WillWhim

Last post on blogspot

2005-04-10T23:33:00.000-04:00

I'm moving my weblog back to http://www.entish.org/willwhim. Please make a note of it. There's likely to be a few twists and turns on the way.

I may be a Unitarian Jihadist

2005-04-09T15:49:00.000-04:00

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Sword of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

(But I'm a trinitarian).

We th ppl f th US (Compressing the US Constitution)

2005-04-07T08:59:00.000-04:00

As promised, a quick test of compressing the US Constitution to compare it to the compression rates seen by Jean Véronis for the European constitution.

It's interesting to note that the compression ratio went down with the addition of the Bill of Rights. Not surprisingly, the other amendments have the biggest compression ratio There are a number of copies of "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." in the later amendments--I've never understood why some amendments have this proviso, and others don't.

In any case, even at its highest ratio (indicating the most redundant text), the US constitution does well in contrast to the European constitution. And taking the original constitutions head-to-head? No contest: 65% vs. 75%.

Of course, take this with a grain of salt. Compression was done using gzip. By the way, Jean Véronis's text compression (for his post in French) is 52%. Apparently, he's a good writer.

Compression as indicator of document quality

2005-04-06T08:30:00.000-04:00

Jean Véronis describes an informal experiment in compressing different texts, including the European constitution. (Original in French, Auto-translated to English). He notes that normally, French texts compress at about 60-65% of the original, but the EU constitution compresses at about 75%. He puts this down to "jargon, puffery, redundancy..." in the constitution. I wonder what the US Constitution is (before and after any admendments added after the Bill of Rights). To be determined...

By the way, Google's translation provider translates ""jargon, baratin, redondance..." as "jargon, sweet talk, redundancy..." Which makes me wonder about the compression ratios achievable on flattery.

Dropping Lambda

2005-04-01T11:36:00.000-05:00

Shriram Krishnamurthi, that bad boy of the Scheme community, announced today (April 1) that PLT Scheme plans on removing LAMBDA from PLT Scheme 3.0.

So I posted this note:

A group of us are pretty upset that the PLT Scheme Team has announced plans to drop LAMBDA from PLT Scheme v300.

We agree that dropping FILTER and MAP is a good idea, although for different reasons. We think that (filter P S) is almost always written more clearly as:


(((lambda (f)
    ((lambda (x) (f (x x)))
     (lambda (x) (f (lambda (y) ((x x) y))))))
   (lambda (f) 
     (lambda (r)
       (if (null? r) '()
    (if (p (car r))
        (cons (car r) (f (cdr r)))
        (f (cdr r))))))) s)

So, we are announcing that we will be forking the PLT Scheme codebase, into a new project, tentatively named "Lorenzo's Oil." Version 1 will remove MAP, etc. We expect Version 2 to further cleanse the language. We are embarrassed, for example, that we left in the IF statements.

-- The Lorenzo's Oil Team

So, are you in, or are you out?

Tradition

2005-03-30T20:17:00.000-05:00

I remember that once, when I was a little boy, my Ma was cooking a pot roast, and she started by chopping off both ends of the pot roast before putting it into the pot. I asked her, Ma--why did you cut off the ends of the pot roast before putting it in the pot? It seems to me that you cook pot roast differently every time you cook it.

Well, she said, my Ma always cooked pot roast a different way each time. Sometimes she'd cut off one end, sometimes both ends, sometimes neither; sometimes she'd use lots of pepper or garlic or tomatoes or even, one time, mustard, anise seed, and dill. Why did she do that, I asked. Well, you'll just have to ask her, she said. So the next time we went to Grandma's house I asked her why she always cooked the pot roast differently each time.

My Ma, she said, was a terrible cook. Her pot roasts were as tough as leather and dry as toast. I decided that when I had my own kitchen things would be different, so every time I cooked a pot roast, I'd try a little experiment. That's cool, Grandma, I said. Do you still do that when you cook?

