Brain Dump

We decided to do our presentation today in suits and ties. Which is, of course, totally overkill. Like, to a silly degree. But fun nonetheless.

Which brings me to something I realize I don’t talk about much: secretly, in my heart of hearts, I think dressing up is crazy cool. Like, sometimes I look for excuses to break out the tux or a suit just because, well, I’m weird enough to think they’re fun to wear.

Some of you may (or may not have, who knows) have noticed a shift in wardrobe this semester. I’ve been, rather consciously, trying to be a bit dressier. Which means long pants and a belt and no more tshirts for the most part. Mostly I’m trying to wear shirts that don’t have to be tucked in (because that’s just not all that comfortable in general). I don’t know precisely why, but it seemed like the thing to do for some reason. Also, my shirts now have pockets! You can never have too many pockets! (How did I survive before I could carry a bunch of writing implements on me at all times?)

Next step, then, is to find a new conditioner. The one I’ve been using is really good at detangling and keeping hair texture pretty nice, but it doesn’t add much in the way of shine. (Body’s not a problem with my hair, so I don’t need anything there.) I guess that’ll go on my list of things to experiment with this summer or something.

Thomas

Tonight was Delanne’s birthday celebration. In one of those odd coincidences of our family, we actually celebrated on her birthday instead of some day sort of close to it. This is, needless to say, sort of rare for us. Schedules rarely align quite like this.

It was good, I definitely enjoyed it. But two things were less than ideal: first, location. We probably would have been better off going somewhere that was quieter and less crowded. Two, time. Apparently Marie had to meet someone at 20:15, which meant that we just didn’t have as much time as would have been nice.

I mean, twenty days and counting. My parents leave the country in three weeks. We’re looking at something like a 12 hour time difference. I’m really going to miss them. A lot. And I don’t see Delanne or Marie nearly often enough anyway. The older I get, the more awesome I realize my family is, and the less I see of them. It’s sort of weird, and sad, and… I don’t know.

Anyway, I’ve got a group presentation tomorrow for my Complex Organizations class. I’m one of a team of three. One of the guys is totally on top of things. Organized a meeting, got his notes worked up, emailed me his PowerPoint slides, and has been really good about staying in touch by phone. The other guy… Ugh. He’s why people hate group projects in college. Showed up to our meeting last night having not read his material. We printed it up for him again, and he didn’t read it then either. He went to “go help his mom with her computer” and was going to “be back before 23:00″. Instead he apparently went to a bar and never showed back up. He texted good-group member to say he’d have his material to me by 08:00 this morning. I still haven’t heard from him at all.

We’re scrambling to fill in and do the presentation with just two people. We’re not sure if he’s going to show up, and if he is if he’ll have anything prepared. And this is a big chunk of our grade.

Ah well. Things’ll work out, I hope.

Thomas

I got an email today that advised me that I didn’t get the fellowship I applied for. They were only awarding twenty of them, and they apparently had a ridiculously large candidate pool. It may not have helped that the sort of stuff I want to look at is… pretty nontraditional.

Surprisingly (or not), I’m not really upset. A bit disappointed, of course, but not depressed or anything. However, it does put me in an interesting position financially.

When I first started my job with the City, they handled tuition reimbursement in a way that was extremely friendly for students. The University would defer payment deadlines until the end of the semester, at which point the City would evaluate your grades and, if you had a 2.5 GPA or higher for the semester, pay the University. This meant that you didn’t have to have any actual money to pay your tuition. Assuming you kept your grades decent all you needed to pay for was class materials.

The University has decided to change policy. They will no longer be deferring payment until the end of the semester. Now you must have the semester paid for up front or they’ll drop your schedule (just like for any other student). At the same time, the City isn’t going to reimburse you for a semester you goofed off in, so they won’t be handing out any money until the end of a semester after they look at your grades.

This presents an obvious cash-flow problem. It’s not that tuition isn’t in my budget (I am confident, after all, that I can accomplish a 2.5 GPA). It’s just not in the budget right now. Which means I’ve got to find some way to get the money to pay tuition up front once, and then use the reimbursement at the end of each semester to fund the next one.

Which means probably means a loan. This is further complicated by the fact that my plans to attend graduate school make budget planning after graduation in spring of 2008 rather difficult. So… I’m currently looking at short term loans (12 to 18 months).

And that, in turn, means radical budget reassessments. Because while I can pay off the loan with reimbursement money, I can’t do so until I actually graduate (since I’ll be rolling reimbursement money over into funding the next semester). I now have to figure out if I can afford a monthly payment roughly equivalent to a new car. The only alternative I can come up with at the moment would be to take a semester or two off to work full time instead of taking the money from the bank. But that would likely mean delaying graduation by a year…

So… I guess I’m, in part, commiserating, and in part tossing out a “hey, anyone else got a good idea?” So… do you?

