Monday, March 2, 2009
Today's Jumble: ASTHMA
Today's Jumble gave me a little trouble. I would expect any word with these letters to have at least one vowel in the interior. When I finally grokked that the answer was ASTHMA, I had to look it up in the dictionary because I wasn't sure of the spelling: the TH isn't even pronounced. A couple of minutes of poking around in the dictionary revealed the spelling. Who'd a thunk it?
"The Trap" by Daniel Brook
Brother remarks on "The Trap":
At first glance I was ready to blow it off as garbage. But then I read one of the reviews. I don't think I have heard anyone else say what he is saying for at least 30 years. Selling out used to be a sin, but then we grow up and get a mortgage and all of a sudden you've got bills to pay.I thought it was very well written. He harps a little too much on the poor wealthy yuppies who can't do what they really want to do because they have to pay New York rents, but...the overall theme of being trapped in economic serfdom by a free-for-all system, resonated with me.
Plus at the end he talks a bit about Po Bronson, so I thought you might like it.
I liked it a lot, and was even a little peeved that a 20-something could so elegantly formulate and articulate these views that I've been struggling with for 40+ years.
I like to think I didn't sell out, but if I didn't it was probably more to dumb luck than any idealistic chops on my part.
Looked up Po on Wikipedia. How did he get to be such a success? Or rather, what did I do wrong? Or maybe, what's wrong with me? His story reads like a fairy tale.
Grand Rapids Mike responds:
They made him a success because he give an over-simplified black-or-white take-it-or-leave-it view of happiness.
In other words, he sold out nuance for obviousness.
Close Call
It must be the stupid mirrors. Either that or I'm getting old and decrepit. That cannot be the case, so it must be the mirrors.
I stopped at the intersection where the side road joins the main road. I looked both ways, then I pull out to turn left onto the main road. Halfway into the intersection I must have seen something out of the corner of my eye because I stopped short and watched a white Crown Victoria slide past me about a foot away from the right front corner of my truck and going 35 MPH. Geez, that was close.
My son John tells me the other driver apparently did not even notice us. This is the second time this has happened in the last couple of months. I need to get those mirrors replaced.
I was just looking at some motor vehicle accident animations/reconstructions last night on the web, too. Some were minor, some were horrendous. This incident this afternoon could have been really bad. The animations were done by the same company that did the video of the airliner landing on the Hudson river that I posted here a day or so ago.
I stopped at the intersection where the side road joins the main road. I looked both ways, then I pull out to turn left onto the main road. Halfway into the intersection I must have seen something out of the corner of my eye because I stopped short and watched a white Crown Victoria slide past me about a foot away from the right front corner of my truck and going 35 MPH. Geez, that was close.
My son John tells me the other driver apparently did not even notice us. This is the second time this has happened in the last couple of months. I need to get those mirrors replaced.
I was just looking at some motor vehicle accident animations/reconstructions last night on the web, too. Some were minor, some were horrendous. This incident this afternoon could have been really bad. The animations were done by the same company that did the video of the airliner landing on the Hudson river that I posted here a day or so ago.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Ross Gets Published
Notes from the Grand Tour, American style. Page 20 of the current issue of the Oregon Voice (PDF file).
Why So Serious?
Carolyn Hax, one of the new Dear Abby/Ann Landers breed of columnists said something that hit pretty close to home.
The Carolyn Hax links go to the Washington Post, and they require registration to gain access. Her column shows up on the same page as the Jumble on Sunday's.
... I would guess that 1. you equate minor conflict (your sister's disappointment) with major pain (train wreck), and 2. you think you can prevent the pain.I suspect I do this with family, or maybe just with my finances. I need to pay more attention to the big issues (potential train wrecks) and not so much to the minor complaints. But, geez, I sure hate the whining, not that anybody in my family ever whines.
The Carolyn Hax links go to the Washington Post, and they require registration to gain access. Her column shows up on the same page as the Jumble on Sunday's.
Fun With Numbers
I have been fooling around with a program to compute the Ackermann function. I say fooling because I haven't really put any serious analysis into it. I have just been trying different things to see what happens.