Oh don't be silly, she said. I ruined a lot of perfectly good pot roasts with those crazy experiments. One day I finally went out and bought a decent cookbook, and now I make a pretty good pot roast. Maybe I should lend it to your Ma.

One suppon a time

2005-03-29T18:43:00.000-05:00

I member when me an two a my brothers were walkin home late one night an we found ourself in a graveyard. Lookit here, said Dave -- this guy lived to he was 87 years old. Huh, I said. I seen a grave a minute ago had a guy who lived till he was 95. Stevie called us over and said here's a guy who was 250 years old! What was his name, I asked. Lemme see, said Stevie, lighting a match -- oh, yeah, here it is: His name was Miles, from Detroit.

(My brother Steve was almost complaining that my posts have been a little too erudite lately).

Kunonga watch I

2005-03-29T18:03:00.000-05:00

From Archibishop Ncube Urges Mugabe Overthrow

Although Mugabe is regarded as evil incarnate by Zimbabwe's Roman Catholic hierarchy, he does have friends elsewhere in the Christian Community. Zimbabwe's Anglican primate, Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, has used his pulpit at St Mary's Cathedral in Harare to support Mugabe and his land reform programme.

He was rewarded by Mugabe with one of the farms, St Marnock's, outside Harare, confiscated from its previous white owner, 25-year-old Marcus Hale. The bishop installed his son in the 2000 acre farmhouse, which overlooks a lake and sweeping fields of wheat and soya. The bishop also evicted 50 black workers and their families to make way for his own staff.

From his pulpit, Kunonga has compared opponents of Mugabe as "dogs against an elephant" and described them as "puppets of the West". During one of his pro-Mugabe sermons, the choir began singing hymns to drown out his words. The choir was subsequently sacked by the bishop along with the cathedral wardens and cathedral council.

Anglican priests critical of Mugabe have been transferred to tough rural parishes and many have resigned. A plethora of legal cases between Kunonga and his disillusioned flock are stuck in Zimbabwe's chaotic court system. In place of priests who have resigned, he has appointed men who have pledged not to criticise the head of state.

(Kunonga used to be a friend of mine. He is now an Anglican bishop in Zimbabwe, and very supportive of dictator Robert Mugabe.)

Follow-up on "all lavish of strange gifts to men"

2005-03-29T06:21:00.000-05:00

Warren Steel, who is at the Department of Music at the University of Mississippi, had access to the original poem, by Edward Young. His "Night Thoughts" was a popular series of poems--Blake illustrated them, for example. Steel wrote on the Sacred Harp mailing list:

I have a copy of Young's Night Thoughts handy. Night 4 is the Christian Triumph.

--in his bless'd life,
I see the path, and in his death, the price,
And in his great ascent, the proof supreme
Of immortality. --And did he rise?
Hear, O ye nations! hear it, O ye dead!
He rose! he rose! he burst the bars of death...

The theme, the joy, how then shall man sustain!
Oh the burst gates! crush'd sting! demolish'd throne!
Last gasp of vanquish'd death! Shout earth and heav'n
This sum of joy to man: whose nature then
Took wing, and mounted with him from the tomb!
Then, then I rose; then first humanity
Triumphant pass'd the crystal ports of light
(Stupendous guest!) and seiz'd eternal youth,
Seiz'd in our name. E'er since, 'tis blasphemous
To call man mortal. Man's mortality
Was then transferr'd to death; and heav'n's duration
Unalienably seal'd to this frail frame,
This child of dust--Man, all-immortal! hail!
Hail heaven! all-lavish of strange gifts to man!
Thine all the glory, man's the boundless bliss.

So, since the resurrection, the poet views man
immortal; it's he being hailed first. Then heaven,
or God is hailed as generous of gifts that are
strange (i.e. immortality). The glory belongs to
heaven, the bliss belongs to man. So I read it.

I think he's right. I'm also convinced now that "all-lavish of [strange gifts]" is a adjectival phrase, like "God almighty" or "God all-powerful". Note the parallelism in the poem to "all-immortal".