Thomas

And today this one does. It’s sort of weird, I feel like it’s been more than a week off. It’s going to be a busy week school-wise.

I have to finish redrafting a paper on Kripke’s discussion of name-references being determined by complex causal chains rather than by description. It’s been interesting: we’ve spent the entire semester in Phil of Language talking about names. I’m enjoying it, but I do think that it’s really solidifying my thoughts that I’m about at the end of my interest in serious philosophy. I imagine I’ll always be reading and writing some, but I don’t think I’m going to want to do it seriously. Good thing I’ve got other plans, huh?

I have to reread the third chapter of The 9/11 Report so that we can finalize our group presentation for Thursday. This is the chapter on shifting trends in counter-terrorism made in response to 9/11. It’s pretty interesting, and the class (Complex Organizations) is really rocking my world. It’s probably the most topical class (in terms of the stuff I really want to study) that I’ve taken yet, and certainly the most topical class this semester.

I need to find time to go to the library and return some books. This would be the city library, which means it’s not precisely on my way to class. I’ll think of something, I guess.

Actually, the Phil of Language class has been radically different from any other philosophy class I’ve taken at Auburn. I’m pretty sure that it’s not really the sort of philosophy class I like. Our papers have been information summaries rather than seriously analytical. And I did somewhat poorly on the first one because I failed to provide the right answers (the ones discussed in class). This has been… somewhat stressful. I feel like I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m good at the philosophy I’ve done before. I analyze well, I can summarize positions, I can interpret, and I can criticize. I don’t feel like I’m very skilled at the sort of paper-writing we seem to be doing for this class. Ah well…

Thomas

Hopefully this doesn’t turn out to be an unintentional April Fool’s joke on me, but I’d like to get back on the daily updates thing. I feel good when I do, and I realize that a lot of you who may care don’t know some important stuff.

Like… next month my parents will live on the other side of the world from me. Just a few last details to clean up, and poof, they’re boarding a plane. It’s… weird in a way. I mean, instead of all the kids growing up and leaving the nest, it’s the parents who are bailing. As the time gets closer I think that my dad and I (who are very similar in the way we approach emotional stuff) are both growing more and more aware of how much we’re going to miss having everyone together.

When it was all in the planning stages, and even just a couple of months ago when the clock was ticking down, it was mostly intellectual. But now, as the deadline approaches, I’m seeing just how difficult this might be. I’m used to being able to call my mom or dad up and saying, “Hey, wanna go grab lunch on Wednesday?” and that’s not going to be an option any more. I’m still not sure what I think about it all.

Like… I got a new car. I “traded in” the 89 Daihatsu Charade for a 2006 Ford Taurus (with the eight body trunk). It’s weird, I’ve never owned a car with a warranty still in force. It drives pretty nice though, and I now have a car that I would trust to make it more than three miles on the Interstate.

Like… Jon, Shreyas, and I are rocking the Four Nations. Every time we talk about it something exciting comes of the discussion. I may have to revive my blog and talk about it. We’ll see.

Like… They changed the way that the University handles tuition reimbursement from the City. Now instead of deferring payment to the end of the semester so that the City can evaluate grades before deciding whether to reimburse, the University is going to require payment up-front. But the City doesn’t hand out money until grades are in. This means that I have to come up with $2,700 or so in order to pay up front and the City will pay me back at the end of the semester.

This is going to be difficult. My budget is pretty limited, and optimized to save what it can, but $2,700 is right out. It’s looking like I may have to talk to my bank about some short-term loans. Oh joy.

Still, I think I can probably swing that. I’ve got some stuff that could work as collateral. I feel really bad for some of the other students here who probably can’t get student loans, at least not reasonable ones, and who couldn’t beg, borrow, or steal the money from anywhere else. It’s going to really suck for them.

Like… I took a vacation thing last week to the mountains. It really deserves its own post because it was tremendously relaxing (and I got to hang with my favorite aunt and uncle and meet my cousin’s new wife). I’ll just provide a favorite highlight!

We stayed in a cabin in the foothills of the Appalachians. In the bathroom adjacent to the master bedroom there was a large bath tub. Now, I’m a pretty big guy, so I don’t fit in normal bath tubs so good. But I could almost stretch all the way out in this one. I took some really nice long relaxing baths. (And, of course, getting to spend time with my parents before they leave the country was good too.)