One thing I did was install the GMP library on my Linux box. I changed my program to use the functions provided by this library instead of just performing regular arithmetic. Being as the results of the Ackermann function can run into thousands of digits, I was going to need something. I thought about writing one myself, and that might have been fun, but let's try and focus, shall we?
I am beginning to think that a simple minded implementation of Ackermann is not going to work. I may be wrong, but I suspect that there might not be enough virtual memory on the planet to accommodate a simple minded solution.
Say the answer (to a particular evaluation) runs to 10,000 digits. Two to the 10th power (2^10) is 1024, or roughly one thousand, or three decimal digits. 10,000 digits is roughly 1000^3333, or 2^33330. A trillion is roughly 2^40. So say we can get by with 16 bytes (2^4) of stack space for each call. So if the depth of our recursion is proportional to the number of digits in the answer, then we will need 2^33334 bytes of stack. A terabyte is 2^40. 2^33334 / 2^40 = 2^33,294.
Notice that neither the number of bytes of stack per call nor the number of bytes in a terrabyte make any real impact on the original number.
Of course it may be that the amount of stack space required is NOT proportional to the size of the result, in which case it might be possible to arrive at a solution.
But then there is the time involved. Even at the fastest clock speed incrementing a number from zero till it has 10,000 digits is going to take a long time. Strikes me now that the amount of time required is going to be similar to the amount of space we computed above. In other words, we won't have an answer before our Sun burns out, or goes Nova.
So how do we compute the value of the Ackermann function? Someone was put together a simple mathematical expression that purports to compute the value of the Ackermann function. So one fairly simple test I could do would be to implement that expression and see it if delivers the same result as reported elsewhere.
But how do know if that is the correct answer? That is going to require analysis of the original definition to see it does in fact correspond to the expression in question. That is going to require thinking.
Of course the real question, is why am I even fooling with this? Same reason I do the Jumble (most) every morning: I need a little mental exercise everyday. Keeps me from getting bored. Also I am acquiring L33T Linux skills by mucking about with GMP and Eclipse.
One thing I did was install the GMP library on my Linux box. I changed my program to use the functions provided by this library instead of just performing regular arithmetic. Being as the results of the Ackermann function can run into thousands of digits, I was going to need something. I thought about writing one myself, and that might have been fun, but let's try and focus, shall we?
I am beginning to think that a simple minded implementation of Ackermann is not going to work. I may be wrong, but I suspect that there might not be enough virtual memory on the planet to accommodate a simple minded solution.
Say the answer (to a particular evaluation) runs to 10,000 digits. Two to the 10th power (2^10) is 1024, or roughly one thousand, or three decimal digits. 10,000 digits is roughly 1000^3333, or 2^33330. A trillion is roughly 2^40. So say we can get by with 16 bytes (2^4) of stack space for each call. So if the depth of our recursion is proportional to the number of digits in the answer, then we will need 2^33334 bytes of stack. A terabyte is 2^40. 2^33334 / 2^40 = 2^33,294.
Notice that neither the number of bytes of stack per call nor the number of bytes in a terrabyte make any real impact on the original number.
Of course it may be that the amount of stack space required is NOT proportional to the size of the result, in which case it might be possible to arrive at a solution.
But then there is the time involved. Even at the fastest clock speed incrementing a number from zero till it has 10,000 digits is going to take a long time. Strikes me now that the amount of time required is going to be similar to the amount of space we computed above. In other words, we won't have an answer before our Sun burns out, or goes Nova.
So how do we compute the value of the Ackermann function? Someone was put together a simple mathematical expression that purports to compute the value of the Ackermann function. So one fairly simple test I could do would be to implement that expression and see it if delivers the same result as reported elsewhere.
But how do know if that is the correct answer? That is going to require analysis of the original definition to see it does in fact correspond to the expression in question. That is going to require thinking.
Of course the real question, is why am I even fooling with this? Same reason I do the Jumble (most) every morning: I need a little mental exercise everyday. Keeps me from getting bored. Also I am acquiring L33T Linux skills by mucking about with GMP and Eclipse.
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