Thanks, Warren!

"All lavish of strange gifts to man"

2005-03-28T08:55:00.000-05:00

I posted the following questions to the Sacred Harp discussion list. This will be of interest to only those people who are interested in both grammar and Sacred Harp. I may be the only one in this group. However, hope springs eternal ...

In Easter Anthem (236), the poetry ends:

Man, all immortal hail,
Hail heaven, all lavish of strange gifts to man,
Thine's all the glory,
Man's the boundless bliss.

I'm having trouble parsing this. Maybe you can help...

Question 1. Who is hailing, and who is being hailed?

I think it's 'Man' and 'Heaven' hailing God, but it could be we are hailing 'immortal Man' (i.e., Jesus, I assume) and 'heaven.' (i.e., God, I assume).

Question 2: What does 'all lavish of strange gifts to man' mean?

It seems to me that 'lavish' has to be a noun, grammatically. If so, it probably means something like 'lavisher' or 'giver'--i.e., 'heaven, giver of strange gifts to man'; or 'the lavished', or 'blessed', i.e., 'hail heaven, O ye who are lavished with strange gifts.' Any thoughts?

Seven last words

2005-03-25T02:31:00.000-05:00

Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23:34).

Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise (Luke 23:43).

Woman, behold your son: behold your mother (John 19:26f.).

Eli Eli lema sabachthani? (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34).

I thirst (John 19:28).

It is finished (John 19:30).

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Luke 23:46).

Plagiarism detector

2005-03-22T15:58:00.000-05:00

I learned about Copyscape.com today via rebecca's pocket. Copyscape allows you to tell whether you've been plagiarized elsewhere on the web. I checked a number of pages, and found that I was feeling a bit sad that nothing I'd written had been worth plagiarizing ... until finally I found that my description of C++ in my Real Quick C++ tutorial showed up at http://support.maguma.com/doc/reader.php?docset=sdkdocs&page=oop.html. Now I don't know whether to be flattered or angry...

Irish-American

2005-03-17T15:32:00.000-05:00

My ma was an O'Shaughnessy. My da is a Fitzgerald. It's St. Patrick's Day, and we're celebratin' here at NASA. I've been asked to "take time to remember the enduring contributions of those Irish-Americans who have given this country ... so much," I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean I can take off the rest of the month. Did you know that "Nine of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Irish-Americans?" When did they become Irish-Americans? During the act of signing? At the end of the revolutionary war? What were they before that? Irish-America-the-continent-not-America-the-country-ians?

Yes, I know, I'm being daft.

left-right blogosphere

2005-03-16T09:37:00.000-05:00

I haven't read the study, but I like the pretty picture. (via 3 Quarks).

Ascii mandelbrot set movie

2005-03-09T10:02:00.000-05:00

Ascii mandelbrot set movie.

in the midst of business

2005-03-07T21:04:00.000-05:00

I'm very busy -- but John took me up on my suggestion that he'd look cool in front of a BRLESC-II. Also, <brag_alert="on">daughter Jane (6th grade) got a 530 on her SAT--56%ile for all SAT takers.<brag_alert="off">.

englishdroid.com

2005-03-03T23:11:00.000-05:00

Much fun about teaching English as a foreign language, as I did in a former life; including a bitter essay that pretty much explains why I stopped teaching EFL.

After the age of 40, English teachers are burnt-out, skill-less and unemployable, their working lives a wasteland, their future oblivion. Suicide attempts are not unheard of. A former colleague of mine, a charming and talented but fatally lazy Scotsman who was well on his way to drinking himself to death, was recently found in a pool of blood, having tried to finish himself off by slashing his wrists.

(via languagelog).

Better to light a candle ...

2005-02-27T17:04:00.000-05:00

Bess says she wants to cross-stich the final version: Better to light a candle....

