Ken's Blog

I know that we live in a time of great divisiveness. Half of our nation thinks that the other half is crazy. And that feeling goes both ways.

So as terribly sad a day as this is, at least Memorial Day is a time when we can all agree on something. The brave men and women who have been willing to give their lives for their country and for their fellow citizens deserve our respect, and our eternal gratitude.

I’ve been wanting to go back and read the Harry Potter books in order. I remember reading the first one soon after it came out.

I was in a book store in the late 1990s, looking for a good book to read. The proprietor said “This recent book is quickly becoming very popular.” Which is how I came to buy the first one.

The title was “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” It was a great read, but the title puzzled me. It soon became obvious that the book was about the philosopher’s stone.

So if I was reading a book that was obviously about the philosopher’s stone, why did everybody in the story keep calling it the sorcerer’s stone? I eventually learned the answer from a British friend.

The original UK title was indeed “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, but the U.S. publisher thought that was too sophisticated for American readers, so they changed it. Basically, it was because they thought that we Americans are stupid.

Given where our nation’s current political choices have led us, it’s kind of hard to argue.

This week was notable for the list of invited commencement speakers at college graduations. To pick only two among many, one of those speakers was Kermit the Frog, and another was the president of the United States.

It’s wonderful to see such diversity on display. Consider the range spanned just by those two examples.

One of those two speakers is a talking puppet controlled by an unseen hand. The other is a frog.

I started writing Java applets on the Web in 1995 as soon as that became possible, but stopped cold turkey in August 2013, after Oracle (which had acquired it as part of Sun Microsystems) stopped allowing the general public to access unsigned Java applets. That summer I completely switched over to Javascript and WebGL for both my research and teaching, and have never looked back.

But until then, Java was revolutionary in its effect on scientific communication. For the first time ever, anybody anywhere could access interactive computer graphics from a Web browser.

This was a radical reframing that had a profound and lasting effect on the way we think about interacting with computers. Oracle may have effectively killed the Java applet, but it couldn’t stop the revolution that James Gosling’s Web-friendly language had started.

We now take for granted that from any Web browser you can interact with your computer or phone in all sorts of rich and powerful ways, but that was not always so. Today being the 30th anniversary of the first public introduction of the Java programming language, let’s take a moment to appreciate its profound influence.

Yesterday the President of the United States hosted the President of South Africa and his entourage to the White House. Once the guests had arrived, our president spent much of the time, while the cameras rolled, expounding an idiotic “theory” that thousands of white South Africans were being killed en masse by black South Africans.

I am sure our president isn’t actually stupid enough to believe this thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. In fact, if history is any guide, the very stupidity of the accusation is its greatest strength.

He was essentially enacting a modern equivalent of the “Blood Libel” — the accusation dating from the Middle Ages, and running up to the 20th century, that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make their Passover matzoh. Of course that accusation was false, and in fact absurd, but that didn’t diminish its underlying power.

The first rule of successful authoritarian take-over is to remove actual truth from the conversation. And the optimal strategy is to replace facts by blind stupid hate. In fact, the stupider the better.

I wouldn’t be surprised if our president were to invite the Prime Minister of Israel to the White House next week. Just so he can explain to Mr. Netanyahu, while the cameras roll, how terrible it was that the Jews persecuted all those poor Germans about 80 years ago.

There are particular combinations of names that for the true fan will instantly invoke the name of a particular songwriter. To others these name combinations will mean nothing at all.

The true fan will instantly recognize “Terry and Julie”. The fan of a different songwriter will recognize “Brenda and Eddie”.

There are many such examples. But I think my favorite songwriter mentions a lot more name combinations than anyone else.

There’s “Rose and Valerie”, and “Vera, Chuck and Dave”. Not to mention “Desmond and Molly” or “Phil and Don”. The list goes on, and I just love it.

I find A.I. to be useful as a starter kit. For example, I can ask it a question about a particular software package, and it will give me a working example of how to use that package.

For me this is useful because it is essentially a starter kit. I never end up using any of the code that the A.I. generates, but I find it extremely helpful to have a working example as a reference when I write my own code.

This parallels what people report in their use of ChatGPT. Good writers don’t actually use any of the actual prose that ChatGPT spits out, but they often find it helpful as a reference.

I wonder whether this will be the way that people who generally know that they are doing employ A.I. You would never allow it to substitute for your own work, but it’s nice to have a working example to refer to, just as it’s nice to have a dictionary or encyclopedia at your fingertips.

What is it about Monday songs? It seems that most of the sad songs that are about a day of the week are about Monday.

There are too many to list here, but you know what I’m talking about. After reading this, one of those songs is probably playing in your head right now.

Regardless of the genre or the era, songwriters seem to really hate Mondays. Or is it that songwriters just really love weekends, and hate to see them end?

I’ve been watching the war of words between the Boss and the aging six year old who once pretended to be a boss on TV. A number of commentators have been criticizing Bruce’s recent statements, accusing him of diving into politics.

But isn’t this an important part of why millions of people have loved him for all of these decades? The poetry of the man’s lyrics is inherently political. His songs speak truth to injustice, standing up for the dignity of individuals and urging respect for the working class.

I found his recent words decrying our nation’s recent political slide into intolerance and authoritarianism to be thoughtful, articulate, and well reasoned.

In contrast, that petulant six year old sounded, well, like a petulant six year old.

Somebody asked me recently what I would say in celebration of Alan Kay’s birthday, which happens to be today. This was my reply:

Somebody once said that if you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

One great thing about hanging out with Alan Kay is that I can always be sure I am in the right room.