that current events like these educate people about civics or constitutional law and therefore have a useful function all their own.

Now, I realize that irreverent college students prone to sarcasm are a poor sample of the citizenry, so my personal experience may be atypical. But the marriage amendment proposal has moved neither me, nor anyone I know, to discuss - say - ratification requirements or the poll tax. I know exactly as much about the constitution today as I learned in high school, and I suspect (probably for worse) that it will stay that way indefinitely.

Remember how, after the 2000 presidential election, people claimed that the Florida recount was teaching children about the nuances of the electoral process. How many of those kids do you think can explain the “electrical college” today?

Two years ago, Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner branded PVR owners as thieves and reminded all viewers that “your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots.” What, did you really think those bathroom breaks you’ve been taking all these years would never catch up with you?

Fortunately, most of us rejected this assessment and returned to our lawless mid-show sandwich fixing no worse for the wear. Of course, nobody likes being called a crook, and people wondered whether Kellner was wise to admonish the public with his revenue so closely tied to viewership. I mean, who could possibly treat their customers any worse?

It’s now pretty clear that the broadcasting and music industries share a common problem: new technologies are challenging business models that they have relied on for decades. The RIAA has had to deal with it first, which may partially explain their single-minded determination to bring grandmothers and 12-year-old girls to justice. But in a few years time, PVRs may become ubiquitous, and broadcasters will surely find new ways to pay the bills.

So go ahead and enjoy that TiVo - while you still can.

DISCLAIMER: Though I own and operate a home-built PVR, I have only used it to squeeze in refrigerator runs when my Mayo-Mustard Equilibrium is seriously threatened.