Oh, and I got this amusing video of Delanne firing a 130-grain load .270 rifle. (For those who don’t know, the .270 is a pretty dang big rifle round. You can get them up to 150-grains, but… well a 130-grain round is enough to removed your hand if you take one in the wrist.) I’ll have to upload it to share at some point, but watching her rock back under the recoil is not nearly as awesome as seeing the maniacal grin on her face as she starts to reload.

So, I guess we’ll see if I manage to update regularly. Wish me luck!

Thomas

If you haven’t seen me around recently it’s probably because I’ve been crazy-busy. Working on this application, doing some reading in feminist media studies, doing a lot of reading in organizations and community, reading foundational philosophy of language, and making notes and doing research on some really random topics. (I’m sorry, Mo!)

Some friends you are! I ask you for one tiny favor and no one seems willing to help.

I’m going to take your resounding silence to mean that these were pretty much perfect as-written and will hate you all if I fail to get this fellowship. Which is another way of saying that the application is in, and now I just need to sit around and wait while they go through the selection process. I should know by May, but might know sooner.

Being awarded this thing would be a big step for me. In the first place, it’d be about $300/month for living expenses for a year. Second, it’d provide me with a research budget and a (small, but existent) travel budget with which to purchase software and travel and to find money to attend a conference for presentation. That’s all nice since I can’t afford to do that sort of stuff out of pocket, really.

It’ll also look good on my next round of grad school applications, which is not to be forgotten.

Mostly, though, I’m just excited about the research. I mean, I’m doing something I find intensely interesting, and something that I think may be important, foundational, and new (I certainly haven’t been able to find a similar study). I’m more and more convinced that this is the sort of thing I want to do with my life, which is a pretty awesome feeling.

Anyway, cross your fingers for me and think happy thoughts. I’m a bit nervous since this is the first thing like this I’ve ever really done.

Thomas

Some of you know this, most of you probably don’t. I’m submitting an application for a one-year research fellowship next week. It’s not a large fellowship, but it will allow me to get a project I’ve been rather excited about off the ground. Interestingly, I was already in the process of putting this project together for review by the Internal Review Board (the people who decide whether any experiment involving human subjects is ethical or not) when I was made aware of the fellowship.

If I am awarded the fellowship I can fund some of the technical stuff this project will need, as well as be able to afford a serious statistical analysis package (like JUMP). It will also help me with living expenses next year, which is another big bonus.

Anyway, for those of you who saw the paper I was working on as my grad school application writing sample, you’ll be familiar, mostly, with the issues I want to explore. Now I’m working on an actual survey and such to see if I can get some hard numbers on pseudonym use and social bridging.

There are two parts of the application I would really appreciate feedback on. The first is the long-term personal goals section, and the second is the research question and plan section. Please, if you have a chance, look these over, and if you see any areas that could be improved or made clearer, let me know.

Both of these sections have size limits, and I’m pushing the limit on the long-term goal section already. I have about another paragraph’s worth of space on the question and plan section if I need to expand.

Thanks, and without further ado…

Long-term research and academic goals:

In the long term I hope and intend to pursue a full-time career in academic research and post-secondary education. My interest is in the formation and development, both intentional and naturally evolving, especially communities which are mediated through computers. This includes software packages such as MySpace and LiveJournal as well as internet bulletin boards and electronic mailing lists.

In the short term I intend to do research into the natural development of communities as they shape themselves around the interfaces through which they are mediated. Once I have gained a basic understanding of these dynamics I intend to begin doing research involving designing interfaces which promote specific types of interaction. Hopefully it will be possible to identify which types of interfaces promote which types of interaction and which interfaces inhibit which types of interaction.

Ultimately, I hope to find methods for designing computer mediate communities which promote educational interaction which can be used to supplement traditional education programs. Hopefully these communities will promote continuing investment in students by providing opportunities for students to interact with one another, and especially to teach one another which will promote learning. Further these communities will hopefully provide chances for students to stay involved with the material being taught even after they complete the class.

A secondary benefit that may arise from this project in the long-term is a scaling class-size structure in which students who have already completed a class remain involved in the community and can act as assistants for the instructor to at least partially mitigate the problem of rising student-to-teacher ratios.

Research question and plan:

With the growing use of internet pseudonyms in social interaction, how do people handle social bridging between internet groups and face-to-face groups? How are people referenced without “real” names, and how are those modes of reference changing as more and more social activity moves online?

Very little research has been into the ways that people use internet pseudonyms other than examinations of pseudonyms as anonymizers. This study is intended to act as a foundational one from which future studies involving pseudonym use and the integration of pseudonymous acquaintances with more traditional (face-to-face) social groupings.

