musings

It’s been a horrible year for losing giants in the computing industry.

John McCarthy coined the term AI, and was highly influential in time-sharing systems (read: multitasking).

Now, I don’t write AI code, and I’m not an OS programmer, but John McCarthy’s impact on my life is nonetheless immense, because he invented the LISP programming language, and LISP powers Emacs. If a warrior lived and died by their sword, a coder lives and dies by their editor – I’m a tenth as productive in a mundane text editor as I am in Emacs, and LISP is a beautiful (if, to the untrained eye, inscrutable) language.

If I owe the start of my career to Apple, it’s only fair to admit that I owe the bulk of it to Dennis Ritchie. Dennis Ritchie was a co-creator of unix, the inventor of the C Programming Language, and the co-author of this gem:
I’m long past needing this book, but I keep it on my shelf. Both as a reminder of where I came from, and as a monument to the absolute zenith of technical writing.

There’s not a computer system in the world today that doesn’t owe some of its heritage to either C or Unix. Dennis was a quiet giant of computer science. He wasn’t a public figure like Steve Jobs, but his impact on the field of technology was at least as large, and his loss an equally terrible blow.

My condolences to the Jobs family, and all of their friends. I wish you’d had more time with each other.

The first computer I ever used was an Apple ][+. The first I ever owned was an Apple //c, and I used that machine to learn how to program.

Today, I use a Mac all day, every day, and earn my living writing software for iOS.

Thank you, Steve. You will be missed.

I’ve been in a twitter conversation with @maverynthia, @nonconneko and @scottmadin, but twitter really isn’t the best place for long discussions. @maverynthia wrote a lengthy post (because sometimes 140 characters really isn’t enough) to explain her grievance with the scientific community, this is my long-winded response.

Maverynthia starts by quoting me as saying “if you want me to believe in fairies YOU provide proof”. I had prefaced that with “I can’t prove a negative” – I’ll never be able to prove that fairies don’t exist. I can’t prove that there are no such things as miracles, that humans aren’t animated by spirits or that ghosts don’t exist. Why? Simple – absence of proof is not proof of absence. This isn’t being dismissive – it’s the nature of science.

Wikipedia defines the scientific method as:

1. Define the question
2. Gather information and resources (observe)
3. Form hypothesis
4. Perform experiment and collect data
5. Analyze data
6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
7. Publish results
8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)

The job of the scientist is to follow this method and then convince the community using the evidence they’ve gathered.

I should make clear that science isn’t singularly skeptical of things supernatural or paranormal – it’s skeptical of other science too. This is why we don’t fall for the noise spewed by anti-vax cranks, or cold-fusion.

The Large Hadron Collider had an accident in September 2008 that delayed took it offline for just over a year. Holger Bech Nielsen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomyia of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto theorezed that the Higgs-Boson particle was so abhorrent to nature that when the LHC created it, it travelled backwards in time to sabotage the LHC to prevent itself from being created. Particle physicist Brian Cox, when interviewed on The Colbert Report said (and I’m paraphrasing as the link I posted doesn’t work outside the USA) “The scientific community has a word for that: bollocks”.

On the surface that certainly sounds like it’s being knee-jerk dismissive, but there’s simply no evidence to back the theory. In our conversation, Maverynthia mentioned theories of multidimensionality as being just as outlandish as the existence of fairies and the existence of the soul. I think there’s an important distinction, though: many of these theories are supported by mathematical models of the universe. Furthermore, we recognize there’s little physical evidence to support these theories and thus they remain theories. Science never claims to understand something with 100% certainty. Science operates based on the information at hand.

Maverynthia’s example of earth-lights only serves to reinforce my point. Derr and Persinger did dismiss the fanciful theories behind earth-lights. Rather than accept fairies, gods, ghosts or dragons as the explanation for these lights they formed hypotheses, observed the phenomena, conducted experiments and formulated a conclusion that explained the phenomena they saw.

Science, by its very nature, is skeptical. That’s not a weakness of science – it’s its biggest strength. Aristotle defined science as a body of reliable knowledge that can be logically and rationally explained. Reliable is an important factor in that definition – anecdotes, on their own simply aren’t reliable evidence. Scientifically, it’s not only rational to say “I didn’t see it, so I don’t believe it”, it’s the point.

