Francis Hwang's site

Objective updated. Endure tedious small talk.

2009-11-10T18:07:46Z

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

"The crabs were mine. I had gotten used to them."

2009-11-10T01:15:35Z

Jean-Paul Sartre, interviewed by John Gerassi in the spring of 1971:

Yeah, after I took mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time. They followed me in the streets, into class. I got used to them. I would wake up in the morning and say, “Good morning, my little ones, how did you sleep?” I would talk to them all the time. I would say, “Okay, guys, we’re going into class now, so we have to be still and quiet,” and they would be there, around my desk, absolutely still, until the bell rang.

Not to be influenced by the name

2009-11-04T02:02:25Z

Other programmers sometimes ask me why I like dynamic typing, and, sure, I can talk about various specific reasons. It makes refactoring easier, it makes testing easier, and it’s not as if static typing ever caught my difficult bugs anyway.

But, really, this is why I like dynamic typing:

Suppose mind consciousness is observing an elephant walking. During the time of observation, the object of mind consciousness may not be the elephant in and of itself. It may only be a mental construction of the elephant based on previous images of elephants that have been imprinted in store consciousness. Mind consciousness has then lost contact with the particular; now it is in touch with the universal….
Inquiry means not using the function of mental creation, but allowing yourself to get in touch and to try to see how things truly are…. We practice not to be influenced by the name, because when we are caught in the name we can’t see reality.

—Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment

(Incidentally, this Google Books thing is pretty cool; I’d never really looked at it before. But something tells me it’s easier to secure digital rights when the author’s a Buddhist monk.)

Peekaboo

2009-10-27T16:24:13Z

Hey, honey, I think these pictures will be perfect for the baby’s room, what do you think?

Inheritances in continental Europe

2009-10-26T03:05:03Z

Not being up on the finer points of international estate law, I had no idea that inheritances are treated quite differently in continental Europe. The Economist explains:

To understand one of the gulfs separating the Anglo-Saxon world from continental Europe, consider Warren Buffett’s children. Omaha’s sage investor long ago said he would leave most of his fortune to charity, with more modest sums to his offspring. For Mr Buffett, leaving vast wealth to his children would be “anti-social” in a society that “aspires to be a meritocracy.”
In 26 out of 27 European Union countries, Mr Buffett’s plans would not just be shocking, but illegal. The exception is Britain, or rather England and Wales (Scotland has its own, centuries-old legal system, with a strong continental flavour). In continental Europe a big part of an estate (often around half) is reserved for the surviving children of the deceased and must be equally divided between them. This “forced heirship” makes it impossible to disinherit feckless children (though several countries exclude bequests to “unworthy” children, who have for example murdered a parent or two). Such rules also make it hard to reward the deserving by, say, leaving more to a daughter who gave up a career to care for her ailing parents. Finally, “clawback” laws in many countries stop parents from dodging forced heirship by giving assets away while they are still alive. This applies to gifts made in the last years of life (two years in Austria, ten in Germany), or much longer: in some countries, no time limit applies.

From my American, somewhat-capitalist point of view, it strikes me as pretty odd that a government should try to tightly regulate this financial matter between individual family members. I’m down with the idea of the estate tax in general, I guess, but that’s the state defining a relationship between a wealthy individual and society as a whole, with the state as the proxy for that society. But if I’ve got three children, why is it the state’s business to say I have to treat them equally when I die?

The Buffett example is illustrative, I think, and generally why I’m not a fan of laws that are socially normative—whether those norms have to do with how much money you can bequeath your children, or who you can have sex with, or how much money to pay your hedge fund employees. No matter how well-intended those laws, unforeseen exceptions always creep in. Of course, Warren Buffett is not your typical billionaire, but I think it’s unfortunate when laws punish you for being atypical.

Why is blackmail illegal?