I am currently assembling a preliminary questionnaire to be administered locally. I am hoping to collect between 250 and 300 samples by early May and use the data gathered to focus questions for a larger follow-up questionnaire to be administered both locally and online. This refined questionnaire will provide the basis for an analysis based of the way people deal with pseudonym use among their friends when they have only a pseudonym is a referent.

Using the dataset gathered by the refined questionnaire I intend to do an analysis of the ways in which people bridge social connections between online social groups in pseudonyms are the only available identifier and face-to-face social groups in which pseudonyms are rarely, if ever, used.

Thomas

I like this book by Timothy Zahn called The Icarus Hunt. It’s not really the greatest book ever written. It’s not even the greatest book Zahn’s ever written. It is, however, one of my favorite twist-ending stories ever. Because I totally didn’t see it coming the first time, and that impression of “oh wow!” comes up again every time I read it, though not as strongly of course.

But the book itself is just an intro for what I want to talk about. You know how sometimes you get to a point where there’s a twist and suddenly all those things you saw before make sense in an entirely new way? You had interpreted scene X to mean one thing, but suddenly you realize that it had meant something else all along. That moment in which your brain flips out and builds an entirely new model of what’s going on in a matter fo moments as it realigns everything to fit in with this new information.

That same thing can happen with people you know too. Like you suddenly find out that someone had a twin that died in a terrible accident when they were young, and suddenly things realign and certain actions and things said take on a whole new light.

Now to the point: this has got to be something that someone, somewhere has done a lot of research on. It’s huge psychological identity thing, right? It’s a big part of how we understand other people, and how we update our understanding of other people as time goes on. It’s also a big part of how we understand ourselves. I mean, I might suddenly come to the realization that attractive female X is, you know, sexually alluring and suddenly reevaluate a lot of the things I’ve said/done around attractive female X (note, I made this up, ladies, you’re safe from me… for the moment).

And, a more extreme example (perhaps), is when people talk about realizing later in life that they are gay. A lot of the time language that suggests precisely this sort of personal reevaluation is employed in which people talk as if they could have known all along if they’d only properly interpreted their own actions.

Anyway, back to the point: this is a big deal. Someone has got to have done research on it, right? Who, and where can I read it? It’s a fascinating, and perhaps important, topic. And I’m curious. Also, I apparently don’t have enough other stuff on my plate these days.

Thomas

Because I’m willing to give you some (though probably not as much as you’re worth) if you can do a bit of programming for me.

I’m working on a preliminary run at my community organization project. The initial trial is going to be a web-based LiveJournal client. If you, or someone you know, has the skills and interest to develop such a thing, please let me know. My budget is limited, but it is more than $0.

Here’s what I’ve got:

1. LiveJournal has a fairly simple interface for clients. I need someone who can develop a web version. My server has PHP and CGI support, so however you can do that.
2. I need someone who can help me set up a web-based IM client (I’ve been looking at JWChat).
3. I also need a dbased account system through which people can connect (securely, I can provide a secure server for this) which will remember LJ account information for users so that they do not have to reenter it. The dbase also needs to store IM login data accessible to whatever gets set up for #2.
4. Someone to do a very basic site design for the project. Really, if you’re competent enough to duplicate the LJ light interface that would be pretty much perfect.

These can all be the same person, or all be different people, or whatever. There is money. It will be paid to you. We don’t really have a deadline, though I’d like to see some sort of prototype by August, but I don’t really have any idea how much work this will require. I have a special interest in people who want to do this and who live in the US so that I can do phone conferences.

So, if you or someone you know wants to get involved, do let me know.

Thomas

I was reading for my Complex Organizations class, which has been pretty fun so far, and one of the things that came up was the suggestion that “mechanical model” organizational structures tend to be stereotypically “male” while “organic model” organizational structure tend to be stereotypically “female”.

In this sense the male stereotype is the linear and logically dominated mode of thinking while the female stereotype is more intuitive and (perhaps) emotionally dominated (without connotations of this being a bad thing).

And I have to wonder: are these generally accepted as accurate? I mean, not as absolutes, and possibly only as socialized modes of thinking, but… Is this pretty well accepted as an accurate description of the way that males (are typically taught to) think versus the way that females (are typically taught to) think? Or is this another one of those things that floats around but which no one with any serious familiarity with the subject ascribes to?

Tell me oh wise and knowledgeable friends list! Certainly some number of you out there must know!