Ultimately, people will believe what they want or need to believe. The lack of any evidence of the existence of a supreme being doesn’t stop roughly 85% of the world’s population from believing in god(s). For flat-earthers, no amount of evidence is enough to prove the earth is a sphere, and for conspiracy cranks there’s no proof that man landed on the moon. I have no problem with anyone believing anything at all, but I think it’s unfair to be critical of somebody or some community for not believing the same things you do. And in the absence of repeatable, measurable evidence all you have is belief.

eMusic’s agreements with Merge Records and the entire Beggars Group (4AD, Matador, Rough Trade, XL, Beggars Banquet, Mantra, Too Pure, Twisted Nerve, True Panther, Young Turks) expire on November 18th. All the music goes away, pending a renegotiation. I’ve had to adjust my planned downloads a bit, so as not to miss out on some stellar music. I’m still posting links, but I’m not sure if they’ll still be good after the 18th. I hope these great labels will return to eMusic one day.

• BXI by BXI

• Spirit by Culture Kultur

• Ring by Glasser

• To You in Alpha by Scala

• Mit Gas by Tomahawk

• Exs by Uberbyte

• The Fool by Warpaint

• xx by The xx

• Stridulum EP by Zola Jesus

It’s municipal election time in my city, and there’s a gentleman running for city council by the name of Max Khan. I don’t know anything at all about him, but I feel like I’m obliged to vote for him on the basis that if he is elected and city council does something stupid I can clench my fist and shout my anger at the universe: “KHAAAAAAN!”

I am aware that this reference may be lost on younger readers.

The UberDork Cafe kickstarter project reached its funding goal this past weekend! Congratulations, Natali!

I’ve recently been made aware of a really great kickstarter project – The UberDork Cafe. A safe and friendly community centre for the geeks and dorks amongst us – a group of which I’m a proud member – is terrific. I’m getting close to forty now, and I’m pretty comfortable with who I am, but for the younger set I think this is really important. As a teen, I knew I didn’t really fit in with anyone. My high school had a strong athletic focus, and the outsider groups were mostly metal-heads and goths. Though I identified with the goths, I didn’t adopt the look. Worse, I was one of the “smart kids”. Now, I was always a loner, so it didn’t really bother me too much that I didn’t fit in, but it would’ve been nice to have a place to go. (All that cliquish BS evaporated in university – between the amazing community at the school and access to the goth and industrial clubs of the city, I was in heaven.)

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I understand the need for a place like UberDork Cafe. I wish there were one near where I lived when I was in high school. If there were one here I’d go now.

The project founder, Natali, isn’t looking for a ton of money (how she’s going to swing this with such little investment is a mystery to me) and she’s well on her way to her goal, but she’s not there yet. (If, by the time you read this, the project goal has been met please donate anyway – every bit helps.)

My grandmother loved cricket. My grandfather does too. Here they are, watching a match between India and New Zealand. (I confess, the game makes no sense whatsoever to me.)

For the past several years my mother’s been making a trip to India at the start of the year to visit my grandmother. My grandmother’s health has been failing – diabetes, a hyperactive thyroid, Parkinson’s and even cancer. She’d had several close calls, but pulled through every time. Knowing her health was poor, my sister and I had been making trips to India as well – my sister went two years ago, I went last year, and my sister and mum were en route to India last night.

My grandmother died this morning.

This is a photo of her, taken February 25, 2009 – when I went to India. I wish you could have seen her when she was in the prime of her health. I wish I had more photos of her. I wish I’d seen her more often, spoken with her on the phone more. I wish … so many things.

The last time I saw her she was so frail. She could barely speak. The effort of speaking left her tired. She was wheelchair bound, and needed help eating. The cocktail of drugs she was on drove her body temperature sky high, so she was always complaining of feeling hot. And worse, the drugs made it hard for her to distinguish things she’d dreamt from reality. Still, when she was on she was on. Her mind was still razor sharp, and I could see how frustrated she was to be trapped in a body that refused to obey her.

At times I thought she was hanging on so she could see her grandkids married. Of severn grandchildren, only one is married. My sister got engaged on New Year’s. We thought she should wait to tell my grandmother in person, but she wisely overruled us and told her on the phone, so at least she knew that one more of her kids had her feet on the path she’d have loved for us all to have been on. She’ll never see my sister’s wedding now. She never met her great-grandson. EDIT: My cousin and his wife took their infant son to India, last year, so my grandmother did see him. I’m so glad of that.

I’m sad for us – the ones she’s left behind. The ones who’ll never again feel the joy of her company. A small part of my is happy that she’s free of the body that betrayed her, and became a cage. I want that small part of me to be right.

But I can’t help but cry.