Personal

Jun 23, 2015 — I decided recently to embrace my dilettantism. I don’t think there have been two consecutive days in my life where I wanted to pursue and learn the same ideas. Now mind you, the complete list of topics is finite and I cycle back eventually.

Jul 10, 2008 — I grew up assuming that people make their own way in the world. I thought it was up to me to make every decision, plan every move, open every door, and find my own way in my life and career. Only much later did I learn that I was doing it all wrong. Not only is my way much harder, it’s also completely miserable to be so isolated. Here’s an example. The place where I started making these wrong decisions was in college. I attended my classes, which in some cases were way below my capabilities, and in other cases were way above. Either way, at the end of class, I packed up my things and walked back to my room. I dreamed of being a scientist, just like I had since I was 10 years old. But all I did was go to class, I never spoke with any professors, nor was I ever approached by any. My talents started to appear in my sophomore year, but I was still doing things in this retarded way. Then in my junior year the first consequence of my nihilistic lifestyle happened, and I didn’t even really notice it for what it was until years later. I switched my major from Astronomy to Astrophysics, then I added a concentration (minor) in Math, and then I made Math a second major. This all happened within a couple of months. Even these bureaucratic thrashings didn’t raise any red flags in any administrators or professors. No one cared. So, I shifted my focus to math, threw away the pile of physics grad school applications I had, and requested a bunch of math ones. I went to graduate school for a year at Stony Brook, then transferred back to Columbia for the rest of my Ph.D., because my then-girlfriend, now-wife, was continuing on from Columbia undergrad to grad school.

Mar 16, 2008 — Alison was interviewed on one of our favorite podcasts, Jumping Monkeys. Here’s the episode page. She discusses home archives and how to approach saving your family’s stuff for the future. Cool!

Dec 13, 2007 — Over Thanksgiving, I was complaining about people who crowd forward when boarding a plane, even if their row hasn’t been called, so that when it is called, they get on first. And if they can get away with boarding before their row is called, they’ll do that too. Someone close to me retorted, “competition made the human race what it is today.” I haven’t stopped thinking about that remark ever since. Can this person be right? I dearly, dearly hope not. Because all I can think of in reply is, “yes, it did make us what we are – especially the World Wars and the Holocaust.”

Nov 30, 2007 — I’m listening to The Return of the King: The Complete Recordings at work, and I’m at the point near the (first) end when Frodo and Sam have just destroyed the ring (with Gollum’s unwitting help) and they’re escaping the flowing lava by standing on a rock, feeling a relieved. With all the events of the story to back up the scene, I think it’s truly moving to see these two regular guys, who together destroyed a great and senseless evil power. I actually see it as a very tragic moment, when two of the world’s great forces are being presented to us via the heightened drama of this point in the story: senseless evil/destruction/chaos on the one hand, and the fortitude and perseverance and good of the common person on the other hand. You can ask all sorts of questions at this point, like if the common person is so good, where is all the evil coming from? Why must the most ordinary and good people sustain such injury and sacrifice to ward off the worst effects of the evil?

Nov 19, 2007 — Has Masterpiece Theater always just been some British TV show? Lately they’ve been showing The Amazing Mrs. Prithcard, which felt like an American TV show that happened to be British. Is it a masterpiece? Did they pick it because they felt it was a masterpiece? Maybe they should rename Masterpiece Theater to “Some British TV Show”.

Sep 27, 2007 — A while back I wanted to read The Lord of the Rings aloud with my wife. We’ve read lots of books together this way, and I’m a huge LOTR fan, so I really wanted to share it. The problem is it’s very long and many people consider lots of it boring. So, I took a clever (if I do say so myself) shortcut! I went through the books and dog-eared ranges of pages where the plot differed from the movies in a way I thought significant or noteworthy. For example, I read the entire chapter “The scouring of the shire” because this was left out of the movie. I highlighted the differences in Denethor’s character as much as I could, as well as Faramir’s. Both were substantially diminished in moral quality in the movies.

Aug 10, 2006 — I recently heard of a book called The Jasons at the blog of a former colleague, Peter Woit. Since I spent the summer of 2004 doing classified math research for the government, I was very interested to hear of another such group. In a way, the Jasons are a sequel to the very successful Manhattan Project, and there is lots of overlap of personnel. The Jasons came into being in the aftermath of the Soviet launch of Sputnik, in 1960 to be exact.

Jul 26, 2006 — “Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”

Mar 12, 2006 — The central question I have been trying to satisfy myself about with these notes is the following: is there a way to formulate Intelligent Design as a scientific theory? (See part 1 and part 2.)

