Because the future has just started
Cousins share a pair of grandparents. Second cousins share a pair of great-grandparents.
This leads to some interesting and non-trivial puzzles. For example, as you go up from second cousin to third cousin to fourth cousin, on the average, how many nth cousins do you have?
What kind of curve describes the rate of increase? Is there any reasonable way of figuring this out?
If you spend years working in an area of research, that activity starts to become its own little world. And like any human world, that world begins to develop its own language and culture.
A problem and then arise when you try to explain your work to others. From the perspective of many listeners, you are speaking an alien language. At best they try their best to understand that language. At worst, they are resentful of how your well meaning explanation is, in a sense, making them feel illiterate.
Which is why it is important to distinguish between the research and the demo. A demo does not try to explain things fully. Rather, it tries to communicate why what you have been working on is meaningful or important to others.
One of the hardest things to do in research is to separate yourself from all of those technical details that you are so proud of, and think about what you’ve been doing might mean to others. Once you can do that, you can start to design a great demo.
Many years ago, a Ph.D. student of mine subtitled his Doctoral dissertation “All My Failures”. Over the years I have come to understand how profoundly on target that statement was.
The nature of successful science is to embrace failure. Sure, we can celebrate the “Eureka” moment, but most of science is about doggedly trying things, and knowing that most of the things you try will fail.
Those failures are at least as important as the occasional successes. If you don’t understand the ways up the mountain that don’t lead to the top, you can’t really understand the mountain.
That student’s thesis was well written not just because he demonstrated some successful results (which he did), but because he also described the places of failure — the many experiments that did not work out. And sometimes it is in the understanding of those places that the deepest truths can be found.
On the other hand, very smart people cautioned that Truman was foolish to run against Dewey, when it was obvious that Dewey was going to win.
Ginsburging: Present participle of the verb “to ginsburg”.
Definition: Stubbornly remaining in a position of political authority, even when doing so is beneficial only to one’s political opponents.
On Thursday July 27 our Supreme Court issued a set of rulings that severely weakened the ability of Federal agencies to protect
U.S. citizens.
On that day I thought up the slogan “Don’t Let SCOTUS OutVote Us.”
This was actually one day before another Supreme Court ruling essentially set up Donald Trump to become a dictator in January 2025. I know that sounds crazy, but if you study the January 28 decision, you will see that it is quite literally true.
That ruling will place Trump above the law and answerable to nobody for any act, no matter how venal or corrupt or harmful, as long as he can claim “I’m doing this in my official capacity as president.”
So now it is even more urgent. U.S. citizens are likely to lose fundamental rights that they have never even questioned before, as we careen toward becoming a authoritarian state. Imagine that — six people just summarily took away the rights of 300 million people.
To paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, it can happen here.
Today would have been the 86th birthday of the great actress Shirley Knight. Alas, she passed away in 2020, at the age of 83.
She was one of those brilliant actors who always make the films they are in much better by making the other people in the cast look good. Tom Wilkinson was like that as well.
I had the great good fortune to meet her some years back, and we got to talking about movies. At one point I mentioned her role as Beverly in the 1997 film As Good as It Gets.
There is one scene in particular in that film where it looks as though Helen Hunt is giving a bravura performance, but if you watch carefully you realize that Shirley Knight is quietly doing all the heavy lifting. “You’re the person,” I told her “who won Helen Hunt an Academy Award.”
She seemed happy that I realized that.
I was talking with someone today who pointed out that today might be our very last Independence Day. At least, in the way that we’ve thought of it till now.
Depending on how things go on November 25, by this time next year it might be illegal to question our government’s policies. As of a few days ago, it is now perfectly legal for the U.S. President to issue an executive order declaring that any criticism of the U.S. government is an act of sedition, punishable by imprisonment.
I very much doubt that the current administration would issue any such order. But I cannot say the same thing about next year, when we might have a very different administration.
Such a policy might seem odd to those of us who grew up in the U.S., but it is perfectly normal elsewhere. There are many countries in the world where criticism of the government is an offense punishable by imprisonment, or even, in the case of Iran or Sudan, by execution.
So enjoy this holiday while you can. And don’t forget to vote in November. It might be the very last time you get to do that.
I learned this morning of the death of Robert Towne at 89. I had never seen his face before. From the picture in the New York Times, looking at his eyes, I could tell at once that he was Jewish.
How odd, I thought to myself. “Towne” is not a Jewish name. Then I read the obituary, and learned that he was born Robert Schwartz.
It all made more sense to me then, the undercurrent of incredible sadness that runs through his best screenwriting. The line “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.” is a metaphor for infinitely larger tragedies.
We need our poets. We need them to speak to what is unspeakable, yet must be spoken.
To my astonishment, the U.S. Supreme Court just declared Joe Biden to be King. Well, not exactly King, because there is no right of succession. Hunter Biden doesn’t get to inherit the monarchy.
But in effect, the majority opinion of the court yesterday was that anything a sitting president does in his official capacity is legal. Which means Joe Biden can do whatever he wants between now and January 20.
Should he decide to round up all of the Republican senators and put them into holding camps for the next six months, that would be legal. Should he order a military hit on the Republican candidate for president, or on any particular members of the Supreme Court, that would also be legal.
In each case, he could simply say he is acting in the interest of national security. The Court made it very clear that we are not allowed to even question the motives of a sitting president.
According to SCOTUS, you cannot question POTUS. As long as King Joe is operating in his official capacity as president, whatever he does is by definition legal.
I wonder why the Supreme Court decided to give Joe Biden such absolute power.