2009-10-20T19:48:15Z

Lizzie Widdicombe of the New Yorker on David Letterman and blackmail:

[CBS producer Robert Joel] Halderman, as everyone knows, is being prosecuted for attempted grand larceny (he has denied wrongdoing), but the act he is accused of committing is blackmail, a crime that, in philosophical and legal circles, presents a conundrum. Lindgren is the author of a paper called “Unraveling the Paradox of Blackmail,” which raises the question: why is blackmail considered a crime? The thinking goes like this: It’s perfectly legal for Halderman to write, or threaten to write, a screenplay (or an e-mail to TMZ) exposing the fact that David Letterman had flings with “Late Show” employees. It’s also legal for Halderman to ask Letterman for money as part of a business transaction. So why are the two things illegal when you put them together? In other words, Lindgren said, “Why is it illegal to threaten to do what you can do legally anyway?”

Signs from the National Equality March

2009-10-15T00:17:27Z

Buzzfeed: The 20 Best Signs At The National Equality March (more than 20, if you count posted images in the comments)

Gay Iraqis, hunted in their own country

2009-10-13T13:01:03Z

Gay Iraqis are living in heightened fear as they become the victim of militia and government terror, reports New York Magazine:

... in February of this year, something changed. There was no announcement, no fatwa, no openly declared policy by a cleric or militia leader or politician, but a wave of anti-gay hysteria hit the country. An Iraqi TV station, with disapproving commentary, showed a video of a group of perhaps two dozen young men at a private dance party, wiggling their hips like female belly dancers. Terms like the third sex and puppies, a newly coined slur, began to appear in hostile news reports. Shia and Sunni clerics started to preach in their Friday sermons about the evils of homosexuality and “the people of Lot.” Police officers stepped up their harassment of openly gay men. Families and tribes cast out their gay relatives. The bodies of gay men like Mazen and Namir, often mutilated, began turning up on the street. There is no way to verify the number of tortured or harassed, but the best available estimates place that figure in the thousands. Hundreds of men are believed to have been killed.
The eruption of violence in February appears to have been an unintended consequence of the country’s broader peace. In the wake of the surge in American troops and the increase in strength of the Iraqi military and police forces, Iraq’s once-powerful Sunni and Shia militias have wound down their attacks against American forces and one another. Now they appear to be repositioning themselves as agents of moral enforcement, exploiting anti-gay prejudice as a means of engendering public support. Gay Iraqis seem to believe that the Mahdi Army is the main, but not only, culprit in the purges. “They’ve started a new game to make people follow them. No more whores, no more lesbians, no more gays,” a friend of Fadi’s told me. “They’re sending a message to people: ‘We are still here, and we can do anything we want.’ ”

The article also describes the efforts of Human Rights Watch to spirit some of the men out of the country to safety, and the difficulties of that mission. I went to the HRW site and was surprised to see there isn’t any specific fundraising appeal for this effort—I suspect that making this a focused campaign, operationally and in terms of fundraising, might enable them to do some more good in this area.

In the meantime, it’s issues like these that make me wonder how long we in the U.S. will decide to stay engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Between reports of Iraqi policemen torturing and killing innocent gay men, and reports of widespread electoral fraud in Afghanistan, there’s probably some point where the American people stop caring about fine distinctions and get disgusted by the whole thing. (Regardless of whose fault it is that it got that way in the first place, obviously.)

Street Fighter in 15 pixels

2009-10-12T15:56:45Z

Via Kotaku.

I've got a tunnel to sell you

2009-10-11T20:07:08Z

Hamas Finds Gaza Tunnels’ $500 Million Loss Worse Than Madoff

Investment opportunities are rare in the Gaza Strip. So when Nabila Ghabin saw one last year, she pawned her car and jewelry and put $12,000 into a network of tunnels that brought in supplies smuggled from Egypt.
She was one of about 4,000 Gazans who gave cash to middlemen and tunnel operators in 2008 as Israel blocked the overland passage of goods. Then Israeli warplanes bombed the tunnels before and during the Dec. 27 to Jan. 18 Gaza offensive and the investments collapsed.
Now investors, who lost as much as $500 million, want their money back from Hamas, which runs Gaza. Hamas Economics Minister Ziad Zaza says about 200 people were taken into custody in connection with the tunnel investments; most have been released. Hamas is offering a partial repayment of 16.5 cents on the dollar using money recovered from Ihab al-Kurd, the biggest tunnel operator.