Thomas

I took some time out today to sit down with the amazingly fun Guitar Hero II today. I’m pretty sure that my favorite song to play in the entire game is Freezepop‘s “Less Talk More Rokk”. And as I was playing through it I was struck by something: It’s a ton of fun to play, but I’m not sure how much I’d want to listen to it on its own. I mean, it’d probably be fun and enjoyable, but it’s not really sitting around music if you know what I mean.

This got me to thinking about music that’s best experienced aurally and kinesthetically at the same time. Dance music, as a possible example, only more so. This, in turn, got me thinking about what it would be like if we had the culture and vocabulary to establish musical sub-markets.

I mean, right now we basically treat all music as if it is intended primarily for listening. All music playing devices are geared toward this (with the possible exception of video game consoles combined with dance pads, microphones, and guitars). What if we had people who mastered the skills of composing music for play in certain game types. Or people who composed music for dancing to which included choreography (or something). I’m sort of imagining what music would look like if we broke it down not by genres built from theoretical construction (chord progressions, harmony types, etc.), but by intended interaction.

Wouldn’t that be cool?

Thomas

Wow… been a while, huh?

Anyway.

Mostly I enjoy my job. Dispatch is a pretty cool place to work, and the people I work with are fun and interesting, and I tend to have time to think and work on stuff. But sometimes it’s not so much fun as it is sad and/or depressing. I get reminded of the darker, the dumber, and just plain bad parts of life. Thus begins a tale in three parts.

This past weekend we got a 911 call asking for paramedics in reference to a young man who was unconscious and could not be awakened. He had passed out on the couch at a friend’s apartment after a night of drinking. No one had really noticed at the time as everyone was pretty intoxicated. One of the guys there had enough medical knowledge to clear the kid’s airway of vomit and check for a pulse. They couldn’t find one.

Nineteen year old kid. Probably a college freshman in his second semester. Aspirated on his own vomit because there is a significant chunk of social culture that glorifies the hard-partying lifestyle.

Over the past couple of days we’ve gotten repeated 911 calls from a cell phone. There is a group of kids, from the chatter in the background it sounds like at least 4, maybe more, and they’re loud. And they’re just playing on the phone. It’s annoying, and they harass whoever answers the phone, but hey, they’re kids, we’re used to that sort of thing.

The depressing part is that every once in a while they try to make a prank emergency call. Like the kid who just repeated over and over “please don’t kill me”. Which is the sort of thing that would be really freaky if we hadn’t identified the phone already. But then, this morning, we got a call where this kid, probably not more than eight or nine years old, called in a pretty routine harassment. The depressing part was that he had the precise speech patterns and said precisely the same thing that we hear when real potentially violent harassment calls come in. Which suggests that this kid has heard them before. A lot of them. He lives there. That sucks.

Today we got a pretty weird call. This guy was having a problem with an ex-girlfriend. I’m not clear on the details, but apparently they had a baby (I believe of less than six months of age) and he was sick. The ex-girlfriend wanted (for whatever reason) the guy to take care of the baby (also note that this is like 05:30 local). He, on the other hand, didn’t want to take care of said baby. So he got in his car and left his house in order to get away from her. And she put the baby in her car and followed him. Waiting for him to stop somewhere so she could make him take the baby.

We got some officers to meet with them. Again, I’m not clear on the details, but they were both talked to and went their separate ways. She took the baby with her.

That’s bad enough. Here’s this baby that either no one wants to take care of or no one can take care of. And they’re in a fight not over who gets to keep it, but over who has to keep it. It just makes me a bit nauseous thinking about that.

Then, about five or ten minutes later we get a 911 call. This is from the wife of the guy who originally called in the complaint. It seems that the ex-girlfriend has driven over to their residence, and left the baby on the front porch (or something). (Bear in mind that this is what the people involved told me, there’s certainly some bias in here.) And now the ex-girlfriend is honking her horn trying to get someone to come out and pick up the baby.

Now, the truth is that there’s not enough context here to judge what’s going on. The ex-girlfriend may need to go to work, and her day-care may not allow sick children. Or she could just be crazy. But whichever it ends up being, it’s just plain heartbreaking.

So, yeah, most of the time I like my job. And, truthfully, I think this may be one reason why: it reminds me that as great as my life is, we live in a world where it sucks for many people.

Thomas

I’ve told a couple of people that I’ve been contemplating a shift in my sleep schedule for the semester. I’m working a number of mornings at five in the morning. Four a week, it turns out. I’ve decided to do it.

Advantages include: getting enough dang sleep and the fact that I tend to be more productive in the morning than the evening. So, for the rest of the semester I’m going to be going to sleep most nights at 20:00 and waking up around 04:00.