Mar 12, 2006 — This is a continuation of my discussion of ID (see part 1). Here in part 2 I have exerpted from Behe’s book in order to summarize his argument. I am using the 2003 trade paperback edition published by Free Press, lent to me by a work colleague.

Mar 12, 2006 — I am finally ready to write some definitive thoughts about Intelligent Design. I just finished reading Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box from 1996, and I’ve thought about it from the perspective of science, falsifiability, religion, and philosophy. I would like to be very careful about where I plan and do not plan to take issue with him, so let me start in Part 1 by delineating the argument.

Dec 10, 2005 — I’ve been meaning to write this down for a long time. There are two very widespread and very annoying idioms that I see a lot in amateur writing. The main example of the kind of writing I mean is product reviews on sites like Amazon, but I see it also on Macworld, CNet and other more professional sites.

Oct 19, 2005 — I just watched Contact again for the first time in a while. A major theme of the movie is that the goals of science and religion are so hard to untangle that the two main protagonists have a very complicated adult relationship based on it.

Oct 9, 2005 — There is a great deal of controversy at the moment over Intelligent Design (ID) being taught in science classrooms. I have always felt very strongly about the dangers faced by science in our society, and this crisis is a perfect example of what can happen without careful vigilance on the part of science teachers and practitioners.

Apr 26, 2005 — I’ve had poker on my mind since last Thanksgiving, specifically Texas Hold’em. At this point, I have special hold’em software, four poker strategy books and one nonfiction book about poker. I mostly study the books and play a bit with the software, but eventually I want to start a real-money account on one of the online poker sites. I feel that if I apply what’s in the books, then I can win money, which would be a very fun goal to shoot for. Of course, to avoid having a gambling problem I have to tread very carefully and lower my expectations within reason for the early stages. I have been procrastinating setting up a new checking account for my poker money both because I truly hesitate to take this step, and because I don’t feel I’m good enough yet.

Apr 8, 2005 — I don’t understand daylight savings time. No one I talk to has a clear idea of when and why it was invented. What country started it? What countries adhere to it? Why is Europe still doing it a week before the US?

Jan 17, 2005 — I visited my parents for the holidays again this year, and like last year I decided to read some of their C. S. Lewis collection. I felt like progressing on with his Christian works, and so I chose Mere Christianity.

Jul 17, 2004 — I’ve been renting Ken Burns’ Civil War shows lately, from Netflix. I thought I’d share a misconception I learned I had about the Civil War. My memory from school left me thinking that the war would involve a large set of complicated virtuosic battlefield maneuvers, and that I’d come to appreciate how all the famous generals were geniuses. In fact, I’d somehow developed the opinion that the generals during that war outshine generals in other wars, that through a coincidence of history, the best strategists somehow simultaneously appeared during that conflict.

Jun 1, 2004 — I’ve always thought Tolkien was essentially pessimistic, despite the happy ending of The Lord of the Rings. The power of Evil he describes, and the inevibatle comparisons to the horror of World War I make this a convincing point of view. The army of Gondor is forced to risk a suicidal attack against a formidable foe to even preserve their tiny ghost of a chance of victory.

Apr 17, 2004 — A new feature on Long Head is the new super-accurate “Greg Links” list on the left. Except for the other langmead.info sites, these links are the sites I’m actually actively reading every day.

Apr 17, 2004 — This winter I read three books by C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters and Surprised by Joy. I’ve been introduced to Lewis before, when I was young. I read the first several books of the Narnia series, and I read the whole Out of the Silent Planet trilogy. Back then, however, I was looking for pure entertainment from those books, and although they delivered it, the religious level was also apparent, and detracted from their enjoyment for me.

Mar 26, 2004 — After nearly three years of development, MathType 5 for Mac has been released. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m looking forward to moving on to other projects, but for now I’m happy it’s finished.

Feb 12, 2004 — I’ll be adding my thoughts soon about three books by C. S. Lewis that I’ve recently finished. Although I had a few false starts with the Narnia books as a youth, these were read more to find out about the real Christian thinker, and because I wanted to branch out from Tolkien to some of his colleagues.

Dec 4, 2003 — A few weeks ago I decided to put some thought into why I have so much trouble getting good at real-time strategy computer games. I went ahead and submitted it to GameSpot, my favorite gaming news site, which does a weekly set of op-ed pieces with a slot for a reader to opine. Well, my article was accepted! Have a read – I’m the second one down.