Why I love Lisp

2005-02-25T14:19:00.000-05:00

In what other language could I write a function like this:

(defmethod subject-to-variable-bound-precondition-p ((operator (eql '%%eql-if-bound))) nil)

Some publications

2005-02-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

Gee, I just discovered that two short technical reports I wrote at the Canadian National Research Council are available on their document site: Models for Cross-Cultural Communications for Cross-Cultural Website Design and Integrating Internationalized Websites with Databases and Email Systems: Working with Multilingual Texts.

Spead the meme: captchaservice.org

2005-02-23T11:06:00.000-05:00

Spread the meme: captchaservice.org provides a web-served captchas (testat that are easy for humans, but hard for robot spammers, to pass). Created by my wizardly friend Tim Converse and hosted by CommerceNet.

Montréal

2005-02-21T17:22:00.000-05:00

We just returned from Montréal. The main purpose was to celebrate the wedding of our niece Margaret Lipsey to Chris Kassab. They're both chefs, and the wedding was held in a 30's vintage restuarant, the Lion D'or. Margaret and Chris planned the wedding (Margaret even made marshmallows for the late night chocolate bar), so I took a picture of her behind the coat check.

I also got to visit friend and colleagues Daniel Lemire and Anna MacLaughlin, with whom I worked at the Canadian National Research Council, which was great fun. The weather was clear and cold, but we hit a major winter storm on our way home, forcing us to stay an extra night in a hotel on the way back. All in all, a good trip, and a chance to brush up on some of my favourite aspects of Canadian culture.

Roseville muralist

2005-02-19T12:10:00.000-05:00

I grew up in Roseville, Michigan, an anonymous Detroit suburb of no distinction. It's among the least beautiful places I've ever seen--the homes are non-descript, the businesses are strip-maill ugly. My father still lives there, so I visit it from time to time. One point of artistic light is a funky little studio run by Ed Stross, who has painted a large mural on the side of his building with portraits of Mother Theresa and Princess Diana. So, of course the obvious thing to do is to threaten to send him to jail for including a bare-breasted Eve.

His studio is kitty-corner from the Roseville Theatre, one of the only interesting buidlings in Roseville, where I spent a lot of time as a youth watching double features such as my favorite combonation ever: The Paper Lion and The Yellow Submarine. It now shows indie films and is a band venue. I have no idea where they get an audience for indie films in Roseville.

(Story via boingboing).

First century texting

2005-02-16T11:25:00.000-05:00

Jean Veronis has interesting post about the use of abbreviations in an ancient Christian text. He points out that later (medieval) texts had a much higher use of abbreviations, and suggests that perhaps the use of translations for Lord, Jesus, etc., were to mark "membership in a tribe" in addition to compression.

Ne retrouve-t-on pas là le double besoin qui se fait sentir dans l'écriture "texto" : gagner de la place, sans doute, mais aussi marquer son appartenance à une tribu, à un groupe à part ? Il y avait trèsprobablement un tel sentiment chez les premiers chrétiens, comme nous le rappelle l'étymologie du mot église : du grec ek - klesia, "qui a été appelé hors de"...

There one can see the double need that is met by "texting": to save space, no doubt, but also to indicate membership in a tribe. There was, very probably, such a feeling among the early Christians, as the etymology of the French word for "church" (église) tells us: from Greek ek-klesia, "those who are called out."

My French is pretty bad, so I relied on Google's translation into English, which was as good an extended automated text as I've ever seen. Still, it translated canon as gun -- i.e., "the construction of the gun by the Church", and the latin expression Nomina Sacra as nominated crowned. The English translation above is mine, based on the Google translation. I had thought that the English word church derived from ekklesia, too, but according to Online Etymology Dictionary, it derives the Greek for "the Lord's house," which means its etymologically related to economics.

Rovers and Whegs

2005-02-16T11:09:00.000-05:00

Is the Rotundus the new Rover?

And check out this movie (35mb) of wheg robots.

Thanks to Robots that chase burglers (or...prisoners??) at Mirabilis.ca