With the obvious disadvantages. I’m not operating on a night-time activity schedule compatible with most people. I still want to do stuff evenings, and will be glad to hang out and do whatever, but it won’t be for long.

It’ll probably just be for the semester, but if you’re looking for me during the evening I’m probably asleep.

Thomas

Still trying to work out the bugs in my DSL connection. The phone company finally repaired the lines, and I’ve got the thing online (and am posting from it now), but I’m running into firewall problems. I think that they are router related, but it’s hard to say. Anyway, at the moment they’re blocking my ability to send email. Which is clearly ridiculous. I’ve got a note for you, , which I’m going to try to get to you via some other confusing method. Wish me luck.

Thomas

By this time tomorrow I should be back on the broadband band-wagon. These short bursts of connectivity at work and at the houses of kindly friends just won’t cut it. In doing the shopping for this I was reminded again why monopolies and near-monopolies are so often bad for consumers. There are two major broadband providers locally: the cable company with a cable connection and the phone company with DSL.

The advantage of the cable company is that you don’t need a local phone line. Since people (like me) are pretty much doing everything by cell phone, this seems like a good deal. I mean, it should reduce costs since you aren’t paying for a local line you don’t need. So the cable company, in its infinite wisdom, decides to soak you. $55/month is the entry-level connection. That’s a 2Mb/s download and a 256kb/s upload. That is to say, super-lame. Especially if you do any gaming or work much with BitTorrent, which are both highly dependent upon upload rates rather than download rates.

So, feeling that this price was ridiculous, I decided to explore the cost of DSL. Turns out that you can get a local phone line for around $24/month. That’s no features. That’s for them to allow you to make local calls. That’s a mere $10s less than my cell phone bill. That’s ridiculous. On the other hand, the entry level DSL package is around $22/month or so. It’s even worse than the entry-level cable, but at least it’s a reasonable price for a net connection. There’s also a $27/month, a $32/month and a $37/month level. Figuring that I could budget for cable and take DSL, we’re at the third level which ends up right around $55/month. That’s a 3Mb/s download and a 384kb/s upload (with the nice addition of a static IP for no cost). Again, this is a pretty lame package, but I get considerably more service than with a cable connection.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that when there are only two companies providing broadband, and they’re only sort of in competition with one another (operating on different networks and different perception models means they don’t have to worry as much about one anothers’ pricing) is a recipe for screwing consumers.

But that’s not the stupid people. The stupid people are even more fun. Tonight I took a call from a girl on 911 advising that she just saw a man trying to break into a car. That’s pretty serious (generally a felony offense), so we rush a whole bunch of officers over there. It turns out that the girl called it in as a prank. And lied about her identity when I took the call.

This is also very serious. Police officers don’t like being used as tools in pranks, they don’t like having their time wasted, and they don’t like having a bunch of officers pulled out to one side of town when things might happen on the other side of town. Also, they don’t like being lied to (and neither do I).

Unfortunately for the girl in question, she called on 911 so we got her phone number and she couldn’t lie about that. Equally unfortunately the guy who the prank was on knew who pulled it. This resulted in her eventually being contacted by officers and arrested for filing a false report, which isn’t terribly serious, but not something you want to have to deal with. So they took her to jail.

Now, it’s likely that she’s already been bonded out and will attend trial, so she’s not in jail long-term or anything, but man did she deserve it. This was one dumb prank. I suppose that I’m continually shocked by how little respect people have for the police and what it is we do. I mean, sure some of the stuff we do is silly, or aggravating (enforcing speed limits when people are in a hurry and stuff), but a lot of what we do actually matters.

I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised. It’s not like the beat cop is a media-appreciated personality. That’s reserved for detectives and crime scene investigators and other more glamorous jobs. People are far more likely to encounter beat cops in routine situations (like traffic violations) than they are in something more serious like an assault or a burglary, and so they don’t really have a good gut-level feeling for why beat cops matter. I shouldn’t be surprised, but I think I’m justified in being upset.

Thomas

I seem to remember doing this last year, and this year I think I’ll be taking it a step farther. Today I shall be listing my Christmas haul, and over the next couple of days I think I’ll try to spotlight some of my favorites.

From the parents:

• The traditional stack of clothes. A lot of these are actually pretty cool. I may model some for everyone, especially the bright orange pants.
• A knife block. A very nice knife block. High-carbon stainless steel with single edge serrations. I’m super-excited.
• A bunt pan. I don’t do a lot of bunt cakes, but I might try one now. Actually, I’m wondering whether a cheese cake would work in a bunt pan, that might be fun.
• An electric mixer. One of those little items that everyone needs eventually. It’s nice to have it off my list now.
• A copy of Joshua Harris’ new book Stop Dating the Church. Looks interesting, even if I’m pretty sure that the title is an inelegant attention grab rather than being especially descriptive. I tend to agree with Harris on a lot of issues, we’ll see how this one turns out.
• A cake presentation plate and an apron, both useful kitchen items
• A really nice Cross pen. It’s a combo red/black/pencil rig that’s the same size as my slim-line mechanical pencil. I like it a lot.
• New shoes! I’ve got a pair of Merrell sandals, which is great since I’ve worn massive holes into the insoles.

I’m also rocking the house with an awesome combo gift from Delanne and Marie: a copy of Guitar Hero II. Sometime this week I’m going to be going out and picking up a second guitar, and the rocking will not stop!

Continuing the tradition of utterly ridiculous gifts that can be made on the cheap and get most of their value from creativity (such as the black hole, complete with magnetic containment field DO NOT BREACH! from last year), obtained for me a magical amulet that can be used to grant three wishes. However, realizing that my religious beliefs forbid the use of magic, he was kind enough to remove the temptation to damn my immortal soul by using all the wishes for me. What a guy!

An offer for you!
No worries if you skipped all that. But if you want baked goods please let me know. I’m trying to break in my new kitchen, and this time of year (what with the break) is great for finding time to bake. I’ve already got a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies promised, and they’re coming. If anyone else wants anything, I’m willing to try baking it. Comment or email me or give me a call. You know how it works.

Thomas

First, a brief public service announcement. If you are in the local area (in/around Auburn or Opelika) then you are hereby invited to my totally awesome condo-warming party tomorrow (Friday). Details such as menu, time, and duration are all undetermined, but I figure I’ll start cooking around 13:00 or so. Please show up. Since some of you haven’t been there yet, do give me a call (334-663-2738) for directions and further details. This is in celebration of having moved into a condo with my sister and having reached a point where things are relatively presentable. Please come, otherwise I’ll have far too much food left over.

But none of that is the food or fun (not to mention fire) the post topic references. That’s a different story, and I promised I’d share it :)

One of the profs in the philosophy department here has a focus in ethical issues surrounding computer mediated communications. I first ran into her when she presented a paper at the end of last semester on privacy issues in personal blogs (such as LiveJournal). In fact, I’m pretty sure I posted about it around the very end of April. Anyway, I stopped by her office a couple of times this semester just to talk, and we’ve had some fun discussions. During the hectic week of finals we made tentative plans to get together once things calmed down.

Early this week we had an email exchange in which I was invited to join her family for dinner on Wednesday. No way I was going to turn down free food. So I baked a couple dozen cookies and showed up around 18:30. I got to help prep dinner stuff, which is always a great situation for talking to people. During this time I was introduced to about six of her nine kids and her husband. Some pretty good conversation was had, and I was able to interact with relatively small groups.

Dinner finally got finished (pasta, snow peas, and prosciutto in a white cheese sauce with a light salad and bread) and we had twelve people sitting at the table. That’s a lot of people. I don’t think I’d ever noticed just how chaotic a dozen people become. It’s clearly above the maximum managable informal conversation size, and there were at least two, often three, conversations going on at any given time. It was such a shock to my social coping system that I was lucky if I could follow any single conversation.

This actually got me thinking about maximum managable social sizes. I bet there’s some really cool research that’s been done there, and even more cool research to be done there. Dinner was great, and I really enjoyed watching the family in action (and sitting next to an unbelievably adorable four year old was a plus).

After dinner people scattered. Some to bed, some to their rooms, and some stayed to talk. I got this awesome snowflake from one of the girls, and a cute sketch from another. Then we sat around and talked for an hour or two. Eventually it got late, and I needed to be headed home to sleep. So we walk out the front door to discover the thing that made my night…

It turns out that only one of the kids had gone to sleep, the others had decided to go outside to the front yard and start a fire. You know, for fun. So my hostess panics a bit. It’s been a dry couple of weeks, and there are a lot of evergreens around the front yard. So we’re standing around this fire kicking dirt and pouring water on it, and I just lose it. I start laughing uncontrollably.

I think I was just struck by how utterly absurd the situation was. It’s 23:00 at night, and six children between the ages of six and eighteen have set a fire in their front yard. If ever the phrase ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ was appropriate to a situation, this situation was it.

With the fire extinguished I made one last trip back toward the house and made the comment, ‘I am so glad that I have a LiveJournal.’ Which started a brief conversation on the nature of not-so-private spaces. I think the ability to share these little live stories with people is great, and I enjoy doing it..

Thomas

As some of you know, I’m putting together graduate school applications for next fall. The current plan is to graduate this May and start a two year masters program in the fall. I’m pumped. But all the programs I’m looking at want a writing sample. Of course since I like writing, I’m happy to provide.

The topic is simple: it is widely considered (though generally unstated and unnoticed) socially deviant to use a name that is recognizably an internet pseudonym in face to face discussion. While people can probably get away with calling me ‘Smerf’, which could be a mundane nickname, addressing me as ‘Lord Smerf’ would be a bit odd. And it only gets worse if you’ve got numbers in there or if you’ve got a visible pun ‘Miss Creant’ or ‘Smerf8301′ for instance. I argue that this creates a barrier for the formation of communities that share internet and meat space equally.

Here’s the most recent draft. This is the version I turned in as my final (and perfectly scoring) paper for my Deviance class. Unfortunately, my Deviance class is, by necessity, less than fully rigorous (with 80+ students you can’t get to detailed in your analysis of a paper).

Anyway! I’d love feedback. I crave it. If you don’t give me some I shall be disappointed. Especially criticism. I want criticism on word choice, sentence structure, grammar, logic, lack of evidence, dumb conclusions, anything. This is big. I want everyone to tear it apart, and point out how it can get better. I want the best writing sample I can possibly create for my MIT application.

I already know of one area that needs significant work, and will receive it. I need to add a section discussing how community formation works in social situations, and point out those community formation functions that rely upon identifiability. Anyone with references for that, please feel free to chime in. And anything else you have to say, I want to hear that too.

Thomas

I linked to the Creating Passionate Users article on jargon, and figured it might be useful/amusing to provide an example. This one’s from philosophy, specifically metaphysics, which you may question the usefulness of before we start… Oh well.

Jargon version, in which I surround any jargon term with *s: *Microphysical* *states of affairs* can simultaneously *realize* both *determinate properties* and *supervening* *determinable properties*.

To be fair, the use of “supervening” is perhaps superfluous here. Determinable properties always supervene on determinate properties, so it’s somewhat redundant to mention it…

No without the jargon, I hope: Science continually shrinks what we consider to be fundamental physical building blocks. Cells, molecules, atoms, quarks… You get the picture. There is some fundamentally small physical thing which actually is the fundamental building block of physical things. (Microphysical) These fundamental building blocks are arranged in ways that make certain statements about them true while making other statements about them false. Arranged in such-and-such a way they form solid matter, and arranged in some different way thay form liquid matter. When they are arrange in such a way as to make solid matter, they are simultaneously arranged in such a way as to not make liquid matter. (States of affairs)

Sometimes all X are Y and all Y are Z, which means that all X are Z. For instance: all things that are scarlet are red, and all things that are red have a color. Depending on the specific perspective we want to take in the above example, red is either the thing implied by another thing (i.e. scarlet implies red) (red is the determinable) or red is the thing that implies another thing (i.e. red implies colored) (red is the determinate).

Any given arrangement of these fundamental building blocks will simultaneously make it true that a thing constructed of this particular arrangement has both the implying and the implied properties. Let us pretend that the fundamental building blocks end up being light-reflective. Whatever the physical properties an object possesses that make it reflect the spectrum of light we call “scarlet” (that realize scarlet) are precisely the same properties that make the object reflect the spectrum of light we call “red” (that realize red).

Now, I might have been more concise with my non-jargon explanation, but I wanted to be pretty clear and transparent and not assume much in the way of specialize vocabulary. Even with that I had to resort to the word “property” without defining it, and I’m also pretty sure that I’ve missed some important nuances with superveniance. But I hope I’ve made my point anyway. Jargon permitted me to make a statement for discussion and analysis in 14 words that took me at least 20 sentences to explain without it.

I like metaphysics, but I sure don’t like it enough to engage with it on a regular basis with the sort of ineffeciency a lack of jargon would push on me. Of course I couldn’t have made any sense of that original sentence when I first started reading the stuff, so it’s clear that I have to have some sort of starting place. The difficulty is, as it often is, moving from one state to the other. How do I get from needing all those paragraphs to needing a single sentence to explain something? Someone has to teach me. But teaching can be super-frustrating precisely because it requires a willing drop in effeciency. To teach people this stuff I must choose to use ineffecient, inelegant, and less nuanced language. Yuck.

Thomas

If you’re not already reading Creating Passionate Users you should be. Triply so if you’re at all interested in communities and/or product design.

This post on jargon is a prime example of why you should be reading.

Thomas